“Today is my dad’s first official day as associate warden on Alcatraz Island, home to anyone who is anyone in the criminal world.”

The first line of Choldenko’s novel establishes the setting and central problem of the story. The narrator’s father, a gentle, compassionate man, has just been promoted to second-in-command at Alcatraz, which houses some of the most dangerous criminals in the world. The narrator knows that the convicts will try to “test” him to discover his weaknesses.

“My dad says Natalie views the world through her own personal kaleidoscope and it’s our job to see from her perspective.”

The narrator’s 16-year-old sister, Natalie, has a developmental disability that makes it difficult for her to relate to others since she focuses on different aspects of the world than most people do; for instance, she is fascinated with objects like buttons and light switches and with numbers, rather than with the niceties of social interaction. Her father aptly describes her distinct way of looking at the world as a “personal kaleidoscope,” framing her neurodivergent perspective as unique and complex.

“He’s in a tight spot is all. He’s got the cons on one side testing him. And Darby on the other hankering for his job.”

Donny Caconi explains that Moose’s father, in his new job of associate warden, is caught in an isolated—and perhaps dangerous—position since the convicts will be putting pressure on him, and the head guard Darby Trixle does not necessarily have his back. As later events suggest, Donny knows more about Darby’s resentment than he reveals here. Through early interactions like these, Donny is initially characterized as a trustworthy, affable adult; this early characterization makes his antagonist role more difficult for Moose and his friends to accept.

“‘Could have burned the whole place down, killed every last one of us,’ Darby Trixle says. ‘Look at her. She can’t even look at me. That’s a guilty girl if ever I saw one.’”

Darby Trixle, bitter over being passed over for promotion in favor of Cam Flanagan, is quick to blame Cam’s daughter, Natalie, for the fire in the Flanagans’ apartment. Disingenuously, he cites her reluctance to look at him as evidence of her guilt, though he knows that Natalie never looks people in the eye. By showing how Natalie’s habitual ways of being are twisted into something suspicious, this passage demonstrates the ostracization that neurodivergent people like Natalie face in society.

“‘Never needed to,’ Piper says. ‘It’s all about loyalty anyway. You take care of people and they’re loyal to you. Then it doesn’t matter if you have permission or not.’”

The warden’s daughter Piper, who has grown up side-by-side with the prison culture of Alcatraz, shows her cynical, transactional view of morality and personal loyalty. “Taking care” of people (such as by offering them gifts), she says, gets you friends and gives you license to do what you want. Moose describes her amoral outlook as the “Al Capone model,” and Piper, who earlier gushed about all the fan mail Capone receives, agrees. Piper’s perspective on the world highlights the theme of Moral Decision-Making in a Young Person’s Life.

“This was just a distraction to make me feel better and we both know it. He’ll return our money. Course he will. But when the ferry puts down the gangplank, he gets on without looking back.”

On Alcatraz, not all of the slippery characters are behind bars. Slick, twenty-something Donny Caconi, who always has a friendly word for everyone, cannot resist an easy mark: Right after Moose loses his home to a fire, Donny cajoles him with flattery into a money bet, asking him for a few “pointers” about throwing, then goes back on his word by keeping the children’s money. His casual dishonesty and greed here augur his involvement in more serious crimes right under the guards’ noses.

“On the top of the first page of my thesis about Roosevelt and his polio, it says State problem in handwriting that is hauntingly familiar.”

In the small world of Alcatraz, convicts often have access to residents’ belongings, whether laundry or (on work details) even their homes. Always hungry for influence on the outside world, they sometimes use this access to their advantage. Moose’s school paper on FDR has found its way into Al Capone’s hands, and Capone adds some penciled comments, one of which turns out to be a (coded) warning. Moose recognizes his handwriting because he has had dealings with him in the past—as detailed in the series’ earlier books.

“Nat’s eyes brush past my face. ‘Ten thousand, nine hundred and ninety-eight,’ she says. She somehow has managed to take in the numbers that quick.”

Natalie demonstrates her remarkable facility for numbers, solving a difficult multiplication problem in less than a second. The glancing speed of her calculation frustrates Moose, who was hoping to train her to settle her gaze on people’s faces, but will prove useful later during the poker game.

“If the Count put this information in the rain gutter, he’s trying to communicate these numbers—whatever they are—to someone.”

Moose quickly sees the implications of this drop location, which is outside the cell block: The mysterious note must have been intended for a resident, not a prisoner. Later, he connects this insight with Donny Caconi’s suspicious behavior and the large amount of money he discovered in the Caconis’ laundry bag.

“Once Nat starts with the lights, she doesn’t stop. She’d stand there all night, flicking them off and on. Off and on. She wouldn’t have gone to the stove. She’d never have made it there.”

Since the fire, Moose has been tormented by the fear that Natalie might have started the fire with the stove while he was asleep. Now, Annie reminds him that she would have had to turn on the light first—which, with her preoccupation with light switches, would have kept her from reaching the stove. Though Natalie’s exoneration (and his own, for falling asleep) comes as a great relief to him, the ominous mystery of who started the fire remains. This moment also serves as a turning point in Moose and Annie’s relationship as Moose grows to appreciate her empathy and level-headedness.

“‘Clubs. Second black jack of clubs,’ Nat shouts.”

Natalie, watching her father play poker with Donny, Darby, and Riv, spots a cheat: She has been rapidly counting the cards and knows that there is only one jack of any particular suit in a standard deck. Most of the adults ignore her, but Moose, remembering how Donny took advantage of him in the throwing contest, insists that his father count the jacks. Natalie shows how her “private kaleidoscope” has its own worth, even to the people who habitually dismiss and deride her.

“Please, Nat. You saved him a bundle of money. He wants to like you. Can’t you pretend to be normal just this once? But Nat does not look up…and the moment passes.”

After Natalie catches Donny cheating, Moose silently pleads with her to make eye contact with Darby, which might win his respect. Moose knows the importance of “social graces” or doing things we may not particularly want to do in order to make others comfortable. But as Mrs. Mattaman notes, Natalie does not “fake” anything, which makes it hard for her to be accepted by people who do not know her.

“‘She’s going to live out there, Mom. You can’t keep her in here forever,’ I whisper.”

Natalie’s teacher, Mrs. Kelly, has recently reminded Moose that Natalie will probably outlive her parents by many years and so must learn to function, to some degree, in society. Moose has taken this to heart and has been trying to get his sister accustomed to being around other people and looking them in the eye. Natalie’s mother, on the other hand, worries that if Natalie keeps “pitching a fit” in public, she will just make things harder for herself and the family. This becomes a major source of disagreement between Moose and his mother. This moment also underscores The Pressures of an Unstable Home Life as Moose grapples with the sense of responsibility he feels for his older sister at a young age.

“Being locked in a shed with a girl you once kissed and your best friend who happens to be a girl is not exactly relaxing.”

Though he does not like to admit it, Moose has romantic feelings for both Piper and Annie. Though he has kissed Piper once, he feels awkward around her because it is her “outsides” that he likes—her stylish, pretty looks—rather than her “insides.” As for Annie, he has always regarded her as a “friend”—a much better friend than Piper—but lately, as she has grown taller and more mature, he has begun to feel physically attracted to her as well. In addition, both girls seem jealous of his closeness with the other, so being “locked” up in a confined space with both only exacerbates his awkward, confused feelings.

“‘I thought one of the laundry cons, you know, liked me,’ Piper mumbles, her eyes focused on her shoes. This is the only safe place to look.”

Piper has been trading good money for bad through the prison’s laundry system, which is partly operated by the counterfeiter Count Lustig. She had suspicions, early on, that this two-for-one exchange was illicit but soon convinced herself that one of the cons was giving her free money because they “liked” her, a reflection of her vanity that highlights the difficulties of Moral Decision-Making in a Young Person’s Life. In this scene, her inability to look her father in the face echoes Natalie’s reluctance to make eye contact, underscoring the differences between the two girls: Natalie’s socially compromising condition is in some ways a strength, allowing her to expose a card cheat, whereas the glamorous Piper’s vanity and greed make her the accomplice of an even worse crime.

“Part of me is glad Piper finally got caught. As long as I’ve known her, she’s always gotten away with things. I just wish it was for something little.”

Moose has never liked Piper’s “insides,” part of which is her slipperiness: Her ability, as the warden’s pretty daughter, to wriggle out of tight spots of her own making, only feeds her arrogance and sense of entitlement. Maybe, Moose thinks, this reckoning will teach her some humility. At the same time, he feels sympathy for her and the severity of her downfall. If only she had been caught earlier for some smaller misdeed, she might not have come to this. Moose’s contradictory feelings about Piper’s actions reveal that Moral Decision-Making in a Young Person’s Life can be multi-faceted and far-reaching; he recognizes that he can both be glad that she is finally facing repercussions for her morally gray decisions and feel sorry for her as a friend.

“Jimmy and me are outside the canteen when we hear the task force report is finally released. ‘It’s Donny Caconi.’ Annie runs down the steps to tell us. […] ‘I knew all along,’ Bea Trixle informs Annie as she puts the empty soda bottles in the wood tray.”

The task force concludes that Donny Caconi, the card cheat, is also responsible for burning down the Flanagans’ apartment. Bea Trixle shows her hypocrisy by claiming to have known it “all along,” despite her repeated accusations against Natalie Flanagan, which included trying to get her kicked out of her school. Ironically, later revelations that Darby Trixle may have paid Donny to set the fire suggest that Bea may actually be telling the truth: Perhaps she did know it all along.

“The glint of the knife flashes in Indiana’s hand. The ball is in my palm. I aim for the knife, aim with everything I’ve got.”

Indiana, who spat at Cam Flanagan on the new warden’s first day on the job, tries to graduate to murder, to earn himself 5,000 points in the cons’ “game.” Moose, who has an exceptional throwing arm for his age, reacts quickly, possibly saving his father’s life. For this, he has also Al Capone to thank, namely the mobster’s coded warning about Indiana (“State problem”). This moment is an example of the novel’s interest in kids using their special interests or skills to solve problems that adults can’t; here, Moose’s love for baseball becomes a powerful solution to a very adult situation.

“He could have prevented this, but he wasn’t willing to stick his neck out. Al Capone isn’t as brave as people think he is. My dad has more courage than he does.”

Despite Piper’s esteem for Al Capone and the “loyalty” he commands, Moose loses some respect for the notorious mobster, who might have warned him more explicitly about Indiana or even used his influence to prevent the attack on Moose’s father. He decides that his father, despite his gentleness and occasional tendency to cry, is a more courageous man, who puts his neck out every day. Moose’s realization aligns with his nascent moral code, relating to the theme of Moral Decision-Making in a Young Person’s Life.

“I never realized how many millions of things you have to do to look normal. How confusing it must be to figure it out.”

Moose gains a new appreciation for Natalie’s difficulties when she insists on visiting their father at the hospital: Facial expressions, social cues, and other instinctive gestures that he and others take for granted have to be painstakingly learned by her, almost like a foreign language. That she summons the willpower to do this demonstrates that, despite her downcast eyes and aloof manner, she cares very deeply for her family.

“‘I am sixteen now,’ Natalie says, her words like a wall keeping my mom at bay.”

By insisting on visiting her father, Natalie takes a pivotal step into independence, refusing to be sheltered and hidden by her mother. In doing so, she proves her brother right in trying to accustom her to the outside world and neurotypical society, which has helped her make this step.

“I look into my dad’s deep brown eyes. It never occurred to me he understood what I was going through. I wish I’d talked to him about falling asleep the night of the fire long ago.”

As his father points out, Moose has tried to carry too much weight on his shoulders, feeling himself responsible for both his father’s and his sister’s safety. For weeks, he has harbored terrible, secret guilt for falling asleep while watching his sister on the night of the fire, almost as if he sees himself as one of the prison guards. His father, however, has never wanted him to take on these responsibilities but wants him to enjoy the remaining, carefree years of his childhood. This knowledge makes Moose feel much less alone.

“In Darby’s mind, I’m the threat. He feels the cons are here to be punished and my plans to rehabilitate them are crazy at best, dangerous at worst.”

Moose’s father explains to him the main bone of contention between Darby and himself, which is a conflict of opposing philosophies. His father believes that prisoners can be rehabilitated (made into better, law-abiding people), even in Alcatraz, while Darby takes the more cynical view that prisons are houses of punishment, not correction, and that any softheartedness will be ruthlessly exploited by the convicts. At any rate, this is how Darby rationalizes his jockeying for Cam Flanagan’s job, which may have involved hiring Donny to burn down the Flanagan’s apartment. This passage highlights the theme of Punishment Versus Rehabilitation.

“I turn it over. Carved into the leather in awkward hatch-mark strokes are the words Do your own time.”

Al Capone, to whom Piper once looked as a role model for earning “love” and loyalty, has rebuffed her scheme to use his autograph to help pay back the money she “stole” with counterfeit bills. His curt response puts her in her place, which is approximately that of a small-time grifter, even if she is the warden’s daughter.