A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, #4)(21)

“I’m still your son,” I whispered.

His jaw was set, but I saw his lip tremble, as if he were about to speak. Then he turned away and went to the chair and sat again, his head in his hands. It was silent in the room for a moment, the only sounds his uneven, hitching breaths.

Finally, I said, “Tell me what you want.”

He raised his head without looking at me. Pressed a finger to his temple. “Go ahead,” he said hoarsely. “Wipe it. That’s what you were going to do anyway.”

I felt a sudden desperation.

“Not if you don’t want us to. Not if you think—”

“It’s what I want,” he said, looking to Miss Peregrine. “Only this time, finish the job.”

He sat back in the chair, limp, and the light seemed to go out of his eyes.

Miss Peregrine looked at me.

I could feel myself going numb, head to toe.

I nodded at her. And then I left the room.



* * *



? ? ?

Emma stopped me as I was rushing down the stairs.

“Are you okay? I didn’t hear what happened—”

“I’m fine,” I said.

I was not, but I did not yet know how to talk about it.

“Jacob, please talk to me.”

“Not now,” I said.

I needed, very badly, to be alone. More specifically, I needed to scream out the window of a fast-moving car until my breath gave out.

She let me go. I didn’t look back; I didn’t want to see the look on her face. I ran past my mother crumpled on the couch and my friends in a nervous, whispering cluster. I snatched the car keys from the wooden bowl on the kitchen counter, went into the garage, and slapped the door button. The garage door made a painful grinding whine as it tried to open, but the car’s rear bumper was so badly wedged into it that it would not, and a moment later it gave up and went silent. I swore and kicked the closest thing to me as hard as I could. It happened to be a boxy old TV stashed under the garage workbench. My shoeless foot went through the back of it and shards of plastic went flying, my foot now numb and probably cut. I extracted it roughly and limped out the side door into the yard and screamed at the trees.

The knot of boiling anger in my chest shrank a little.

I rounded into the backyard, crossed the grass, and walked down our little sun-warped dock that jutted into the bay. My parents didn’t own a boat. Not even a canoe. I only ever used the dock for one thing: sitting on the end with my feet dangled into the brown water, thinking about unpleasant things. Which is what I did now.

After a minute or two, I heard footsteps coming down the planks. I was ready to turn and bark at whoever it was to please go to hell, but then the slightly uneven gait gave her away, and I couldn’t bring myself to be rude to Miss Peregrine.

“Watch out for nails,” I said without turning.

“Thank you,” she replied. “May I sit?”

I kept my eyes on the water. Shrugged. A boat puttered by in the distance.

“It’s done,” she said. “Your parents are in a suggestible state now, ready for input. I need to know what you’d like me to tell them.”

“I don’t care.”

A few seconds passed. She sat down on the dock beside me.

“When I was your age,” she said, “I tried something similar with my parents.”

“Miss Peregrine, I really don’t feel like talking right now.”

“So, listen.”

Sometimes Miss Peregrine couldn’t be argued with.

“I had been away at Miss Avocet’s ymbryne academy for a few years,” she began, “when it occurred to me that I still had a mother and father, and it would please me to see them again. Because some considerable time had passed since I’d gotten my wings and been rather unceremoniously driven from my home, I thought they might see me in a different light—as a person, and a daughter—rather than some loathsome aberration. I found them living in a hovel on the outskirts of our village. They had been shunned because of me. Even our relations refused to associate with them. Everyone believed they were consorts of the devil. I tried to win them over. They still loved me, but they feared me even more. It ended with my mother cursing the day I was born and my father chasing me from the house with an iron from the fire. Years later, I heard they had died—sewed stones into their pockets and walked into the sea.”

She sighed. A breeze whisked up, carrying away the stagnant summer heat for a moment. It hardly seemed possible that the world she was describing could exist alongside this one.

“I’m sorry that happened to you,” I said.

“Our blood relationships often don’t survive the truth,” she replied.

I thought about that for a moment, and then I got annoyed. “That’s not what you said an hour ago. You said the truth is worth the trouble, or something.”

She shifted uncomfortably, brushing sand from the hem of her dress. “I thought I should let you try.”

“Why?” I said, my voice starting to rise.

“It’s not my place to tell you how to be a son to your parents.”

“As far as I’m concerned, I don’t have parents.”

“Don’t say that,” she said. “I know they said terrible things to you, but you can’t—”