A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, #4)(48)

“I know, it’s such a cliché.” She squatted, her back to me, twiddling dials on the enlarger. “The peculiar photophile.”

“Is it a cliché?”

“Ha, very funny. I take it you’ve noticed how every ymbryne has her big album of snaps, and there’s an entire government ministry devoted to cataloging us photographically, and every third peculiar fancies themselves some kind of genius with a camera . . . though most of them couldn’t take a photo of their own feet. Here, give me a hand with this.” She slid her hands under one side of the enlarger, and I lifted the other—it was surprisingly heavy—and we set it on a plank she’d laid across the bathtub.

“Any theories about why?” I hadn’t given it much thought until then, but it did seem odd that people who lived the same day over and over would need to remember them with photographs.

“Normals have been trying to erase us for centuries. I think photography is a way to fix ourselves in place. To prove we were here, and we weren’t the monsters they made us out to be.”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “That makes sense.”

An egg timer buzzed. She picked up one of the metal canisters from the toilet, uncapped it, and poured a stream of chemicals into the sink. Then she slid a plastic spool out of it, unreeled from the spool a roll of negatives as long as her arm, squeegeed it dry with two fingers, and hung it from a wire she’d stretched across the shower.

“But now that we’re in the present, it’s different,” she said. “I’m getting older, and for the first time since I can remember, every day I live is one I’ll never live again. So I’m going take at least one picture every day to remember it by. Even if it’s not very good.”

“I think your pictures are great,” I said. “That photo of people walking down steps toward the beach that you sent me over the summer? That was so beautiful.”

“Really? Thanks.”

She was rarely shy about anything. I found her modesty immensely charming.

“Okay, then, if you’re interested . . . I’ve just been developing some rolls of film I was shooting over the past few weeks.” She reached up and unclipped a photo from the wire. “These are members of the peculiar home guard.” She handed it to me. The print was still slightly wet. “They’re filling in the hole where Caul’s tower used to be. They’ve been working in twelve-hour shifts for ages. It was a huge mess.”

The photo showed a line of uniformed men standing at the top of a deep crater, shoveling rubble down into it.

“And here’s one I took of Miss P,” she said, handing me another print. “She doesn’t like having her picture made, so I had to catch her from the back.”

In the photo, Miss P was wearing a black dress and a black hat and walking toward a black gate. “It looks like she’s going to a funeral,” I said.

“Yes, we all were. There were funerals almost every day in the weeks after you left, for all the peculiars who were killed in the hollowgast raids.”

“I can’t imagine going to a funeral every day. That must have been terrible.”

“Yes. It was.”

Emma said she had some more photos to develop.

“Mind if I watch?” I asked.

“If you don’t mind the smell of the chemicals. It gives some people headaches.”

She went back to fiddling with the enlarger.





“I’m curious why you don’t use a digital camera,” I said. “It’d be a lot easier.”

“Is it like your computer telephone?”

“Sort of,” I said, and having been reminded of it, I checked my phone again, but there were no missed calls.

“Then it wouldn’t work inside most loops,” she said. “Just like your computer telephone doesn’t. But this old mare”—she held up her folding camera—“she can go anywhere. Okay, close the door.”

I pushed it shut. She turned on the red light and turned off the white one overhead. We were plunged into near darkness, and the space was so tight with the two of us in there that it was hard not to bump her while she worked.

Photo developing involves a lot of carefully timed waiting. Every forty-five seconds, she would have to agitate one of the canisters, or pour out a batch of chemicals and pour in another, or hang the negatives up to dry. In between, there was nothing to do but wait. Wait, and kiss, in the corner of the cramped and red-lit bathroom. Our first forty-five-second kiss was tentative and gentle, just warming up. The second was less so. During the third we kicked over a tray of chemicals, and after that we started ignoring the egg timer altogether. I’m pretty sure a roll of Emma’s film got ruined.

And then my phone began to ring.

I let go of Emma and snatched it from my pocket. The screen read no caller ID. I answered.

“Hello?”

“Pay attention.” It was the same gruff voice on the other end. H. “Abe’s spot, nine p.m. sharp. Sit at his booth. Order his usual.”

“You want me to . . . meet you?”

“And come alone.”

He hung up.

I lowered the phone.

“That was fast,” said Emma. “And?”

“We’ve got a date.”