A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, #4)(62)
All except Emma. She came out wearing tight black jeans, white Reebok Classics, and a billowy top the color of root beer. She looked beautiful, I thought, as she turned to frown at a mirror.
“I look like a man.”
“You look great. And modern.”
She sighed and lifted the plastic bag into which her old dress had been rudely stuffed. “I miss this already.”
“This fabric is so . . . itchless,” said Bronwyn, pulling at the gray henley shirt we’d bought her. “I can’t get used to it.”
Enoch emerged from the bathroom in thick-soled creeper sneakers, pajama bottoms with flaming skulls emblazoned on each knee, and a T-shirt that read NORMAL PEOPLE SCARE ME.
Emma shook her head. “That’s the last time you pick out your own clothes.”
There was no time to return anything, so we walked out—somehow attracting even more stares than we did walking in. As we pushed our cart through the automatic doors, a loud, bleeping alarm sounded.
“What’s that?” Emma yelped.
“We may not have, er, paid for everything,” said Millard.
“What! Why?” I said.
Two guys in blue vests were speed-walking toward us.
“Old habits die hard,” Millard said. “Never mind, run for it!” He grabbed the cart from me and sprinted toward the car with it—and now easily a hundred people were watching the cart apparently steer itself across the pavement, followed by a clutch of weird-looking kids and two loss-prevention agents.
We dove into the car with our bags. I jammed the key into the ignition and twisted it, and the car started with a loud bark that made me cringe. I floored the gas, tore down the aisle of cars and through the two blue-vested agents, who dove in opposite directions to avoid being run over.
“If you’re going to break the law, at least do it with a little panache, Millard,” said Emma. “You’re not even trying!”
“I knew about the cameras,” said Millard. “No one told me about the alarms!”
* * *
? ? ?
After racing down the interstate for several miles and checking the rearview mirror constantly for police lights, I realized no one was chasing us. Eventually we exited onto a little state road and veered away from the coast toward the heart of Florida. On the Mel-O-Dee map, H’s ring had circled an area in the middle of the state that was crossed by only one major road—the one we were on now. Within that zone was Mermaid Fantasyland. I wasn’t sure if that’s where we would find Flaming Man, but as it was the only thing marked on that section of the map it made sense to start looking there.
“Wait a minute,” said Bronwyn from the back seat. “We’re heading away from the ocean now. Why would mermaids live in a swamp?”
“They aren’t real,” I said. “It’s just a cheesy old tourist trap.”
“Perhaps,” said Millard, “but Mermaid Fantasyland is also listed in Peculiar Planet.” He raised the guide to show it to me, then read from it. “Brand-new syndrigast-friendly attraction features delightful aquatic performances. Time-looped accommodation nearby. Bring the kids!”
“That doesn’t mean the mermaids are peculiar,” said Emma. “It just means there’s a loop in town.”
“Or there used to be,” said Millard. “Remember, this guide is nearly seventy years old. Everything in it should be treated with the highest skepticism.”
We drove on, the sun sinking lower in the sky, the road narrowing from two lanes in each direction to just one. We were entering a part of Florida that felt like a different state altogether. Away from the moneyed coasts there were no chain stores, no shiny new developments. The woods closed in from both sides, and in the occasional gaps there were signs for U-pick strawberry farms, free dirt, and bail bonds.
Instead of cookie-cutter suburbs that spread out for miles, here there were small towns clustered around intersections of roads. The bigger towns had fast food on the outskirts and a few blocks of dying main street in the middle—a venerable old bank, a shuttered movie theater, a storefront church. In every single town that had a stoplight, we caught the light red and had to sit and wait while old people on benches and pedestrians with nothing better to do stared at us like we were the most interesting thing that had ever come through. We came to dread those stoplights. At the third or fourth one, a young guy with a mullet and an open beer yelled, “Halloween’s not till next month!” at us and walked away cackling.
A few miles later, we passed a fading billboard for Mermaid Fantasyland, and a few miles after that, we finally came upon it: a dirt field occupied by a few sad-looking tents, and in the distance, cinder-block houses that might’ve been an office or staff quarters. The entrance was blocked by a closed gate, so I parked along the shoulder of the road, and we walked in. We crossed the field toward the tents. It didn’t seem like anybody was around, but then we heard someone grunting and swearing from around the back of the nearest tent.
“Hello?” I said, leading my friends toward the sound.
Rounding the tent, we came upon two people in clown makeup. One had a frizz of blond hair and was dressed in a mermaid costume, and the other was awkwardly carrying her, toddling backward with his arms linked around her waist, since her legs and feet were encased inside the costume.