A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, #4)(73)

When I could no longer stop myself from nodding off at the wheel, I pulled over at the next likely-looking place. It was called Johnnie’s Brite Spot.

“Who wants coffee?” I said. “I’m dying here.”

Everyone raised a hand but Paul.

“I’m not a coffee drinker,” he said.

“Have a sandwich, then,” I said. “It’s lunchtime.”

“No, thanks. I’ll just wait here.”

“We should all stay close to Jacob,” said Emma. “In case there are any hollows around.”

Paul folded his hands in his lap and stared down at them. “I can’t go in there,” he said finally.

“Why is he being difficult?” said Enoch.

And then I realized why, and a shudder of revulsion went through me.

“They won’t let him,” I said.

“What do you mean?” said Enoch, irritated.

Paul looked angry and embarrassed. “Because I’m black,” he said quietly.

“What the hell does that have to do with anything?” said Enoch.

Millard sighed. “Enoch isn’t a great student of history.”

“It’s 1965,” I said. “We’re in the Deep South.” I felt awful that this hadn’t occurred to me sooner.

“That’s terrible!” said Bronwyn.

“It makes me sick,” said Emma. “How can you treat people like that?”

“Are you sure they won’t let you in?” said Enoch, peering at the diner’s window. “I don’t see a sign or anything.”

“They don’t need one,” said Paul. “This is a white town.”

“How can you tell?” said Enoch.

Paul’s head snapped up. “Because it’s nice.”

“Oh,” said Enoch, chastened.

“Hollowgast aren’t the only reason I don’t like traveling through the past,” said Paul. “They’re not even the biggest reason.” He drew in a deep breath and looked down again, and when he looked up a moment later, he’d stuffed his feelings away somewhere deep. He waved his hand. “You all just go on in. I’ll wait here.”

“Forget it,” Emma said. “I wouldn’t eat here if I was dying of starvation.”

“Me, neither,” I said. I wasn’t tired anymore, just pissed off and deeply unsettled. I had grown up in the American South—a weird, tropical version of it, filled with transplants from other parts of the country; but still, the South. But I’d never really confronted its ugly past. I’d never been forced to; I was a wealthy white kid in a mostly white town. I felt ashamed that I had never really reckoned with it, never imagined what a simple road trip through my own state might’ve been like for anyone who didn’t look like me. And not just in the past. Just because Jim Crow was dead didn’t mean racism was. Hell, in some parts of the country, those laws were still officially on the books.

“What if we burned the place down?” Enoch suggested. “It would only take a minute.”

“That would accomplish nothing,” said Millard. “The past—”

“I know, I know, the past heals itself.”

“The past?” Paul shook his head. “Is nothing but an open wound.”

“What he meant was you can’t change the past,” said Bronwyn.

“I know what he meant,” Paul said, then went quiet again.

There was a sudden, sharp knock on my window. I turned to see a man in an apron and a paper hat staring at us, one hand on the car’s roof.

I rolled my window down a few inches.

“He’p you?” he said. No trace of a smile.

“We were just leaving,” I said.

“Mm-hmm.” His eyes slid to the back seat, then to the passenger seat. “You kids old enough to drive?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“This your car?”

“Of course.”

“Are you a cop or something?” asked Emma.

He ignored her. “What model vee-hicle is this?”

“1979 Aston Martin Vantage,” Enoch said quickly. Then his eyes widened as he realized his mistake.

The man stared at us for a moment, expressionless. “You a comedian?” He straightened and waved someone down. “Carl!”

A police officer had just turned a corner at the end of the block. He pivoted and started heading toward us.

“Start the car,” Emma hissed.

I turned the key. The engine made a noise loud enough to wake the dead, and the man stumbled back.

When he regained his balance, he tried to reach through my window, but the gap was too small to get his arm through. I put the car in reverse and started to roll, and he swore and yanked his arm out before it could get ripped off.



* * *



? ? ?

The downside of the Aston’s fat, growly engine note was how thirsty it was, and in the seven hours it took to reach Portal, we had to stop twice to fill the tank. In those days you didn’t pump your own gas, so we had to endure nosy questions from both station attendants while they did it for us. This being the South, they were slow about it, too. They pumped slowly and talked slowly and made change slowly and offered to check the oil and tires and wash the windshield and twenty other unnecessary things, all just an excuse to walk around the car and study it, and us, from every angle. It could’ve been a good opportunity to get out and stretch our legs and pee, but we didn’t have clothes for 1965, and besides, I had no interest in using a bathroom that Paul couldn’t use, and I knew the others felt the same. Instead, we stopped to relieve ourselves in an orange grove along the Georgia border, scattering among the trees and coming back with handfuls of ripe fruit, which we ate as we drove, juice running down our chins and peels flying out the windows. The only ones who got out were Emma and Enoch; they went into the second filling station and returned after a few minutes with three coffees in Styrofoam cups to share among us. After we pulled away, there was an awkward, sullen mood in the car, most of it emanating from Emma. Bronwyn, who was sitting beside her in the back, asked if she was okay, and she said yes in a way that sounded like no, but didn’t elaborate.