A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children #4) - Ransom Riggs Page 0,10

a sort of horror of empty space, so when it came to the only room in the house over which I had some control, I preferred it full. Which is why, in addition to all the overflowing bookshelves, I had plastered one wall floor to ceiling with maps, and another with old record album covers.

“Oh, wow. You really like music!” Emma broke away from me and went to the wall—the one with album covers growing over it like scales. I was starting to resent my distracting decor.

“Doesn’t everyone?” I said.

“Not everyone papers their walls with it.”

“I’m mostly into the older stuff,” I said.

“Oh, me too,” she said. “I don’t like these new groups, with their loud guitars and long hair.” She picked up a copy of Meet the Beatles! and wrinkled her nose.

“That record came out, what . . . fifty years ago?”

“Like I said. But you never mentioned liking music so much.” She walked along the wall, trailing her hand over my records, looking at everything. “There are lots of things I don’t know about you, but I want to.”

“I know what you mean,” I said. “I feel like we know each other so well in some ways, but in others it’s like we just met.”

“In our defense, we were both quite busy, what with trying not to die and rescuing all those ymbrynes and such. But now we have time.”

We have time. Whenever I heard those words, an electric feeling of possibility uncoiled in my chest.

“Play me one,” said Emma, nodding at the wall. “Whichever is your favorite.”

“I don’t know if I have a favorite,” I said. “There are so many.”

“I want to dance with you. Pick a good one for dancing.”

She smiled and went back to looking at things. I thought for a moment, then found Harvest Moon by Neil Young. I slid the album from its sleeve, placed it on the turntable, and dropped the needle carefully into the gap between the third and fourth song. There was a warm crackle and then the title track began to play, wistful and sweet. I was hoping she’d join me in the middle of the room, where I’d cleared a little space for us to dance, but she had come upon my wall of maps. There were layers upon layers of them—maps of the world, city maps, subway maps, tri-fold maps torn from old National Geographic magazines.

“These are amazing, Jacob.”

“I used to spend a lot of time imagining I was somewhere else,” I said.

“Me too.”

She came to my bed, which was shoved against the wall and surrounded by maps. She climbed up onto the comforter to examine them.

“Sometimes I remember you’re only sixteen,” she said. “Actually sixteen. And it kind of breaks my head open.”

She turned to look down at me in wonder.

“What made you say that?” I asked.

“I don’t know. It’s just strange. You don’t seem only sixteen.”

“And you don’t seem ninety-eight.”

“I’m only eighty-eight.”

“Oh, well, you definitely seem eighty-eight.”

She laughed and shook her head, then looked back at the wall.

“Come back here,” I said. “Dance with me.”

She hadn’t seemed to hear. She had come to the oldest part of my map wall—the ones I had made with my grandfather when I was eight or nine, drawn on everything from graph paper to construction paper. We’d spent many a long summer day making them, inventing cartographical symbols, drawing strange creatures in the margins, sometimes overwriting real places on the maps with our own invented ones. When I realized what she was staring at, my heart sank a bit.

“Is this Abe’s handwriting?” she asked.

“We used to do all kinds of projects together. He was basically my best friend.”

Emma nodded. “Mine too.” Her finger traced some words he had written—Lake Okeechobee—and then she turned away from it and climbed down from the bed. “But that was a long time ago.”

She came over to where I stood, took my hands, and rested her head on my shoulder. We began to sway with the music.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “That caught me by surprise.”

“It’s okay. You were together for so long. And now you’re here . . .”

I felt her shake her head. Let’s not ruin it. Her hands slipped out of mine and wrapped around my waist. I lowered my cheek to her forehead.

“Do you ever still imagine you’re somewhere else?” she asked me.

“Not anymore,” I said. “For the first time in a long time, I’m happy where I am.”

“Me too,” she said, and she lifted her head from my shoulder, and