top and slouchy linen pants, Enoch had snagged some swim shorts and an old T-shirt, and Horace looked downright preppy in a blue polo and a pair of khaki chinos, cuffs neatly rolled. The only one who hadn’t changed was Hugh; still moody and moping, he had volunteered to stay behind and watch over my parents. I gave him my uncle’s phone, pulled up my own cell number on the screen, and showed him how to call me in case they started waking up.
Then Miss Peregrine came into the room, and everyone oohed and ahhed. She wore a fringed top with scooped-out shoulders, tropical-print capri pants, aviator sunglasses, and her perpetually upswept hair towered through the middle of a pink plastic sun visor. It was slightly disconcerting to see her dressed in my mom’s clothes, but she looked absolutely normal, which was, I suppose, the point.
“You look so modern!” Olive cooed.
“And strange,” said Enoch, wrinkling his nose.
“We must be masters of disguise, if we’re to pass in different worlds,” Miss Peregrine said.
“Careful, Miss P, all the bachelors will be after you!” Emma said as she walked in.
“You’re one to talk,” Bronwyn said. “Woo-woo, look out, boys!”
I turned to her, and the breath caught in my throat. She wore a one-piece swim dress with a skirt bottom that stopped mid-thigh. It was far from scandalous, but easily the most revealing thing I’d ever seen her wear. (She had legs!) I’d known it since the moment I met her, but Emma Bloom was achingly pretty, and I had to make a conscious effort not to stare.
“Oh, hush,” Emma said, and then she caught me looking and smiled. That smile—my God—it lit me up from the inside.
“Mr. Portman.”
I turned to face Miss Peregrine, my dopey grin melting.
“Uh, yeah?”
“Are you ready? Or have you been entirely incapacitated?”
“No, I’m good.”
“I’ll bet you are,” Enoch said with a snicker.
I knocked him with my shoulder as I parted the crowd, and then I threw open the front door and led my peculiar friends out into the world.
* * *
• • •
I lived on a skinny barrier island called Needle Key: five miles of touristy bars and waterfront houses with a bridge at each end, bisected by a winding lane overhung with banyan trees. It only qualified as an island thanks to a long ditch of water that separated us from the mainland by about a thousand feet, which at low tide you could cross without getting your shirt wet. Rich people’s houses fronted the Gulf; the rest of us looked out on Lemon Bay, which on quiet mornings was really very nice, with sailboats drifting by and herons fishing for their breakfast along the banks. It was a safe and sweet place to grow up, and I probably should have been more grateful, but I had spent my youth fighting the sensation—creeping at first, then overwhelming—that I belonged elsewhere, that my brain had begun to melt, and that if I stayed here a day past graduation it would liquify entirely and run out of my ears.
I kept us hidden behind a thicket of hedge at the end of my driveway until all the cars within hearing range had passed, and then we darted across the street to a footpath, intentionally neglected and overgrown with mangroves so tourists couldn’t find it. After a minute or two of bushwhacking, the path broke open onto Needle Key’s main attraction: a long white-sand beach and the gulf, emerald-green and spreading out endlessly.
I heard a few gasps escape my friends. They had seen beaches before—had lived on an island for most of their unnaturally long lives—but they’d rarely seen one so pretty, with water as flat and calm as a lake, an apron of powdery white sand that curved away gently, fringed palms waving. This pristine view was the entire reason some twenty thousand souls lived in an otherwise nowhere town, and in moments like this, with the sun high in the sky and an easy breeze chasing away the heat, you couldn’t fault them their choice.
“Goodness, Jacob,” said Miss Peregrine, taking in a lungful of air. “What a little paradise you have here.”
“Is that the Pacific?” asked Claire.
Enoch snorted. “It’s the Gulf of Mexico. The Pacific’s on the opposite end of the continent.”
We strolled along the beach, the smaller kids circling us as they ran to collect shells, the rest just enjoying the view and the sunshine. I slowed to match Emma’s stride and took her hand. She glanced at me