A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children #4) - Ransom Riggs Page 0,140
at all.
Why? Because I’d been rude to him in the fourth grade? Because I’d hurt his feelings? It was hard to believe he could’ve been so petty. Or was it, as Miss Peregrine had once suggested, because he was trying to spare me pain? Because he wanted me to grow up feeling normal?
It was a sweet idea, on its face. But not if I interrogated it a little bit. Because he knew. He had lived here, in this complicated and bloody and divided peculiar America. If he was really withholding the truth in order to spare me pain, he knew it was putting me at risk. Even if the hollows never got me, some gang of peculiar Americans would have sniffed me out eventually. Imagine my surprise, had I found out I was peculiar that way, as some heartless highwayman’s feral prize.
Abe left me without a map, without a key, without a clue. Without a single hint about how to navigate this strange new reality. It had been his duty to tell me, and he had not.
How could he have been so careless?
Because he didn’t care.
That nasty little voice in my head, back again.
I couldn’t believe he hadn’t cared. There had to be some other answer.
And then I realized there was someone still living who might know it.
“Rafael?”
The bone-mender stirred. He’d been sleeping in a chair by the window, the blue light of early morning washing over him.
“Yes, Master Portman?”
“I need to get out of this bed.”
* * *
• • •
Three hours later, I was up and moving again. I had a purple bruise under one eye and my ribs still ached, but otherwise Rafael had worked miracles and I was feeling pretty good. I made my way back toward Bentham’s Panloopticon as stealthily as I could, but there were people everywhere—the morning rush was in full swing—and I got stopped a few times for autographs. (It still surprised me every time I was recognized. I had spent so much of my life as an unremarkable nobody, that whenever I was approached my first thought was that they had confused me for someone else.)
I knew I wasn’t supposed to leave the Acre. I was risking being seen by someone who would report me to Miss Peregrine. But that wasn’t at the top of my list of concerns. I managed to make it through the front door, down the main hall, and upstairs to the Panloopticon hallways without being recognized. When the clerk at the Panloopticon entrance did, I told him I was going home and he waved me through. I ran down the hall, past busy travelers and officials at checkpoint desks and Sharon’s voice booming from an open door. I rounded a corner into the shorter hall, where my door was, found the broom closet marked A. PEREGRINE AND WARDS ONLY, and dove inside.
I walked out of the potting shed into the slanting sun and muggy heat of a Florida afternoon.
My friends were in Devil’s Acre. My parents were traveling in Asia.
The house was empty.
I went inside, settled onto a sofa in the living room, and took my phone out of my pocket. It still had a little battery left. I dialed H’s number. After three rings, a man answered.
“Hong’s.”
“I’m calling for H,” I said.
“Hold on.”
In the background I could hear voices, the noise of clattering plates. Then H came on the line.
“Hello?” he said warily.
“It’s Jacob.”
“I figured the ymbrynes would have had you under lock and key by now.”
“Not quite,” I said, “but they’re pretty angry. I’m sure they wouldn’t be happy if they knew I was calling you, either.”
He chuckled. “I’m sure they wouldn’t.” I knew he was angry with me, too. I could hear it in his voice. But he seemed to have forgiven me already, probably even before we’d talked. “Hey, I’m glad you’re all right. You had me worried.”
“Yeah. I had me worried, too.”
“Why the hell didn’t you listen to me? Now things are all fouled up.”
“I know. I’m sorry. Let me help fix it.”
“No, thank you. You’ve done quite enough.”
“I should’ve aborted the mission when you told me to,” I said. “But—” I hesitated, worried this would sound like an accusation. “Why didn’t you tell me we were doing something illegal?”
“Illegal? Where’d you get that?”
“It’s the clans’ law. You can’t take an uncontacted peculiar—”
“We should all be free to go where we like,” he interrupted. “Any law that takes your freedom away should be ignored.”