A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children #4) - Ransom Riggs Page 0,23
him wanted me to know. It was like a . . . a blackboard that had been wiped, but if you squinted hard enough you could still read it a little? But I didn’t want to see it. I didn’t want to know. Because I really, really did not want that to be true about my father. That he was . . . like that.”
“You just wanted a normal father,” I said.
“Right,” said my dad, as if, finally, I had understood.
“Well, he wasn’t,” I said. “And neither am I.”
“So it would seem.” He stopped pacing and sat on the edge of the bed, his body angled away from mine.
“Your son is a brave and gifted young man,” Miss Peregrine said icily. “You should be very proud of him.”
My father muttered something. I asked him what he’d said.
He looked up, and there was a look in his eyes now that hadn’t been there a moment ago. It was something like loathing.
“You made a choice.”
“It wasn’t a choice,” I said. “It’s who I am.”
“No. You chose them. You chose these . . . people . . . over us.”
“It doesn’t have to be like that. Either-or. We can coexist.”
“Tell that to your mother, screaming like a lunatic! Tell that to your uncles, who are—where? What did you do to them?”
“They’re fine, Dad.”
“Nothing is FINE,” he bellowed, jumping to his feet again. “You’ve destroyed everything!”
Miss Peregrine had been lingering at the door but now stormed into the room, Bronwyn close behind her. “Sit down, Mr. Portman—”
“No! I will not live in a madhouse! I will not subject my family to this insanity!”
“This could work,” I said, “I’m telling you—”
He came at me in a rush, and I thought for a moment he might hit me. But he stopped short. “I made my choice, Jacob. A long time ago. And now it looks like you’ve made yours.” We were chest to chest, my father red-cheeked and breathing hard.
“I’m still your son,” I whispered.
His jaw was set, but I saw his lip tremble, as if he were about to speak. Then he turned away and went to the chair and sat again, his head in his hands. It was silent in the room for a moment, the only sounds his uneven, hitching breaths.
Finally, I said, “Tell me what you want.”
He raised his head without looking at me. Pressed a finger to his temple. “Go ahead,” he said hoarsely. “Wipe it. That’s what you were going to do anyway.”
I felt a sudden desperation.
“Not if you don’t want us to. Not if you think—”
“It’s what I want,” he said, looking to Miss Peregrine. “Only this time, finish the job.”
He sat back in the chair, limp, and the light seemed to go out of his eyes.
Miss Peregrine looked at me.
I could feel myself going numb, head to toe.
I nodded at her. And then I left the room.
* * *
• • •
Emma stopped me as I was rushing down the stairs.
“Are you okay? I didn’t hear what happened—”
“I’m fine,” I said.
I was not, but I did not yet know how to talk about it.
“Jacob, please talk to me.”
“Not now,” I said.
I needed, very badly, to be alone. More specifically, I needed to scream out the window of a fast-moving car until my breath gave out.
She let me go. I didn’t look back; I didn’t want to see the look on her face. I ran past my mother crumpled on the couch and my friends in a nervous, whispering cluster. I snatched the car keys from the wooden bowl on the kitchen counter, went into the garage, and slapped the door button. The garage door made a painful grinding whine as it tried to open, but the car’s rear bumper was so badly wedged into it that it would not, and a moment later it gave up and went silent. I swore and kicked the closest thing to me as hard as I could. It happened to be a boxy old TV stashed under the garage workbench. My shoeless foot went through the back of it and shards of plastic went flying, my foot now numb and probably cut. I extracted it roughly and limped out the side door into the yard and screamed at the trees.
The knot of boiling anger in my chest shrank a little.
I rounded into the backyard, crossed the grass, and walked down our little sun-warped dock that jutted into the bay. My parents didn’t own a boat. Not even a canoe. I only ever