A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children #4) - Ransom Riggs Page 0,5
we met. So it was pretty hard to believe it was really happening. Anyway, the point is, you are here, and I hope I can make you feel as welcome as you made me feel when I came to stay in your loop.” I nodded and looked to the floor, suddenly self-conscious. “So, basically, thrilled you’re here, love you guys, speech over.”
“We love you, too!” Claire said, and she leapt out of her seat and ran to hug me. Then Olive and Bronwyn joined her, and soon almost everyone was bear-hugging the breath out of me.
“We’re so happy to be here,” said Claire.
“And not in Devil’s Acre,” added Horace.
“We’ll have ever so much fun!” sang Olive.
“Sorry we broke part of your house,” said Bronwyn.
“What do you mean, we?” said Enoch.
“Can’t breathe,” I gasped. “Squeezing too hard—”
The pack expanded enough for me to inhale. Then Hugh inserted himself into the gap and poked me in the chest.
“You know it’s not all of us who are here, right?” A solitary bee zipped around him in agitated circles. The others moved back, giving Hugh and his angry bee some space. “When you said you were glad we were all here. Well, we’re not.”
It took me a moment to realize what he meant, and then I felt ashamed. “I’m sorry, Hugh. I didn’t mean to leave out Fiona.”
He looked down at his fuzzy striped socks. “Sometimes I feel like everyone but me has forgotten her.” His bottom lip trembled, and then he clenched his fists to make it stop. “She’s not dead, you know.”
“I hope you’re right.”
He met my eyes, defiant. “She’s not.”
“Okay. She’s not.”
“I really miss her, Jacob.”
“We all do,” I said. “I didn’t mean to leave her out, and I haven’t forgotten her.”
“Apology accepted,” Hugh said, and then he wiped his face, turned on his heel, and walked out of the room.
“If you can believe it,” Millard said after a moment, “that was progress.”
“He’ll barely even talk to any of us,” said Emma. “He’s angry, and he won’t face the truth.”
“You don’t think it’s possible Fiona could be alive somewhere?” I asked.
“I’d rate it unlikely,” said Millard.
Miss Peregrine winced and put a finger to her lips—she’d been gliding toward us across the room—and with a hand on our backs, she pushed us into a private huddle. “We put out word to every loop and peculiar community we’re in contact with,” she said quietly. “We’ve distributed communiques, bulletins, photographs, detailed descriptions—I even sent Miss Wren’s pigeon scouts to search the forests for Fiona. Thus far, nothing.”
Millard sighed. “If she was alive, poor thing, wouldn’t she have reached out to us by now? We aren’t difficult to find.”
“I guess so,” I said. “But has anyone tried looking for her . . . um . . .”
“Her body?” Millard said.
“Millard, please,” said the headmistress.
“Was that indelicate? Should I have chosen a less exact term?”
“Just be quiet,” Miss Peregrine hissed.
Millard didn’t lack feeling; he just wasn’t good at minding the feelings of others.
“The fall that likely killed Fiona,” Millard said, “occurred in Miss Wren’s menagerie loop, which has since collapsed. If her body was there, it is no longer recoverable.”
“I’ve been weighing whether to hold a memorial service,” Miss Peregrine said. “But I can’t even raise the topic without sending Hugh into a spiral of depression. I fear if we push him too hard—”
“He won’t even adopt new bees,” said Millard. “He says he wouldn’t love them the same if they’d never met Fiona, so he only keeps the one, who’s of a rather advanced age at this point.”
“Sounds like this change of scenery might do him good,” I said.
Just then the doorbell rang. And not a moment too soon, as the mood in the room was growing heavier by the second.
Claire and Bronwyn tried to follow me down the hall, but Miss Peregrine snapped at them. “I don’t think so! You’re not ready to talk to normals yet.”
I didn’t think there was much risk in them meeting the pizza delivery guy—until I opened the door to see a kid I knew from school, balancing a stack of pizza boxes in his hands.
“Ninety-four sixty,” he mumbled, then jerked his head in recognition. “Oh, snap. Portman?”
“Justin. Hey.”
His name was Justin Pamperton, though everyone called him Pampers. He was one of the pothead skaters who haunted the outer parking lots of our school.
“You look good,” he said. “Are you, like, better now?”
“What do you mean?” I said, not actually wanting to know what he meant, counting out his