A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children #4) - Ransom Riggs Page 0,96

said Millard. “Say, Jacob, would you mind pulling round to his window again?”

I started the car, rounded the small building, and drove back into the drive-through lane. When he slid the window open this time, he looked annoyed. “Uhhh. Hi.”

Millard leaned out the window. “Sorry to trouble you, old boy. If we could just have one of your combo number threes.”

The kid typed the order onto a greasy keyboard and charged me $10.50. As I was paying, Bronwyn leaned toward the open window and said, “Do you know H? Are you a hollow-hunter? What is this place?”

He gave me my change, acting as if he hadn’t heard her.

“Hey!” said Bronwyn.

He turned and went into the kitchen.

“I don’t think he’s allowed to answer questions like that,” I said.

After a minute he came back and dropped a greasy paper bag onto the window ledge. It made a solid thud as it landed.

“You have a great night, now,” he said, and shut the window.

I picked up the bag, which was unusually heavy, and unrolled the top. Nothing but french fries and onion rings. Not much of a combo, I thought, handing it to Millard as I pulled out of the lot and headed back toward the highway. It was a long way to Brooklyn, and I wanted to get going before the morning rush hour turned the major arteries into parking lots.

Ten minutes later, as we were flying up I-95, Millard had eaten his way to the bottom of the bag. I heard him laugh and turned my head to look. He pulled out something heavy and egg-shaped.

“What’s that?” I said.

“Combo number three, it would seem. French fries and a hand grenade.” Bronwyn yelped and ducked behind my seat.

It seemed OK Burger was more than just a message relay station. It was a peculiar weapons depot. I wondered how many of my grandfather’s secret way stations were like this, hiding in plain sight. (I also wondered what prize came with a combo number one.)

Millard chuckled, rolling the grease-covered grenade from one hand to another. “My, they really do give you more for your money!”

* * *

• • •

I drove, nibbling at my meal with one hand while my friends scarfed theirs. Their teenage bodies, now aging forward for the first time in many years, were sometimes insatiably hungry. After they finished they all fell into a deep sleep—all but Emma, next to me in the passenger seat. She said she didn’t want to sleep if I couldn’t.

For an hour we hardly spoke. I scanned through radio stations at a low volume while she watched the dark world slide by outside the window. We were halfway through Virginia when a pale gray dawn began to smear the sky. The silence between us felt like a stone forming in my chest. I’d been talking to Emma in my head for the last fifty miles, and finally I couldn’t take it anymore.

“We have to—”

“Jacob, I—”

Neither of us had said a word in a long time, and then we’d both spoken at once. We snapped our heads to look at each other, surprised at our odd synchronicity.

“You first,” I said.

She shook her head. “You.”

I glanced up at the rearview. Bronwyn and Enoch were fast asleep. Enoch was snoring lightly.

“You’re not over him.” I hadn’t meant to be so blunt, but I’d held back the words for so long that they’d gotten stuck in my mouth, and I just had to spit them out. “You’re not over him. And it’s not fair to me.”

She stared at me, shocked, her lips a tight line. Like there was something she was afraid to say.

“Whenever someone mentions his name,” I said, “you flinch. Ever since we found out one of his hollow-hunter comrades was a girl, your head’s been somewhere else. You’re acting like he cheated on you. And not years and years ago, either.”

“You don’t understand,” she said quietly. “You couldn’t possibly.”

My face went hot. All I’d really wanted was an acknowledgment that she’d been acting weird and an apology, but this was going somewhere else. Somewhere worse.

“I’ve been trying,” I said. “I’ve been telling myself to ignore it, to not be so sensitive, to give you space, that you’re going through this hard, strange thing. But we’ve got to talk about it.”

“I don’t think you really want to hear what I’m thinking,” she said.

“If we can’t talk about it, we’re not going to make it.”

She glanced down briefly. We were passing a factory, twin smokestacks belching smoke into the