“No, not quite.” She slid down in her seat, her voice falling to a whisper. “I suppose it’s better for you to know the truth than rumors and speculation. So, here goes.
“I started manifesting when I was just ten. Kept setting my bed on fire in my sleep, until my parents took away all my sheets and made me lie on a bare metal cot in a bare room with nothing flammable at all in it. They thought I was a pyromaniac and a liar, and the fact that I myself never seemed to get burned was as good as proof. But I couldn’t be burned, something even I didn’t know at first. I was ten: I didn’t know fig about anything! It’s a very scary thing, manifesting without understanding what’s happening to you, though it’s a fright nearly all peculiar children experience because so few of us are born to peculiar parents.”
“I can imagine,” I said.
“One day, as far as anyone knew, I was as common as rice pudding, and the next I felt a curious itch in the palms of my hands. They grew red and swollen, then hot—so hot that I ran to the grocer’s and buried them in a case of frozen cod! When the fish began to thaw and stink, the grocer chased me home again, where he demanded that my mother pay for all I’d ruined. My hands were burning up by this time; the ice had only made it worse! Finally, they caught fire, and I was sure I’d gone stark raving mad.”
“What did your parents think?” I asked.
“My mother, who was a deeply superstitious person, ran out of the house and never came back. She thought I was a demon, arrived straight from Hell via her womb. The old man took a different approach. He beat me and locked me in my room, and when I tried to burn through the door he tied me down with asbestos sheets. Kept me like that for days, feeding me once in a while by hand, since he didn’t trust me enough to untie me. Which was a good thing for him, ’cause the minute he did I would’ve burned him black.”
“I wish you had,” I said.
“That’s sweet of you. But it wouldn’t have done any good. My parents were horrible people—but if they hadn’t been, and if I’d stayed with them much longer, there’s no question the hollows would’ve found me. I owe my life to two people: my younger sister, Julia, who freed me late one night so that I could finally run away; and Miss Peregrine, who discovered me a month later, working as a fire-eater at a traveling circus.” Emma smiled wistfully. “The day I met her, that’s what I call my birthday. The day I met my true mum.”
My heart melted a little. “Thank you for telling me,” I said. Hearing Emma’s story made me feel closer to her, and less alone in my own confusion. Every peculiar had struggled through a period of painful uncertainty. Every peculiar had been tried. The glaring difference between us was that my parents still loved me—and despite the problems I’d had with them, I loved them, too, in my own quiet way. The thought that I was hurting them now was a constant ache.
What did I owe them? How could it be reckoned against the debt I owed Miss Peregrine, or my obligation to my grandfather—or the sweet, heavy thing I felt for Emma, which seemed to grow stronger every time I looked at her?
The scales tipped always toward the latter. But eventually, if I lived through this, I would have to face up to the decision I had made and the pain I had caused.
If.
If always propelled my thoughts back to the present, because if depended so much on keeping my wits about me. I couldn’t properly sense things if I was distracted. If demanded my full presence and participation in now.
If, as much as it scared me, also kept me sane.
London approached, villages giving way to towns giving way to unbroken tracts of suburbia. I wondered what was waiting for us there; what new horrors lay ahead.
I glanced at a headline in the newspaper still open in Emma’s lap: AIR RAIDS RATTLE CAPITAL. SCORES DEAD.
I closed my eyes and tried to think of nothing at all.