The call came the following evening: a room had opened up for me. My bags had been packed and waiting for days. It didn’t matter that it was nine o’clock at night, or that it was a two-hour drive to the clinic—we would go right away.
We piled into the station wagon. My parents sat in front, and I was squashed between my uncles in the back, as if they thought I might try leaping from a moving car. In truth, I might’ve. But as the garage door rumbled open and my dad started the car, what little hope I’d been nurturing began to shrivel. There really was no escaping this. I couldn’t argue my way out of it, nor run from it—unless I managed to run all the way to London, which would’ve required passports and money and all sorts of impossible things. No, I would have to endure this. But peculiars had endured far worse.
We backed out of the garage. My father flipped on the headlights, then the radio. The smooth chatter of a DJ filled the car. The moon was rising behind the palm trees that edged the yard. I lowered my head and shut my eyes, trying to swallow back the dread that was filling me. Maybe I could wish myself elsewhere. Maybe I could disappear.
We began to move, the broken shells that paved our driveway crunching beneath the wheels. My uncles talked across me, something about sports, in an attempt to lighten the mood. I shut out their voices.
I’m not here.
We hadn’t yet left the driveway when the car jerked to a stop. “What the heck is this?” I heard my father say.
He honked the horn and my eyes flew open, but what I saw convinced me that I’d succeeded in willing myself into a dream. Standing there before of our car, lined up across the driveway and shining in the glare our headlights, were all my peculiar friends. Emma, Horace, Enoch, Olive, Claire, Hugh, even Millard—and out in front of them, a traveling coat across her shoulders and a carpetbag in her hand, Miss Peregrine.
“What the hell’s going on?” said one of my uncles.
“Yeah, Frank, what the hell is this?” said the other.
“I don’t know,” said my father, and he rolled down his window. “Get out of my driveway!” he shouted.
Miss Peregrine marched to his door. “We will not. Exit the vehicle, please.”
“Who the hell are you?” my dad said.
“Alma LeFay Peregrine, Ymbryne Council leader pro tem and headmistress to these peculiar children. We’ve met before, though I don’t expect you’d remember. Children, say hello.”
As my father’s jaw dropped and my mother began hyperventilating, the children waved, Olive levitated, Claire opened her backmouth, Millard twirled, a suit of clothes without a body, and Emma lit a flame in her hand while walking toward my dad’s open window. “Hello, Frank!” she said. “My name’s Emma. I’m a good friend of your son’s.”
“See?” I said. “I told you they were real!”
“Frank, get us out of here!” my mother screeched, and slapped him on the shoulder.
He’d seemed frozen until then, but now he laid on the horn and jammed his foot on the accelerator, and as shells spit from the back tires, the car lurched forward.
“STOP!” I screamed as we sped toward my friends. They jumped out of the way—all but Bronwyn, who simply planted her feet, stuck out her arms, and caught the front of our car in her hands. We slammed to a stop, the wheels spinning uselessly while my mother and uncles howled in terror.
The car stalled. The headlights died and the engine went quiet. As my friends surrounded the car, I tried to reassure my family. “It’s okay, they’re my friends, they’re not going to hurt you.”
My uncles passed out, their heads slumping onto my shoulders, and my mother’s screams gradually faded to whimpers. My dad was jumpy and wide-eyed. “This is nuts this is nuts this is totally nuts,” he kept muttering.
“Stay in the car,” I said, and reaching over an unconscious uncle I opened the door, crawled over him, and slid out.
Emma and I slammed together in a dizzy, twirling embrace. I could hardly speak. “What are you—how did you—”
I was tingling all over, certain I was still dreaming.
“I got your electrical letter!” she said.
“My … e-mail?”
“Yes, whatever you call it! When I didn’t hear from you I got worried, and then I remembered the machinated postbox you said you’d made for me. Horace was able to guess your password, and—”
“We came as soon as we heard,” said Miss Peregrine, shaking her head at my parents. “Very disappointing, but not entirely surprising.”
“We’re here to save you!” Olive crowed. “Like you saved us!”
“And I’m so glad to see you!” I said. “But don’t you have to go? You’ll start aging forward!”
“Didn’t you read my last few letters?” Emma said. “I explained everything …”
“My parents took them. That’s why they freaked out.”
“What? How awful!” She glared at my parents. “That’s stealing, you know! In any case, there’s nothing to worry about. We made an exciting discovery!”
“You mean I made an exciting discovery,” I heard Millard say. “All thanks to Perplexus. It took me days to figure out how to get him back to his loop using Bentham’s convoluted machine—during which time Perplexus should have aged forward. But he didn’t. What’s more, his gray hair even turned black again! That’s when I realized something had happened to him while he was in Abaton with us: his true age had been reset. When the ymbrynes collapsed the loop, it wound back his clock, so to speak, so that his body was exactly as old as it looked, rather than his actual age of five hundred and seventy-one.”
“And it wasn’t just Perplexus’s clock that got wound back,” Emma said excitedly, “but all of ours! Everyone who was in Abaton that day!”
“Apparently it’s a side effect of loop collapse,” Miss Peregrine said. “An extremely dangerous Fountain of Youth.”
“So this means … you won’t age forward? Ever?”
“Well, no faster than you!” Emma said, and laughed. “One day at a time!”
“That’s … amazing!” I said, overjoyed but struggling to take it all in. “Are you sure I’m not dreaming?”
“Quite sure,” said Miss Peregrine.
“Can we stay a while, Jacob?” said Claire, bouncing up to me. “You said we could come anytime!”
“I figured we’d make a holiday of it,” Miss Peregrine said before I could reply. “The children know almost nothing of the twenty-first century, and besides, this house looks much more comfortable than Bentham’s drafty old rat-trap. How many bedrooms?”
“Um … we have five, I think?”
“Yes, that’ll do. That’ll do just fine.”
“But what about my parents? And my uncles?”
She glanced at the car and waved a hand. “Your uncles can be memory-wiped with ease. As for your parents, I believe the cat’s out of the bag, as they say. They’ll have to be watched closely for a time, kept on a short leash. But if any two normals can be brought ’round to our way of seeing things, it’s the parents of the great Jacob Portman.”
“And the son and daughter-in-law of the great Abraham Portman!” said Emma.
“You … you knew my father?” my dad said timidly, peeping at us from the car window.
“I loved him like a son,” said Miss Peregrine. “As I do Jacob.”
Dad blinked, then slowly nodded, but I don’t think he understood.
“They’re going to stay with us for a while,” I said. “Okay?”
His eyes widened and he shrank away. “It’s … uh … I think you’d better ask your mother …”
She was curled in the passenger seat with her hands blocking her eyes.
I said, “Mom?”
“Go away,” she said. “Just go away, all of you!”
Miss Peregrine leaned down. “Mrs. Portman, look at me, please.”
Mom peeked through her fingers. “You aren’t really there. I had too much wine at dinner, that’s all.”
“We’re quite real, I assure you. And this may be hard to believe now, but we’re all going to be friends.”
My mom turned away. “Frank, change the channel. I don’t like this show.”
“Okay, honey,” my dad said. “Son, I think I’d better, um … um …” and then he shut his eyes, shook his head, and rolled up the window.
“Are you sure this isn’t going to melt their brains?” I asked Miss Peregrine.
“They’ll come around,” she replied. “Some take longer than others.”
*