dozing on a stool between the single-souled peculiars. I cracked the door to Miss Wren’s room and saw her rocking Miss Peregrine in her lap, gently kneading her fingers into the bird’s feathers. I said nothing to anyone.
Wandering through empty halls and ransacked offices, I tried to imagine what home would feel like, if after all this I chose to go back. What I would tell my parents. I’d tell them nothing, most likely. They’d never believe me, anyway. I would say I’d gotten mad, written a letter to my father filled with crazy stories, then caught a boat to the mainland and run away. They’d call it a stress reaction. Chalk it up to some invented disorder and adjust my meds accordingly. Blame Dr. Golan for suggesting I go to Wales. Dr. Golan, whom of course they’d never hear from again. He’d skipped town, they’d say, because he was a fraud, a quack whom we never should’ve trusted. And I’d go back to being Jacob the poor, traumatized, mentally disturbed rich kid.
It sounded like a prison sentence. And yet, if my best reason for staying in peculiardom didn’t want me anymore, I wouldn’t debase myself by clinging to her. I had my pride.
How long could I stand Florida, now that I’d had a taste of this peculiar life? I was not nearly as ordinary as I used to be—or if it was true that I’d never been ordinary, now I knew it. I had changed. And that, at least, gave me some hope: that even under ordinary circumstances, I still might find a way to live an extraordinary life.
Yes, it was best to go. It really was best. If this world was dying and there was nothing to be done for it, then what was left for me here? To run and hide until there was no safe place left to go, no loop to sustain my friends’ artificial youth. To watch them die. To hold Emma as she crumbled and broke apart in my arms.
That would kill me faster than any hollow could.
So yes, I would go. Salvage what was left of my old life. Goodbye, peculiars. Goodbye, peculiardom.
It was for the best.
I wandered until I came to a place where the rooms were only half frozen, and the ice had risen halfway to the ceiling like water in a sinking ship and then stopped, leaving the tops of desks and the heads of lamps sticking out like faltering swimmers. Beyond the iced windows the sun was sinking. Shadows bloomed across the walls and multiplied in the stairwells, and as the light died it got bluer, painting everything around me a deep-sea cobalt.
It occurred to me that this was probably my last night in peculiardom. My last night with the best friends I’d ever had. My last night with Emma.
Why was I spending it alone? Because I was sad, and Emma had hurt my pride, and I needed to sulk.
Enough of this.
Just as I turned to leave the room, though, I felt it: that old familiar twinge in my gut.
A hollow.
I stopped, waiting for another hit of pain. I needed more information. The intensity of the pain corresponded to the nearness of the hollow and the frequency of the hits with its strength. When two strong hollows had been chasing us, the Feeling had been one long, unbroken spasm, but now it was a long time before I felt another—
