“For you, you idiot! I love you!”
I couldn’t believe I’d said it. Neither could Emma — her mouth had fallen open. “No,” she said, shaking her head like she could erase my words. “No, that’s not going to help anything.”
“But it’s true!” I said. “Why do you think I stayed instead of going home? It wasn’t because of my grandfather or some stupid sense of duty — not really — or because I hated my parents or didn’t appreciate my home and all the nice things we had. I stayed because of you!”
She didn’t say anything for a moment, just nodded and then looked away and ran her hands through her hair, revealing a streak of white concrete dust I hadn’t noticed before, which made her look suddenly older. “It’s my own fault,” she said finally. “I should never have kissed you. Perhaps I made you believe something that wasn’t true.”
That stung me, and I recoiled instinctively, as if to protect myself. “Don’t say that to me if you don’t mean it,” I said. “I may not have a lot of dating experience, but don’t treat me like some pathetic loser who’s powerless in the face of a pretty girl. You didn’t make me stay. I stayed because I wanted to — and because what I feel for you is as real as anything I’ve ever felt.” I let that hang in the air between us for a moment, feeling the truth of it. “You feel it too,” I said. “I know you do.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry, that was cruel, and I shouldn’t have said it.” Her eyes watered a little and she wiped at them with her hand. She had tried to make herself like stone, but now the facade was falling away. “You’re right,” she said. “I care about you very much. That’s why I can’t watch you throw your life away for nothing.”
“I wouldn’t be!”
“Dammit, Jacob, yes you would!” She was so incensed that she inadvertently lit a fire in her hand — which, luckily, she’d since removed from my knee. She clapped her hands together, snuffed the flame, and then stood up. Pointing into the ice, she said, “See that potted plant on the desk in there?”
I saw. Nodded.
“It’s green now, preserved by the ice. But inside it’s dead. And the moment that ice melts, it’ll turn brown and wither into mush.” She locked eyes with me. “I’m like that plant.”
“You aren’t,” I said. “You’re … perfect.”
Her face tightened into a expression of forced patience, as if she were explaining something to a thick-headed child. She sat down again, took my hand, and raised it to her smooth cheek. “This?” she said. “Is a lie. It’s not really me. If you could see me for what I really am, you wouldn’t want me anymore.”
“I don’t care about that stuff — ”
“I’m an old woman!” she said. “You think we’re alike, but we aren’t. This person you say you love? She’s really a hag, an old crone hiding in a body of a girl. You’re a young man — a boy — a baby compared to me. You could never understand what it’s like, being this close to death all the time. And you shouldn’t. I never want you to. You’ve still got your whole life to look forward to, Jacob. I’ve already spent mine. And one day — soon, perhaps — I will die and return to dust.”
She said it with such cold finality that I knew she believed it. It hurt her to say these things, just as it hurt me to hear them, but I understood why she was doing it. She was, in her way, trying to save me.
It stung anyway — partly because I knew she was right. If Miss Peregrine recovered, then I would have done what I’d set out to do: solved the mystery of my grandfather; settled my family’s debts to Miss Peregrine; lived the extraordinary life I’d always dreamed of — or part of one, anyway. At which point my only remaining obligation was to my parents. As for Emma, I didn’t care at all that she was older than me, or different from me, but she’d made up her mind that I should and it seemed there was no convincing her otherwise.
“Maybe when this is all over,” she said, “I’ll send you a letter, and you’ll send one back. And maybe one day you can come see me again.”
A letter. I thought of the dusty box of them I’d found in her room, written by my grandfather. Was that all I’d be to her? An old man across the ocean? A memory? And I realized that I was about to follow in my grandfather’s footsteps in a way I’d never thought possible. In so many ways, I was living his life. And probably, one day, my guard would relax too much, I’d get old and slow and distracted, and I would die his death. And Emma would continue on without me, without either of us, and one day maybe someone would find my letters in her closet, in a box beside my grandfather’s, and wonder who we were to her.
“What if you need me?” I said. “What if the hollows come back?”
Tears shimmered in her eyes. “We’ll manage somehow,” she said. “Look, I can’t talk about this anymore. I honestly don’t think my heart can take it. Shall we go upstairs and tell the others your decision?”
I clenched my jaw, suddenly irritated by how hard she was pushing me. “I haven’t decided anything,” I said. “You have.”
“Jacob, I just told you — ”
“Right, you told me. But I haven’t made up my mind yet.”
She crossed her arms. “Then I can wait.”
“No,” I said, and stood up. “I need to be by myself for a while.”
And I went up the stairs without her.
CHAPTER XIII
I moved quietly through the halls. I stood outside the ymbryne meeting room for a while, listening to muffled voices through the door, but I didn’t go in. I peeked into the nurse’s room and saw her 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.