“A whole pack of foxes, maybe,” said Pitchfork doubtfully, “if the island’s even got that many.”
“I still say the cuts are too clean,” said the one holding Worm. “Had to have been done with a knife.”
“I just don’t believe it,” my dad replied.
“Then come see for yourself,” said Knit Cap. So as the crowd began to disperse, a small group of us followed the farmers out to the scene of the crime. We trudged over a low rise, through a nearby field, to a little brown shed with a rectangular animal pen beyond it. We approached tentatively and peeked through the fence slats.
The violence inside was almost cartoonish, like the work of some mad impressionist who painted only in red. The tramped grass was bathed in blood, as were the pen’s weathered posts and the stiff white bodies of the sheep themselves, flung about in attitudes of sheepish agony. One had tried to climb the fence and got its spindly legs caught between the slats. It hung before me at an odd angle, clam-shelled open from throat to crotch, as if it had been unzipped.
I had to turn away. Others muttered and shook their heads, and someone let out a low whistle. Worm gagged and began to cry, which was seen as a tacit admission of guilt; the criminal who couldn’t face his own crime. He was led away to be locked in Martin’s museum—in what used to be the sacristy and was now the island’s makeshift jail cell—until he could be remanded to police on the mainland.
We left the farmer to ponder his slain sheep and went back to town, plodding across wet hills in the slate-gray dusk. Back in the room, I knew I was in for a Stern Dad talking-to, so I did my best to disarm him before he could start in on me.
“I lied to you, Dad, and I’m sorry.”
“Yeah?” he said sarcastically, trading his wet sweater for a dry one. “That’s big of you. Now which lie are we talking about? I can hardly keep track.”
“The one about meeting friends. There aren’t any other kids on the island. I made it up because I didn’t want you to worry about me being alone over there.”
“Well, I do worry, even if your doctor tells me not to.”
“I know you do.”
“So what about these imaginary friends? Does Golan know about this?”
I shook my head. “That was a lie, too. I just had to get those guys off my back.”
Dad folded his arms, not sure what to believe. “Really.”
“Better to have them think I’m a little eccentric than a sheep killer, right?”
I took a seat at the table. Dad looked down at me for a long moment, and I wasn’t sure if he trusted me or not. Then he went to the sink and splashed water on his face. When he’d toweled off and turned around again, he seemed to have decided it was a lot less trouble to trust me.
“You sure we don’t need to call Dr. Golan again?” he asked. “Have a nice long talk?”
“If you want to. But I’m okay.”
“This is exactly why I didn’t want you hanging out with those rapper guys,” he said, because he needed to close with something sufficiently parental for it to count as a proper talking-to.
“You were right about them, Dad,” I said, though secretly I couldn’t believe either of them was capable of it. Worm and Dylan talked tough, but that was all.
Dad sat down across from me. He looked tired. “I’d still like to know how someone manages to get a sunburn on a day like this.”
Right. The sunburn. “Guess I’m pretty sensitive,” I said.
“You can say that again,” he said dryly.
He let me go, and I went to take a shower and thought about Emma. Then I brushed my teeth and thought about Emma and washed my face and thought about Emma. After that I went to my room and took the apple she’d given me out of my pocket and set it on the nightstand, and then, as if to reassure myself she still existed, I got out my phone and looked through the pictures of her I’d taken that afternoon. I was still looking when I heard my father go to bed in the next room, and still looking when the gennies kicked off and my lamp went out, and when there was no light anywhere but her face on my little screen, I lay there in the dark, still looking.
Chapter Eight
Hoping to duck another lecture, I got up early and set out before Dad was awake. I slipped a note under his door and went to grab Emma’s apple, but it wasn’t on my nightstand where I’d left it. A thorough search of the floor uncovered a lot of dust bunnies and one leathery thing the size of a golf ball. I was starting to wonder if someone had swiped it when I realized that the leathery thing was the apple. At some point during the night it had gone profoundly bad, spoiling like I’ve never seen fruit spoil. It looked as though it had spent a year locked in a food dehydrator. When I tried to pick it up it crumbled in my hand like a clump of soil.
Puzzled, I shrugged it off and went out. It was pissing rain but I soon left gray skies behind for the reliable sun of the loop. This time, however, there were no pretty girls waiting for me on the other side of the cairn—or anyone, for that matter. I tried not to be too disappointed, but I was, a little.
As soon as I got to the house I started looking for Emma, but Miss Peregrine intercepted me before I’d even made it past the front hall.
“A word, Mr. Portman,” she said, and led me into the privacy of the kitchen, still fragrant from the rich breakfast I’d missed. I felt like I’d been summoned to the principal’s office.
Miss Peregrine propped herself against the giant cooking range. “Are you enjoying your time with us?” she said.
I told her I was, very much.
“That’s good,” she replied, and then her smile vanished. “I understand you had a pleasant afternoon with some of my wards yesterday. And a lively discussion as well.”
“It was great. They’re all really nice.” I was trying to keep things light, but I could tell she was winding me up for something.
“Tell me,” she said, “how would you describe the nature of your discussion?”
I tried to remember. “I don’t know ... we talked about lots of things. How things are here. How they are where I’m from.”
“Where you’re from.”
“Right.”
“And do you think it’s wise to discuss events in the future with children from the past?”
“Children? Is that really how you think of them?” I regretted saying this even as the words were passing my lips.
“It is how they regard themselves as well,” she said testily. “What would you call them?”
Given her mood, it wasn’t a subtlety I was prepared to argue. “Children, I guess.”
“Indeed. Now, as I was saying,” she said, emphasizing her words with little cleaver-chops of her hand on the range, “do you think it’s wise to discuss the future with children from the past?”
I decided to go out on a limb. “No?”
“Ah, but apparently you do! I know this because last night at dinner we were treated by Hugh to a fascinating disquisition on the wonders of twenty-first-century telecommunications technology.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. “Did you know that when you send a letter in the twenty-first century, it can be received almost instantaneously?”