Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - BOOCarz

stutters. “But I—I can’t—my parents.”
“They may love you,” she whispered, “but they’ll
never understand.”
* * *
By the time I got back to town, the sun was casting its
first long shadows across the streets, all-night
drinkers were wheeling around lampposts on their
reluctant journeys home, fishermen were trudging
soberly to the harbor in great black boots, and my
father was just beginning to stir from a heavy sleep.
As he rolled out of his bed I was crawling into mine,
pulling the covers over my sandy clothes only seconds
before he opened the door to check on me.
“Feeling okay?”
I groaned and rolled away from him, and he went
out. Late that afternoon I woke to find a sympathetic
note and a packet of flu pills on the common room
table. I smiled and felt briefly guilty for lying to him.
Then I began to worry about him, out there wandering
across the headlands with his binoculars and little
notebook, possibly in the company of a sheepmurdering
madman.
Rubbing the sleep from my eyes and throwing on a
rain jacket, I walked a circuit around the village and
then around the nearby cliffs and beaches, hoping to
see either my father or the strange ornithologist—and
get a good look at his eyes—but I didn’t find either of
them. It was nearing dusk when I finally gave up and
returned to the Priest Hole, where I found my father at
the bar, tipping back a beer with the regulars. Judging
from the empty bottles around him, he’d been there a
while.
I sat down next to him and asked if he’d seen the
bearded birder. He said he hadn’t.
“Well, if you do,” I said, “do me a favor and keep