“The fall that likely killed Fiona,” Millard said, “occurred in Miss Wren’s menagerie loop, which has since collapsed. If her body was there, it is no longer recoverable.”
“I’ve been weighing whether to hold a memorial service,” Miss Peregrine said. “But I can’t even raise the topic without sending Hugh into a spiral of depression. I fear if we push him too hard—”
“He won’t even adopt new bees,” said Millard. “He says he wouldn’t love them the same if they’d never met Fiona, so he only keeps the one, who’s of a rather advanced age at this point.”
“Sounds like this change of scenery might do him good,” I said.
Just then the doorbell rang. And not a moment too soon, as the mood in the room was growing heavier by the second.
Claire and Bronwyn tried to follow me down the hall, but Miss Peregrine snapped at them. “I don’t think so! You’re not ready to talk to normals yet.”
I didn’t think there was much risk in them meeting the pizza delivery guy—until I opened the door to see a kid I knew from school, balancing a stack of pizza boxes in his hands.
“Ninety-four sixty,” he mumbled, then jerked his head in recognition. “Oh, snap. Portman?”
“Justin. Hey.”
His name was Justin Pamperton, though everyone called him Pampers. He was one of the pothead skaters who haunted the outer parking lots of our school.
“You look good,” he said. “Are you, like, better now?”
“What do you mean?” I said, not actually wanting to know what he meant, counting out his money as quickly as I could. (I had earlier raided my parents’ sock drawer, where they always kept a couple hundred bucks stashed.)
“Word is you went, like, off the deep end. No offense.”
“Uh, nope,” I said. “I’m fine.”
“Righteous,” he said, nodding like a bobblehead figurine. “’Cause what I heard was—”
He stopped mid-sentence. Someone inside was laughing.
“Dude, are you having a party right now?”
I took the pizzas from him, shoved the bills into his hand. “Something like that. Keep the change.”
“With girls?” He tried to peek into the house, but I shifted to block his view. “I’m off in an hour. I can pick up some beers . . .”
I had never wanted anyone off my porch so badly.
“Sorry, it’s kind of a private thing.”
He looked impressed. “You handle that, dogg.” He raised a hand to high-five me, realized I couldn’t because of the pizzas, then made a fist and shook it. “See you in a week, Portman.”
“In a week?”
“School, bro! What planet have you been living on?” He jogged off toward his idling hatchback, shaking his head and laughing to himself.
* * *
• • •
Conversation ground to a halt as the pizza was distributed, and for a full three minutes there was only the sound of lips smacking and the occasional satisfied grunt. In the lull I kept replaying Justin’s words. School started in a week, and somehow I had forgotten all about it. Before my parents decided I was certifiable and tried to have me committed, I’d made up my mind to go back to school. My plan had been to stick it out at home long enough to graduate, then escape to London so I could be with Emma and my friends. But now the friends I had thought so distant, and the world I had thought so inaccessible, had landed on my doorstep, and in the space of one night everything changed. My friends were now free to roam anywhere (and anytime) they liked. Could I really imagine sitting through interminable classes and lunch periods and mandatory assemblies every day while all that was waiting for me?
Maybe not, but it was too much to figure out right at that moment, pizza in my lap, still dizzy with the idea that any of this was possible. School didn’t start for a week. There was time. Right now all I needed to do was eat and enjoy the company of my friends.
“This is the best food in the world!” Claire announced through a mouthful of gooey cheese. “I’ll be having this every night.”
“Not if you want to live out the week,” said Horace, plucking the olives off his slice with fastidious precision. “There’s more sodium in this than in the whole Dead Sea.”
“Worried you’ll get fat?” Enoch laughed. “Fat Horace. That I’d like to see.”
“That I’ll bloat,” said Horace. “My clothes are tailored just so, unlike the flour sacks you wear.”
Enoch glanced down at his clothes—a collarless gray shirt under a black vest, fraying black pants, and patent leather shoes that had long ago lost their shine. “I got these in Pah-ree,” he said in an exaggerated French accent, “from a fashionable fellow who was no longer in need of them.”
“From a dead fellow,” said Claire, her lips curling in disgust.
“Funeral parlors are the best secondhand boutiques in the world,” said Enoch, taking a massive chomp of pizza. “You’ve just got to get the clothes before their occupant begins to leak.”
“Well, there goes my appetite,” said Horace, tossing his plate down on the coffee table.
“Pick that up and finish it,” Miss Peregrine scolded him. “We don’t waste food.”
Horace sighed and picked up his plate again. “Sometimes I envy Nullings. He could gain a hundred pounds and no one would notice.”
“I’m quite svelte, for your information,” said Millard, and made a sound that could only have been his hand smacking his bare stomach. “Come have a feel if you don’t believe me.”
“I’ll pass, thanks.”
“For bird’s sake, clothe yourself, Millard,” said Miss Peregrine. “What have I said about unnecessary nudity?”
“What does it matter if no one can see me?” Millard replied.
“It’s in bad taste.”
“But it’s so hot here!”
“Now, Mr. Nullings.”
Millard stood up from the couch and grumbled something about prudes as he breezed past, then came back a minute later with a bath towel tied loosely around his waist. But Miss Peregrine disapproved of this, too, and sent him away again. When he returned the second time, he was overdressed in clothes he’d ransacked from my closet: hiking boots, wool pants, a coat, a scarf, a hat, and gloves.
“Millard, you’ll perish of heatstroke!” said Bronwyn.
“At least no one will have to imagine me in a state of nature!” he said, which had the desired effect of annoying Miss Peregrine. She announced that it was time for another security check and left the room.