Scorched Earth: The Prequel to Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children (editing)

Chapter Seventeen

April 12, 1934

The rain pattered lightly against the window of the car and the roll of thunder sounded in the distant moorland. A deep growl resonated through my stomach as we drove down an unfamiliar dirt road. We hadn't eaten since dawn this morning and when I glanced down at my pocketwatch to see the time marked as 1:32 in the afternoon I grew hungrier.

"We're almost there," Miss Peregrine promised and gave an uneasy glance toward our driver.

We had been on the road for hours now, and I knew we should have just taken a train. I was exhausted from the past three weeks of helping Miss Peregrine take care of Emma Bloom, the strange pyrokinetic who barely opened her mouth to say yes or no whenever she was talked to. She was sick in much of the same way I was when I was rescued and Miss Peregrine hoped that I could reach out to her because of my Peculiarity and my history with the circus.

Truthfully, she was an easy person to read and I had no problem seeing into her past. I was absolutely mortified at the similarity between our histories. It was almost like reliving my memories with my father all over again and there I was locked in that basement because my abilities were misunderstood. Then becoming a runaway and being sold into the circus. It was all too familiar and it gave me awful flashbacks. Miss Peregrine told me that sometimes memories were the worst form of torture, and that I should just let Emma talk to me, which I felt was better than prying into her thoughts and invading her privacy.

So now I had spent that past three hour car ride waiting for this girl to talk, to try and empathize with her, but having no such luck.

"We should stop here," Miss Peregrine informed our driver as we drove past a resting area or a gas station, or whatever it was. "I think we could all use a break."

The car pulled over and we came to a stop. The doors opened and I exited the car, Emma following me.

I glanced to Miss Peregrine momentarily and she nodded her head, allowing me to proceed in what I was about to do.

"Let's go for a walk," I suggested to Emma and linked arms with her.

We took off in a random direction away from the road and out of earshot of the person kind enough to give us a ride. A walk was a better way to try and get Emma to talk without the extra company. She kept her hands tucked in under her arms and her head down, eyes trained on the ground. She was okay now, I was at least able to detect that. She was calm, she trusted us, more so Miss Peregrine, but I was able to bond with her a bit whenever I was alone with her. Still underneath the aura of fearlessness she tried so hard to project, she was still scared, but not of her captive at the circus and not of us. She was scared of herself mostly, and I think it was because she didn't quite know what she was capable of. I remembered the feeling all too well and I was momentarily amazed at the realization of how far I had come. I snapped back into reality and focused on trying to break through her protective wall she had put up this past month.

"It'll get better, ya know," I spoke up in hopes that I could make the situation better. Her eyes didn't leave the ground as we walked. She didn't even answer me.

"I know exactly 'ow it feels to be cast away and hated 'cause you're different," I tried again.

"No you don't," she defensively returned. "You have no idea what I went through."

"Well I didn't find Miss Peregrine on my own," I responded.

She went silent once more and I tried to reach into her mind again, hoping I didn't upset her. Perhaps I was pushy, but isn't that what Miss Peregrine wanted me to do? Maybe not. I decided to stop talking before I said something wrong.