Silver Lining

CHAPTER TWO

"Miss Peregrine is going to kill us."

"Shut up."

"But she's going to kill us! It's past curfew!"

"Shut up."

"Enoch's going to kill us, your brother is going to kill us, we're basically marked for death."

"We wouldn't be if you would shut up!" I hissed, hunkering down outside the entrance to the drawing-room. Miss Peregrine was working at her desk, reading through old journals from who knows how many years ago. Her hair had come partly undone and she had a dressing gown wrapped around her shoulders. A clock on the wall marked the time as half eleven.

Before Victor could open his mouth again, I dug him in the ribs with my elbow, holding back a snicker as the air left his lungs. We waited until Miss Peregrine was looking the other way before scuttling past the door like little mice, keeping our footsteps as silent as we possibly could.

It had been a few years since we had come to the loop and although I missed my parents on occasion, I didn't regret or scorn the fact that they had dumped us here. I had made more friends over the years in the home than I had back in Poland. Some children came and went, but most stayed for good.

I was surrounded by peculiar children, like Abe and I. Whilst his power hadn't quite presented itself in the same manner mine had, he knew that he wasn't normal from all of the night terrors that he had, from the monsters he saw stalking the streets at night. Whilst we never learned how our parents had found out about our peculiarities, we no longer cared as we hadn't seen them since.

Some of the children were thrilled to have new friends when we had arrived, others not so much. Enoch had been wary around Abe and I, having seen more children come and go than most of the other children. However, when he had learned how useful our peculiarities could be when they were put together for pranks, he found himself warming up to me.

Victor still never spoke of the day that we had set a small army of dead rats on him, adorned with hats and toothpicks at their sides for swords. Enoch and I were able to watch through a basin of water that I had set up in his room. The rats were never to hurt him, but they definitely gave him a right scare.

This night, however, I had dragged Victor out of bed to go down to the lake at the edge of Miss Peregrine's grounds. I had found myself keeping an eye on the war as it escalated outside of our walls, whilst we were quite neatly tucked away. Often I found myself watching the events back home, where my parents were, where my friends had gone. Eventually, though, I could hardly bring myself to look back at Poland. It had grown harder and harder for me to bear, knowing that I could simply watch but not help a soul.

The lake was the best place for me to experiment with my peculiarity, and Miss Peregrine often had the children join me as I could show them little tiffs happening around the island, at the bar for example. It helped them to feel a lot less isolated.

After they all had their amusement and they left, Victor always stayed. He had become my closest friend in the loop since my arrival, helping me bring Enoch out of his shell so that he could hang around the other children more instead of staying in his room. He helped me experiment with my peculiarity often, and I was still just learning how to communicate through the surfaces rather than just seeing through them.

I always gave him a right fright with that one.

"Was that necessary?" Victor rubbed at his ribs once we were far enough out of earshot from Miss Peregrine, stepping out of the kitchen door and out into the garden. "That's going to leave a bruise."

I rolled my eyes refusing to answer. "You're such a baby. You have superhuman strength."

"Yeah, but I'm hardly invulnerable to bony elbows." Victor hissed as we tracked our way over the hill and into the tree line. All was quiet asides from our footsteps as we crunched across leaves, jumping as he snapped branches beneath our feet.