Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

Author:Ransom Riggs
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Publisher: Quirk Books
Published: 2011-06-06T22:00:00+00:00

Bronwyn finished dragging the rock to the middle of the stage, and for an awkward moment she just stared into the crowd, as if someone had told her to pause for dramatic effect. Then she bent down and gripped the rock between her big hands and slowly lifted it above her head. Everyone clapped and hooted, the kids’ enthusiasm undimmed though they’d probably seen her do this trick a thousand times. It was almost like being at a pep rally for a school I didn’t attend.

Bronwyn yawned and walked off with the boulder tucked under one arm. Then the wild-haired girl took the stage. Her name was Fiona, Emma said. She stood facing the crowd behind a planter filled with dirt, her hands raised above it like a conductor. The orchestra began to play “Flight of the Bumblebee” (as well as they could, anyway), and Fiona pawed the air above the planter, her face contorted in effort and concentration. As the song crescendoed, a row of daisies poked up from the dirt and unfurled toward her hands. It was like one of those fast-motion videos of plants blooming, except she seemed to be reeling the flowers up from their loamy bed by invisible strings. The kids ate it up, jumping out of their seats to cheer her on.

Emma flipped through the stack of postcards to Fiona’s. “Her card’s my favorite,” she said. “We worked for days on her costume.”

I looked at it. She was dressed like a beggar girl and stood holding a chicken. “What’s she supposed to be?” I asked. “A homeless farmer?”

Emma pinched me. “She’s meant to look natural, like a savage-type person. Jill of the Jungle, we called her.”

“Is she really from the jungle?”

“She’s from Ireland.”

“Are there a lot of chickens in the jungle?”

She pinched me again. While we’d been whispering, Hugh had joined Fiona on stage. He stood with his mouth open, letting bees fly out to pollinate the flowers that Fiona had grown, like a weird mating ritual.

“What else does Fiona grow besides bushes and flowers?”

“All these vegetables,” Emma said, gesturing to the garden beds in the yard. “And trees, sometimes.”

“Really? Whole trees?”

She sorted through the postcards again. “Sometimes we’ll play Jill and the Beanstalk. Someone will grab hold of one of the saplings at the edge of the woods and we’ll see how high Fiona can get it to go while we’re riding it.” She arrived at the photo she’d been hunting for and tapped it with her finger. “That was the record,” she said proudly. “Twenty meters.”

“You guys get pretty bored around here, huh?”

She moved to pinch me again but I blocked her hand. I’m no expert on girls, but when one tries to pinch you four times, I’m pretty sure that’s flirting.

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