No Place Like Home

                                    

                                          
Quick Author's Note before we start: Hi guys! When creating an outline for this book, I split it into two acts. Act One was my prologue, since it takes place before the reader meets Jacob, and, um, I wasn't expecting it to be as long as it is? I have always planned for it to end with Heather's death, so we have a new (Y/N) when our American Idiot visits. Welcome to Act Two, you guys! And yes, I had to reread the whole series for this. You're welcome.
                          
"So this is what the house looks like in the 21st century," I said as Emma, Millard, Bronwyn, Hugh, a couple other older children, and I stood in front of our broken house.
                          
Bronwyn knit her eyebrows closer together, and asked me, "Did it not look like this in the '70s?"
                          
I just shrugged. "I dunno. I never actually saw the place when I first came here."
                          
"Let's just get this over with," Millard grumbled. "It's freezing on this side of the loop, and I don't have anything to wear."
                          
And with that, we made our way to the house's entrance. My feet sunk in to the wet floorboards underneath, and I tried not to show my disgust externally. We made our way down the hallway, and I pocketed a piece of the burned wallpaper. When we got to the stairway, I heard our guy walking upstairs.
                          
Miss Peregrine had sent the ten of us to check out the loop in 2000-whatever. Apparently, a bloke had thought that looking through the ruins of what used to be a children's home was cool, since this was the second time he'd been here. The Bird asked us to try and figure out if he was Peculiar, dumb, or maybe just a mix of both. 
                          
A piece of me was hoping that this mini adventure of ours wouldn't go anywhere, so I could get back to my readings back home. Yet another part of me hoped that this new kid would lead to something interesting. Miss Peregrine did have a gleam in her eye when she told us about this kid.
                          
"Millard and I will go see what he's doing up there," I told Emma, and I popped into invisibility.
                          
"We are?" Millard asked, but I just ignored him.
                          
I creeped up the stairs, and hoped that I was right about Millard following me. I spotted the boy wandering the hall, and soon walked into a room. And he just started crying. Like, out of the blew he sat down on a bed, and let everything out. I didn't know whether to feel a new appreciation for this boy, or feel bad.
                          
"This is awkward," I muttered under my breath. 
                          
The kid didn't even hear me say this, because of how loud he was sobbing. I crept inside the room (it was Emma's, fun fact) and tried to examine the boy the best that I could. Messy black hair, super white and lanky. When he stopped crying, he wiped his nose, and looked around the room with blue, bloodshot eyes. He looked super familiar, but I didn't know why. Maybe it was just my subconscious trying to connect with this kid. Yeah, that was probably it. 
                          
Then he saw the chest near the bed, and crouched over it to take a better look. I recognized it as the place where Emma kept all of the photos she took over the years. She showed them to me a couple years back, but my mind was blurry when trying to think of which ones were in there. So I was silently rooting for the boy to jimmy the lock open. He failed, however, and began pushing the box towards the room's entrance.
                          
Oh no, that probably wasn't good. 
                          
I ran down the stairs as quietly as I could, and found Emma. I reappeared, which made Emma jump a bit. Served her right, for always slamming the library doors open to scare me when I was reading. 
                          
"The kid's got your trunk of photos," I warned her. "And he's coming downstairs with it."
                          
"Really?" Emma asked. "Why would he-"