HOLLOW CITY: THE SECOND NOVEL OF MISS PEREGRINE S CHILDREN

And that, at least, gave me some hope: that even under ordinary circumstances, I still might find a way to live an extraordinary life.

I tried my best to explain. "It's not about destiny," I said, "but I do think there's a balance in the world, and sometimes forces we don't understand intervene to tip the scales the right way. [...]"

I knew then that, from now on, every word that passed between us would hurt, would be wrapped up with and marked by the pain of this moment, and that I needed to pull away now or it would never stop.

"Maybe when this is all over," she said, "I'll send you a letter, and you'll send one back. And maybe one day you can come see me again."

"Sometimes I can't decide whether you're completely mad or some sort of miracle," she said. "Though I'm starting to think it's the latter."

Just because they knew it was lost didn't mean they knew how to let it go.

[...] and she hugged me last —a long, bittersweet embrace that felt too much like a goodbye.

Laughing doesn't make bad things worse any more than crying makes them better. It doesn't mean you don't care, or that you've forgotten. It just means you're human.

"If even outcast and downtrodden folk like yourselves can't muster a bit of compassion for others," she did, "then there's no hope for this world."

"I'll never understand ninety-nine percent of humanity"

I'd become a mystery they would never solve. A wound that would never heal.

I, too, said a silent goodbye, to a place that had changed me forever —and the place that, more than any graveyard, would forever contain the memory, and the mystery, of my grandfather.

My question hadn't been about logistics. I had meant, simply: 'How could I leave you?' But those words were unsayable, couldn't find the way past my lips. So I held them inside, and instead I kissed her.

It hurt her to say this things, just as it hurt me to hear them, but I understood why she was doing it. She was, in her way, trying to save me.

I don't know why it was so important for her to prove to a stranger that we were good-hearted, when we knew ourselves to be —but the suggestion that we were anything less than angels walking the earth, that our natures were more complexly shaded, seemed to bother her.