As a personal aside, not to brag, but I do have to say that I'm proud of myself for working both condoms and a Dr. Seuss book into the same chapter. I wish more books and movies about young people brought up birth control.

Jake's hands shook as he packed his duffel bag, preparing to travel back to 1943, and he wasn't sure if he was more nervous or excited. His pulse quickened at the thought of seeing Emma again... but he hardly had any experience with traveling through time-loops – what if he never found her? What if he got stuck in the wrong decade?

He pulled a sweater from the back of his closet – the desert would get chilly at night, and his first stop was at a time-loop in the desert – and as he folded it into his bag, his hands slowed down. His mom had given him this sweater for Christmas last year, even though it almost never got cold enough in Florida to wear it. A wave of guilt hit Jake as he thought about his mom and dad. They weren't peculiar. They couldn't enter time-loops. They'd never been the best parents... but mostly, they tried. How was Jake going to say goodbye to them? How was he going to explain where he was going?

Abe came into his room just then and started to say something, but Jake interrupted. "Grandpa, I don't know if I should go back," he blurted out nervously. "I mean, what about Mom and Dad? What am I supposed to tell them?"

Abe's wrinkled old face grew thoughtful. "I'll explain things to your parents, Tygrysku," he said softly. "I think your father and I are long overdue for a talk."

Jake started to protest, but then a memory popped into his head – his dad dropping him off at his grandfather's house for the evening when he was about eight. "Tell your grandpa I'll pick you up around seven, okay, buddy?" His dad didn't get out of the car, just watched as Jake ran up the driveway to the front door, where Abe was waiting for him. Abe gave his son a short wave, but they didn't say one word to each other.

Jake could remember dozens of times like that, when the two of them had used him as their messenger to avoid talking to each other. He racked his brain, trying to remember – when was the last time his dad and grandfather had actually spoken to each other? Had they ever? They must have, surely... but he couldn't remember when.

Jake sighed sadly and nodded at Abe. It probably would be better to let him explain things to his parents. After Jake traveled back in time, he wouldn't be there to deliver messages between them anymore, and they would have to finally sit down and talk to each other. Abe was right: they were long overdue for it. Maybe when Jake came back to 2016, their relationship would have improved.

He hadn't noticed that Abe had a bag in his hands until he held it out to Jake now. "Here's some things I thought you should take with you," he said, and Jake took it and rummaged through it. There was Abe's map of time-loops, American and European money, and underneath that –

Jake nearly dropped the bag when he saw what was at the bottom. He recognized the little cardboard box from his old job at the drug-store, but... was this really happening? Had his grandfather really just given him a pack of condoms?

Jake cursed himself later for not just leaving the condoms at the bottom of the bag and saying nothing. He cursed himself for making the situation even more awkward by picking them up.

"Grandpa, these are – I don't – I mean, I'm not..." Jake stammered, searching for something to say that wasn't completely mortifying, but he found nothing and fell silent. His face grew hot, and he wished that carpet would open up and swallow him whole. Why did he always have to make everything more embarrassing for himself?

Abe shifted, looking almost as uncomfortable as Jake felt. Then he took a deep breath and said, in a rehearsed-sounding way, "Look, Jake, if you don't need them, then don't use them. That's fine. But I just thought... I mean, you and Emma are teenagers, and... well, I'd just rather you have them and not need them, than need them and not have them, you know?"

Jake was silent, too embarrassed and confused to say anything. He did like Emma, really liked her more than he'd ever liked any girl. He was making a journey back in time just to see her again. But he didn't think that he was ready for anything beyond kissing, and she probably wasn't, either. After all, she lived in 1943, when those things were so different. Enoch and Olive would probably need condoms before he and Emma ever would. But the thought of giving condoms to Enoch... no, Jake could never do that. He would rather be eaten alive by a Hollow – much rather.

"But listen," Abe said in an urgent whisper, "whatever you do, don't let Miss P find out you have them. She'll know I gave them to you, and she'll murder me."

Jake grimaced. As if having a conversation about condoms with his grandfather wasn't awkard enough, now he had to drag Miss Peregrine into it. "Grandpa, she's in Wales," he reminded him. "In 1943."

But Abe shook his head dismissively. "It doesn't matter. Believe me, I know that woman. If she finds out I gave you these, she'll find a way to get to 2016 in Florida, and she'll murder me." He actually sounded nervous as he said it, as if after facing Nazis, Hollows, and all sorts of other dangers in his life, he was still a little fearful of the woman who'd taken care of him as a boy.

Jake shoved the little box of condoms back to the bottom of the bag before this conversation could get any worse. As he did, his eyes fell on something else that his grandfather had packed for him: a large hardback book with a familiar spiral design on the cover. Grateful for a change of subject, he grabbed it.

"What's this?" he asked loudly, pulling it out, even though he could see perfectly well what it was. It was identical to the copy that he'd had on his bookshelf when he was little – Oh, the Places You'll Go, by Dr. Seuss.

Abe smiled fondly. "I know you've got a long way to go," he said, glancing at Jake apologetically, "and I probably shouldn't give you anything you don't really need, but I feel like I have to send something for the kids, you know? They must've lost all their old toys and things when the house was bombed."

Jake nodded, remembering watching in stunned silence with Emma and the others as Miss Peregrine's fine house went up in flames. They'd felt so lucky to have all escaped safely that it hadn't really sunk in that Miss Peregrine's children had just lost nearly everything they owned.

Abe went on, "I sent them a copy of this years ago, and the little kids always loved it. Miss P reads it to them before bed." Jake had been flipping through the book – "Out there, things can happen and frequently do" – but at this, he looked up, surprised. When Abe used to baby-sit for him, he'd often read him this book before bed, too. It was still a surprise that so much of what his grandfather did had come from Miss Peregrine. Jake had only met her recently, but in a way, it felt like he'd always known her.

"They think it's about Miss P."

Jake frowned, looking down at the book again. "What? Why do they think it's about her?"

"You find your way back to 1943, Tygrysku, and ask them," Abe said, smiling mysteriously. There was a gleam in his old eyes that made him look younger for a moment. "They'll tell you."

Jake was lucky. Much later, after a long, hard journey, when he finally made it back to the exact right place and time – the docks of Blackpool, England, on September 3, 1943 – the ocean liner was still there. He ran full-speed down the deck to catch it before it sailed away, and when he ran up the gangplank and onto the deck, there they all were again: Emma, Miss Peregrine, Enoch, Olive, everyone. He'd made it! He almost collapsed with relief and had to grip the deck railing to catch himself.

To them, of course, it had been only a few minutes since they last saw Jake, and he started to explain how he'd traveled back in time from California, but Miss Peregrine caught him off almost immediately. "Really now, Jake, sit down and catch your breath first," she said, steering him onto a bench near the center of the deck.

Jake nodded, grateful, and unzipped his duffel bag. As he rummaged through it for his water bottle – he'd hidden the condoms in a chewing-gum tin inside a zippered pocket that he never opened – Oh, the Places You'll Go fell out. The book had gotten a bit battered since Florida, for Jake had turned to it often during his long trip. Whenever he got discouraged – those two months he'd spent broke and hungry in London had been pretty bad – he'd read from it to feel better. "But on you will go, though the weather be foul. On you will go, though your enemies prowl."

Now, as the book fell onto the deck, Bronwyn and Claire both gasped with delight and pounced on it.

"Our book!" Bronwyn squealed, hugging it to her chest. "Ooh, Claire, wait till we show the twins that we have this again."

Jake had found his water bottle and drunken half of it at once. "Yeah, my grandpa – uh, Abe, I mean – he sent that for you," he told the little girls, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. "He said you liked it."

Claire grinned, touching the cover with one hand. "It's about Miss P, you know," she told Jake in her grown-up voice.

And only then did Jake remember what his grandfather had told him before he'd left Florida.

"Well, it's not about her," Bronwyn corrected, "but she is in it."

"She is?" Jake asked, feeling more curious than ever now. He knew that book very well, but he couldn't see why Miss Peregrine's children thought that she was in it.

Bronwyn and Claire plunked down beside him on the bench and flipped through the pages with the expert hands of someone who knew it by heart. They went to the right page almost immediately, and Claire pointed and exclaimed, "There, see, that part's about her!"

Jake leaned forward, and when he saw the verse that Claire was pointing to, he laughed a little. "You'll get mixed up, of course, as you already know. You'll get mixed up with many strange birds as you go."

"Yeah," he said softly. "Yeah, I guess it is."

As he leaned back, a salty sea breeze ruffled his hair, and he realized that the words of that book had come true for him in ways that he never could've imagined when his grandfather first read it to him. He'd traveled halfway around the world and stepped backwards and forwards in time. He'd gotten mixed up with a whole second family of peculiar people. And he wouldn't have it any other way.