Page 15 of Sleeping Giants
The custodian looked very tall. The sun caught the bristly hairs growing from the top of his ears. Dennis was coming to love everything about his face. He just didn’t know it yet.
“It said a bunch of lies,” the custodian said.
“Like what?”
“You know. Names for disorders. Crap they have no idea about. I should know.”
“How do you know?”
Ralph flung down the camera. It remained in his hand, but somehow, in his growing imagination, Dennis saw it on the ground, where it belonged.
“Why do you think I took the job here?”
Dennis shrugged. He had no idea why adults worked in a place like this and didn’t care.
“I lived in a place like this, that’s why.”
“You lived in a center?” Dennis was agape.
“It was a hundred times worse than this. A thousand times worse.Not because of the rules or the food. Because of what she did to us. The woman who ran the place. But what is judgment for a thing like that? Any place like this is no place for a child. Not even a child like you, or a child like me. Don’t you ever forget that.”
Ralph looked over Dennis to the center behind them; his face was a mask of emotions.
Dennis smiled. For the first time ever, he had been entrusted with a secret.
5
After Larry dropped her off at the hotel following their meeting with the constable, Amanda went for a walk. She left her hotel room and headed toward the sea. Today it heaved, like a rib cage expanding. Every day, the ocean seemed different. Some days, like today, it seemed especially alive.
She wondered where exactly on this beach her brother had died.
Tentatively, she crossed the soft white dunes to the packed sand. She leaned against a driftwood log, feeling the wind pound against her face as she took off one shoe, then the other, pouring a thin trail of white onto the gray. She slipped her shoes back on. Her ears were filled with noise, as if the ocean were telling her something.
As usual, the beach was deserted. Well, almost. Far down the shore, two beachcombers walked high above the surf, looking for shells.
Amanda walked in the other direction, toward the cliffs, hearing the sand squeak under her shoes. Little razor clam holes appeared, and clamshells dotted the shore, from where seagulls had dropped them. Larger mussel shells, glowing orange and blue, were littered among the debris. She stopped to pick one up, examining the black barnacles. It poked a hole in the heel of her thumb, and she sucked away the bead of blood.
She kept a safe distance from the ocean, worried about the sneakerwaves Larry had told her about. He said you never knew when one was coming. They were like mini tsunamis. One moment the waves would seem to be striking the same pattern, and the next a sweeping wave—like a massive powerful broom made of icy water—would run far up the sand, dragging everything back with it.
The ocean was farther out right now. Low tide, she thought. The water was sucked away from the shore, pulled back with a gasp and a sigh, then rolled back up as if to inspect the sand. Out to sea were the rocks Larry had said sea lions visited. On a cloudy day, the rocks disappeared from view, but today, as the mist cleared, they popped like a lunar vision. The tops were crowned with white bird shit, but she couldn’t see any sea lions. She imagined them in the waves, their dark eyes watching her.
She heard childlike laughter in her mind.Come play, the voices said.Come play in the waves, Amanda.
Had her brother ever laughed? What had he been like?
She could imagine him, running into the waves. She saw his back, framed against the sea.
All of a sudden, she felt tears in her eyes. She took a deep breath, then exhaled. She was twenty-six years old—old enough to know herself. But still she stumbled through life, feeling like an outsider, like an alien come to land. Her adoptive parents, as loving as they had been, did not understand.
Amanda felt the pull of the waves, as if there were a cord inside her. She had always known she had another family, ever since she was little. She wanted to know them. She wanted them to tell her what was wrong with her.
Surprising herself, she began to run. She ran parallel to the faraway waves, feeling their pulse pound in her ears. She ran until she was too tired to think.
Soon after she got back to the hotel, there was a knock on her door. Amanda got up from the edge of the bed, where she was eating a granola bar and reading a research paper on polar bears.
It was Larry. Sea mist hung from his nose.
“Gertrude sent her daughter with a note.”
