Little Monsters

CONTENTS Cover Title Page Dedication Epigraph April 1. Adam 2. Ken 3. Abby 4. Steph May 5. Adam 6. Abby 7. Adam 8. Ken 9. Steph 10. Abby June 11. Steph 12. Jenny 13. Ken 14. Adam 15. Steph 16. Abby July 17. Ken 18. Steph 19. Abby 20. Adam 21. Jenny 22. Abby 23. Steph 24. Ken August 25. Adam 26. Abby 27. Ken 28. Steph 29. Adam 30. Ken 31. Jenny 32. Abby 33. Ken 34. Jenny 35. Adam 36. Ken 37. The Party 38. Ken 39. Steph 40. Adam 41. Abby 42. Jenny October 43. Abby Acknowledgments About the Author Copyright Guide Cover Start of Content Title Page Dedication Epigraph Acknowledgments About the Author Copyright III V VI VII VIII 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 
 
 
 
 
 For Lauren Wein
 
 
 
 If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.
 —GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
 
 
 
 April
 
 
 Adam
 Adam Gardner hadn’t slept well in weeks. He awoke daily to random words, incoherent thoughts, and fleeting images, convinced that their meaning, though not yet clear, would develop in the gelatin silver process of his mind. Each morning, buzzing, he slung his legs off the bed and sat bolt upright, naked, allowing his male parts to hang over the edge of the mattress, and did his best to capture these jangled dreams, recording what details he could remember in a spiral-bound notebook kept by his bedside. His daytime musings spread onto legal pads, Post-it Notes, and the backs of envelopes and receipts, mostly in the form of unedited bullet-point lists. His house, located deep in the Wellfleet Woods, was littered with scraps of paper covered with his fastidious penmanship.
 
 Deepening pitch of whale vocalizations
 Ocean spirals: shells, whirlpools, waves, bubble nets, seahorse tails
 Sound’s relationship to the inner-ear labyrinth (another spiral?)
 Mystery of infinity: 1 = .99999999…
 
 Adam tried to decipher the clues his mind was depositing. He had one big discovery left in him, he felt sure of that. This thing, whatever it was—an idea? a theory?—was taking its own sweet time to make itself known. He knew he needed to trust the process. If he could practice patience and maintain equilibrium, Adam felt certain that every book he’d ever read, every piece of art that had ever moved him, every conversation, creature, curiosity, and concept he’d encountered in his lifetime would align like cherries in the slot machine of his mind.
 For now, the anticipation of it, the pre-buzz of impending discovery, was as mouthwatering as the squeak of a wine cork before dinner. He basked in an exquisite sensation of déjà vu, feeling a comradeship with other great discoverers: James Cook, Charles Darwin, Jacques Cousteau…
 To his credit, at the onset of this latest bout of insomnia, Adam followed protocol and made an appointment at the clinic in Hyannis knowing full well what to expect: a blood draw, a barrage of questions, an adjustment of medication. What he hadn’t expected was that the doctor who’d been treating him for the last three decades had retired. Why Dr. Peabody hadn’t bothered to inform him directly was beyond him. Thirty years was… well, a very long time. Adam pointed out the oversight to the front desk clerk, a busty young woman with blue fingernails, who assured him an email had been sent to patients the previous month. Had he thought to check his junk folder? she asked, clicking together her talons. Adam started to answer but held his tongue. (Who, but an idiot, would bother to check a “junk” folder?) He followed her down the hall to the exam room, still puzzling over why his longtime doctor, at least five years his junior, would have retired. To do what?
 In Peabody’s place, a kid half Adam’s age, outfitted in tight pants and alarmingly bright orange socks, strode into the exam room. Was it too much to ask that the person evaluating his mental state have at least one gray hair on his head? The new doctor acknowledged Adam only cursorily, opting to study his electronic