Besides, if you were at Brightwood, it was because you had failed at being normal. That’s why they called it a home for disturbed boys. Dennis was disturbed. Otherwise he wouldn’t be here.
Dennis remembered the day he met Ralph. Dennis had been in one of the isolation rooms because he had punched a hole in his bedroom wall and peed into it—it was strangely satisfying—and had spent hours locked away. The staff person who had put him there was opening the door. Dennis, a small dark cloud, walked into the narrow, dim hallway.
Ralph was down the hall, being shown the custodian closet by the director. He turned, saw Dennis, and winked at him.
That wink broke Dennis. He fretted over it for all of a day and a night, somehow miraculously keeping from destroying all the walls of his room, and finally he went back to the source of his agony.
“Why did you wink at me?” he demanded.
By then Ralph was mopping the floor. He wasn’t very good at it. He stopped and squeezed the gray mop so ribbons of soapy, dirty water ran back into the bucket.
“You looked like a boy who needed a wink,” he said. His voice was calm and low, and he finished by giving Dennis another wink.
Dennis felt a gust of anger. He hated it when such anger swept over him, but then he relished it, because anger was all he had in this dim lightbulb of a world.
“How wouldyouknow?” he sneered.
For a little boy, Dennis could make himself big. He had done it before with foster parents, and it had worked. He had been scaring people since he was two, when he realized his mother was not coming back. He started with his hands and then made his neck big. He hissed at Ralph.
But Ralph was not scared. He didn’t react by shoving Dennis into the wall or pushing him into one of the small rooms. He didn’t sigh or look sad. He just lifted the mop, which was still drooling gray water, and put it gently on the floor. Somehow, Ralph managed to mop the floor without ignoring Dennis, and yet at the same time did nothing to provoke him. It was an adult sleight of hand that Dennis had never before experienced.
The mop skidded right up to his feet.
It was then that Dennis noticed what small feet he had. His feet were clad in institutional sneakers, and no amount of huffing and puffing could make those feet bigger. He stared at them as if he had never seen them before, and all of a sudden, much to his surprise and that of Ralph, he burst into tears.
Ralph didn’t soothe him or chide him or do much of anything else. He just rocked back on his heels like he knew what that emotion would cost him—and Dennis.
A few days later, Ralph found Dennis in his room. Dennis was catching and killing the black flies that clustered on the inside of the windowpane. They made a bad smell when you crushed them, but he told himself it was okay; it was what God wanted.
The custodian left the door open. Rules. No adults in rooms with a child unless others could see in. No one was in the hall. All the boys were in the front yard, kissing ass in hopes of Easter candy. Dennis told himself he didn’t care about candy.
“You’re quite the hard case, aren’t you?” Ralph asked.
He sat down on Dennis’s creaky cot. This was so out of the ordinary, Dennis was startled.
“You’re not supposed to do that,” Dennis squeaked, and then hated the sound of his own voice. He sounded like a baby.
“Well, you’re not supposed to be killing bugs. You’re making a mess of your hands.”
“So?” Dennis was ready to go on the offensive. Something about this tall, kind-looking custodian scared him to his bones.
“Thought you might want to help me with something.”
“What? Cleaning?” Dennis made it sound like an insult.
“Come on. I’ll show you.”
“You’ll get in trouble.”
“Probably not.”
Curious, hopeful that the custodian would do something bad and get fired, Dennis followed Ralph down the narrow stairs. They went through the empty kitchen and out the back door, which swung open under the weight of the custodian’s hand.
The backyard was full of overgrown weeds and grass, unlike the mowed front yard, where they could hear the other children, answering in muted chorus to the rules being set down by the director for their Easter candy hunt. If they were lucky, they would each find a piece and eat it before anyone could steal it.
The forested mountains were all around them, and the ocean was close by. Dennis could smell the tang of salt. It sent a shiver of excitement through his small body that he tried to hide. He liked being outside. He wished he could be outside all the time.
“It’s over here,” Ralph said, leading the boy to the edge of the unkempt yard, where there was a large bush near the trees.
