The Highest Tide Read Online Free Page B

this Miles O’Malley is an unreliable child who claims he saw the squid alive. If so was code for we all know this kid was lying or imagining things . I wondered again if I’d really heard it breathing at all. The evidence would be there in Professor Kramer’s report, wouldn’t it? Then what would happen? I’d be sent to a reformatory school for liars—that’s what.
    My parents didn’t see the five o’clock news, but they heard about it and huddled around the television at five before eleven with their late dinner of leftover tuna loaf and brass-colored cocktails.
    They were so startled by the attention their boy was getting that they didn’t even question my lie that the squid’s death moans pulled me from bed. Dad, however, made sure I understood—while showing me a mouthful of ground tuna—how easy it was to get stuck in the mud, something he knew nothing about. That’s what parenting looked like to me then, tuning in just often enough to warn your kids about things that they knew more about than you did. Mom scolded me for wearing the same green army shorts evey damn day , then cut me a half-smile the way she did right before she’d say she had no idea where I came from, which always left me wondering, if not from you, then who?
    They didn’t ask a single question about the squid. They simply couldn’t get past their amazement that I was on the same segment with the judge, as if there’d been some sort of mistaken-identity screwup.
    As expected, my father eventually dwelled on how tiny I looked on TV. It was obvious where he was headed, seeing how, unfortunately, it was the first of July. He asked me to slip off my shoes and stand in front of the broom closet. As usual, I started to sweat. Most kids were measured a few times a year. For me, it was the first of every month.
    My father was obsessed with height. He was five five and wished he were six one, preferably six four. He was so height-oriented he respected people just for being tall, as if their elevation were some refinement or survival skill he lacked. It wasn’t just the crap that women crave tall men. He was convinced people listen more carefully if you’re tall, that tall men get better jobs, better pay and loom over crowds like gods. Plus, tall men dunk basketballs, and what could possibly top that?
    You need to understand this about me: I loved being small and undanged . (My fifth-, sixth- and seventh-grade pictures were nearly identical.) Tall kids stepped into rooms and people expected them to deliver speeches. I could hide in daylight, and there were advantages to having my brain so close to my feet. I could scramble up trees and jump off low roofs. I was so small there was little that could go wrong. The only catch was I felt guilty for stunting my own growth after reading that kids grow the most in their sleep.
    I fluffed my hair and stood so straight I felt vertebrae separating. I lifted my chin and snuck undetectable air beneath my heels. If my father could scratch a pencil line a quarter-inch above the last one it spun him into such a great mood that the house throbbed with his goodwill; the tuna was awesome, my mother was gorgeous and I was the perfect kid. But on this night he argued gently with my mother over whether the hardback balancing on my skull was level, then darkened the pencil line from the prior month, leading to a final wince and bourbon-tuna exhale. I’d grown just a third of an inch during the prior thirteen months. I was stuck at four eight and seven-sixteenths.
    I later overheard them debating which side of the family deserved credit for my brains, singling out smart uncles, cousins and grandmas. At one point, Dad observed, “He’s always been really smart for his size.” Then my mother reminded him for the second time that week that she’d been on her way to med school before she’d inexplicably hitched up with him.
    I’d seen it building inside her, this troubling investigation into the sequence of events