Larger Than Life (Novella) by Jodi Picoult Page B

are going to grow up and work for OPI and make
     up nail-polish color names based on famous movies: Magent-lemen Prefer Blondes; A
     Fuchsia Good Men. Maybe I’ve tried to join the conversation once or twice, but when
     I do, they usually look at me as if they’ve smelled something bad coming from my direction,
     their little button noses wrinkled, and then go back to whatever they were talking
     about. I can’t say I’m devastated by the way I’m ignored. I guess I have more important
     things on my mind.
    The memories on the other side of my mother’s disappearance are just as spotty. I
     can tell you about my new bedroom at my grandma’s place, which had a big-girl bed—my
     first. There was a little woven basket on the nightstand, which was inexplicably filled
     with pink packets of Sweet’N Low, although there was no coffeemaker around. Every
     night, even before I could count, I’d peek inside to make sure they were still there.
     I still do.
    I can tell you about visiting my father, at the beginning. The halls at Hartwick House
     smelled like ammonia and pee, and even when my grandma urged me to talk to him and
     I climbed up on the bed, shivering at the thought of being so close to someone I recognized
     and didn’t know at all, he didn’t speak or move. I can describe how tears leaked out
     of his eyes as if it was a natural and expected phenomenon, the way a cold can of
     soda sweats on a summer day.
    I remember the nightmares I had, which weren’t really nightmares but just me being
     awakened from a dead sleep by Maura’s loud trumpeting. Even after my grandma came
     running into my room and explained to me that the matriarch elephant lived hundreds
     of miles away now, in a new sanctuary in Tennessee, I had this nagging sense that
     Maura was trying to tell me something, and that if I only spoke her language as wellas my mother had, I’d understand.
    All I have left of my mother is her research. I pore over her journals, because I
     know one day the words will rearrange themselves on a page and point me toward her.
     She taught me, even in absentia, that all good science starts with a hypothesis, which
     is just a hunch dressed up in fancy vocabulary. And my hunch is this: She would never
     have left me behind, not willingly.
    If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to prove it.

About the Author
    Jodi Picoult is the author of twenty-two novels, including the #1
New York Times
bestsellers
Lone Wolf
,
Between the Lines
,
Sing You Home
,
House Rules
,
Handle with Care
,
Change of Heart
,
Nineteen Minutes
, and
My Sister’s Keeper
. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband and three children.

A LSO BY J ODI P ICOULT
    The Storyteller
Lone Wolf
Sing You Home
House Rules
Change of Heart
Nineteen Minutes
The Tenth Circle
Vanishing Acts
My Sister’s Keeper
Second Glance
Perfect Match
Salem Falls
Plain Truth
Keeping Faith
The Pact
Mercy
Picture Perfect
Harvesting the Heart
Songs of the Humpback Whale
    For Young Adults
    Between the Lines
    And For the Stage
    Over the Moon: An Original Musical for Teens

LEAVING TIME
    Coming October 14, 2014

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