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  FOR OUR PARENTS,

  DALE & SUSAN PAULS AND CONNIE & JERRY SOLOMON,

  THE GIANTS IN OUR LIVES

  1

  A slew of newly crowned seniors gathered to celebrate finally becoming the ruling party of Richland Center High School in the darkened rock quarry just outside of town. The sun had been down for hours. No parents, neighbors, or teachers were around to break up the party, safely hidden in the open space between hulking piles of crushed rock. The closest building was an abandoned silo out past the end of the gravel pit.

  The kids didn’t hear the silo’s dome creak as it rose up a couple of feet. An enormous hand reached out and wrapped its fingers over the edge of the forty-foot structure, propping up the top. Huge eyes blinked and watched from inside.

  The eyes darted left and right to make sure the coast was clear. Then a mammoth leg swung out over the side of the silo, and without a sound, a twenty-five-foot-tall giant emerged.

  This giant was no monster. His youthful, dark-skinned face was huge, but otherwise it looked like that of any teenager. He wore nothing but a brown canvas tunic, and his long black hair swirled in the breeze against the cloudy night sky.

  The music got louder, and the kids got rowdier, dancing to heavy beats in the headlights of their cars.

  The giant folded, unseen, into the darkness at the edge of the quarry. The thumping music confused him—he recognized the beating of drums bouncing off the quarry walls, but where was it coming from? He studied the teens thrashing to the beat, and soon his head bobbed in unison with theirs. He thrust his right hand in the air, almost perfectly imitating their dance.

  At the point where the headlights dimmed and night began lay a pile of four signs that read SPRING GREEN CITY LIMITS. Valley High, Spring Green’s high school, was Richland Center’s chief rival. Swiping the signs was the seniors’ first jab in what promised to be a yearlong contest for local supremacy. A kid wearing a letterman’s jacket snapped a picture of them with his phone, proof of their plunder. The giant blinked in disbelief. He’d seen it for only an instant, but somehow an image of the signs glowed on the box in the kid’s hand. The giant had seen a few strange things on his trip so far, but if he could trust his own eyes, this was magic.

  A growling bass line kicked in, and the kid in the jacket hurried to join the throng by the cars. The giant edged closer to the sign pile, curious.

  “This is epic!” another guy shouted with a fist bump to a fellow partyer. He jumped onto the hood of a car. “Let’s not wait until Homecoming to burn their stupid signs. Valley sucks! Let’s do it now!”

  All the other kids threw up the chant. “Bonfire! Bonfire!”

  They didn’t see giant hands reach out from the edge of the darkness and snatch the signs away. A colossal, curious finger traced the strange letters as the giant tried to make sense of the weird wooden placards. How had they duplicated themselves inside the kid’s glowing box?

  “People in Spring Green won’t know if they’re coming or going,” yelled the guy on the car, slipping and landing on the hood with a thud. The kids all laughed, except the one who owned the dented car. The guy rolled off the hood and lumbered toward where the signs had been. “Hey, what the heck?” The other partyers gathered around, some confused and some downright angry. Cutting down the signs had been risky. “Where’d they go?”

  Then a truck pulled into the quarry, heading straight for the party. The kids winced at the bright headlights as the vehicle skidded to a stop. A silver-whiskered man, old enough to be everyone’s grandfather, leaned out the driver’s-side window.

  “Get out of here right now!” His voice boomed through a cloud of gravel dust, rising above the music. “All of you! This is private property. You got three minutes before I call the cops.”

  “Cops!” shouted the ringleader. He dove into the passenger seat of a buddy’s car. “Adler! Let’s go!”

  The giant hightailed it back into the silo unseen, accidentally pinching the tip of his right index finger when he lowered the top. He dropped the signs and bit his lower lip, muffling a scream that would have been heard all the way into town.

  The old man favored his right hip as he got out of the truck. A German shepherd bounded from the cab behind him. Between the old man punching numbers into his cell phone and the mean-looking dog snarling at everyone, the party broke up in well less than the man’s threatened three minutes. Soon the last cars were peeling away, racing back toward Richland Center.

  “Powder, that’s enough,” said the old man, swinging aside his long leather duster coat and slapping his thigh. The dog stopped barking at the escaping cars and heeled. The man peered over at the silo. “You can come out of there now.”

  The giant threw the top off again and vaulted out of the silo, landing as quietly as a cat on the ground. He looked as disappointed as the other kids that the party was over.

  “I know, I know,” grumbled the old man. “The music was loud, and everything is new and interesting.”

  The old man had that right. The giant pointed to the phone that the old man had threatened to use to call the cops—did it work like the kid’s had?

  “You stay away from phones. If someone sees you or snaps a decent picture, we’re finished. You’re a secret. You have to stay that way. We’ve been through this before.” The old man spat on the ground. “I should have moved you sooner. Kids hang out in quarries—always have.” He kicked a stone and looked up at the giant. “Well, you can’t stay here. Let’s get moving.”

  The giant stayed in place, sucking the tip of the finger he’d pinched on the silo top.

  “What are you standing around for? Let’s go,” he repeated. “We’re heading to a new hiding spot. It’s an old warehouse, and the place is falling apart, so take it easy climbing up. Once you’re on the roof, don’t dally—get your big butt down the hole and quick. You got it?”

  The giant nodded. Long black bangs drooped in his face.

  The old man’s whiskered cheeks billowed as he pointed toward a large dump truck. “You know what to do. Get moving.”

  The giant bounded to the truck in one leap. The truck’s suspension groaned as he hopped into the bed and lay down on his side. He had to work hard to scrunch his huge frame into the uncomfortably tight space.

  The old man yanked a lever on the side of the truck. A motor pulled a canvas tarp along a metal track, sealing up the giant in the back. The old man stopped the cover short of the giant’s head. “So we’re straight,” he said, “this is town we’re talking about now. That means people, so no screwing around. I can only keep you safe if you stay out of sight.”

  The old man started the tarp back up. As the cover reached the end of its track, he missed the giant’s mischievous grin.

  2

  Charlie Lawson saw his opening. He spun the steering wheel, and his white Lamborghini wailed pas
t 99NInJas’s lame Dodge Charger. Charlie’s Total Turbo alter ego, CUGoneByeBye, was back in the lead.

  Charlie checked the map at the top of the screen for the other racers. He was scorching SpeedDea1er from Spring Green; Rocket2Ride, the Viroqua motormouth; DaleEarnhardtJr.Jr., from Muscoda; and Adelicious, a girl from his school. Man, he loved beating these guys.

  His best and only real friend, Trenton Mullins, had moved to Germany at the beginning of summer. He joined Charlie’s dad and brother on the list of people who’d split and left Charlie alone in boring Richland Center. His only escape from the monotony of small-town life was Total Turbo 4: Danger Ahead. He dominated the game and had spent the whole summer racing online instead of hanging out at the pool like everyone else. Now that school had started, he’d already gotten in trouble a couple of times for being late because he had a good race going.

  “Looks like you got another one, CUGoneByeBye,” chirped Adelicious in Charlie’s headset.

  “The only thing he’s got,” hissed an obnoxious new voice, “is a major problem. Me.”

  Charlie checked the map again. A new car had entered the race. A pitch-black Porsche driven by someone with the boring username Fitz was bullying its way through the field and coming up fast.

  Fitz roared unscathed through police gunfire on an airport runway, muscling Rocket2Ride right off the course with a nasty bump move before settling in behind Charlie’s Lamborghini. The two cars were locked in a battle for the finish line with one turn remaining: a hard ninety-degree corner. Charlie laughed at Fitz’s audacity. “Bring it, buddy!” He took the turn low, jumping his foot from the brake to the accelerator to put this new guy in his place.

  The Porsche zipped right around him. Charlie cringed as Fitz flew first across the finish line, shouting “Game over!” through the headset.

  Charlie threw down the wheel onto his unmade bed and kicked the foot controls away. He shook his shaggy, ash-blond hair in disbelief. Fitz had stolen the race, handing Charlie his first loss in months. It was even more humiliating than the time in fifth grade when Mrs. Hendricks got on the loudspeaker to call him to the office because his mom had brought his snow pants.

  On-screen, “Another race?” blinked in taunting red letters. Absolutely! Charlie fired up the next course. He’d been playing for five hours, even skipped dinner, but that didn’t matter. He wanted revenge, to kick this guy’s butt and prove the win had been a fluke, especially as he heard Fitz’s voice crackle through the headset:

  “Let’s do this thing again, CUGoneByeBye—unless you’re scared?”

  Charlie toggled a button on his headset, switching to audible disguise mode to make his voice deeper, mechanical, and menacing. “Scared they’re going to have to scrape you off the pavement,” he shot back.

  Then Charlie heard a stern man bark through the static. “Jamie, I told you to shut that off. You’ve got work to do!”

  “Bye-bye, Jamie,” Charlie mocked in a singsong tone, which sounded even more condescending with his voice buzzing way down low. “Daddy says you gotta go.”

  “You better hope I never get my hands on you.”

  Fitz disappeared before Charlie could snap back a reply. One by one, the other drivers signed off. Charlie could imagine parents yelling to knock it off with the games. No one would yell at him tonight—his mom was out with DJ, her boyfriend. Charlie shuddered. He hated thinking about his mom dating. It was just one more way real life in Richland Center continued to suck. He powered down the game and heard muffled screeching from the apartment below.

  Uh-oh.

  Charlie had been playing Total Turbo for so long that he’d forgotten all about Pansy, the cat downstairs. He’d promised Mrs. Lundstrom that he’d feed her nasty beast by six at the latest. It was nearly eleven. With no more roar from the game, he heard the cat yowling like crazy.

  He kicked his way through the moving boxes on the floor of his new room, which was even worse than the one in their last crummy apartment. He and his mom had been in this cramped place for only a week, their third home in the past two years. Rita Lawson had made Charlie promise to finish unpacking before she got home. What was the point? The boxes would just have to be loaded up again, dragged around to wherever they were going to live next.

  More caterwauling told him that chore would have to wait. He threw a hooded sweatshirt over his scrawny frame, went out the back door, and bounced down the wooden stairs from his second-floor apartment.

  “Hang on, Pansy.” Charlie turned a key that Mrs. Lundstrom had left for him under the mat. He seethed as he remembered how the old lady had thought he was eleven (not his actual thirteen going on fourteen) when she asked him to feed her cat while she was on a bus trip to the Indian casino. He pushed the door open.

  Pansy, all black and all business, dashed right between his legs and out into the night. Charlie yanked the door shut with an angry bang. He wasn’t in the mood for stupid games.

  The cat postured on the sidewalk, taunting him, her eerie yellow eyes glowing in the night. “You want to get fed or not?” Charlie took only two steps toward her before she dashed toward the old warehouse across Church Street.

  He chased Pansy to the back of the building and down a murky alley, finally cornering the cat by some trash cans. “C’mon, cat,” he said. “I got better things to do.”

  But Pansy had other ideas. She jumped through a shattered ground-floor window and into the old building.

  Charlie hesitated. Chasing her into an alley was one thing; following her into the creepiest building in town was another. The AD German Warehouse, built by the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright around 100 years ago, had been abandoned for as long as Charlie could remember. In fact, it reminded him of Wonka’s chocolate factory: Nobody ever went in and nobody ever came out. The warehouse stood about four stories high, with huge, casted-concrete Mayan hieroglyphics etched into its roofline. It seemed weird and otherworldly, as if a UFO had swung by and dropped an ancient ruin into the middle of town.

  Taking care not to cut his hands, he pulled the biggest shards of glass from the shattered window pane. Then he crouched down and peered inside, finding only darkness.

  “Pansy?” he called. There was no response.

  Cursing the cat, Charlie contorted his body and squeezed through the opening. There wasn’t enough of a gap for a normal-size eighth-grader to wedge through, so for once being a shrimp played in his favor.

  He swore that the temperature fell fifteen degrees as soon as he dropped out of the window onto a cold concrete floor in a small room. No cat in sight. He went through a stout metal door into a short hallway.

  “Pansy?” he called, with not so much as a meow in response.

  Charlie breathed in the dank air, which became mustier as he passed out of the hallway into an enormous room. The skeletons of small birds and rats littered the cement floor. The warehouse was even spookier on the inside, if that was possible.

  Rough, jagged concrete ran along the walls where the building’s floors had once been. The place had been hollowed out. It was more a four-story cave than building now.

  “C’mon, you stupid cat,” he shouted.

  The moon cast eerie shapes through the slit windows that ran near the ceiling, creating just enough light to see by. Charlie crept in farther, the sound of his footsteps echoing off the concrete. The cavernous room was empty except for a few odds and ends: a rickety-looking table with a single chair; two stacks of crates balanced on wooden pallets; a large wooden box with a hinged lid—man, did it stink; and, for some reason, an old bathtub.

  A muffled noise froze him.

  He peeked in the direction of the sound. It had come from the crates. He crept over and inspected the nearest stack, hunting for cat hiding spots. The lid of one of the boxes was askew. Maybe Pansy was holed up inside. He slid the top all the way off, finding a bunch of fat cylinders wrapped in brown paper and tied up with rough twine in bundles of six. Charlie lifted out a pack and grunted—the mystery bundle was a
lot heavier than it looked. As he turned it over, moonlight caught the side of a crate. ItTNI read DANGER: EXPLOSIVES.

  Dynamite!

  Had someone blasted out all the floors inside the warehouse? That would explain a lot, though Charlie couldn’t figure out how it could have been done without alerting the entire town. He eased the deadly weight back into the carton.

  “Pansy?” he called, hoping she’d just pop out from wherever, and they could leave. No response.

  He investigated a metal accordion door that hung off the side of a large, square opening jutting out of the wall. It was way too big to be a chimney. Charlie guessed it could have been an elevator shaft at one time, but there was no car inside. He slipped his head into the cavity, half expecting to get a face full of bats. No bats—but no Pansy, either. He looked up the shaft and saw stars in the night sky. It was open at the top.

  Then the floor shook and little hunks of concrete rained down all around. He gave a yelp and stumbled back away from the shaft. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Pansy dart out of the dark with a frightened mewl and hightail it down the hallway.

  Two huge, bare feet landed in the elevator shaft, kicking up a cloud of cement dust. Despite their size, the feet barely made a sound as they hit the ground.

  Charlie’s instinct was to run from whoever or whatever those huge feet belonged to, but fear nailed his own feet to the floor. It was the most inconceivable, unbelievable, utterly incredible thing he’d ever seen in his life. Charlie tried to will himself to run, but then there was a rush of air. Something grabbed him and thrust him up, up, up into the moonlight.

  He found himself face to face with the impossible.

  The only word to describe his captor was giant. The behemoth had no trouble holding Charlie’s entire body in his fist. The giant pushed his face, big as a tractor tire, toward Charlie’s and examined the boy like a jeweler who’d just come into possession of an unusual gem.