by Jeff Garvin
Liam would be here soon, but instead of getting ready I pulled my old wooden box out of its drawer. I opened the lid and stared at the only thing left inside: an Arizona driver’s license with the number 23 written on the back in Sharpie. The small portrait showed a bespectacled guy with a thick brown beard. The text said he was Michael Boslaugh, and that he lived at 17 Primrose Drive in Scottsdale, Arizona—roughly two hundred miles from where Dad and I left our broken trailer. We hadn’t gone back for it; somehow, it represented our old life, a life we never wanted to revisit.
I flipped Michael Boslaugh’s license through my fingers like a playing card, wondering why I hadn’t returned it; I only owed him twenty-three bucks.
I grabbed my phone and searched until I found his Instagram. It was mostly pictures of him at concerts or cuddling his French bulldog, but the latest one showed him with his arms around a petite brunette girl with a long curtain of dark brown hair. It seemed that since our encounter at the mall, Beard Boy had gotten himself a girlfriend. I felt a pang of jealousy; it was stupid, but there it was.
I wondered how differently things would’ve turned out if I had given his wallet back. Would he have turned me in? Would he have helped me? Would it be Michael driving to Las Vegas to see me instead of Liam?
I did that a lot now that I wasn’t preoccupied with trying to survive—thinking about all the what-ifs. Thinking about my life as just one possible route through a system of crisscrossing streets and highways. At any time, I might choose a different path, make a U-turn, pull off at the next exit. Michael Boslaugh might have been a road to a different life—but instead, he’d been a detour. And now that way was blocked.
I glanced at the stack of envelopes on my desk, thinking I should stuff twenty-three bucks and his driver’s license into one of them and drop it in the mail. Instead, I replaced the license and put the wooden box back in the drawer.
I felt a momentary heaviness, a muscle memory of the lead vest that seemed to settle on my chest when things got bad. I walked to the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. There on the top shelf sat a little orange bottle with my name on the label. I picked it up and rattled the pills inside. It was disorienting to think that two hundred milligrams of something could so drastically alter my experience of life, my personality, my self. That my humanity came down to one missing chemical compound thanks to a string of bad code copied from my mother’s defective genes. But then I would remind myself that it only took one burned wire to run an RV off the road. An RV was not a wire, and I was not my sickness.
I replaced the bottle and closed the mirrored cabinet. I was caught by surprise again at the sight of my chin-length hair in the mirror. But the real difference in my reflection was my eyes; they were bright and clear and showed no sign of those red rings. I put on some makeup, and then Liam rang the doorbell.
He held my hand as we tore west on Tropicana with the top down, my hair flying as we drove into the twilight. Behind us, away from the surreal glow of the Strip, a three-quarter moon hung in the sky. Above it, Jupiter shone, a yellow pinprick above the velvety teeth of the mountains, which stretched out in every direction as if guarding the horizon against our escape.
As we drove toward them, I thought about how any place ringed by mountains was, by definition, a valley—and that I had moved to one, more or less permanently. But mountains were also a promise of something beyond, somewhere to climb, peaks to break up the low-lying landscape. Maybe just the knowledge that those heights existed, that they could be reached, was enough.
Liam glanced at me and shouted above the sound of wind rushing past. “What’s so funny?”
I hadn’t realized I’d been laughing.
“Me,” I said. He smiled quizzically. Cue the dimple.
A big rig pulled in front of us, with Idaho plates and girls on the mud flaps. Liam made a face and waved away invisible fumes, but I inhaled the comforting, familiar scent of diesel and laughed again. I remembered worrying that I would miss the highs if I went back on meds. But the way I felt now was better—light, but grounded. Up, but without the frenetic buzz that threatened to overwhelm my nervous system. I stood on a peak with a view, but there was a railing here, and I had less fear of falling.
When we were coming up on Las Vegas Boulevard, Liam said, “Which way do I turn?”
“Go straight.”
“Where are you taking me, anyway?”
I pointed toward the darkening sky. “To meet my mom.”
I reached over and turned on the radio, twisting the old-fashioned dial through the stations in search of something upbeat. A familiar drum loop caught my attention, and I let go of the dial and shifted in my seat, unsticking my thighs from the hot upholstery. A synth patch came in, and then the voice of Jay-Z introduced “Little Miss Sunshine.” It was Rihanna, singing “Umbrella,” and I realized I hadn’t even thought of the song in weeks.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This book is not autobiographical. And yet, as with all works of fiction, there are pieces of the author in it. My father is a magician, and he did teach me a thing or two around my tenth birthday, before I was seduced by the guitar in his den and the typewriter on my mother’s desk. The Magic Castle, too, is real, and I spent many memorable Sunday mornings at the old mansion in Hollywood, watching performances by the brightest minds in magic.
I never lived in a trailer park, but I’ve had good times in Fort Wayne—and in my rock-band days, I toured the country twice in an RV quite like the one Ellie and her father inhabit. That was probably the seed of this book: my desire to share what it’s like to be a traveling performer. How glorious and how isolating it is. How romantic and how brutal.
I did not intend to write a book about mental health. When I sat down at the keyboard, I was hoping to get lost in an adventure, a road trip, a teenage fantasy set in the real world. But writing is a kind of magic, too, and it has a way of extracting what is important to its writer and exposing it on the page without his consent.
I have bipolar II disorder, and sometimes it disfigures my experience of life. It can make fine food taste like ashes and reduce the most breathtaking sunset to a gray smear. It can make my amazing life seem starkly not worth living. There are highs, too, and sometimes they’re spectacular: every song that comes on the radio is perfect. I’m funny and fast and everything seems to fit. But mostly, the ups are as hard as the downs. I’m angry and sleepless, I make bad decisions, and my mind races. (I never got “Umbrella” stuck in my head, but “Wrecking Ball” was on a loop for two years, and that’s enough to test anyone’s sanity.) Bipolar II can make it hard to work and hard to love, which can make it hard to live.
I take my illness seriously. I’m in therapy and on meds. I try to meditate and exercise every day, limit my intake of caffeine and alcohol, and track how much I sleep. It can be exhausting, all the stuff I have to do just to be able to function. It’s hard not to compare my output with that of healthier people, but I try to be compassionate with myself. I’ve shared my experience with my family and friends, so they know what to look for when I get too high or too low.
I want to be perfectly clear about one thing: treating my bipolar II disorder has in no way limited my creativity. On the contrary, when I’m taking care of myself, my work is clearer, more powerful, and more satisfying.
Bipolar isn’t something we’re going to eliminate, like smallpox, or try to eradicate, like cancer. For all we know, it may serve an adaptive function. It has long been linked with creativity in the arts and sciences; maybe the cycles of mania and depression are just by-products of a neurology necessary to advance our species. As medical science evolves, perhaps we’ll learn more. In the meantime, I can’t stress this enough:
Life with bipolar is life worth living.
To learn more about bipolar I and II disorders and the differences between them, please refer to the resources page at the back of this book.
If you or someone you know is suffering, please get help. The resources on the f
ollowing page are among the many amazing organizations working to improve the lives of people suffering from mental illness. Please also note that while all efforts have been made to ensure the accuracy of the information as of the date this book was published, it is for informational purposes only. It is not intended to be complete or exhaustive, or a substitute for the advice of a qualified expert or mental-health professional.
RESOURCES
Information about Bipolar I and II disorders
WebMD—Types of Bipolar Disorder
www.webmd.com/bipolar-disorder/guide/bipolar-disorder-forms
Verywell Mind—An Overview of Bipolar Disorder
www.verywellmind.com/bipolar-disorder-overview-378810
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org
1-800-273-8255
The Lifeline provides 24/7 free and confidential support for people in distress, prevention and crisis resources for you or your loved ones, and best practices for professionals.
Crisis Text Line
www.crisistextline.org
Crisis Text Line offers free, 24/7 support via text message for those in crisis. Serving the US, Canada, and the UK. Visit the website for more information.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)
www.nami.org/bipolar
NAMI is the nation’s largest grassroots mental health organization dedicated to building better lives for the millions of Americans affected by mental illness.
International Association for Suicide Prevention
The IASP is dedicated to preventing suicidal behavior, alleviating its effects, and providing a forum for academics, mental health professionals, crisis workers, volunteers, and suicide survivors. Find a crisis center in your country at: www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres
The Mighty
www.themighty.com
The Mighty is a digital health community created to empower and connect people facing health challenges and disabilities.
The Affordable Care Act
We live in uncertain times when it comes to health care, and mental health care in particular. While, in the story, Ellie and her dad have few options, you may have more than you think. Visit www.healthcare.gov for more information.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THANK YOU:
To Rachel Ekstrom Courage, for her brilliant counsel, flawless navigation, and unwavering friendship. Huzzah! To Kristin Rens, for her patience, perseverance, and commitment to making my second novel the best it could be.
To Alessandra Balzer, Donna Bray, Kelsey Murphy, Caitlin Johnson, Sarah Kaufman, Janet Robbins Rosenberg, Renée Cafiero, Heather Doss, Victor Hendrickson, and everyone at B+B/HarperCollins for their hard work.
To the booksellers and librarians who have made space for my words on their shelves.
To Enrico de le Vega, Dori Belmont, Ezra Deering, Don Houts, MD, Todd Harmonson, Chris Gongora, Adrian Preda, MD, Marley Teter, Ema Barnes, and Johnny Ace Palmer for lending authenticity to Ellie’s world. Though the people and events in this novel are fictional, I was inspired by several real magicians while writing it—but in keeping with rule number two, I’ll never tell. To David Neil Black and Corey Manske for surviving the Hobbit Bridge, defeating the Wall of Death, and clearing the water from the fuel lines so we didn’t die at that northern Illinois truck stop.
To Roger, Priscilla, and Riki Garvin, Dan Zarzana, Tara Sonin, Lissa Price, Derek Rogers, Brian Perry, Scott Sanford, and Curtis Andersen for holding me up; I couldn’t do this without you. To Anna Shinoda, John Corey Whaley, Marisa Reichardt, Jasmine Warga, Romina Garber, Brandy Colbert, Stacey Lee, Joshua Butler, Adam Epstein, Brittany Cavallaro, Farrah Penn, and all the amazing writers I’ve met for letting me eat lunch at the cool kids’ table.
To my children for making me a better man.
To my wife, Ami, who deserves far more than to have her name printed on the first and last pages of this book.
And to you, dear reader, for letting me keep my dream job. I’ll see you at work tomorrow.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo by Zander Vera
Before becoming a writer, JEFF GARVIN acted in films and on TV and was the front man of a nationally touring rock band. He has a BFA in film from Chapman University and is also the author of the acclaimed YA novel Symptoms of Being Human, which was a Lambda Literary Award finalist and was also one of the YALSA Top Ten Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers, an ALA Best Fiction for Young Adults selection, and on the 2017 Rainbow Book List. Jeff lives in Southern California, surrounded by adorable shedding beasts. You can visit him online at www.jeffgarvinbooks.com.
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BOOKS BY JEFF GARVIN
Symptoms of Being Human
The Lightness of Hands
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COPYRIGHT
Balzer + Bray is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
THE LIGHTNESS OF HANDS. Copyright © 2020 by Jeff Garvin. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Cover art © 2020 by Amanda Lanzone
Cover design by Corina Lupp
* * *
Digital Edition APRIL 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-238291-7
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-238289-4
* * *
2021222324PC/LSCH10987654321
FIRST EDITION
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