A Trick of the Light
Page 13
Is that me? Mike thinks. It looks like me.
Of course it’s you. Who else would it be?
Darpana—she said I wasn’t real. I was eclipsed, a shadow, a trick of the light.
She never said that. Anyway, a trick of the light is an honest mistake. Could happen to anybody.
A trick of the light is a lie, Mike thinks. A lie you tell yourself. And you still try to get away with it.
Mike: “Look, there’s a mirror here.”
Meg (peering into the closet): “Oh, right. I forgot I had it.”
Mike: “Is it valuable?”
Meg: “Not at all.”
Mike: “Can I have it? I’ve got a mirror at home, but it’s warped and I’m getting rid of it. I want to replace it.”
This mirror is too small. How will you see yourself? Don’t be idiotic.
Funny, how the voice can sound like Grandma Celia, Mike thinks, finding fault, criticizing—
Now that’s just insulting.
This mirror’s the perfect size for the movie, Mike thinks. Ray can see his reflection, the monster within—
Forget the movie! Remember how good you used to feel? You were so close. You were almost there.
Close—to what? Almost where?
You were so full of life.
It seemed like it.
Listen to yourself!
I’m trying to, Mike thinks.
It takes Mike another hour to clean out the closet. Meg tries to give him money, but he won’t let her. He’ll take only the mirror. They argue about this for a while, but Mike insists.
Meg: “Can I tell my friends about you? You could make some good money.”
Mike: “Thanks, but I’m really busy these days. You could tell people about my mom. She’d appreciate the word of mouth.”
Mike carefully wraps the mirror up with newspaper and tape, like it’s a Christmas present. He heads outside. It’s snowing lightly, so lightly it almost isn’t snowing. Mike finds the almost-snow beautiful.
Run home. No one will know.
I can’t run, he thinks, I’m holding the mirror.
You’re full of excuses! Drop it in the garbage, where it belongs.
The voice in my head, Mike thinks: if I don’t listen to it, can it speak?
Why shouldn’t you listen? Everyone else has betrayed you. They will betray you again. You need to work on yourself. When you get home, look in the mirror—the one you can trust. You can get your body back. Strong body, strong mind, strong enough to master the chaos—
Mike (aloud): “Oh, just leave me alone already.”
I’m shocked to my core. I’d be shaking if there were anything to shake. This is the first time Mike has spoken to me like that, in his own voice. And what a thing to say. He doesn’t sound angry or afraid. He just sounds…
…distant.
But I will not leave him alone. That is not what’s best for him.
Mike is thinking about what Harryhausen said: how, when his creations die, there’s sadness because each one has a mind and a soul.
Mike gets on the Q22 bus home. It’s crowded, but he spots a seat near the back. He sits holding the mirror. Beside him, there’s a man on a cell phone. Behind him, a woman gets a call. Then several other people make calls.
Man next to Mike: “Speak up. I can’t hear you.”
Woman behind Mike: “There’s somebody talking really loud right in front of me—what’d you say?”
Mike (to me in his head): “Guess what? You’re in the pit of voices.”
[nothing]
It takes me a moment, but of course there’s no such thing as a pit of voices. It’s just the boring Belle Heights bus with a bunch of obnoxious people talking loudly on cell phones. I let Mike know I’m still here, that this bit of treachery didn’t just wipe me out of existence. I tell him:
You can be strong, infinitely strong.
So it won’t be easy, Mike thinks, but it’s a step in the right direction—even if it’s smaller than the eye can see.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
SOME YEARS AGO, I READ AN ARTICLE CALLED “NOT for Girls Only” in the New York Daily News. It was about a boy with an eating disorder. I never knew boys could get eating disorders, and this idea was so unexpected, it took hold of me and wouldn’t let go. How does a boy get anorexia? Is it different from what happens with girls?
I emailed the reporter and then spoke with the boy in the article, his family, and his doctor, who put me in touch with other families. I met several young men and their parents. I did research on the complex world of eating disorders, visiting hospitals and reading many excellent books, both fiction and nonfiction (please see the list, below).
As Mike learns in this book, of the 10 million people in the United States with eating disorders, 10 percent are male (and some reports put this figure even higher). That’s one million boys and men, an epidemic that is, as one writer puts it, “overlooked, understudied, and underreported” because “it’s a girl’s disease.” Yet the first two documented cases of eating disorders, back in the 1600s, involved a girl and a boy. It wasn’t called anorexia nervosa back then—that term, which originated in the 1800s, translates to “lack of desire to eat” or “nervous loss of appetite.” Which isn’t really accurate. There is tremendous desire to eat and no loss of appetite. But eating disorders have ways of manipulating the truth.
Anorexia, bulimia, and other eating disorders have the highest death rate of any psychological disorder—though I’m very pleased to say that all the young men I interviewed for this book are doing exceptionally well. One of the moms recently emailed me, triumphantly, her son’s healthy weight.
—Lois Metzger
February 2013
Bibliography
Andersen, Arnold, Leigh Cohn, and Thomas Holbrook. Making Weight: Healing Men’s Conflicts with Food, Weight, Shape & Appearance. Carlsbad, CA: Gürze Books, 2000.
Anderson, Laurie Halse. Wintergirls. New York: Viking, 2009.
Bryant-Waugh, Rachel, and Bryan Lask. Eating Disorders: A Parents’ Guide. Rev. ed. New York: Brunner-Routledge, 2004.
Costin, Carolyn. The Eating Disorder Sourcebook. 2nd ed. Los Angeles: Lowell House, 1999.
Gottlieb, Lori. Stick Figure: A Diary of My Former Self. New York: Berkley Books, 2001.
Harryhausen, Ray, and Tony Dalton. An Animated Life. Foreword by Ray Bradbury. New York: Billboard Books, 2004.
Hautzig, Deborah. Second Star to the Right. New York: Puffin Books, 1999.
Hendricks, Jennifer. Slim to None: A Journey through the Wasteland of Anorexia Treatment. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004.
Hornbacher, Marya. Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia. New York: HarperPerennial, 1998.
Levenkron, Steven. The Best Little Girl in the World. New York: Warner Books, 1979.
Lock, James, and Daniel Le Grange. Help Your Teenager Beat an Eating Disorder. New York: The Guilford Press, 2005.
———, W. Stewart Agras, and Christopher Dare. Treatment Manual for Anorexia Nervosa: A Family-Based Approach. New York: The Guilford Press, 2001.
Medoff, Jillian. Hunger Point: A Novel. New York: Regan Books, HarperCollins, 2002.
Menzie, Morgan. Diary of an Anorexic Girl: Based on a True Story. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2003.
Sacker, Ira M., and Marc A. Zimmer. Dying to Be Thin: Understanding and Defeating Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia: A Practical, Lifesaving Guide. New York: Warner Books, 2001.
Sparks, Beatrice, ed. Kim: Empty Inside: The Diary of an Anonymous Teenager. New York: HarperTeen, 2002.
Vizzini, Ned. It’s Kind of a Funny Story. New York: Miramax Books, Hyperion Paperbacks, 2007.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
MANY THANKS TO:
My agent, Susan Cohen at Writers House, for her enthusiasm, kindness, and belief in this book, which is dedicated to her.
Her assistant, Brianne Johnson, who helped enormously with her insights and suggestions.
Kevin Webb, who was an intern at Writers House and wh
o read an early draft and helped bring the book into focus and worked with me even after he left Writers House. He has an amazing eye and ear for story and language.
At Balzer + Bray, I am very grateful to Alessandra Balzer and Donna Bray, and to Renée Cafiero, Alison Donalty, Ray Shappell, and Viana Siniscalchi.
The following people also helped along the way:
Jacob Hiss; Tony Hiss; Katharine L. Loeb, PhD, at Fairleigh Dic Mercury News reporter and current Sun-Sentinel reporter; Justin Roberts; Susan Roberts; and Niobe Way, professor of applied psychology at New York University.
I thank my lucky stars for my editor at Balzer + Bray, Jordan Brown. He is a spectacularly nice person, and funny and smart and warm, as well as a tremendously gifted editor. He helped give this book a mind and a soul.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LOIS METZGER was born in Queens and has always written for young adults. She is the author of three previous novels and two nonfiction books about the Holocaust, and she has edited five anthologies. Her short stories have appeared in collections all over the world. Her writing has also appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation, and Harper’s Bazaar. She lives in Greenwich Village with her husband and son.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.
BOOKS BY LOIS METZGER
NOVELS
Missing Girls
Ellen’s Case
Barry’s Sister
NONFICTION
The Hidden Girl: A True Story of the Holocaust, with Lola Rein Kaufman
Yours, Anne: The Life of Anne Frank
EDITOR
Bones: Terrifying Tales to Haunt Your Dreams
Bites: Scary Stories to Sink Your Teeth Into
Be Careful What You Wish For: Ten Stories about Wishes
Can You Keep a Secret?: Ten Stories about Secrets
The Year We Missed My Birthday: Eleven Birthday Stories
CREDITS
Cover photo © 2013 by Howard Huang
Cover design by Ray Shappell and Erin Schell
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2013 by Lois Metzger
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 hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Metzger, Lois.
A trick of the light / Lois Metzger. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Fifteen-year-old Mike desperately attempts to take control as his parents separate and his life falls apart.
ISBN 978-0-06-213308-3 (hardcover bdg. : alk. paper)
Epub Edition © APRIL 2013 ISBN 9780062133106
[1. Family problems—Fiction. 2. Anorexia nervosa—Fiction. 3. Eating disorders—Fiction. 4. High schools—Fiction. 5. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.M5677Tri 2013
[Fic]—dc23
2012019039
CIP
AC
13 14 15 16 17 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
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