Lois Metzger - A Trick of the Light

Mr. Clayton is on his computer and Tamio and Mike sit there in silence. Mike eats a grilled-cheese sandwich and drinks a bottle of Ensure. He still has to drink three of those a day, plus three meals and two snacks. It’s enough food for an army.

Tamio: “I saw something on YouTube you’d like.”

Mike: “Yeah?”

Tamio: “These two guys made a stop-motion movie of how they built a Millennium Falcon out of Legos. The animation is seamless.”

Something sparks inside Mike. I love this stuff, he thinks, don’t I?

No, you used to love it. Things change.

Mike: “How long is the video?”

Tamio: “Just under three minutes.”

Mike: “How long did it take them?”

Tamio: “Thirty-eight hours.”

Mike: “That’s not bad.”

Tamio: “It got me thinking. We could make a stop-motion movie. My dad just got a special camera that can shoot single frames. I got some special software, too, that helps you line up the camera and go back and forth between images so you can make sure it all looks good.”

You don’t have time.

Mike: “I’m behind on all my homework, in case you didn’t know.”

Mr. Clayton glances up from his computer.

Mr. Clayton: “Mike, Tamio’s got a great idea. As animators, you’d have to take measurements, study movement and perspective. I think this movie would be perfect for you and Tamio as a year-end project.”

Tamio: “Cool! We can invent our own creature and film it.”

Oh, I understand now. They’ve been plotting this—just the way they plotted to send Mike to the hospital.

Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t do it.

But I have to do it, Mike thinks. Thanks to Mr. Clayton, now it’s homework.

Finally Mike has an opportunity to visit Amber in the Sun Room. His dad has to take Mike to the hospital and will sit in the cafeteria until it’s time to take Mike home again. It’s like Mike is in a prison whose walls are everywhere. But at least he gets to see Amber.

She looks good, Mike thinks; her eyes are clear, her hair’s shiny, there’s color in her face.

Amber (biting off her words): “Thanks for coming to see me. Where the hell have you been?”

Mike: “You’ll never guess. Okay if I sit down?”

Amber: “I really don’t care.”

The padded chair is as hard as Mike remembers. She’s in a bad mood, he thinks.

Can you blame her? She missed you.

I missed her too, Mike thinks with some surprise. He realizes, maybe for the first time, how much he cares about her. Well, it took him long enough.

Amber: “Did you get my bracelet?”

Mike: “Sorry. No.”

Amber: “Thanks a lot. It’s the one thing I asked you to do.”

Mike looks around the Sun Room. There are some hand-drawn pictures of sunrises and sunsets taped to the wall.

Mike: “I was in a hospital. Like this one.”

Now he has her attention.

Amber: “You’re kidding.”

Mike: “Nope. I was really, truly there.” As he says this, the weight of it hits him. I thought I was with people who were nothing like me, Mike thinks, people who had no control over themselves. But am I any different?

You’re badly confused. No doubt because you’re in a hospital setting. It’s warping your judgment.

Amber: “Were the girls there skinnier than me? I bet you didn’t even notice. Did you eat everything they put in front of you? There’s no way I’d do that. I’d explode.”

Mike: “You look good.”

Amber: “I don’t! I’m disgusting.”

Mike: “How close are you to your IBW? Look at me, I speak the language.”

Amber: “You mean my Insane Body Weight? That’s what Deirdre calls it.”

Mike: “How’s she doing?”

Amber: “She’s not my roommate anymore. She’s down the hall, on a feeding tube. She needs potassium. So I’ve got my own room until they stick somebody else in there. My mom wants to keep me in a single. She thinks the other girls are a bad influence. She’s such a bitch. Miss Cool Hunter! She’ll never understand. What’s cooler than being thin and happy and living life the way you want to live it?”

Mike: “You can’t live it if you’re dead.”

I am… appalled. I can’t believe Mike just said that. I don’t think he can believe it, either. He sounds like Darpana, with her obscene talk of death and dying, which I listened to so Mike wouldn’t have to.

Amber: “Excuse me?” She’s not saying this because she didn’t hear Mike, but because she also can’t believe it.

Mike: “I’m on your side, Amber.”

Amber: “You wouldn’t know it!”

Mike: “I don’t want you to, you know, die.”

Of course you don’t. But this isn’t what Amber needs to hear right now.

Amber (glaring at him): “An extra pair of eyes on me—is that what you’re gonna be, Mike? I don’t want that. I don’t need that.” She looks out the window, but it’s dark. There’s nothing to see.

Apologize.

Mike: “I barely know you, Amber.”

That is not what I had in mind.

Amber: “You know me! You’ve known me since kindergarten.”

Mike: “Yeah, I remember when you were little. You were always—”

Amber looks horrified. She’s not sure what Mike is about to tell her about herself.

Mike: “—really smart. You knew the answers before anyone else.”

Amber takes a deep breath.

Mike: “I’ve got to go, but I could come back next Monday. Maybe you could tell me about your aunt and stuff.”

Amber: “What is wrong with you?”

I’d like the answer to that question myself.

Amber: “Anyway, next Monday is Christmas.”

Mike: “I know.”

Amber: “Don’t you have something else to do?”

Mike: “Nothing I’d rather do.”

Amber half smiles. Mike has never seen that before. It’s not one of her sneaky smiles.

MIKE BRINGS HIS PICTURE OF THE TWO-HEADED Cyclops to lunch on Friday, right before Christmas break. He remembers, as a kid, watching the Cyclops (with only one head, naturally) in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad . That Cyclops couldn’t talk but he could roar, and Mike loved and admired him for that; nobody misunderstood him or asked him to repeat himself.

You’re not a little kid with a speech problem anymore. You’re an entirely different person now.

Mike (showing Tamio the drawing): “What do you think?”

Tamio: “You drew something like this a long time ago, didn’t you?”

Mike: “Would he be too hard to make? Maybe something with Legos would be easier.”

Tamio: “We can use clay.”

Mike: “If you want to design a different creature—”

Tamio: “He’s great. He’s perfect. Oh, I forgot to tell you. Val wants to work on the movie too.”

This is not good.

Mike: “What?”

Tamio: “I told her you and I were doing a movie. She likes stop-motion.”

Mike: “She knew what it was?”

Tamio: “She’s a big fan of Wallace and Gromit.”

Mike: “And you told her I was doing the movie too?”

Tamio: “Yeah. Like I said.”

Mike: “But she doesn’t have time. She’s always at dance.”

Tamio: “We have to start without her, but once her show ends, she’ll join us. It’ll be her physics project, too.”

Mike: “You sure you said it was me?”

Tamio: “Yes! For the third time.”

Mike is thinking about stop-motion, how slow and careful and precise it is; you have to get it exactly right so it looks smooth, not choppy; you need to work together closely; he and Valerie, working together, close—

She’s unstable. She’ll turn on you.

When I saw her, Mike thinks, she didn’t turn on me.