Lois Metzger - A Trick of the Light

Spruce Hills is a Q22 bus ride away from Belle Heights, a neighborhood with a new shopping mall that includes a Target and a Home Depot. When Mike and Tamio went to see it, Tamio said, “Welcome to the world of tomorrow!” I don’t know why Mike finds Tamio funny; his jokes don’t make any sense. Anyway, Mike never thought much of Spruce Hills until this moment, when Spruce Hills became the birthplace of Valerie Braylock.

Mr. Clayton: “I hope you’ll all try to make her feel welcome.”

Mike is more than ready to take on the job of welcoming committee. Do I need to mention that Mike has never had a girlfriend? As soon as homeroom is over, he rushes to her like the proverbial moth to the flame. She towers over him, and Mike is immediately caught in her sweet, flowery fragrance.

Mike (drunkenly): “Hi, my name is Mike Welles and I just want to say, you know, hi.”

Valerie: “What?”

Mike (slowly and carefully): “My name is Mike Welles. Hi.”

Valerie: “Hi.”

Mike: “What’s your schedule? Maybe we have some classes together. That way if you have any questions I can, you know, help you out.”

They compare schedules. Or, rather, Valerie looks at Mike’s schedule while Mike looks at Valerie. Close up he notices her smooth skin, and a tiny scar below her left cheek.

Valerie: “We have physics, last period.”

Mike: “That’s great! If you, you know, need help after school, I could, you know …”

Valerie: “Actually I’m a dancer, and I have to go to class after school every day.”

Mike (as if she couldn’t get any more wonderful): “You’re a dancer?”

Valerie (nodding): “Ballet.”

Mike: “Wow. Just… wow.”

She’s way too curvy to be a ballet dancer. The bell rings.

Mike: “Anyway, see you in physics.”

She smiles briefly and leaves. Mike thinks her smile is like the sun and the stars and the entire Milky Way. I try to warn Mike of the pain that awaits him with this girl, but he’s lost in daydreams. His visions of him and her together are too absurd to describe.

He texts Tamio about being in love with Valerie Brayolock. Tamio texts back that she’s in his math, English, and music appreciation classes, and also his lunch period. Mike is instantly jealous.

Tamio (text): She’s cute.

Mike: I saw her 1st.

Tamio: She’s all yours.

Mike: U better believe it.

I don’t like anything about this. Girls flock to Tamio. What will happen to Mike when Valerie invariably does the same?

The day is uneventful, just the usual high school nonsense. Ralph Gaffney is wearing a T-shirt that says I’M NOT AS THINK AS YOU DRUNK I AM, and Melissa Sacks reports him, explaining to the Rubys, “I texted my mom. As head of the PTA she says that even though we don’t have a dress code per se, we can’t allow clothing that promotes substance abuse. If Ralph doesn’t change his shirt, my mom will take it up with the school board.” Melissa can’t stand Ralph because last year she and the Rubys made a video of themselves dancing (it was called “The Belles of Belle Heights”) and posted it on YouTube. Ralph wrote something so pornographic in the comments section that Melissa had the video removed. Well, she’s having her revenge now. Ralph has to borrow a shirt from the lost & found, which already has clothing in it on the first day of school.

By the time physics rolls around and Mike sees Valerie again, her hair is in a tight bun. Mike can barely catch his breath. Now he has a different image to add to his collection.

Mike (rushing up to her): “How’s your first day been?”

Valerie: “Fine! Everyone’s been really friendly.”

Mike is sure all the boys have been friendly, at least.

Mike: “Your hair’s different.”

Valerie: “I have to wear it like this for dance.”

Mike notices that beneath her button-down shirt, there’s a scoop neckline that wasn’t there before.

Mike: “You have a change of clothes on, under?” He instantly regrets saying that.

Valerie (not upset): “I have my leotard and tights on. That way, when I get to the studio, I can rip my clothes off and be ready for class.”

Mike is practically hyperventilating.

Valerie: “I can’t be late—in fact I have this recurring nightmare of being late. There’s a performance and I’m not in costume because my hair’s not ready or something, and the music’s starting. The whole ballet is ruined because of me.”

Mike wishes he had a recurring nightmare he could tell her about.

Speaking of late, Amber walks into the physics lab right now. She scoots into a seat at a table diagonally in front of Mike. He can smell her cinnamon smell. Melissa Sacks, up front where she always sits, turns around to look at the Rubys and pretends to stick her finger down her throat. Amber makes Melissa want to throw up, apparently. These girls are so shallow. Amber is so much deeper than any of them D;

Mike goes to Tamio’s house after school. Tamio lives four blocks from Belle Heights High, on Seventy-Fifth Crescent, which means crossing Seventy-Fifth Road, Seventy-Fifth Circle, and Seventy-Fifth Street. It’s another two long blocks before you get to anything with a seventy-six. All the streets in Belle Heights are that way. Places are never exactly where you think they’ll be.

It’s Tamio’s mother’s birthday and there’s a party in their sunny dining room, where the walls are covered with framed pictures of flowers. There’s pizza, cake. Mike devours several slices of pizza. He sees Tamio’s parents, how different they look (he’s tall with curly brown hair; she’s tiny with short black hair), how easy they are with each other, always a hand on the arm, a whisper, a laugh. Mike wonders about the last time he heard his parents laugh. He feels a terrible ache.

He remembers the night of the Belle Heights Carnival. It was supposed to be an annual event but it only happened once. Mike was nine. There was a Ferris wheel that got stuck when he and his parents were at the top, but it was only two stories high so it wasn’t scary. As they waited for it to move again, his dad wrapped an arm around Mike, and his mom leaned her head onto her husband’s shoulder. After, they had their pictures taken in one of those booths where you get a strip of four photos. They joked about their brush with death. In the photos, his parents are laughing; Mike is laughing. He wonders where those photos are.

He remembers, too, a project he had to do for earth science. His parents came up with the idea of riding the bus in Belle Heights with him and charting all the hills and valleys, block by block. They staked out the last row of the bus; they rolled their eyes at people talking loudly on cell phones. Was that really just a year ago? Mike thinks.

Mike joins in singing “Happy Birthday” to Tamio’s mom. Then he eats a huge slab of cake.

In Tamio’s room, they do physics homework. Tamio explains the right-hand rule to Mike, who can’t wrap his mind around it: how you curl your right hand and use your thumb and fingers to match the curvature and direction of the motion of a magnetic field (or something).

Tamio has to explain it more than once.

Then they watch parts of Harryhausen’s Jason and the Argonauts and Clash of the Titans . They love the flying harpies who torture a blind man by grabbing his food and not allowing him to eat. Mike could’ve used a couple of harpies at this party; his stomach groans in discomfort, while Tamio seems fine. They admire Medusa, who, in this version of mythology, has the body of a snake and the head and torso of a woman, with hair consisting of writhing snakes. Perseus, the hero, loses several of his men to Medusa—one look from her and they turn to stone.

Tamio: “Some people think Medusa is Harryhausen’s masterpiece.”