Too Bright to See

“I feel grounded now. Not in free fall, not hurtling through space. But there’s an empty room inside my chest.”

Bug uses a metaphor, where something is compared to something else without using “like” or “as,” to convey his sense of grief—“there’s an empty room inside my chest.” This reflects the space that Roderick has left behind. It also evokes the house where he has grown up, which is now emptier.

“Just a face that isn’t quite mine. Almost mine. But different enough that it gives me a shock every time.”

Sometimes, Bug looks at himself in the mirror and does not recognize his reflection. This foreshadows his realization about his transgender identity. 

There are no villainous characters in the novel. Everyone—from Bug’s mother to the school principal to the older girls who are friends with Moira—is not only accepting but embracing of him. The antagonist is not a concrete person, but Bug’s internal conflict about his gender identity—the girl he sees when he looks in the mirror but does not identify with.

“Something blunt and unstoppable tries to push its way up from my stomach into my throat and behind my eyes. I brake sharply, jump off, and walk back home, leaving my bike sprawled on the side of the dirt road, one wheel spinning forlornly.”

As Bug goes through The Grieving Process, his memories of his uncle trigger a strong emotional response. Here, Bug describes grief as a palpable, physical thing, an entity that moves throughout his body, “blunt and unstoppable.” Eventually, memories of Roderick will be comforting, but with the grief still so fresh, they overwhelm Bug.

“‘What, exactly, do you know about what boys do when they invite you over?’ I’m wondering the same thing. Does she suddenly know what dates are like? As far as I know she’s never even held a boy’s hand.”

Bug starts to notice a difference in the way Moira is acting. The two friends are already very different, but Bug feels like Moira is acting more grown up than usual; she has started caring about different things, like boys, and this puts strain on their friendship.

“I twitch. I hate the name on my birth certificate and never use it. I imagine starting school, introducing myself as—”

The book never tells the reader what Bug’s birth name is. This is a way for Kyle Lukoff to respect Bug’s transgender identity, as many trans people choose never to disclose their birth names, or deadnames, to new people that they meet.

“But first impressions matter! I heard that all the girls at Maplewood wear makeup and stuff. Well, not all of them, but most of them. Definitely all the popular ones. You want to make a fresh start, right?”

Moira cares a great deal about fitting in at her and Bug’s new school in the fall. She wants to encourage Bug to do things like wear makeup and nail polish to fit in, unaware that these things make Bug feel uncomfortable.

“I’m not sure how I feel about it. When girls in books or movies get makeovers, they’re thrilled with what they see in the mirror. I wonder if that only happens in fiction, or if it’s normal to act like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Bug often compares himself to girls in fiction as a way to try to understand his place in the world. However, when his experiences differ greatly from girls that he has read about, he feels at odds with himself.

“I once asked if I could be a drag queen too. Moira explained that was only for boys but Uncle Roderick said I could grow up to be whatever I wanted.”

Roderick has always supported Bug in being exactly who he is. He suspected that Bug was trans, but did not say anything before he died, allowing Bug to come to his own conclusions.

“I know I’m a girl and all, but I’ve never thought of myself like that. Like a real girl, someone who looks the part.”

While Bug is consciously unaware of his transgender identity until the end of the book, he is at odds with himself and the way he is seen. He struggles with being perceived as a girl and never feels like he is a “real” one.

“Empty rooms feel hollow. Uncle Roderick’s room feels solid. Like someone is still in there, even when I know Mom is downstairs. A presence, not a person, waiting for the right moment to make itself known.”

Bug can feel a ghostly presence in Roderick’s old room. Though he does not yet know who the ghost is, this foreshadows the revelation that the presence is Roderick himself, who is trying to give Bug a message. The last two lines in the quote are incomplete sentences, mimicking informal speech.

“I don’t usually blurt out random things like this, but I desperately want Moira not to tell them what my name is. And I don’t want to tell them that I don’t want them to know. It’s too complicated all of a sudden.”

Once again, Bug shows extreme discomfort with his birth name. He does not quite understand why, but he will later realize that his birth name is yet another way for people to incorrectly identify him as a girl.

“I figured that those magazines taught girls how to be girls. Like that was how they all learned this stuff, and after reading them I would know too. But apparently that’s not how teen magazines work. You’re supposed to understand it already, somehow.”

Bug is so at odds with the idea of being a girl that he believes everyone must feel the same way. He is puzzled to learn that being a girl is not something he can learn from teen magazines and does not understand why other girls seem to already know what to do.

“Trying to picture myself as a teenage girl is like staring at the sun, too bright to see, and it hurts. Thinking about being an adult, a woman, makes me feel like I’m looking up at the stars but there’s nothing holding me to the earth, and I might fly off into the void at any moment.”

The above lines use similes, where something is compared to something else using “like” or “as,” to convey Bug’s discomfort with envisioning himself as a girl. He compares it to the pain of “staring at the sun,” and the untethered feeling of “looking up at the stars […] [with] nothing holding me to the earth.” For Bug, the idea of going through puberty and becoming a young woman is terrifying, as it will bring him into a body with which he is wholly uncomfortable.

“But right now I’m looking. And I can’t explain what seems so wrong, but I just know that it’s a different face staring back at me. If I described it, it would sound like me: long, straight dark hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. Green-blue eyes, a tanned face with freckles. Nothing special. But that face isn’t mine. It looks like someone’s idea of what I look like, without me behind it.”

Bug thinks of his reflection as a ghost. He is unable to reconcile how wrong he feels when he sees himself in the mirror as a girl, an image incongruent with his real identity. In this case, nobody else can relate to his experiences, and he initially thinks something is wrong with the mirrors.

“There’s that skin-crawling sensation of someone standing right behind me. No, several someones. The Patersons, my uncle, whoever else lived and died here. Everyone we’d be leaving. We can’t abandon them.”

Though many kids might be frightened of the idea of living in a haunted house, Bug finds the former residents and his uncle comforting. The idea of having to leave them behind and move somewhere else upsets him.

“She knows more about his life than I ever will. But this still feels like something between him and me. He wanted me to find these. There’s something here he wants me to understand.”

Bug is convinced that Roderick is trying to send him a message from beyond the grave. Though he is puzzled about what it might be, he knows that it is up to him to figure it out. The pamphlets are one of his biggest clues. The text uses short, declarative sentences, creating emphasis: “He wanted me to find these. There’s something here he wants me to understand.”

“But that just sounds normal to me. It must be more of a human thing. I’m not trans, but I always feel like people are looking at me and seeing something wrong.”

When Bug reads accounts of trans people talking about their experiences, he relates to the feeling of not-rightness that many of them describe. As Bug has not yet come to terms with his transgender identity, he assumes that these experiences are not unique to trans people, but universal ones.

“I can’t be the easiest person to stay friends with. Especially right now. But she’s trying, and that means more than anything.”

For much of the book, Bug worries that Moira is pulling away from him, and that she will no longer want to be his friend once they get to middle school. However, as she includes him in more and more things, he realizes that their friendship does not have to end.

“There he is, I think. Then I stop thinking, for just a second, and feel. I see a boy in the mirror. I see myself in the mirror. Every other time I’ve looked in a mirror, I’ve seen a girl, and not seen myself. I’ve always thought it was a ghost. Or a trick. But there he is. There I am. And I realize.”

After getting his head shaved, Bug finally recognizes the reflection that he sees in the mirror. Rather than seeing a girl, he is able to see a boy: his true self. He finally recognizes himself. Lukoff again uses short sentences for emphasis, as well as repetition (emphasis added): “But there he is. There I am.”

“I’m a boy hugging a girl now, as friends, and it’s the first time that hugging her doesn’t make me feel awkward, or stiff, or gross. Just like a friend.”

Bug’s friendship with Moira has not made sense to him until now. Because Bug finally understands himself as a boy, he feels he can finally relate to Moira in a way that makes sense to both of them.

“Mom said that she would have been fine if Uncle Roderick was trans. She sounded like she meant it. But does that mean that she’ll be okay with me?”

Bug’s fears about his mom accepting him reflect a common concern for many LGBTQ people, especially those who are very young. The fear of not being accepted by family is one of the major barriers to coming out for many people, even if their family members are otherwise supportive.

“People cry at beginnings and at endings, and this moment is one of each. They’re not sad tears. Or, at least, the sad tears are mixed in with the others, and are sneaking their way out. I’m crying for my uncle, and a little for myself. She is crying for her brother, maybe her husband, maybe her daughter and son, maybe other tears that she’s never told me about.”

As Bug and his mom have learned over the course of the book, The Grieving Process is not a linear one. Bug understands that this particular moment, his coming out, is one that both of them wish they could share with people who are no longer there.

“It felt nice to be better at something than you, for a change. You’ve never been afraid to be different. I’ve always been a little jealous of you for that.”

For much of the summer, Bug has felt like things have come easily to Moira, and that she understood things in a way that he could not. When he learns that Moira has also been struggling with how to be herself, he is surprised. This suggests that appearances do not always match with reality.