Mike: “We’re not far from where you live, right? How about now?”
I don’t understand this at all. What is Mike up to? What does he imagine this will accomplish?
Meg: “What do you think, Mr. Welles?”
Dad (looking at Mike carefully): “I think he wants to do this.”
Mike nods.
You can’t possibly mean it.
Dad: “So I’ll see you at home for dinner at six, okay? If you get hungry, here’s an energy bar.”
Mike’s dad sounds like an ordinary dad. Mike is grateful that his dad isn’t broadcasting the fact that his son must eat this snack because he was just released from a hospital.
Mike (like an ordinary kid): “Later.”
But this is not ordinary, far from it. Prisoner Mike, he should be called. They walk to Meg’s place. And… wait. I get it. Mike just broke out of prison! Maybe Mike didn’t plan it this way or maybe he did—either way it’s brilliant.
You just got rid of your dad. Now you can get rid of her, too.
Mike knows it. He hasn’t been alone in weeks, always someone hovering over him, shoving a bottle of Ensure down his throat, keeping an eye on him, even when he’s in the bathroom. Mike takes a deep breath. The air fills his lungs. He can run, catch up on his running, make up for all the time he couldn’t run. I can be fit, Mike thinks. I can be strong, infinitely strong.
Yes! Go!
But, he thinks, my dad trusts me.
So what? You don’t have to trust him. He hasn’t earned your trust.
I don’t want to lie to him.
Lying can be necessary. Lying can protect you.
No, Mike thinks, that is not the purpose of a lie.
To my dismay, Mike follows Meg through her lobby to the elevator. This stubbornness of Mike’s—it’s always been a problem.
Mike separates the stuff into three categories: keep, throw away, donate. A navy-blue blazer and an alarm clock, still in its unopened box, get to stay. Into the garbage go a battered suitcase with no handle, and some coats and dresses with zippers that don’t zip. For the Salvation Army, there’s an endless supply of skirts, sweaters, and jeans, and a tennis racket, a printer, and a popcorn maker.
As Mike reaches the back of the closet, he sees something. It startles him—it’s a face, staring back. It takes Mike a moment to realize that he’s looking at his own reflection in a small mirror with a silver frame.
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.