Too Bright to See

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2021

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Chapter 5

Chapters 6-10

Chapters 11-16

Chapter 17-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Chapters 11-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 11 Summary

Bug bikes over to Moira’s house. He decides not to tell Moira about Griffin; he doesn’t want her to “start acting like [Griffin is his] future boyfriend” (92). Bug has brought a Ouija board with him. He wants to use it to try and contact Roderick, but he has read about the dangers of using one alone. Moira and Bug use the board together. All they get is nonsense and letters that do not spell anything.

A thunderstorm begins and Moira dances in the rain. Bug does not want to get wet because he did not bring a change of clothes with him. Moira convinces him to dance in the rain with her and his clothes get soaked. Moira gives him one of her sundresses to wear. Bug admits that the dress is comfortable, though it makes him feel strange. Moira tells him that he looks good. He looks at himself in the mirror and thinks that he looks like a real girl. He feels a strange feeling in his stomach, like he has “swallowed [his] bike chain” (97).

Chapter 12 Summary

Bug bikes home from Moira’s house. He is still wearing the dress that Moira gave him. Though he likes the way it feels to bike in a dress, he still has that strange feeling in his stomach. As he heads home, he decides to stop by Griffin’s house and ask if he can borrow one of the books about ghosts that Griffin checked out from the library. When Griffin sees him, he seems a little confused to see Bug in a dress. He asks if Bug wants to come inside, but Bug does not like the idea of hanging out with Griffin in a dress for so long. He tells Griffin that his mom is expecting him home. Griffin lends him the book and tells him to come by any time.

When Bug gets home, his mom is out. Bug is glad: He does not want his mom to see him in the dress and tell him how nice he looks. He takes his wet clothes out of his backpack and hangs them to dry. When he comes back, the Ouija board is lying on the floor, somehow no longer in his backpack. Bug decides to ignore the warning about using a Ouija board alone and takes it out of the box. The planchette starts moving and spelling out words. It passes over the letters “B Y O U R S E L F,” and Bug thinks at first that Roderick is trying to spell “by ourself.”

After another attempt, the planchette simply spells out “B U.” Bug realizes that Roderick is trying to say “be you.” Bug wonders if Roderick is trying to tell him that he has to “pick what kind of person [he is] going to be” before middle school starts, or if Roderick is trying to communicate something about himself, some past mistake that he does not want Bug to repeat (107).

Chapter 13 Summary

Bug goes into Roderick’s room for the first time since his uncle’s death. He knows that there must be clues to answer the mystery in his uncle’s bedroom. Under Roderick’s bed, Bug finds a box of costumes, wigs, and plastic jewelry from Roderick’s drag costumes. Bug remembers playing dress up with Roderick when he was younger: Roderick wore a dress and a sparkly tiara, and Bug wore a fancy top hat.

There is another box under the bed. This one full of medical and tax papers, as well as pamphlets from PFLAG (Parents, Family, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays). Bug knows that PFLAG is a support group. He is confused why Roderick would have needed support, when Bug and his mom were always very supportive of his sexuality.

Bug notices that there are many pages of information about transgender youth. Bug also knows what being transgender means, as both his mom and uncle had transgender friends when they lived in the city. Bug’s mom arrives home and finds him in Roderick’s room. She explains that Roderick liked to collect information from LGBTQ centers in the places that he visited. Bug puts the papers back in their box. He has not put all the pieces together yet, but he knows that Roderick’s spirit is hanging around because of something to do with the papers.

Chapter 14 Summary

Bug goes back to Griffin’s house to return the book he borrowed. Griffin invites him inside, and this time Bug agrees. The two explore Griffin’s house together, looking for ghosts. Bug tells Griffin that his uncle Roderick taught him about ghosts. He says that Roderick is dead, and Griffin is sympathetic. Bug looks at Griffin and realizes that he is feeling jealous, but he is not exactly sure what of, or why.

Later, as Bug bikes home, he thinks about the papers he found under Roderick’s bed. The stories in the papers about being trans were not what he expected: Many people talked about “a general feeling of not-rightness” (116), which to Bug seems like the normal human experience. He feels it too, even though he is not trans. He has read that “trans people are their genders” (117). He just wants something, so he assumes he cannot be trans. He concludes that Roderick must have been transgender, but never told Bug or his mom. Bug worries that he is using the wrong pronouns for Roderick, and even the wrong name, and is conflicted about whether or not to tell his mom. He is horrified to think that his uncle was hiding who he really was.

Eventually, Bug asks his mom if she thinks Roderick was transgender. She is puzzled, and Bug tells her that there was a lot of information in the box under Roderick’s bed about being transgender. He wonders if Roderick was waiting for the right time to tell them. Bug’s mom does not think that Roderick was transgender because her brother always knew himself and was very comfortable with who he was. She assures Bug that she would have loved him either way. Bug is still not convinced, but he knows that Roderick knew he was loved.

Chapter 15 Summary

Two weeks pass and Bug only senses the ghosts that normally haunt the house. He wants to believe his mom about Roderick not being transgender, but he does not understand why the haunting has stopped since the day he started thinking about gender.

Bug bikes to Moira’s house. It is the day of his 12^th birthday, and Moira has invited him over for a sleepover. When he arrives at Moira’s house, he is surprised to see that she has organized a birthday party for him. Two of Moira’s friends, Isla and Emily, are there, as well as some girls that Bug does not know. Moira introduces them as Hypatia, Chloe, and Chelsey. The girls are a year older and go to the middle school that he and Moira will soon be attending. Bug is shy at first, but the girls are very friendly.

They all have cake and a barbecue in the backyard. Chloe’s dog barks at Bug, and Chloe remarks that the dog normally only barks at boys. Night falls and they all go inside. The girls pull makeup out of their bags and start giving each other makeovers. Bug wants to refuse when Chelsey asks if she can give him a makeover, but he does not want to be mean. He thinks it will be good practice for middle school. Chelsey tells Bug how jealous she is of his long, thick hair, and Bug thinks about how he has always dreamed of shaving his head. Eventually, they all settle down to go to sleep.

Chapter 16 Summary

That night, Bug has a dream about Roderick in his drag persona, Anita Life. She is wearing a long gown made of dragonflies and she and Bug are walking somewhere together. Bug realizes that it is a barber shop. Anita gets out a pair of electric clippers and tells Bug that he needs to “enter [his] life on [his] own terms” (129). He asks Bug if he is ready. Bug pulls his hair out of its ponytail and replies that he is.

Chapters 11-16 Analysis

These chapters build up to the book’s climax, where the novel reaches peak tension. Bug is on the verge of realizing who he really is, and in the process, accepting his uncle’s death. In this section, The Grieving Process seems to get worse before it gets better. When Bug believes that Roderick was actually transgender but unable to say so, he is horrified. He hates the thought that someone he loved could not be his authentic self. Even Sabrina’s reassurances do not allow Bug to completely let go of his fears that Roderick died with a big secret.

On the other hand, Roderick’s ghost gets closer to communicating with Bug. The Ouija board allows for the clearest communication so far: Bug finally gets the message that he needs to be himself, even if he does not know exactly what that means yet. Bug is also willing to go into Roderick’s bedroom in search of clues, a big step toward facing his loss. Roderick’s death is still a big source of pain, but it is no longer so acute that Bug cannot engage with it. He even tells Griffin that his uncle died and accepts Griffin’s sympathetic answer, another step in the right direction.

By the end of Chapter 16, Bug is on the verge of understanding his transgender identity. He agrees to wear Moira’s sundress, but it makes him feel deeply uncomfortable. When Griffin sees Bug in a dress, he is surprised; the narrative implies that he thought Bug was a boy when they first met. It is obvious to some outsiders (like Griffin and Roderick) that Bug is much more comfortable and himself as a boy than as a girl. Bug’s intense grief when thinking that Roderick was hiding his identity suggests that he understands how important it is for people to be themselves.

Bug starts to consider what it means to be trans when he reads Roderick’s pamphlets and gains a more complete understanding of trans experiences. He also sees the ways that other people’s stories resemble his own. These moments help him think more deeply about himself. He starts to think more carefully about Griffin, realizing that he has some complex feelings about how Griffin looks and fits into his gender. By the time Bug gets to his birthday party, he is almost ready to take the leap and learn who he really is. His dream of Roderick in drag at the barber shop is his subconscious’s embracing of the truth, even if Bug has not considered it consciously yet.

As Bug gets closer to his realization, he starts to open himself up to other people. For a while, Bug feels extremely nervous around Griffin. He admires his confidence, wondering: “Is that how people make friends, by believing that it’s possible, even likely?” (90). Bug comes to see that this is in fact the case: There is no secret prerequisite to being perfect, or to being effortlessly a girl, or to making new friends and being happy. The novel suggests that the most important quality for happiness is authenticity—to simply be oneself.

Even though he finds the concept of hanging out with a new person daunting, Bug takes a brave leap and agrees to go into Griffin’s house to look for ghosts. He has spent a lot of time believing that he is simply not good enough at being a girl (or good enough at anything) to maintain friendships. With Griffin, he learns that he was wrong. Griffin likes him for who he is, regardless of his gender. Bug’s confidence grows, a crucial step toward accepting himself and moving toward a better future.

Bug’s tendency to misjudge people once again rears its head at his birthday party. When he meets the three older girls, he assumes that they will be derisive and unkind, but he is mistaken. He also assumes that he will be forced to talk about makeup and boys for hours. While boys do come up as a topic of conversation, they are not the only subject. Just as the people around Bug give him the space to be who he is, he also has to learn to accept the nuances and uniqueness of other people.