But now this old house seems haunted in a different way. A way that's both more boring and more frightening. There's a half-empty jar of okra Uncle Roderick picked and pickled that he'll never finish eating, and Mom and I both hate okra. His winter boots are jammed in the closet... I prefer the ghosts.
This early moment reveals how the book's main conceit, a haunted house, has a very real, not supernatural, emotional weight. The narrator previously says that his house has been haunted for a long time but now is afflicted by a new sort of problem. He makes the distinction that this other kind of haunting is from the presence of physical objects that his uncle will never use again. These objects, like ghosts, remain in the house, reminding Bug and his mother of a person they loved who is now missing. Bug's comment is illuminating in that it immediately shows how profoundly the death of his uncle has impacted everyone in the house.
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. A squirmy, itchy sensation starts to expand in my stomach. I know your stomach can’t itch from the inside, but that’s what it’s like.
This is a key moment in the book. When Bug says that imagining himself as a teenage girl is like staring at the sun, he means that it feels painful and strange. This feeling, characterized by "a squirmy, itchy sensation," gives the strong impression that Bug does not really identify as a girl and that trying to conform to that identity feels difficult and unsettling. This passage gives an early insight into the sense that Bug is coming to terms with who he actually is.
As I’m walking out of the aisle a loud thump comes from behind me. I turn, and one of the books I just put away is lying on the floor. It’s the one that taught me about ghosts passing along messages. About how they only haunt the living if they have something they need to communicate. I know I put it away right. It wouldn’t fall on its own.
In this moment, it is revealed that the ghost Bug has been encountering is trying to share something of importance with him. His matter-of-fact tone about this strange occurrence indicates how he is able to handle this situation without getting too frightened. He almost appears to be comforted by this presence, as it seems to be trying to communicate with him during this difficult period in his life. This passage sets up the mystery that Bug will spend much of the novel trying to solve.
It's more than that, really. They seem to fit together like puzzle pieces, and I'm a shape cut out of cardboard. It looks right if you squint but it can't snap into place.
In this quote, Bug is describing how Moira fits in better with her new friends than she does with Bug. By comparing himself to a shape cut out of cardboard, Bug is capturing the way in which he feels like an imposter when he is with them, able to pretend he is similar without actually being like them. In this way, Bug shows the reader that he does not feel comfortable with his current gender identity, as he perceives the way in which he is unlike these girls. This moment signals that he will eventually have to come to terms with who he really is and the way he is not the same as his friends.
The fill-in-the-blank cards are the simplest ones Mom has ever made, and the best sellers. They're plain white, and the cover says 'I'm Sorry That Your _____ Died.' The inside type reads 'It Really Sucks.' ... Some people might say they're insensitive, but they work. It sucks when someone dies. There's not much else to say.
This moment describes the most popular greeting card Bug's mother has made. As evidenced in the passage, the cards are very plain and the message inside is sympathetic but blunt. Bug notes that while they may appear to be overly direct, people find them extremely comforting, as they don't sugarcoat the truth. Likewise, he notes that often there really is not anything to add in the tragic event of someone's death. This comment shows how Bug experiences grief as a plain fact, as he has been unable to find solace in people's attempts to soften the impact of his uncle's death.
A lot of books have a moral, some lesson about how you have to stay true to who you are. How it doesn't matter if you're different, you don't have to act like everyone else, and that the most important thing is to be yourself. But those books never tell you how to figure out what your self is. They assume that you know already and are pretending to be someone else for a while to fit in.
In this moment, Bug compares himself to other protagonists of other books. He says that most books have some kind of moral or lesson about adhering to a central identity, validating the idea that one should be exactly who one wants to be. He then points out that those same books don't have any solutions for people who don't know who they are, or are still figuring it out. In this way, he highlights how his unique struggle with gender identity has not been captured by this sort of book, as they work off of the assumption that the reader has a fixed sense of exactly who they are.
He tells me I look handsome. And I remember a glow deep inside my chest, like he was right, like he saw who I was going to be.
This moment occurs when Bug is remembering a time when he and his uncle dressed up as Beauty and the Beast, with Roderick as the former and Bug as the latter. Bug tells Roderick that he looks very beautiful and he tells Bug he looks very handsome. This compliment makes him feel overwhelmed with emotion for reasons he cannot fully articulate. In this instance, the reader understands that Bug is actually a boy. In contrast to the moments where Bug feels uncomfortable dressing as a girl, here none of that unease is present. Instead, Bug is overjoyed to finally feel perceived.
If this scene happened in a book, the older girls would be a little mean to me. Not outright bullying, but subtly making sure I know that I'm not one of them. Emily and Isla would join in, because we were never really friends. And if this were in that same book, Moira would start acting like them, finally shedding her old friend like a peeling sunburn, and I would be sad and confused.
This passage highlights the contrast between what actually occurs and what the reader of the book might be expecting. In a different sort of book, Bug notes, all of the girls would be mean to him, pushing him out of the social circle in various subtle ways. The fact that this does not happen shows both that they are actually Bug's friends and that girls do not always need to be depicted as being in conflict with each other. Lukoff seems to be making the case that the anticipated scene of bullying doesn't need to be the norm in literature or in life.
Once we're both cried out, she takes my wet face in both hands and looks into my eyes, which are probably as a red and puffy as hers. "My beautiful boy," she says.
This passage is from the emotional climax of the book. It comes after Bug tells his mother that he is a boy. They embrace and cry together for a moment. What Bug's mother says shows the degree to which she loves and accepts Bug for exactly who he is. It is a pivotal moment in the book in that she is the person Bug is the most concerned about sharing this news with. For his mother to lovingly affirm this is not only a huge relief but the biggest moment of his journey of self-understanding.
"What did I do?"
"Figure it out. Figured yourself out."
This moment occurs in the final chapter of the book. Bug has one more ghostly encounter with his uncle Roderick. Roderick says he is proud of Bug, but Bug doesn't understand what he has done. Roderick says that he finally "figured [himself] out," by which he means that Bug has put in the effort to understand his true gender identity and worked through a series of important realizations. While Roderick wishes he could be around to do more to help Bug, he remains proud of all the energy Bug has put into this and he is so glad to have assisted.
