The Butterfly Clues (18 page)

I make faces in the window fog with my finger; squiggly mouths, turned-down eyebrows, post-electrocution hair. I erase them with the crease of my fist and start again. Six circles. Eighteen deep-fried hairs per circle. Unibrows: three. A giant planetary O that contains them all. Another circle around the first. And then another. Three giant circles, holding everything in.

I wonder if Oren thought we didn’t care. It’s probably why he didn’t come back, why he ended up rotted away in some abandoned building somewhere. He didn’t think we bothered to look for him. He didn’t know that we were convinced, each of us, every second of every day, that he
would
come back. You set free the things you love, even if you don’t mean to, and they come back to you. That’s the reward; the Universal Cycle; the Law. By sheer logic: he would come back. Even when he folded into himself and looking at him became as painful as staring wide-eyed into a very bright sun, he was still ours. My bright, painful brother.

All that time, he was so close. Just a couple miles away. And we sat, waiting, doing nothing, while he fell apart, disintegrated.

We thought he would come back.

Maybe that’s what Sapphire’s mother thought, too, and that’s why she didn’t look. Maybe the things we think we have to believe are the things that end up killing us in the end, when we figure out we were wrong, about everything.

I make it through homeroom (though Weir does seem to look directly at me as he tells us in his familiar tone of grim: “
Please
try not to have
too
miserable of a day, kids.”) I know Weir thinks I’m a depressive, a freak. He always looks directly at me when making his more defeatist comments, as though I’m clearly the one to whom they most apply.

The school day shuffles on.

Within the first few minutes of English class, as Ms. Manning drones in her post-nasal-drip voice about various Shakespearean renderings of doomed love, I reach into my bag and slip Sapphire’s journal in the middle of
Romeo and Juliet
: Act Two, Scene Three (that old trick), flipping to a spot near the page that I’d drooled all over last night:

June 18: Bird was supposed to come over last night, but he showed up four hours late, pounding on the door like he was being chased. I didn’t even want to let him in—I was pissed. He could have at least called. But he wouldn’t stop pounding until I opened the door, so I gave in. He had this look in his eyes, I can’t it explain it, but it freaked me out. He wouldn’t talk about it when I asked what was wrong, he wouldn’t say anything. But that’s the curse, I guess, when you love someone … you’ll take anything, even though they’ve made you feel like shit for two months straight. You’d open up one of your veins with a pocket knife if they needed your blood… . I don’t think I’ll ever be able to stop myself from wanting him. Sometimes I hate myself because of it.

I flip to another entry, earlier in the journal:

February 3: I don’t know about doing it in the shower, but Bird loves it… . Marnie says she agrees that it’s kind of sucky, but that she reads a lot of Savage Love and that it’s all about being “Good, Giving, and Game.” Now, I just need to figure out something that he won’t like to do and make him do it, anyway … but I can’t really figure out what—

“Penelope. ” A voice interrupts Sapphire’s plotting. Ms. Manning’s voice. I lift my head. “Yes, I am, in fact, speaking to
you,
Ms. Marin.” I slam my book shut—the journal inside of it— folding my hands on top of my desk.

“I’m
so
interested, Ms. Marin,” Ms. Manning wheedles in her rusted-spoke whine, “can you tell us what’s just happened in the world of our
doomed
young lovers?”

My mind is a blank, and without thinking, I blurt out: “He wants to take showers with her, but she’s doesn’t like it.”

The class goes apeshit. Ms. Manning stands there, cocking her head forward and furrowing her eyebrows into the bridge of her nose like she can’t
believe
I just said that.

Oh. Shit.
“I just mean—he wants to … shower her … with … love, but she won’t let him… .”

The class laughs even harder; Ms. Manning’s eyes are about to pop out of her face. I consider what might be my easiest escape route out of the room, but, looking around, I realize that no one’s laughing
at
me. Tony Matthews is actually pumping his football-size fist into the air and banging his head like he’s at a death metal concert, and Brigitte Crank and Sidney Lourie are both smiling at me so their teeth show. Brigitte gives me a little thumbs-up.

“Awesome,” she mouths to me.

I sit up taller at my desk, looking forward, straight ahead, unable to suppress a smile.

“Okay, guys … that’s enough. Interesting interpretation, Ms. Marin.” She shoots me a glare and heads back toward the front of the room. “Moving on … In act three, scene five of the play, we find our lovers in what position?”

Another eruption; Ms. Manning must realize what she’s setting herself up for. And, for once, I’m actually in on the joke.

After gym class, in the locker room, I stare at myself in the mirror by the lockers and, for the first time in a while, don’t hate what I see. I run my hand up my shirt and feel the hardness of Sapphire’s bustier against my palm. A happy shiver runs through my whole body. I lift my fingers to the top of my flannel and unbutton the first three buttons, sliding down one of the arms to expose the dark, glittery strap of the bustier against the pale skin of my shoulder. I like it. I feel good. Even though breathing is a little tougher than usual, I like how the bustier keeps me contained— like how I feel in my room, surrounded by all of my objects. Protected. Held up by something.

I consider the beautiful people at school: Keri and Camille and Sidney and Mara Turner and Annica Steele. Straight, silky hair, little minor ski-slope noses, a kind of effortless haughty beauty that pierces through you when you pass them like the sound crystal makes when you
tink
it with a fork—a reverberation of beauty, a high song that perks your ears, makes you smell fresh grass through the snow. Could my face ever do that, I wonder. Could I be … pretty? I shade the bump in my nose with my finger, push my bangs to the side.

As I emerge from the locker room and make my way to the science wing, a tall blond boy with sleepy eyes—he’s just a sophomore, but still—turns his head to look at me as I pass.

I turn my head, too, to look at him back, when I collide with someone.

Jeremy. The second our eyes meet, his cheeks flame up. “Wow. Lo. You look, like, a little different, right? Is that a new shirt or something?” He tucks a strand of thick hair behind his ear.

“I’ve had it for a while, actually,” I say, tugging on the hem. “But, thank you. I … like your T-shirt. It looks really … comfortable.”

“It is! Dad got it at a Neil Young concert in the seventies.” Jeremy looks briefly at his feet and back up at me. “I can’t believe my ’rents were ever cool enough to stay out past like, eight
P.M
. I just wish I could build a time machine and catch them smoking a bowl together as fifteen-year-olds. They could use it now—they seriously need to chill. You know?”

I don’t, not really, but I nod, anyway, force a smile. “Yeah, definitely. A time machine.” I could use one, too.

“So—hey! We’re still on for studying, right?”

“Yeah, um … about that.” I inhale, then exhale in a rush. “I totally forgot I have to take my mom to the doctor today. Remember how she’s sick?”

He deflates just like a balloon when it’s popped. “That’s all right,” he says.

“But definitely some other time,” I jump in. I can’t stand to see him look like that, like a kicked puppy. “Maybe next week? I can buy you pizza or something.”

Instantly, his face perks up again. “Yeah. Yeah, that would be great.”

“Cool.” I pulse my fists three times. I have a whole week to figure out a new excuse.

“Actually, there was something else I was, um, wondering about,” Jeremy says, his voice inching just a little bit higher. “Do you, I mean, would you like to … gotopromwithme? He says the last part very fast, stringing the words together into one word that doesn’t make any sense.

“
What
did you just say?” I ask, genuinely confused.

“Prom.” He repeats, more slowly this time. “I want to know if you’ll go to the prom with me.” I hear each word, but they still make as little sense to me as the first time.

I count tiles in the floor (
sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen
…)

“Jeremy … I don’t—”

“Just think about it, okay?” Jeremy sounds more confident than I’ve heard him sound before; his lopsided smile inches its way up his right cheek. “Just, like, take some time and
ponder
. See ya later, Lo!”

And before I can protest, he strides away, hands in his skinnyjean pockets.

I
ponder
prom as I wind through the science wing toward my locker.

The awkwardly short limo-ride to the school auditorium, the train of shimmering designer dresses and rigor-mortis-stiff diamond-studded updos, the sweat and heave of the gym beneath a ceiling laden with “Midnight in the Amazon” themed décor, the blinding, rising disco ball.

Finally, the last slow dance of the night: the snaking pattern of couples whispering—and then Jeremy’s arms, wrapping unsteadily around my waist. I close my eyes and let it happen.

His lips hit mine and the fantasy shifts: Jeremy’s breath becomes pine and snow and clove and grass and his arms wrap more firmly around my waist and his lips part against mine and I like the smoothness of his tongue and when I open my eyes: it’s Flynt kissing me.

Flynt’s eyes. Flynt’s fingers. Flynt’s tongue.

I don’t want it to stop.

I’m so lost in the fantasy of him, of his warm, rough hands moving down my back, that by the time I reach my locker, prepared to
tap tap tap, banana
, I almost don’t notice it: the locker door. My face. Everywhere. Eight missing eyes.

Four gaping mouths.

My locker: covered in a pattern of Xeroxed, blown-up photos; my school picture from last year. From the yearbook. Eight of them, stuck to the door in a sick square. My face slowly tapering away in each—consumed by something ravenous until it’s gone entirely. And I’m burned away.

Scrawled across my lips in black ink like stitches, keeping my mouth shut, the warning:
Back off, bitch.

It’s acid. I recognize its effects from experiments in chemistry class. Litmus paper. Binder paper. Ink. How it licks everything up like flames.

Eight. Eight squares. Eight warnings. The number spins through my head, I stumble to the floor; the hall feels suddenly like it’s tilting. Or maybe it’s the whole world. I steady myself, try to focus my eyes, stand back on my feet: is this really happening?

I stare hard at my locker as my head begins spinning out of focus. It’s real.

The bouncer. Again. Warning me.

He knows where I go to school. He’s
been
here. He must have been here only minutes ago. Which means he could be watching me right now. He could be watching me all the time—he must know how often I’m alone—and how easy it would be to kill me. I spin around. People walk by. Some whispering. Some laughing.

My face—my eight faces—are dissolved entirely now. Slips of curled paper wave, tendril-like, from the locker door. I throw myself at them, scraping them off, shredding what’s left. Six times torn. Again. Again. I try to stuff all the shreds of paper into my pockets, but they don’t all fit. I’m cramming them in, shoving them now down my jacket, anywhere to hide them.

I should call the cops. But I can’t. Not after last time.

“Get away!” I scream, pieces of torn paper falling from my fists.

People disburse. No one helps. No one tries.

I’m shaking, trying not to cry. My chest feels like it’s collapsing. I lean against the wall for support, fumbling toward the exit.

“Lo!” My name rings through the hall. “Hey! Lo!”

Through a haze, I see Keri Ram on my right at the end of the hall perched with her celestially flowing auburn hair at a folded-out card table with a big sign that swirls into focus:
PROM TIX!! $25.00 ADVANCE!! 2.5 WEEKS TO GO!! GET
’
EM NOW OR YOU
’
RE NOT GOING TO GET SCREWED
!