The Butterfly Clues (19 page)

Her lips are pursing toward me, as are her long silky eyelashes, her cheekbones, her perfect china-white teeth. “Whoa. Are you okay?” She’s handing me a tissue. In her other hand, she’s still holding a stack of prom tickets—pink, green, red. “Is this about Jeremy?”

“Wha—what?” I thud down into a squat. I can’t stay on my feet anymore. Bits of paper spill from my hands: I spread them out in front of her. Some of them are no more than that single line of writing.
Back off, bitch.

Keri moves into a crouch next to me and puts a hand on my back. “Want to talk about it?”

“Someone’s after me,” I blubber. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know who to tell.”

Keri sighs. “Look, whoever it is, I’m
sure
they’re just jealous.” She helps me up to my feet.

“Yeah right,” I mumble.

“Seriously, Lo. You’re
so
pretty—in this totally unique way. You kind of look old and young at the same time.” She’s tilting her head to one side, nose squinched up, examining me. I open my mouth to protest, but she rushes on, “Like non
conventional
or whatever
.
Have you ever noticed how on
Top Model
, all the girls who win are kind of different-looking? It’s so a thing! Seriously, a lot of people wish they could be like you. You know … special. ”

I want to say: I’m tired of being special. I want to say: I want to be normal. But no words come.

Keri squints at me, obviously worried. “You live off of Maplebrook, right?” I nod, weakly. “Just wait a sec for me to close up the booth, and I’ll drive you home. It’s on my way.”

I don’t feel strong enough, or safe enough to resist, so I wait, and I let her weave her arm through mine and lead me through the halls, counting lockers as we pass,
nine, ten, eleven
; my other arm begins to feel very, very uneven. I keep counting, pushing away the panic.
Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen.
“Later, Allen,” Keri calls as we pass Camille, examining her hair in her locker mirror.

“I thought we were hanging after school today …,” Camille replies, a sour tug in her voice as she stares at me.
Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three.

“I’ll text you in, like, twenty, okay?” Keri calls over her shoulder; I
tap tap tap, banana
before she turns back around, and we push out the door and into the front parking lot. Keri leads us to her car; BMW; shiny red. Front row center. A warm breeze rushes around us; Keri removes her arm from mine and pulls her hair into a low ponytail before we settle into the chilly leather seats of her car. I can’t stop seeing my eight faces; peeling away into ash.

Keri’s talking to me about prom as we drive, but all I catch are snippets, intercepting my own thoughts about the bouncer: about how—how in the hell he found me, found my locker, and why— why he would have killed Sapphire in the first place. I’m missing something massive, and I have a feeling I’m about to run out of strikes.

“Lo.”
Keri’s voice cuts through my thoughts. I raise my head to look at her. “You’re, like,
hitting
your legs. Over and over again.”

I stare at a collection of dark stones in the middle of the sidewalk.
Four, five, six.
“I—I didn’t realize,” I answer, honestly, as we drive past the doorway where I’d spotted the bouncer yesterday. I pull my coat up around my chin and push my head farther down

into it.

“Well, I’m just right up here, so …”

Keri pulls over a few houses away from my own. “Here?”

I nod. “Thank you … for helping.” The words feel unnatural, difficult to say. “Really.”

Keri hugs me, squeezing tightly as she says: “Don’t stress, Lo. For real.”

Being hugged is bewildering, overwhelming. Tears prick my eyes; I get out of her car quickly, embarrassed, turning toward my actual house. I have no idea why Keri is being so nice to me. She doesn’t even know me.

“See you later,” I call over my shoulder, already walking. Needing to walk. Needing to tap. Needing to count cracks.

Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen.

If she knew me, maybe she wouldn’t be so nice anymore.

Twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six. Twenty-seven
to make it perfect. Start again.

CHAPTER 15

“Lo,” my mother’s voice creaks through the dark slit of her door-frame as I pass on the way to my room. She’s sitting up in bed, her eyes clear in the bluish television glow. The TV announcer says:
“Congratulations, Peggy! You’ve won a brand
-
new stainless-steel washer. And. Dryyyyer.”
The crowd goes wild.

My mother smiles: “Come over here.” Her voice is unusually calm.

“With a retail value of over two thousand dollaaaars!”

“What’s up, Mom?”

I inch closer to the bed and she pulls my hand to hers. It’s cold. And bony. She hasn’t done this—hasn’t wanted anyone to touch her, or to touch anyone else—since she cast anchor into the dark, stale-smelling harbor of her room over a year ago.

I remember when she used to make dinner. She’d always make sure my plate was even on both sides, make sure that my chicken was cut into the right number of pieces. That she gave me the right number of vegetables. Otherwise I wouldn’t eat. Dad never got it; he just got angry with me for repeating things over and over again, for counting cracks in the sidewalk when I walk, for having to start over when I mess up
.

“Look at that smile, folks. Peggy, from North Carolina! Is your family here in the audience today?”

Mom looks up at me. “Your father told me what happened the other day, Lo, at dinner.” She pulses my hand in hers. “He says you seem stressed. That you’ve been coming home late.”

I clap my hand against my thigh, six times; start counting hairs in her left eyebrow (
sixteen, seventeen, eighteen
…). “I—I’ve just been studying. I’ve been going to the library a lot—”

“Is this about a boy?” she interrupts, before I have a chance to finish.

“What? Mom—no.” It’s like she and Keri Ram share the same brain. “I mean—”

“Lo, it’s okay,” she interrupts again. “I understand. I certainly had my fair share of boyfriends before I decided to settle down with your father.”

“No,” I say, a little more emphatically. I try to draw my hand from hers, but she won’t let me.

“So, what is it?” she continues, a weird half smile crossing her face. “You’ve been sneaking out to see him? You don’t want to bring him around? You’re embarrassed by us?”

“That’s not it
at all.
”

“Well, then, what is it?” she says, her voice starting to become shrill. “Something bad? Are you involved with bad people, Lo? Drugs? What? Are you doing drugs now? After everything we’ve been through?”

I try to make my voice soothing. “Mom, No. I’m
not
doing drugs. I swear. I’m not hanging out with
anyone
.”

“Don’t lie to me, Penelope,” she says, small flags of spit flying off her lips. She is gone, drifting away from stable ground. “I know you’ve been sneaking out all week. I hear you. Creeping, creeping. After what happened last year, how dare you disappear on me and then lie about it? How dare you?” She wraps her arms around her stomach. “No,” she says, “no, no, no, no, no. Not again.”

“Mom, please.” I want to touch her. I want to say something to make her stop, but I can’t.

Suddenly, she’s sobbing, her whole body curled into itself like a leaf wrapped around a twig, her voice coming through in blubbery wails, in short-breathed spurts. “I—I didn’t know. You believe me, don’t you? I didn’t know. Oh
God
. My baby. My baby.” She lifts her fingers to her face, digging her nails down her cheeks.

“I’m going to get you some water, Mom.” I whisper the words. I back away toward the door, squeezing my fists against my thighs, filled with a feathery feeling, as though I am breaking apart.

In the kitchen, I fill a glass with cold water from the tap and dump it out. I fill it again, dump it out. I fill it a final time, without dumping it, and pull myself away from the sink. The rituals are in overdrive. They slow me down, but I can’t stop them. I take three steps up the staircase and have to go back one—up three, down one, up three, down one—until I reach the top.

By the time I come back into her room, my mother has stopped crying. She has collapsed backward on the bed, eyes glazed, and every so often a muted whimper makes its way out of her throat.

“Come on, Mom.” I sit gingerly down on the bed with her. “Drink this, okay? Here. Let me help you.” She’s limp as a doll as I prop her head up with one hand, angle the glass toward her lips with the other.

Behind me, the TV is still blaring. News time, now.
“Thanks, Tom. I’m here at the Westwood Center where Dumpsters are finally being reinstalled after nearly a four-month removal due to a bomb threat in late December.”

I place the now-empty glass on the bedside table and swivel around, toward a picture of a happy-shiny broadcaster standing in the wind-whipped parking lot in front of the mall. Westwood Center: I remember hearing something about Westwood Center … something important …

“Police confirmed shortly after the threat that it was, in fact, a false-alarm, but decided to remove Dumpsters in the vicinity, anyway, as a precautionary measure. For the past four months, the city has been forced to hire private waste and sanitation contractors, hiking up rents for all tenants by nearly twenty percent to cover the costs. Local business owners Glenn, Donn, and Joe Weinberg protested, saying no businesses at Westwood Center should be forced to pay so exorbitantly for services that should by reasonable standards be included in rent, and other business owners agreed. After a protest in front of the Twenty-third Street station on Friday, finally, Cleveland police have cleaned up their act for everyone involved.”

My mother’s breathing slows, and her eyelids flutter shut. My throat feels tight, my head like a balloon ready to burst.

Why can’t I remember?

I creep quietly, swiftly, from Mom’s room, making sure not to wake her.

Back in my room, I stare at my objects and my objects stare back at me.

Suddenly—a ringing sound from my book bag. It takes me a few seconds to piece it together: my cell phone.

CHAPTER 16

I dig furiously around until I locate the phone. My cell
never
rings. I stare at the screen: I don’t recognize the number.

“Hel-
lo
?”

A car horn blares in the background. A confetti-throw of static. “Queen Penelope?” the voice at the other end says. “Can it be she?”

I bite hard into my bottom lip, flooded with relief. “Flynt! You finally got a cell phone?”

“Never! Pay phone, baby. Miraculously, they still exist… .”

“But … how did you get this number?”

“You gave it to me, L! First day we met!” I hear his breath through the line, soft and steady. He’s right—I did. An image from my stupid prom fantasy pops into my head. His mouth. His big straight teeth. I put my tongue to the roof of my mouth nine times and then swallow another three; it’s not real. It’ll never be real.

“So, did you hear about Vinnie?”

“Vinnie?” I ask, confused.

“The bouncer at Tens. He was arrested for killing Sapphire today. It’s the talk of the town over here in Neverland. So, it’s all over. We’re free, Queen Penelope!”

I quickly remove a pile of stuff from my computer, cradling the phone with my shoulder. New search: Cleveland Neverland Crime. B. Hornet’s Neverland Crime Blog pops up: a new headline in bold red: “An Arrest for the Shooting of Area Girl: Sapphire, 19.”

Click.
The article loads; I hold my breath.

4:10
P.M.
: CST, April 8th By: Mark Stanton, the
Plain Dealer CLEVELAND—
Police arrested a man this afternoon for the murder of an area girl, Sapphire (last name unknown). The victim was a dancer at Tens, a Neverland club in the 2100 block of East 119th Street, where the suspect, Vincent Navarro, 43, worked as a bouncer.

Officers apprehended Navarro around 3:00
P.M
.
at work after uncovering conclusive DNA evidence at the victim’s home—the scene of the crime.

Navarro served two of a five-year prison sentence that began in 1998, for armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon. He was released on parole in 2000 and has been employed at Tens ever since.

So, it was him—the bouncer—and now he’s gone. In prison, where he belongs. And I have nothing left to worry about. I should feel light. I should feel
free.

Except, why don’t I? Why can’t I shake the feeling that something’s still not right? When I saw him, a block away from my house, he was talking to someone on the phone. Who, at that moment, would he have
needed
to speak to?

“Hello, Lo? You still there? Shit, did my change run out? Hello?”

“I’m here, I’m here. I’m just … I can’t believe it. I—”

“Come meet me in, like, two hours. By the birdbath?”

I hesitate, listening to the minor static on the other end of the phone, a rush of traffic. The prospect of the bus ride into Neverland, alone, as it’s starting to get dark, doesn’t exactly seem appealing and it’s beginning to annoy me that I’ve always got to go to him.

“Come here. To Lakewood now,” I finally tell him.

“No,” he says abruptly. “I told you. I don’t leave Neverland. Ever. And I need to take care of a few things first, so, two hours.” He pauses. “Just come here, okay? I’ll meet you at the bus stop.”

I hesitate. But no matter what I do now, every time I close my eyes and every time I open them, too, I see it all—the cat, my burning face, the bouncer huddled in the seamy dark, Sapphire’s dark blue lips—and Flynt’s the
only
person I can talk to about it.

“Fine. Two hours,” I tell him, and hang up.