Chance and the Butterfly (2 page)

Chance made sure that he was sitting right in front of her knees. Ms. Samson lifted a plastic cup from the box, exactly the same as the one that Chance had been looking at, with a white lid and the same greenish stuff inside, but only in the bottom.

“What do you think these are?” she asked as she held it high.

A lot of tiny dark things were on the inside of the plastic sides. They looked kind of wriggly.

“Caterpillars!” the class called out in unison. A couple of voices said “larvae” instead. Ms. Samson seemed pleased.

“Hands up for this next question,” she said. “Do you think the caterpillars will always be caterpillars?”

That was silly, Chance thought. “No. They'll become butterflies,” he called out. Ms. Samson ignored him and called on Martha, who was holding her hand up in the air. She was sitting, legs neatly crossed, right beside him. “No. They'll become butterflies,” Martha said.

Chance was hemmed in on all sides. He shifted in his spot, trying to gain himself a little space.

“Don't bother your neighbors, Chance,” Ms. Samson said. “That's right, Martha,” she went on. “As caterpillars, their only job is to eat and eat and eat to get lots of energy so they can turn into butterflies. Do you know, boys and girls, that if a baby could grow as fast as some kinds of caterpillars, that baby would be bigger than a bus by the time she was four weeks old.”

Chance's brain reeled. “Then how big would the baby be by now, in grade three?” he asked eagerly, flipping onto his knees to see better how tiny they were now.

Half a dozen voices complained immediately.

“Sit down flat, Chance. And put your hand up,” Ms. Samson said.

Chance collapsed onto his bottom and threw his hand into the air. He rattled off the question again. Of course, that wasn't exactly what she wanted, but it was so hard to wait, and his question was so important.

“Next time, wait for me to call on you, Chance,” Ms. Samson said. Chance gritted his teeth. Why did she have to do this every single time? Why could nothing ever just happen?

But at least she answered the question. If the baby grew by the size of a bus every month, then they just needed to know how many months there were up until grade three. Together they worked it out. The baby would be about as big as one hundred and fifteen buses, since they were near the end of the year. Wow! The children gazed at the little caterpillars with great respect.

Still, Ms. Samson pointed out that larvae don't keep growing for seven years. They only have a month or so to grow in the outdoors, and they grow even faster in the classroom. Not like us. We have twenty years to grow. We can take our time.

Then Ms. Samson explained again all the steps that the larvae would go through to become butterflies. At first, Chance listened carefully for new information, but they had already made a booklet that included everything she was telling them. So it wasn't long before his body started to wriggle. He had never discovered anything that would keep him still once that had started to happen. His teachers thought he didn't try. They were wrong.

Ms. Samson looked down at Chance and ordered him back to his desk. He scrambled through the group of cross-legged children on all fours, not caring how many sides he jabbed or fingers he trod on. Then he took a roundabout route across the room, clomping his feet as he walked. She spoke to him again, more sharply this time. His shoulders slumped and his eyes rolled. He was going, wasn't he? Nothing he did was ever good enough for anybody. He scraped his chair on the hard floor pulling it out, and then he shuffled it in, making as much noise as he could. This time Ms. Samson ignored him.

So Chance didn't get to press some food into one of the little caterpillar containers like everyone else. He didn't get to watch Ms. Samson pick the caterpillars up one by one with something she called a sorting brush, just a little paintbrush as it turned out, and place them one to a container on top of the food. And even though it was Chance's week as classroom helper, he didn't get to help her hand the containers out.

Martha did.

Each time Ms. Samson placed a caterpillar in its tiny cup, Martha handed the container, a lid and a magnifying glass to the next in line. One by one, every child in the class but Chance settled down to examine a tiny creature.

Over and over, Chance kicked his desk leg. Ms. Samson took forever to finish, but finally all the children were seated, chatting away about what they were doing. The teacher took the last container off the table, settled the last caterpillar into it, snapped a lid on and headed in Chance's direction, magnifying glass in hand. Chance kept his eyes moving and his leg kicking. He fixed his gaze on everything in the class that was not human, willing his teacher to go away and leave him alone.

She pulled up a chair and put the container on his desk.

“Let's look at this together, Chance,” she said.

His shoulders were up around his ears, and his foot kicked one more time and then again. If she thought he wasn't mad, she was wrong. He was mad still, mad that he never got a chance, mad that everything had to happen somebody else's way. Never his.

But the caterpillar was right there and the magnifying glass was at his fingertips. So Chance looked. Then he looked some more. He saw the beautiful pattern of white spots and little stripy lines on the larva's back. He saw the tiny hairs sticking up all over its body. He saw its six little feet. As he gazed, the little creature became his. He would feed it. No, he would feed HER, protect her and watch her grow wings.

He looked up at Ms. Samson and grinned. “She's amazing,” he said softly.

“Yes, she is. Especially when you think that she has everything she needs inside her to become a butterfly. The only other thing she needs is that food in there.”

“Yeah,” Chance said. He reached into his desk and rooted around. Bits of paper drifted out and a couple of broken pencils fell to the floor. The desk tipped. Ms. Samson's hand shot out and stopped the small container just as it was about to slide to the floor.

“Careful, Chance,” she said. “What are you looking for?”

“A felt,” he said. “I want to put my name on. So I'll know which is mine.” He looked at his teacher. Her face spelled that familiar word,
no
. His face fell.

“All the caterpillars belong to all of us,” she said. “That way if anything happens to one, we'll all still have others. I kept just the right number, twenty-six, for our class. The grade fours are going to keep an eye on the rest, but I don't want everyone claiming caterpillars for themselves.”

Chance's chin thrust out. He sat and stared at his desk. Ms. Samson touched him briefly on the shoulder as she stood and swung her chair back into its spot at the round table at the back of the classroom. Chance could almost feel his skin twitch where she had touched him. She said “no” and then she patted him. What did she think he was, a puppy?

“Could you finish up, please, everyone?” she said. “Within five minutes all the caterpillars need to be on the work-in-progress shelf and the magnifying glasses need to be put away.”

A few children got up and put their containers away. Chance watched. They were putting them in a jumble. He would never be able to pick his out again in that mess. And even if he put it somewhere else, it was sure to get found and moved. No. This one was his.

He thought for a long moment. He wasn't allowed to mark the container, but there had to be a way. There had to be. He wasn't allowed to mark it so she could see, or so anyone else would know. Making sure that Ms. Samson was not looking, he reached into his desk and felt around until his hand met his scissors. He tugged the lid off took a quick look in at the little caterpillar. She was curled up in the bottom. Still as still. Scared, he thought. She needed to get to her spot away from all the noise.

Slowly, the scissors and the lid came together. One false move and he'd slice that lid right in half. Then he'd be in trouble! The first cut went all right. Now he just had to make another cut that met up with it. The scissors were small and dull. His thumb was thick and wanted to twist the scissors around the wrong way. And he had to hold everything right in his lap so no one would see. There! He made the second cut. A tiny triangle of plastic fell away. He snapped the lid back on. Yes. It still stuck.

He shoved the scissors out of sight and looked up to see Ms. Samson approaching his desk once again.

“Make sure the lid's on tight, Chance,” she said, looking past him to check on the rest of them, “and put it over with the others.” Then she turned back to the class. “Time for a math drill,” she said. “Six times tables today.”

Chance placed his caterpillar at the back of the shelf, where she would be safe. He had got three out of twenty on the last math drill. When Ralph had gloated about getting the only A+, Chance had drawn thick black lines across Ralph's test. That had been the first time he had eaten his lunch outside Mrs. Laurence's office. Today was different. Today he could get one out of twenty and he wouldn't care.

His caterpillar was getting ready to grow.

Chapter 3

Dinner was casual in this new foster house. In the last one the whole family sat down at the dinner table every night and stared at each other. Here, Mark, who was their son, not their foster son, often took his dinner into the den. Angie set herself up at the kitchen table to feed that sad baby, as Chance called her to himself. Doug and Angie didn't eat until later, when the baby was asleep, if she fell asleep. And there didn't seem to be any good place for Chance to eat his dinner, at least not after that first night.

The baby's name was Louise. Her mother had left her at the hospital after she was born. She had been sick and had to stay in the hospital for a long time. Then a family had adopted her. But she had been too sad for them. They had wanted a happy baby. And so they had given her back. After that, Angie and Doug had taken her in as a foster child. Two months later they took Chance in too.

Louise was still sad. She cried all the time. She screamed and screamed. She screamed in the nighttime and in the daytime. She screamed in her crib and in her high chair and in Angie's and Doug's arms. Chance had a pretty good idea about why she was so sad. After all, he knew all about being abandoned and being given back. He was glad that Angie and Doug kept Louise. They held her tight, wrapped in her blanket. They sang to her and talked to her.

Sometimes they seemed tired. Sometimes they even snapped at him or at Mark. But they never seemed to think of sending anybody back.

On that first day, a Sunday, his caseworker had dropped him off in the afternoon. She had come into the house for a few minutes and had offered to stay longer, but he had brushed her away. “I'm okay,” he had mumbled.

She had looked at him hard for a moment. “I'll be checking in next week,” she had said. Then she had gone.

The house was quiet that afternoon. The baby was napping for once, and Mark was at some kind of sports event. Mark had wanted to be here to meet Chance, Angie said, but his coach was strict and couldn't spare him. Chance knew she was lying. The sons and daughters of foster parents never wanted him or any other foster kid around.

“We thought that maybe it would be easier for you to get to know us gradually, grown-ups first. And Louise,” Angie said. Her smile was so big and warm that Chance was almost taken in. Almost. “You'll meet Mark tonight at dinner,” she went on. “We're roasting a chicken to celebrate. I even cleared the table in the dining room, so we can have dinner together for once!”