Chance and the Butterfly (6 page)
“Move it, kid,” Mark called from the doorway, as he did every day.
And, “He'll be right with you, Mark,” Ms. Samson said, as she did every day. But today, she didn't stop there. “Have you seen our butterfly bush? We have six chrysalides now!” she said. “It's hard to believe that it's already two years since you were helping me with the very first butterfly bush at our school.”
“Yeah,” Mark said. “It was amazing!” And he walked into the room and over to the bush. Chance watched from the cloakroom in horror. That bush had nothing to do with Mark. It was not Mark's business. And now it was turning out that Mark had done it already. Two years ago.
“I'm ready,” Chance said, stepping forward. But both foster brother and teacher ignored him. They were standing together, gazing through the netting that would keep the butterflies from escaping, and talking together in low voices.
“I said I'm ready,” Chance said again, more loudly this time.
“Yeah, all right, Chance. Give me a break, okay?”
It was not okay, and it got worse. “We seem to have lost one,” Ms. Samson was saying.
“That's awful!” Mark responded. “Remember when that happened to us? We were so sad.” Chance almost forgot his horror that Ms. Samson was telling Mark about the lost caterpillar in his shock that Mark could talk like that.
“No, no, none have died. At least I hope not! One disappeared,” Ms. Samson said.
That was it. This conversation had gone way further than it should have. Chance gathered himself together and spoke more words to his foster brother than ever before.
“We have to go right now, Mark. Angie said. We're all going out somewhere or something. Remember? She said to set off right away after school.” Chance reached out and pulled on Mark's sleeve while he spoke. Mark flicked his hand away in disgust. But he also stared at Chance in surprise at the insistence and at all those words.
“All right, off you go, boys,” Ms. Samson said. “Come back anytime, Mark.”
Chance hoped Mark had missed that last bit.
As they were walking together that day, Mark seemed to forget that Chance was beneath contempt. Or maybe he just forgot who Chance was altogether. He talked on and on at him about being in Ms. Samson's class and about raising butterflies.
He was stealing the whole thing, doing it first, knowing everything already. At least he didn't know about Matilda. Or so Chance thought.
“So, one of the caterpillars is missing. I'd be willing to bet you know something about that, kid,” Mark said.
For the first time in Mark's company, Chance was too angry to be scared. “Yeah, so one's missing. What's that got to do with you?” he said, glaring up at Mark.
Surprise and sudden anger stopped Mark in his tracks. He looked around. They were walking by the overgrown vacant lot. No one was in sight. Without warning, he grabbed Chance by the shoulders and spoke again, this time in his slowest, meanest voice. With each sentence, his fingers dug deeper.
“I'll say it has something to do with me. If you've done something to mess up Ms. Samson's butterflies, that has a whole lot to do with me. And I can tell you that my mum and dad wouldn't want a kid in the house who would do something to mess up a class project.”
With no warning, Chance head-butted him. Rage drove the top of his head right into Mark's chest. Hard. Mark grunted and let go. Chance ran. He had only a block to go. Looking back when he turned up the walk, he could see Mark still standing in the same spot. He flung himself into the house, ignored Angie's “hello” from the living room, took the stairs three at a time and shut his bedroom door behind him with a gasp of relief.
He pulled back the curtain and grabbed the box off the sill. No, Matilda was not attaching. She was curled up half under a leaf in the corner. She looked awfully still. He gave her a poke. But no, she was all right. She moved under his finger. Just sleeping, he guessed.
But a seed of worry planted itself in his mind.
He put the box on his bedside table, where he could watch it, and sat down on the bed, rubbing his head. It was sore where he had bashed it into Mark's bony chest. Thinking of the impact, he grinned in satisfaction. That would teach Mark to leave him and his caterpillar alone.
Then he thought of what Mark had said. That Angie and Doug wouldn't want him if they knew what he had done. No. Angie and Doug were keeper foster parents. If you were a baby, you could cry and cry. If you were older, eight years old, for example, you could break things. You could get three out of twenty on a spelling test. And you could keep a stolen caterpillar in your room. Angie and Doug didn't send kids back. For a moment Chance wondered why he wanted to stay in this house anyway, with a screaming baby and a boy who hated him. Who could say? But he did.
A sharp knock on the door interrupted his thoughts. He leaped to his feet and was standing with Matilda's box thrust behind him when the door opened. Doug stood there. Mark was hovering behind him.
“I'd like to see you downstairs, please. In the kitchen,” Doug said. The words were stern, but his eyes were warm. Chance was pretty sure that Doug knew that he wouldn't head-butt Mark without some sort of a reason. Still, his heart pounded. He stood, hands hidden behind his back, and waited for Doug and Mark to turn and go.
“Hey, ask him what he's got behind his back!” Mark said. “Come on, Dad. It's that caterpillar. I'm telling you.”
But Doug would not be drawn in. “Chance is meeting us in the kitchen,” he said to his son. “You go ahead.”
So Mark was forced to lead the way. And Chance was able to put Matilda back behind the curtain before making his own way slowly downstairs.
Mark was so angry that Doug got annoyed with him and sent him away. “Yes, I've seen the mark on your chest, son,” he said. “I agree that there's no excuse for that, but I still want to hear Chance's side of the story. Off you go, so Chance and I can talk together quietly.”
Mark stamped his way out of the kitchen, but he didn't say a word in argument. Chance should have sensed danger. But he was worrying instead. Worrying about being sent away. These are keeper foster parents, he repeated to himself. Still, keeper or no, a foster parent was not the same as a real parent.
Chance kicked at his chair leg and kept his eyes on the table. It was that hard plastic stuff, and it had lots of interesting cracks, stains and scratches. Doug talked on and on in his gentle voice, and the words floated away, up, up and away. Like balloons, Chance thought.
Finally Doug reached out and gripped Chance's shoulder.
Like son, like father, Chance thought, but he stopped kicking.
“Look at me,” Doug said, sharply now. Chance looked but gave another kick at the same time.
“We do not accept violence in this house,” Doug said. “Neither you nor Mark is permitted to hurt the other in any way. Is that understood?”
In answer, Chance wiggled his shoulder, still in Doug's grip. He wasn't holding on hard, but it hurt because of Mark's earlier attack.
Doug let go. Chance nodded his head once.
“All right. If you refuse to tell me your side of the story, you'd best be off.”
And Chance was off, in an instant. Out the door, into the hall and up the stairs. As he neared the top, fear entered his heart. He could hear music from Mark's room. His door was closed. Chance headed for his own room, but he already knew what he would find.
His own door, carefully shut behind him when he went downstairs, stood open. From the doorway, he could see that the curtain had been pulled back.
The windowsill was bare.
Matilda was gone.
At least Mark's door wasn't locked. Chance opened it as quietly as he could.
Mark was sitting at his desk, hunched over something. Chance didn't have to see it to know what it would be.
“Give her back,” he hissed. He did not want Doug to come upstairs to investigate.
Mark looked up. “It's dying,” he said.
“Matilda's not an it. She's a she. And what do you mean? What have you done to her?”
“It. She. Doesn't make much difference now. You starved her to death, Chance,” Mark said.
“No, I didn't. I gave her leaves, real leaves. Way better than that goop at school.”
“But that goop is made out of stuff that caterpillars like. I don't know what these ones are, but anyone with any brains could see that they're too thick and hard for a caterpillar to eat. Anyway, she's not eating them.”
Chance had walked close enough to see Matilda where she was curled up now, in Mark's palm. He didn't try to take her back. He just stood.
He had thought that he had known everything about painted ladies. Everything. Except for the one thing he needed to know to keep Matilda alive, to let her become a butterfly. She was lying there starving, and it was his fault.
“She can't die, Mark, she can't. There must be some kind of leaves she likes. You have to help me.”
“It's a little late for that,” Mark said, chewing on the side of his thumb as he spoke. Then he was quiet for a long time.
Chance burst into the silence, “I'm taking her back to school tomorrow. But there must be some leaves around here that she'll eat. Come on, let's go find all the kinds of leaves we can!”
“Not so fast, kid. You've done your bit, stealing her, starving her. I'm going to take her back to school tomorrow myself. If she survives the night.”
If Chance could have grabbed Matilda out of Mark's hand right then, he would have, but Mark's fingers were curled around her. Anything that Chance did might hurt Matilda more than it would hurt Mark. Every single thing that he felt like doing would only make things worse.
So he tried something that he didn't feel like doing at all.
“Please, Mark,” he said, hating how raw the words sounded in the room. “Please don't take her away from me.”
“I have to,” Mark said. “Ms. Samson would want me to.”
And then Chance knew what to say, because he knew that that wasn't true. “No, she wouldn't. She would want you to help me. She would want us to work together. And she would want us to bring Matilda back to school first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Well, you're right about the last thing anyway,” Mark said, seeming to relent. “All right, you can help me get food for her. Then we'll see.”
“What do you mean, âwe'll see'? She's my caterpillar. You can't do that.”
“Watch me,” said Mark. “You follow my rules, or just get out of here right now.”
Chance knew that he didn't have much choice. “Fine,” he said. “What are we going to do?”
“We're going to go find thistles,” Mark said. “I remember Ms. Samson said they like thistles and lots of other plants I can't remember, but I remember the thistles. I thought it was weird. So prickly. But that's what she said.”
“I bet there're some in the vacant lot,” Chance said. And they were off.
