Chance and the Butterfly (8 page)
“I didn't do anything. Leave me alone!” Chance took off at a run. Mark kept up, and when they burst through the door together, he was good and mad. They both stopped in the front hall to fling off their coats and catch their breath.
“I've been way nicer than you deserve, kid. I helped you save your little stolen pet's life. I let you wake me up in the middle of the night and shove a bunch of leaves in my face. And right this minute I couldn't tell you why I bother.”
“You're not so nice,” Chance said, but by the time he said it, he was halfway up the stairs.
Chance sank his teeth deep into his last pencil. It felt good, chewy with a slight crispness to the paint. He worked his way down from the eraser end, examining the perfect tooth marks after each chew.
Ten bites, evenly spaced, and on the tenth, snap. That was the formula. On the tenth bite, he gripped the tip of the pencil between his fingers, sank his teeth a little deeper, and drove his chin down toward his chest hard. The pencil snapped.
Satisfied for the moment, he tossed the halves into his desk where they joined the jumbled, crumpled mess that had gathered since his arrival in Ms. Samson's class. The math paper he was supposed to be working on would soon be added to the mix.
It was a page of word problems. Butterfly word problems, but butterflies were no different from dandelions or teacups where math was concerned. Actually, math, reading and writing combined. That's what word problems were.
Pencil disposed of, Chance looked around the room. Ken sat next to him.
He was carefully coloring in the butterflies on his page with pencil crayons. Ken's page was different from Chance's. Ken had a baby page. At least, that's what Martha and some of the other kids, the Martha clones, called it. All pictures and numbers, no words.
It seemed as if Ken didn't care when they said that, because he didn't understand English. He was even newer to the class than Chance was. And he had moved a lot farther to come here. All the way from Hong Kong across the Pacific Ocean, Ms. Samson said. Ken didn't seem to care when the other kids told substitute teachers about him either. “He can't do that,” they would say, all serious, helping the teacher. “He doesn't understand English.”
Chance cared though. It made him mad, especially since half the time they were wrong anyway. And Chance suspected that when Ken sat there with his face all blank while they talked about him, he actually did understand. And if he did understand, then he cared too.
Chance cared even more when they said stuff about him. “He's always bad like that,” they would say loudly. “You have to put his name on the board.” Or, “You should keep him after school.” Or, “Send him to the principal.” As bossy as that, ordering around him and the substitute, both.
He glanced at his paper again, but the words had done nothing to untangle themselves. He knew that if he tried, he would probably be able to find the word
butterfly
in every problem. And there'd be number words. He knew those. But there were other words too. And with Matilda sitting on that ledge, all alone like she was, he just wasn't going to try.
Right now, this very minute, Ms. Samson was attaching the last three chrysalides to the butterfly bush. The last three, that is, except for Matilda. Matilda was still a caterpillar. A munching, crunching caterpillar. A caterpillar who could not get enough green guck to eat. But caterpillar through and through.
And Chance knew perfectly well that that was his fault.
Every bit on purpose, he crumpled up his paper, his butterfly-word-problem paper, and threw it right onto Ken's desk. Ken looked up, startled. And Chance grinned at him. He thought it was a friendly grin, like he was saying, “Forget the baby pages. Look at me!” And, Ken
had
stopped coloring. He
was
looking at Chance. But he wasn't grinning back. Instead, he looked kind of mad.
And one of the Martha clones was calling out, “Ms. Samson, Chance is being bad again.”
“Julie, unless you are in physical danger, I do not appreciate tattling,” Ms. Samson said from the butterfly bush.
“But, Ms. Samson,” said another of the clones, “he's bugging Ken. And Ken doesn't even know English.”
“All right, Preeti,” Ms. Samson said. Her voice was sharp. But she did look over. She took in Ken's angry face and the crumpled paper. The whole class watched, breathless, hoping, Chance knew, that she would
do
something. But Chance cut her off at the pass. He jumped up and grabbed the paper off Ken's desk, knocking Ken's pencil to the floor while he was at it.
“Pick up Ken's pencil,” Ms. Samson said patiently. But not really. She wasn't patient at all.
Chance knew how to prove that. He could prove that Ms. Samson wasn't patient every time. He did it by moving slowly.
He headed for the recycling box.
“I said, pick up Ken's pencil, Chance,” Ms. Samson said, her voice a little tighter now.
Chance tugged at the ball of paper until he found an edge. Then he smoothed it out. After all, they weren't supposed to put crumpled paper in the recycling.
Now she was striding in his direction. And her shoes made sharp noises, even on the carpet. She walked right up to Chance, towered over him. Chance looked up at her. He paused. Then, just as she was taking in a good, big breath to speak to him again, he strode as smartly as she had over to Ken's desk, bent, picked up the pencil and handed it to Ken. He even tried a little smile, but Ken took the pencil from his hand without looking at him and without twitching a single muscle in his face.
Chance sat down and scuffed at the floor with his foot. So now Ms. Samson was mad at him, Ken was mad at him, and Matilda was going to be a caterpillar forever. She was probably going to die a caterpillar. And she had turned out to be such a greedy little caterpillar. She was always hungry.
That thought gave him the idea, the brilliant, best-ever idea.
Forgetting that he was in disgrace, he was at Ms. Samson's desk in a moment, whispering eagerly in her ear. And the more she listened, the more she smiled. When he finished, she nodded her head, turned and pulled a book off the rack by her desk.
She took the book and walked to the front of the class.
“I think that someone in this class would very much like to hear this story,” she said, smiling.
“But we've all heard it a million times!” said Ralph, who always complained about rereading books, but then loved them as much as anyone else.
“Well, Ralph, maybe not a million times,” Ms. Samson replied. “But there is someone in this class who I'm almost certain has NEVER read
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
.”
Martha's hand shot up. “It's Ken,” she said when Ms. Samson gave her a chance. “You mean Ken.”
“No, Ken was here when I read it a few weeks ago. No,” she said, “put your hands down. We have one caterpillar left in this class. And she is a⦔
“Very hungry caterpillar,” Chance filled in, joy flooding his heart. “Can I bring her to the story corner?”
“Yes, please do. And let's the rest of us get ready to tell our very last, very hungry caterpillar her very first story.”
Ms. Samson let Chance hold the little creature in his palm so she could see the pictures. “Listen carefully, Matilda,” he whispered to her. He held her a little closer to the book when the very hungry caterpillar turned himself into a cocoon, well, a chrysalis really, but they called it a cocoon in the book. Chance knew, as did the rest of the class, that if it were really a cocoon, that would make her a moth instead of a butterfly.
Matilda lifted the front of her body right up, high in the air, and Ms. Samson looked over at her and smiled.
After the story was done, Chance took Matilda for a tour of the butterfly bush. “Look,” he whispered to her. “One of those should be you. Soon you'll be a chrysalis too.”
He looked down at her, nestled in his hand. That was when he noticed the chrysalis lying on the table under the bush. He scanned the bush, but couldn't find the lid that it had fallen from. It looked different from the other chrysalides, even the newest ones. He couldn't see the butterfly inside, just hard whitish skin.
“Chance, it's time to get back to work,” Ms. Samson said. “We're going to start making butterfly story-boards.” And she held a big sheet of paper up to the class. It was divided into sixteen roomy squares. “With just pictures, just words, or both, I want you to plan a story with a butterfly or a caterpillar in it,” she said.
Chance looked down at the still, hard chrysalis for one more moment. Then he turned away, put Matilda back in her container on the ledge, and settled down to work. The story was halfway unfolded in his mind before he had unearthed his pencil crayons from his desk.
Most of the class was eager to get out the door when the three o'clock bell rang. It was easy for Chance to linger unnoticed, putting the finishing touches to one of the squares on his storyboard, while he waited to have the classroom to himself. When he saw Mark hovering in the doorway, he beckoned him in.
Ms. Samson had been saying goodbye at the door, but now she was at her desk, reading over the story-boards. She had just said, “Time to go, Chance,” as she passed his desk. Now she seemed to have forgotten that he was there, although Chance considered that unlikely.
Mark stood just inside the door, looking annoyed. “Come on, kid,” he said. “Get it together. I don't have time for this.”
Ms. Samson paused in her work. “Oh, hello, Mark. We read a book you'll remember. Your brother picked it out!” And she held up the book with the big green caterpillar on the cover. Mark came a few steps farther into the room.
“Hey, I love that book!” he said. “But it's not a painted lady, is it? The very hungry caterpillar turns into a different kind of butterfly.”
“That's right,” Ms. Samson said. Mark was standing by her desk now, flipping through the book.
Chance stood up. “I want to show you something,” he said in a loud clear voice, addressed to both his teacher and his foster brother. “But I think it's something bad,” he added, and walked over to the butterfly bush without waiting for a reply.
Mark followed, but Ms. Samson stayed where she was.
