The Butterfly Clues (13 page)

“Really?” I ask her, uncertain if I’ve misheard, worried that I’m somehow being tested.

She shrugs. “She’s not coming back for it, right?” Her tone softens. “Besides, she would have probably given it to you, anyway. She was like that. Generous. Always shared her makeup, clothes, whatever.”

“Except for her ugly-ass lipstick,” Marnie says, but she says it with affection. The other girls groan, and laugh: they are caught in the cycle of remembering, now, distant-eyed and hazy. “You couldn’t
pay
homegirl to give that purple shit up.”

I put my hand into my pockets to grip the butterfly as I walk toward Sapphire’s old locker and put my fingers around the handle—the whole thing feels a lot like a dream, like I’m observing my body from somewhere far away. I shut my eyes for a second and imagine that I’m her, that she’s me, that we’ve melded into one, solid, living person, going about our daily business, getting ready for work. And my hand, gripping the handle of her locker and swinging it open, is also her hand, granting me entrance.

Inside the locker is a bag of makeup and, taped to the inside of the door, a small black-and-white sketch of a bird winging through the sky. Beneath it is a tiny note, neatly printed and shaded in block letters.

I love you, Sapphire.

The note is signed
Bird
.

My fingers feel like they might shake right off as I reach in to grab the makeup bag and shove it into my marigold linen purse. The makeup bag is dark blue with a purple zipper—I feel like it was made for her, or of her. Like she wove herself into cloth and thread in the night and, when she died, simply unraveled, slowly, in little parts and pieces, to prevent herself from ever fully disappearing.

I leave the bird drawing where it is, but detach the note and fold it carefully into my pocket.

“Girl would reapply that stuff every ten minutes.” Marnie laughs as I squeeze the bag into my purse. “She never took it off before she left, either.” She looks around at the other girls. “Did you guys
ever
see Sapphire without her face on?”

“Nope,” says Lucy. “We used to joke she secretly had a hideous monster face under there. She always played along, too.” She sighs, a heaviness in her voice. “She could be pretty funny.”

“It shouldn’t have been her,” Randi puts in with sudden intensity, white teeth bared, extra-bright against her dark skin. She glares at me through the mirror, as though I’m somehow to blame. “It doesn’t make sense. She had class, you know?” She shakes her head. “She never did extra to a guy for a hundred bucks, never went out with the guys from the club, not even the regulars. Not even the
bouncers
.”

“I can’t believe she’s only been gone a week,” Marnie puts in. “It feels like she’s been gone forever.”

My head is pounding slightly—all the crowd sounds from outside and the hot, bright lights and the mingling smells of sickly sweet perfume and hairspray. “Did she—did she maybe have a boyfriend?”

A few of the girls shrug, look between each other.

“She didn’t ever say. She kept private about a lot of shit, ya know?” Randi says.

So, she was kind and generous and responsible and private. I think of the note from Bird. Maybe a boyfriend? Or a best friend? Someone who loved her, in any case.

Then why was there no one to claim her body?

I check the time on my cell phone: it’s almost twelve thirty. I have to wake up for
high school—
the whole school thing seems even more absurd than usual right now—in six hours and eighteen minutes.

“Hey, thanks for your help,” I say. “I appreciate it, you know?”

Marnie says, “So, when you think you’re gonna start?”

“Oh. Yeah. I have to talk to”—I almost say
Mustache
—“the manager about that. But you guys have been great. Really.”

“Yeah, no problem.” Marnie bends forward, lifts a pack of matches from the long dressing room countertop and lights a cigarette. “See you around.”

I
tap tap tap, banana
as quietly as possible and duck into the low hallway and make my way back into the club and toward the exit, feeling empowered by the information I’ve gathered, feeling really good.
I did it. I didn’t freak out—not really. I acted like a normal person.

On my way out, though, a gleam of silver catches my eye. I spot an area I haven’t seen yet: the VIP room. It’s a red-carpeted section at the back of the club, full of marble tables, each one topped with delicate, intricately engraved silver ashtrays, and blocked off by velvet ropes.

And I can’t leave just yet.

Because I’ve got to have one of those ashtrays,
got to got to got to
. It’s the
urge
—there’s nothing I can do—my head is full only with this, this intense
need
. Something beyond need, even. The sparkle and flash of it courses through my whole body, every nerve, every cell. It pulls me forward, inch by inch. I cannot choose. I cannot stop it.

I wait until the big, burly bouncer turns to scold a customer in the regular area for trying to paw one of the waitresses before I sneak past the velvet ropes and grab the closest ashtray within reach. A rush fills my whole body as I do, clears up my head, makes me feel instantly like everything in the whole world is okay, like the universe and solar system and every big, holy planet and blade of grass and flake of fresh-fallen snow are rotating and growing and falling just for me right now. When I find where it belongs, where it fits, everything will be whole: I will plug up the emptiness, the swirling, sucking drain of the universe spinning into chaos.

I’m about to slip the ashtray into my handbag when a small curly-haired girl and her customer—escorted by another huge bouncer—come up the stairs and around the corner, heading directly toward me. I pocket it, quickly, praying they haven’t seen me as I duck behind one of the heavy velvet curtains hanging to my right.

I trip through a different curtain that sends me falling backward into an enclosed big leather booth and onto something warm and shifting.

A low voice very close to my ear says, “And where did you come from?”

Not something.
Someone.
I turn my head to face a man: surprised, smiling. Gorgeous.

I’m so shocked that it takes a second to register: I’m sitting on his lap.

CHAPTER 10

The man and I stare at each other and my body feels like it has completely stopped working. All I can think is
handsome
.
So handsome.
And for a second I forget exactly where I am and what I’m doing here in the first place.

After what might be seconds but what feels like hours, he speaks again:

“I’m going to take a wild guess that you didn’t intend to end up on the lap of a random stranger?” He laughs, his eyes crinkling as he smiles. He looks like Mr. Hamilton, my very cute tenth-grade English teacher who, after Oren died, had given me a long, genuine hug and said,
Lo, you take as much time as you need with everything, okay? I can’t even imagine what you’re going through right now.
Mr. Hamilton—the only one who came to the funeral, the only one who had the balls to admit the awful truth: that he
didn’t
and
couldn’t possibly
know. That the grief might last forever.

I try to say something, but the only sound that emerges is a low
hhnnn
.

“Sorry—how rude of me.” The man laughs. “I’m Gordon Jones. I’d offer you a handshake, but … I suspect we may have already progressed beyond that.” He does a little sweeping motion with his hands to indicate the (very short) distance between us, brushing my neck, briefly, maybe accidentally, with his fingers. My breath catches in my throat, but I don’t shrink away.

“
I’m Penel—” I say before catching myself. “Juuuliet.” I drag out the
u
as I say it, hoping there’s a chance he’ll ignore my blunder.

But he doesn’t. “Well,
Penel-Juuuliet
, forgive me for saying, but if anyone was going to fall out of nowhere and into my lap— literally and metaphorically speaking—I’m glad she happened to be so beautiful.” He looks into my eyes as I sit there, still frozen into complete and total immobility.

That word again—
beautiful—
makes my cheeks burn straight through to my teeth, my gums. And Gordon Jones, with his jet black hair and big green eyes and clean, square jaw and silky black-and-gray business suit, thinks this word applies to me.

“I—I’m new here,” I finally manage to squeak out.

He puts his hand on my back, in a fatherly kind of way, and says, “Hey, it’s okay if you’re nervous. These places kind of make me nervous, you know? But I promise I don’t bite—okay? Juliet?” He catches my eye as he speaks to me, looks into me like he wants to reach way down into my belly and wrestle with the darker parts of my soul, or something. “We can just sit here and talk to each other. That’s more than fine with me. I’d like to do that, actually—it’s a kind of hobby of mine. So, you don’t need to worry about anything,
really
.” His eyes move down to my neck, my chest; he cocks his head, staring.
So cute. He’s so cute.
“Where did you get that?” His fingers brush the horse pendant, Sapphire’s horse pendant, loosed from within my shirt.

“My friend.” The words bubble out. “She, um, she died. She left it for me.”

“You guys were close?”

I nod. Because I feel closer to her than I’ve felt to most living people.

“It’s very nice. Elegant.” His voice calms me, his eyes calm me, and I can’t help but wonder why
this
guy is sitting in a VIP booth at a strip club in Neverland. He’s gorgeous and rich looking— probably no more than thirty—and seems genuinely nice. And he’s not the strip club–type, at least not the type I’ve pictured: the hooting, hollering, beer-bellied drunks who fill the seats out front, slobbering onto the stage at the sight of a bare breast.

I notice the freckles above his left eyebrow and count them: six. Good. Perfect. The right amount. I decide to let myself relax. I move off of his lap and onto the plush leather couch beside him, blurting out: “So, what
are
you doing here? If these places make you nervous, I mean.”

He smiles at me, patient, as though he expected me to ask. “Hazards of the job,” he says. “I’m thinking of buying the place.” His smile curves up the right side of his face like a lopsided crescent moon.

I can’t tell if he’s joking or not about the whole “buying the place” thing, but either way, his answer, and the
way
he delivers it, reassures me even further.

“And what about you?” He reaches out and places one of his hands on top of mine. It is warm. Dry. Comfortable. “When did you start?”

The feeling of his hand on mine somehow radiates through my whole body, making every cell feel warm. “It’s kind of a long story,” I say, but before I can say anything more, a giant, awful-looking bouncer with a nose like a squashed tomato and squinty little eyes pokes his head into the curtain.

Without thinking, I spring immediately to my feet and begin a clumsy dance in front of Gordon, hoping neither man can tell that I have no idea what I’m doing.

The bouncer sneers at me. “Mr. Jones, you need another girl?”

I keep dancing, just keep dancing. I see Sapphire’s face in the folds of the curtain, watching me, willing me on, her apparition folding into and out of itself like slow-moving wings. We’re in this now together, Sapphire and I; we’ve become responsible for each other. Our lives and our deaths. No turning back.

“No, Vin. I’ve got a girl, thank you.”

“You sure you’re all set, boss?” he asks.

“Absolutely sure, Vinnie. Thanks for checking in.” And with that, Vin, the tomato-nosed bouncer retreats behind the curtain and into the smoke and noise and thick purple air.

I continue to sway awkwardly for a minute before Gordon reaches his fingers gently to my wrist, stilling me. “You don’t have to keep going.” His eyes are kind and serious. I fold my arms across my chest, embarrassed yet oddly comforted—like a little girl who has spilled her cup of punch all over the new white carpet but who is promised a pony, anyway. He keeps his fingers on my wrist and pulses softly. “Sit down. Let’s just talk.”

He looks down at his wrist, as though to check his watch. But there’s nothing there. Just a white watch-shaped silhouette where a real watch should have been. He looks temporarily panicked, puts his hands to the pockets of his suit pants and feels around.

“What happened?” I ask him. “Did you—did you lose your watch?”

He fumbles for a second, covering up his empty wrist with the other hand; he smiles at me. A clean, tan smile. “I guess I did.” He laughs. “Always a bit of a shock. Losing something.”

I reach into my bag and check the time on my cell phone: “It’s almost one a.m.,” I tell him, as an unnamed panic starts to flood me. I have to go, have to get out of here. My salvaged ashtray needs to be placed and ordered, and I need to sleep. Juliet is going to turn into a pumpkin, and the old, ash-covered Lo will be back, with her stupid bangs and bumpy nose.

“I—I have to go, now,” I stammer. “I didn’t realize what time it was… . I have to be onstage. I’m supposed to be, dancing, and … not here. I’m really sorry.”

I grab my purse from the floor. Gordon creases his brow, looking perplexed. I turn away from him, and as he begins to protest I
tap tap tap, banana
, push my way through the curtains, and start heading for the exit, head down.

I make it just outside the velvet VIP ropes when a voice, close by, stops me: “If I were you, I would
not
be walking out on Gordon Jones.”

I whip around and Randi, dressed now in a leather corset, is standing right behind me, holding the edge of an empty drink tray in her left hand.

“He doesn’t even usually go for the new girls, hun, so, you should feel downright
blessed
, especially in
that
thing.” She motions with her French-manicured fingernails toward my skirt and looking me over like I’ve just committed some unbelievable crime.