The Butterfly Clues (26 page)

We keep kissing as he wraps his hands around my waist and flips me beneath him; dimples like crescent moons; teeth like rows of stars. I pull back, gasping slightly as he tugs me into him again. My skin burns as he inches his fingers under the borrowed shirt, toward my belly button, tracing a circle around it—a perfect circle—softly pressing into my belly, moving his lips to my face, kissing it all over, emitting halos of soft, warm air. And then I want this so badly it fills my whole body, pure heat rising up from the soles of my feet.

I let myself kiss him, too; moving my mouth to his, our lips press together, soft and slow, his tongue tracing an arch across my lower lip. I can’t stop being amazed by it all, how it feels to kiss another person, how it feels to kiss Flynt.

I move into his hands; they move farther up my belly, to my rib cage, to my chest, finally lifting the shirt over my head as I shiver between his hands. My heart leaps and trips between his palms. For a second I worry that he’ll notice my misshapen boobs beneath my bra, and I pull away a fraction.

But he doesn’t seem to notice my hesitation, my asymmetries and flaws. He’s staring into my eyes. He takes my hands, moves them under his own shirt. I feel the long muscles of his stomach, his chest, his own heart, skipping wildly. His mouth moves to my ear, biting it very gently. It tickles. The basement light settles on our shoulders; Moby meows suddenly in the corner, a loud yowl, and we both laugh. It feels good to laugh.

I move my fingers farther into his shirt, pulling it slowly, cautiously off him as he lifts me, a firm, quick pull, closer to him. Our bodies press into each other, our heartbeats touch. He kisses my forehead; my scar; my nose, lips, chin, neck—nuzzling in, scruffy, his tongue running over my teeth, his breath against my skin—my belly; my chest; my thick, dark, now-wild hair.

“God, Lo,” he mutters softly. He runs his hands up and down my legs.

I want to kiss him everywhere and so I do: his face, all over, every single inch of his lips and his neck, his collarbones and the little divot in between them. His mouth tastes earthy, warm, like grass and sunlight and salt. His skin smells like the T-shirt he gave me to wear; pine and cloves and something new I can’t identify—something that I could smell forever, though. Raw and wood and sweet.

I start to move my finger over his smooth chest, tracing shapes, figures, patterns in threes and sixes and nines. Perfect circles. As I trace, my heart begins to slow, and I let my nose fall to his warm sternum. I draw three straight, even lines down to his navel—when I see something that makes my heart stop.

I shoot upright, push away from him.

“What’s wrong?” Flynt says. His voice is raw.

There’s a tattoo above the waistband of his torn moose-patterned boxers.

“Lo?” Red has crept into his cheeks, his eyes wide.

A tattoo of a bright blue bird.

Everything slows down, gets loud and wobbly, begins to fall apart. “It’s you.” I whisper, unable to pull my eyes away, so stunned I can hardly breathe.

Bird.

“What?” Flynt says, squatting on the couch, stabilizing himself with his palms on the lumpy threadbare cushion between us, shaking his head furiously. “What are you …? Lo—come back here. Talk to me.” He tries to grab me and pull me to him, but my ears are full of fire and my legs are full of fire and the number
four thirty-seven
is pushing itself through my head over and over again and then just
four
and four is a horrible number and it means
go
.
Get out. Now.
Sapphire: calling to me from a different universe: warning me.

I leap away from him, arms outstretched toward me on the couch—
liar liar LIAR—
the words beat through me, hard, sharp
—
grab my still-wet clothes from where I left them; throw them over my body; tripping. Trying to keep the sob out of my chest.

Four four four
: up the stairs, the number looming and heavy. I hear him, calling my name as I run: “Lo!
Lo!
Please come back here.”

Tap tap tap, banana
. Body burning, heaving as I push out into the street, still dewy in the predawn gray.

Birds are chirping, signaling the dawn.

Flynt is Bird.

CHAPTER 23

One week later. Seven days. A rough, terrible number. A number that seethes and moans. I have hardly left my bed. I have missed five days of school. Now I’m not sure how I’ll ever go back. Dad is away on business. I told Mom I was sick. This is the truth. I
am
sick. And hungry.

In the grocery store: I flick my eyes back and forth down aisle nine. Household items. Rows of toilet paper and paper towels and cleaning products and scouring pads in rows. Colors that don’t go together.

A bin in front of me full of pink and yellow sponges: A small neon sign:
50% OFF!!!
The tingle starts in my feet and shoots through me like a current, all at once. My eyes swim in my skull. An old lady across the aisle puts a twenty-four pack of Fluffy Dream brand toilet paper into her cart. The voice in my brain clicks on:
NOW.

I reach into the sale bin. Pull out three sponges. Stuff them into my pockets—the pressure in my chest breaking up—before I pay for my other groceries. Dad’s the designated grocery buyer, but he’s been on a business trip to San Francisco. With him gone, there’s nothing left in the house.

Loaf of multigrain bread. Off-brand apple juice. Jar of Nelly’s Nutty creamy peanut butter. Twizzlers. That should last me for the next couple of weeks.

It has been a week since I saw the tattoo. Since I figured out Flynt was Bird. Every time I’ve tried to leave my room this week, I’ve been assaulted by the realization that everything is in the wrong place and then I’m forced to rearrange, and, eventually, the hours whittle themselves away to nothing, to darkness.

Today: only the miniature wooden rocking chairs, only a switch, from the southwest corner of my room to the northeast— not an incredibly time-consuming process. And then the pangs in my stomach wouldn’t quit, and I realized that if I ever wanted to eat again, I had no other choice. I’d have to go outside and buy myself groceries.

Outside, on the way back home, the Bigtooth Aspen and the Buckeye and Northern Catalpa are all beginning to flower and re-leaf. The pavement has more cracks in it than I remember. I have to be careful about when I look up into the trees—if I miss one, I have to go all the way back to the grocery store, and I think if I don’t eat something soon I’ll collapse.

Cracks in the pavement:
twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight
. I kick at twigs on the street, push them off of the sidewalk so that everything’s clear.
Twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one.
Can’t walk with twigs. Twigs at my feet. Twigs in my eyes. Twigs in my hair. Filling up all the space in the universe. Why is everything suddenly so crowded?

This is why it’s not a good idea to go outside. A person could suffocate outside.

Flynt’s a liar. I knew it. From the beginning I knew it, but I pushed it away. Liar liar liar. I can’t believe I fell for him, for his creepy sketching and his stupid bear-eared hat and his patchyquirky-art-boy act.

I
tap tap tap, banana
until my wrists and tongue are sore as I walk to the 48 bus on Eutaw Street.

The bus shows up, glinting with sunlight.
Tap tap tap, banana
on each side of my body. The bus driver shoots me a disgusted look.

“Just counting my change,” I announce to her too loudly. “Making sure I have enough.”

She doesn’t say anything, just rolls her eyes. “Sit down so we can get moving.”

The bus is crowded. The lady I have to sit next to is old and smells like cabbage. She scoots over in her seat an inch or two. “No school today?” she asks as I sit down. She’s got one of those duck-headed umbrellas poking out of her big woven purse even though the sky is cotton-candy blue and cloudless. Her hands rest on top of each other in her lap like balls of pizza dough.

“I don’t know,” I answer, staring at her chubby, wrinkly, little hands.

How could I be so stupid?
He wouldn’t even tell me his real name. I stare through the window past cabbage-breath lady, watch the trees skating by. Imagine Oren monkeying through each one to the next, a long-armed chain of him.

Flash: the man’s fist in my mouth. My throat constricting around it, trying to scream in that very dark room, the
urge
pulsing through me like fire—like acid.

The old woman shifts beside me, turning back to me for a second. She continues to frown, pity radiating from her eyes. I turn my face sharply away.

Flash: Flynt’s warm skin, fingers brushing against my collarbones, over my lips. His lips. The weight of his body over mine. Our fingers intertwined. The rush in my belly. Our legs braided together on the couch.

I never meant anything to him. Nothing at all.

Flash: the last time I saw Oren. So skinny—he was already so skinny, his eyes ringed with purplish disks, his hands shaking. He tried to hide them in his pockets.
Catch you on the flip side, Lope.
Last words I ever heard him say.
Flip side
. Did he know already? Did he know he was leaving me forever?

Catch you on the flip side. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

Poof.

I feel the
urge
shake through me again—the duck umbrella. It noses lazily out of the old woman’s purse, seeming to glimmer and shine in that familiar, needy way. Her eyes are fixed again on the window. I reach my fingers down, brush the smooth wooden head, the hard black eye—
now—
I have no choice.

I grab it, push it under my coat. Her head spins around, hands flying immediately to her purse.

“What on earth … ?” Her lips curve into a horrified little O as she tries to form words
.
“That’s my
umbrella
. What are you … ?” Her hand moves to her chest, flutters against the space above her heart.

I jump out of my seat. Tug hard on the chord, two stops from where I need to get off—
bad
. She rises next to me, putting her hand out as if to pull me back, but she’s slow, arthritic. Shame is beating through my chest, hot and poisonous. I weave my way quickly to the front of the bus as it shudders to a stop, doors swinging open.

Tap tap tap, banana
. And I’m out on the street as the bus closes its doors. The old woman’s face is huge in the window, amplified— shaking her head, lips pruned together. I hug her umbrella to my rib cage, watch the sun glare of the bus windows disappear down Gresham Street as the sick feelings swirl around in my belly.

Back home I shove a piece of peanut-buttered bread in my mouth, refrigerate the perishables, lining them up by size and shape.

As soon as I return to the attic, I realize I never should have left. My room looks stricken, sick. Each of the antique brass wall clocks need to be moved. Next: the short wire trees currently residing beside the floor lamp by the window must be moved beneath the printer’s drawer full of thimbles, and then the thimbles must be placed in three even rows on the desk in front of the teal Olivetti typewriter, but not too close to the partially rusted maroon Smith Corona.

As I’m placing the first thimble at the foot of the Olivetti, the doorbell rings. I drop the thimble, and it skitters beneath my desk, between several stacks of newspaper.

It’s the old lady—she’s traced me.
Diiiing-donnnnng.
I hear my mother’s muffled voice, wailing to me from within her room: “Looo.”

When I get downstairs, I see it’s not the old lady.

It’s Jeremy. He waves from behind the glass panels of the front door, a folder dangling from one gloved hand. I open the door,
tap tap tap, banana
quickly, dead quietly, stepping halfway outside to meet him.

“I brought you your homework,” he says. He hands me the folder. His nose and cheeks are tinged red, like his hair. The folder hangs there between us—I don’t want it. I don’t want to think about school right now. After a few seconds, he drops it back by his side. “So, what’s going on? Are you dying of the flu?” He cocks his head and shrugs. “You don’t
look
sick.”

I reach out and grab the folder from him. “Thanks,” I mumble. I start to turn and head back into the house, but he keeps talking.

“There’s this super confusing lit stuff we have to read for English; you might need me to explain it to you,” he says, taking a small step into the hallway. “I had to ask Manning about it like eight times.”
Eight.
I cringe. Tap six times on each side to reverse it, ears burning, looking away from him, willing him to leave.

“Also,” he continues, softly, “I wanted to come by and make sure you were okay and everything since you didn’t show, you know, for our study date this week. You rain-checked on the rain check. I mean, it’s totally fine,” he rushes to say, when I open my mouth, “but I’m glad you’re not dead, because I still have a bunch of snacks. So, whenever you get better …” He pauses, briefly. “I guess we’ll have to make a new date.” He grins, his blue eyes get even bluer. “You know, so they don’t go to waste or anything… .”

“Lo.” Mom’s voice interrupts from the top of the stairs. I turn; she’s standing there, watching from the landing, hands planted on her jutting hips, still wearing the velour sweats she had on last week. “What’s going on down there? Who’s that?” She coughs, and it makes her whole body shake.

“Someone from school, Mom,” I answer. “Don’t worry about it.”

She comes down a couple of stairs, anyway, narrows her hazy eyes at Jeremy, who is still half in and half out of the house, shivering in the open door.

“Penelope.” She inhales sharply. “Don’t make your friend stand outside like that. It’s cold.”

I turn away from her and back to Jeremy, anger burning through my chest. I
tap tap tap, banana
under my breath, disguising the
banana
as a kind of grumbly cough before I invite Jeremy in and close the door behind him, knocking my teeth into each other—nine, nine, six—until I feel a dull pain in my gums. Mom continues to stand there, eyeing us.