The Butterfly Clues (29 page)

Joe laughs, resting his bony elbows on the bar, his T-shirt sagging so that Alice in Chains tents off his ribs. “Hearing you just makes me wish we had Bird back, you know?”

My heart stops. I grip the raised ridge of the bar hard as the words fly out: “You know Bird?”

“Yeah, sure,” Joe says, shaking his head. “He used to help out around here for cash. Man, oh man, that kid could whistle like a frigging
nightingale
.”

The other men nod in agreement.

I slide halfway off the stool. My body feels wobbly and loose: Flynt can’t whistle. I know for a
fact
he can’t—that he wasn’t
blessed with the whistling gene—
he told me himself the first time I met him; we’d laughed together about it. My throat is being squeezed by a million fingers, but I manage to choke out: “Do you—do you know where I could find him?”

Joe cracks his knuckles. He and Paul exchange a look.

He shakes his head, cracks a small smile. “Why—he get you pregnant or something? He owe you some money? I’m just kidding, he was a good kid.”

“Was?” I ask.

Joey shrugs. “He stopped coming by here a couple years ago.”

“I just need to ask him something. That’s all. I have something … I have something of his.” This is true, in a way. I have Sapphire now. She floats all around me, all the time.

Joe shrugs. “Maybe we’re not even talking about the same Bird. Tall guy? Black hair down to about”—he cuts with the flat of his hand to the center of his ear—“here? Mole in the center of his forehead?”

My organs go soft, loose inside me. The description … the height. The hair. He could whistle like a bird, had a mole in the exact center of his forehead that he always hated. That he wore baseball hats to try and cover up, every single day.

Everything in me drops, bursting—straight through the earth, straight through to the molten, spinning center.

My brother. Oren.

Bird.

CHAPTER 26

“You know him?” Joe asks.

I nod slowly, wavering in the hazy overhead light as he stoops, pulling something from within a set of plastic drawers beneath the bar. “Then here, take this,” he says, tossing me a navy baseball hat with a white
D
on it. “It’s been behind the bar for ages.”

Oren’s favorite Detroit Tigers hat—the one he used to wear, every single day—in my hands. A prized part of his collection. My throat seems to cleave in two; a weird, mangled whimper escapes.

The echoey sounds of the bar, the football-game whooping and the
tink
of glasses and the
scuff
of shoe against linoleum melt away around me. I thud back into my seat.

Oren was Bird, which means Bird
couldn’t
have had anything to do with Sapphire’s murder, because Oren has been dead for over a year. My breath staccatos through my chest.

Another part of my brother’s life we knew nothing about.

A shiver runs up my spine: Sapphire was … Oren’s girlfriend.

Tweed Hat stands; I watch him wave limply from the corner of my eye, walk slowly out the door. Joe says, “See ya, Carl.” I fold the baseball cap into itself, slide it carefully into the waistband of my jeans.

Suddenly, it makes sense—all the inexplicable ways I’ve felt drawn to her, how fate must have drawn me to her daisied driveway, to Mario’s table and to her glittering, wing-drawn butterfly pendant. We both wanted the same thing: for him to live. When it didn’t work out, we were both infected. By that gnawing, silent thing that crawls inside of you and hollows you. It’s when her diary entries stopped: a little over a year ago.

It’s why I can’t rest, why I see her face between curtains and clouds and tiles on the floor: she found me. She chose me.

“Penelope.” I whip my head toward the door. Dad. His face is red and exhausted.

His work shirt’s undone, white undershirt in full view; neither are tucked in. This means he’s upset. So upset he first had to loosen his collar to prevent himself from hyperventilating.

Flynt and Oren and Sapphire are butterflying through my head—a whirring, fizzy feeling—as Dad tornados over to me, grabs my arm, and pulls me with him into the oddly warm, alarmingly pee-scented alley before I even have the chance to thank Joe for the phone call—and for so much more.

“Come on,” he practically growls. “We’ll talk in the car.”

Dad’s grip is so strong on the left—and I tug away, pulling at my right arm to make it even. And then I have to do it again, because one time per arm, a total of two, is a crude, dislocating number, a number that will make me scream.

So many secrets. Oren could have told me. I would have known where to look for him, then. I could have helped him. I could have saved him.
Tug tug tug.

Dad’s watching me, shaking his head. I know he hates what I do; he’s always hated it. Maybe he hates me in general at this point, since, ever since Oren died, I haven’t seemed capable of stopping. “Neverland, Lo. Jesus, I just can’t believe … after everything …”

He rubs his eyes. I don’t respond. He hasn’t asked a question, and, also: now, I have to bend down and stop and touch my feet. Six times right, six times left, six times right again, because they, too, feel completely off-kilter, sick.

“You know your brother was found not too far from here.” I can hear his throat constricting as he speaks. “You know that, right? You want to end up like him?”

I have to start over before I can stand up and walk any farther. The bar is still close enough to smell: musk, sugar, tar.

“Holy Christ,” he bursts out. “Holy
fucking
Christ; you’re driving me crazy with that shit. I’m trying to have a conversation with you, and you are actually driving me
insane
.” I have to block him out. Have to keep going. He stoops down as I’m midway through, grunting as he wraps his forearm under my waist and forces me up. His forearm presses Oren’s hat into my waist. The alcove is dark, lights from the street cutting in; disjointed angles, crude shapes spearing the black.

I wriggle fiercely back down to my feet, choking back expletives, tears sliding down my cheeks to finish my toe touches. I have to start over, though, because he’s interrupted me, so angry I could choke or scream.

He stands feet away, breathing heavily; his back question-marking beneath the streetlights. A heavy minute of silence passes before he snaps again.

“All right. That’s
it
.” He bends to grab me again, the fabric of his sport coat whipping against my cheek, dragging me by my left arm through the narrow, brick-lined passageway to the car. I’m too exhausted now to resist. But I
tap tap tap, banana
loudly, not even trying to hide it, and when I get inside I have to pull on my right arm again to even it out, and then both sides, two more times. Six. Better.

I plug my eyes to the window as we drive, watching for signs— from Sapphire, maybe—folded into the stars, with Oren now, too. Maybe they’re both whispering to me—through the Box Elder and the Kentucky Coffee Tree and the Black Chokecherry.

“You know, I get angry because I love you. You know that, right? Your mother and I, we both love you.” We’ve pulled into the driveway, but he makes no move to get out of the car. He grips the gearshift with his fingers. “All I’m asking is for you to let us in.”

But I can’t focus. One of the two lamps is out on the porch, and the asymmetry makes my stomach hurt. “Lightbulbs,” I say, turning to my dad, digging my nails into my scuffy black pants. “Where do we keep the lightbulbs?”

“Lightbulbs?”
He shakes his head at me. “What are you
on
, Lo? Tell me what you’ve been doing.” He is practically roaring. “Because if you don’t, I’m going to do whatever it takes to find out for myself.” He practically rips the keys from the ignition, letting himself out of the car. I follow, close behind, feeling horribly, hideously off-kilter, panic snaking through my whole body like acid, like poison.

“
Please
, Dad,” I say, trying to keep my voice low, calm. But the panic bubbles out. “I need a lightbulb.”

But he won’t turn around and he doesn’t answer me. I run to the front door as he unlocks it and
tap tap tap, banana
as fast as I possibly can, slipping inside behind him as he throws his coat across a kitchen chair and begins jogging up the stairs. And then I realize—as I dig through the pantry for lightbulbs—he’s not stopping at the second floor—where
his
room is. He’s going farther up. He’s going to the attic.

To my room.

The broken lightbulb is tugging, but I ignore it and barrel upstairs, everything suddenly very loud around me: my feet pounding against the stairs, heart jackhammering around my chest, brain crashing in my skull.

His back is a dark giant, an eclipse in the doorway to my room.

“Get out, Dad!” I scream. “This is my place.
Mine.
” I try to push him. He’s boulder-heavy. Immovable.

He doesn’t even fight back, just stands there, his mouth slightly open, gaping. “Jesus mother of God. Jesus,” he finally whispers, swallowing hard, looking around my room. “What the hell
is
all this
shit
?” His voice is slightly hysterical; he runs a hand through his thinning hair. “What have you been
doing
up here? I can’t even—I can’t even
walk inside
your goddamn room.” He’s rubbing his face with his hands; eyes wide, full of terror. Full of disgust. “This is … this is
sick.
This is the kind of shit a
sick
person does—piles and piles of—garbage.” Spit firecrackers from his lips and he’s blinking now, rapidly. “I can’t believe … how did we not … Jesus.
Jesus.
”

“Jesus,” I whisper, one more time, to make it three. My whole body is hot, furious as he speaks. He steps out of the doorway, kicking into my room. Kicking into the nine soft-bellied jester dolls at his feet, disturbing them, breaking two of their soft, perfect china faces. I scream and lunge after him.

He bats me off, crossing his arms in front of his chest. Keeps shaking his head, voice frighteningly monotone. “We fix this. We fix this
now
.” He tears out of the room and tears back in, thirty seconds later; I’m still clutching the jester dolls. Now he’s got a giant black trash bag.

“No, Dad,
No!
” I sob as he starts going through my things, haphazardly, kicking at piles, pulling things off my walls, throwing them away: antique brass wall clocks. Minnesota. Baltimore. Cincinnati. All of them. Suddenly: smashed, scattered like dust. Like trash. My heart is ripping through my rib cage, shimmying up into my throat where it sticks, blocking off my air supply. I’m going to suffocate, right here. Right now.

“Stop,”
I plead, trying to wrestle him away from my Smith Corona, my Olivetti—he’s shoving them apart, letting them fall. Their keys come loose, tumble off, their undersides tremble away. He lifts parts into the gaping trash bag mouth, squeezing them between his fingers, his horrible fingers.

“Newspapers? Jesus, Lo. Why did you
save
all this shit?” He folds them up in his arms, dumps them away. I’ve saved every one, since Oren died. To document what he’s missed, to have record of every day that has passed. In case he came back. He’d want to know. He’d want to see. “And old cigarettes? Half smoked … Oh
God
. Just
piled
up garbage … You could catch a disease… .”

He kicks over to my desk, plucking loose my pennants from their neat rows, flinging them to the ground. My whole body is a scream. I am being ripped to shreds from inside. But I can’t move. Like how people must feel witnessing a natural disaster— totally helpless—houses, lives, people, everything—ripped away completely.

The drawers: he opens them, shaking through each and every paper, magazine clippings, a collection of crunchy, dried-up, russet-tinged leaves I’d started saving this spring, just as the season turned. He tosses them into the bag with everything else.

All I can do is cry: “
Dad.
Please, stop. Please stop. Please
stop
.” But he’s a hurricane. Blind. Hungry.

He slams a drawer shut so hard the whole desk slams into the wall behind it, knocking everything from both shelves to shatter on the ground with a loud
crash
—twelve glass horse figurines, three Limoges boxes shaped like top hats, three silver replications of sugar skulls I found buried beneath a forgotten pile in a dusty store in Detroit.

A pause. The clouds gather back their torrential rains; something in him shifts. He stands there, not moving, blinking, like he’s been snapped out of a trance. And then, without another word, he shakes his head slowly and walks out of my room, dropping the fattened garbage bag.

My knees thud to the ground. Oren’s hat comes loose from my jeans, falls to the floor; my hands move to my shattered things. I pull them from the bag, pull them to me, feel them, sliced, raw-edged between my fingers. Glue. I need. Glue. Or tape. My insides will explode. I’ll die. Everyone will die. The world will collapse.

The world
has
collapsed. It spins and slurs around me—my body is sinking, melting into the ground, splitting, writhing. I lift a jester doll in my hands, hold it to my chest—it shatters against me, falls apart. More, lift more. Everything, I hold everything and everything falls away, divides, separates into more parts, nothing whole, nothing fixed. So, I start to lick, barely even registering how disgusting this is, how pathetic I am. I don’t care. I don’t care. I need to fix this any way I can. Each piece, each crumbling section of a whole, stick them together, hold them together. My tongue tastes like caulking, plaster. Bits flake off into my mouth, slide down my throat; I gag. I hate myself. I have to keep trying. My stomach clenches. And nothing fits. Nothing stays. There’s a blackness eating the edges of my vision.

I drag my hands through the rubble, when my fingers brush against studded edges, curved wings. I look down: Sapphire’s butterfly, a new, dark cleft down its center. I stare down at it, eyes spilling, wishing I’d never put it up there on that shelf—all my fault. Again. For neglecting it, for wishing it away.