The Butterfly Clues (15 page)

All I remembered after that was the rush of ice-cold water, which knocked the air out of me like a punch, and being sure I was going to die—and then Oren’s arms, pulling me back to the bank. He realized I was bleeding before I did—I didn’t even feel it, until I put my hand to my head and it came away covered in blood.

After that, every time I’d get angry with him he’d just raise his eyebrows at me and say:
Remember that time I saved your life?

I stare at myself so long my eyes start to cross and a third giant green-gray Cyclops eye floats up in the middle of my forehead. I refocus my eyes until they’re two again, and the Cyclops eye disappears.

I pull Sapphire’s makeup bag from my linen bag and set it on my nightstand. I paw through its contents, drawn immediately to the eye shadow—a dark, night-sky blue called “Midnight”—and rub it across my lids. As soon as I open my eyes, a weird sensation overcomes me. For a second, looking into the mirror, I swear it isn’t me sitting here, staring at myself in the mirror, but her. Sapphire.

I reach my fingers back into the bag, feeling around for the most important part of Sapphire’s look—her signature bruise-colored lipstick—but it’s not here. I dump everything out onto the table, much of it just multiple copies of the same thing; it’s not in the bag.

I glance back at myself in the mirror one last time, at my eyes, looking so much like Sapphire’s now, before returning to the bathroom to rewash and rewash and rewash my face. Back in my bedroom, I scoop all of Sapphire’s makeup back into the little bag before arranging it as the center point in a circle of six looming silver candlestick holders. It looks like the dark, bulgy center of a flower there, and the candlesticks stand guard around it, protective. It’s then that I remember the ashtray, resting patiently in my bag. I remove it with both hands and place it in a staggered row beside a slightly rusted cigarette case with the initials
GTB
engraved onto its face and three long, flutelike cigarette holders.

I think of Sapphire, a dark, patient silhouette floating gracefully between tables stacked with gleaming hand-engraved ashtrays, the floor, the ceiling, the walls—everything—covered in them. I wonder if she smoked.

I’ll find out, I silently vow. I’ll find out everything
.
Somehow.

CHAPTER 12

“Penelope. Hellooo? Are you with us?”

I snap suddenly to attention. Mr. Keller is frowning at me.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t hear the question.”

“There
was
no question, Ms. Marin. We were going around the room and giving our answers to the homework you were assigned yesterday dealing with differentiation using the Chain Rule.”

I feel like my eyes might roll back in my skull. It’s not even that I’m completely exhausted from getting less than four hours of sleep last night—which I am—it’s that I can’t get my mind off of Sapphire, her missing lipstick, and her killer. I can’t stop thinking about Flynt, too, last night; if he’s really going to
think about it
, or if that was simply the best way he could think to brush me off. I just want to know. Have to know that he’ll help me. Have to know that he’ll
commit.

“Problem nineteen, page one-eleven, Ms. Marin. What was your answer?”

Keller’s one of the teachers who notices my patterns, probably because he’s a math freak and hyper-attuned to numbers. He tried to talk to me after class once; he told me he
understood
, but that all the tapping during tests was distracting to other students. He tried to get me to talk to the guidance counselor about it, as if that would help anything. And when he confronted me, my face got so hot, and my mouth so dry, that I couldn’t respond. Not even to lie and say that I didn’t know what he was talking about, to make the insane promise that I’d never tap again. He didn’t
understand.
There’s no way he could possibly understand.

Since that conversation, it is like he takes my tapping as a personal insult, like I’m deliberately doing it just to distract him during lessons.

I flip the book open and stare at the problem, computing quickly.

“This couldn’t have been our homework, because it’s next week’s lesson,” I reply, “but, if the outside function is the sine
,
and the inside function is three-
x
-squared-plus-
x,
then the derivative would have to be six-
x
-plus-one times the cosine of three-
x-
squared-plus-
x
.”

He clears his throat, raises his eyebrows. “Good, Penelope.” He clicks his tongue once, uncertain how to reprimand me, turning to the board to explain a new series of problems to the class instead. I try to focus and can’t. No way. My head is in the club; in Sapphire’s makeup bag; in the tall mirrors of the dressing room; in Marnie’s long, dyed red hair; in the dead cat, growing bloodier and more disjointed each time it claws its way into my head. Everywhere but here.

I have to find out more. But where? And how to find it?

After last period; I turn the combination and shove things into my book bag as someone, walking past, shouts: “Screw derivatives!”—a husky, hard-edged, cool-girl voice. I turn my head: Annica Steele smiles briefly at me, and then runs ahead to catch up with the rest of the Perfect Girl Brigade at the end of the hall.

My breath catches in my chest. “Yeah!” I chirp after her, sounding way too excited. She doesn’t turn back around. Maybe she didn’t hear me. Or maybe I just imagined the whole thing.

I slam my locker and say my name again and again under my breath as I walk out of school
: Pen-el-o-pe-Mar-in Pen-el-o-peMar-in Pen-el-o-pe-Mar-in.
Six syllables. Three times. Eighteen.

The cold air makes my eyes sting on my way home. I think of all the other things the newspaper neglected to mention about Sapphire. Maybe she
did
have a family—a sister or brother or a lot of sisters and brothers, parents who loved her, who lost her. She didn’t do drugs, she didn’t drink, she didn’t break the rules. She was kind, helpful,
good
, according to everyone I spoke to at Tens. Her murder doesn’t make any
sense—
that’s what the girls kept saying last night.
It shouldn’t have been her.

Scuff, scuff, scuff—
my whole body goes stiff and jerky at the sound of another person’s feet, dragging through the snow. And then I start to feel it—the heat of another person’s breath fast approaching, the
scuff, scuff, scuff
coming closer.
Oh God,
I think,
oh God, not now.
I turn on my heels, fists balled and close to my chest.

But, guess who: Jeremy. Of course. Jeremy.

“Holy shit,” I say under my breath, letting it pass from my lips in a cloud of cold air.

“Lo! Wait
up
!” He’s panting as he finally reaches me, a piece of paper in his hands.

His face is all splotchy and red from the cold, especially his button nose, and it clashes with his hair. His jacket isn’t even zipped, and I see that his Neil Young T-shirt has developed a little rip near one of his armpits, a little tuft of hair poking out.

“You left this on your desk in English.” He hands me the piece of paper—a handout about all the different words Shakespeare added to the English language that I’m pretty sure I already have or could get online if I really had to. “And I’ve been chasing you all day, but were you, like, avoiding me or something?” He laughs a little, like this couldn’t
actually
be true.
“
I saw you walking out the door. We need this for the homework tonight.” He rubs his hands against his thighs and smiles. He’s got a little cleft in his chin.

Keri’s right: he is cute, in his own track-star way—his muscle-y little body, the shadow of scruff across his cheeks and chin, the wild blue of his eyes that turn all little-kid sparkly when he gets a right answer in class, the freckles dotted across his nose, the way his mouth curves too far to the right when he smiles—even if he has a dumb laugh. And I’m probably only feeling irrationally pissed off right now because I’m so on edge. The fact is: I’ve been completely terrified since the dead-cat incident.

Jeremy’s still talking, following me down the street. I can only half pay attention to what he’s saying. “And, like, as a side note: it would be so
rad
if we could study SAT stuff together sometime. My mom’s all like: ‘Jeremy are you studying? Jeremy are you studying? Blah blah blah,’ and, like, she’s got some serious bored-housewife problems and has nothing better to do than harass me, I guess.” He laughs again, high-pitched, girly. “Parents, man. Right?”

I nod. Six times. Nod nod nod nod nod nod.

“So I told her that there’s this girl in class”—he jabs his finger at my chest—“that would be
you
—who is supersmart and who I’m going to beg on my knees to be my study buddy if necessary. And that kind of shut her up. So”—he flashes me a coy smile—“now you kinda
have
to be my study buddy, or the Moms will freak.”

“Jeremy—I—” I need him off my back, need to be alone. But I can see that he won’t let up until I give in. I stop at the corner of the street and fire my answer at his chin: “Great! Let’s study together. In the library after school tomorrow, okay?”

He grins, his face lighting up. “Awesome, Lo! I knew you’d come through. You’re saving me some serious parental grief.”

“Yeah, okay,” I say. “No problem.”

“See you tomorrow, then!” He backs away from me, practically skipping. “I’ll bring snacks!”

I wave him a fast good-bye and turn the corner, walking toward the 96 Line—the bus that will take me to the border of two worlds—where Neverland and the rest of Cleveland meet.

The fact is: I need Flynt. I wish I didn’t, but I don’t know who else to ask
.
No one else knows Neverland like he does, and he’s going to help me, whether he likes it or not.

The bus lets off several blocks from the now-defunct birdbath that Flynt once told me serves as kind of community P.O. Box. I keep my fist clenched tightly around the butterfly in my pocket, pumping it in my hand. It’s like a heart sending blood to the rest of my body; I have to keep it from shutting down.

As I walk toward the birdbath, I try to think of what I will say in my note:
Flynt, please meet me tonight. Here. I will wait for you.
No. Too pleading.
Flynt, meet me tonight. Here. Need your help.

I keep my eyes down, counting the cracks in the pavement out loud. I get to twenty-seven—
three nines; really good—
before I look up and see what I didn’t expect to see but secretly, desperately hoped I would: a pair of fuzzy bear ears, bent over the edge of the birdbath, scrawling something onto a piece of paper.

“Flynt!” I say, practically bursting, wanting to run to him and squeeze him and bury my head in the dark shadow where our chests meet. Instead, I tug at the edge of my sweater, pulling it, pulling it, pulling it to the top of my thighs, wanting to stop but not being able to make my fingers cease and desist.

He snaps his head up and sees me, his dimples growing deeper. “Lo!” He jogs up to me, folding up the piece of paper. He hands it to me with a little bow. “I was just about to leave this for you.”

I unfold
his
note and read it to myself while he’s standing there, watching:

Dearest Penelope,

I am a giant jerk. I don’t mean to imply that I am an abnormally sized human who happens to also be a jerk, but, instead, that I am a normal-sized human who happens to sometimes be an extra-large jerk. When you buy me an ugly holiday sweater next Christmas, it needn’t be an extra-large men’s sweater, but it should probably feature some much-despised public, or private, figure that will serve to indicate to the world the immense degree of my jerkiness. What I’m really saying is … I’ve thought more about it, and I’d like to be of help to you in your quest so that come Christmas you can just find me a basic ugly holiday sweater that has no other object but to be a basic ugly holiday sweater, and I can wear it the next time we beat god and the devil alike at trash can bowling.

Yours,

Flynt

The
Yours
part makes me warm. I fold up the note and put it in my pocket, looking at the triangles made in the branches of the trees. I wonder what made him change his mind but can’t even let myself care right now. I need him. He’s going to help.

“I’m sorry, Lo, for before,” he says, focusing his big eyes on me. “I’ve cleared out my calendar. All of the Dumpsters in the world couldn’t tear me away from your side. I’m all yours, okay? So what now, Private Penelope?”

I squeeze the butterfly hard, feeling Sapphire pulse through my palm. “Now,” I answer, nerves winging furiously through my chest, “we need to figure out what happened the night she was killed. We need more clues.”

“And how do you propose we do that?”

I swallow, will myself to speak the idea I’ve been mulling over all day. “We go to Sapphire’s house,” I answer, starting to walk, “and we break in.”