Breaking Butterflies

by M. Anjelais

  Leigh called back in a flash, apologizing. Apparently he tended to do that, hang up on people. She apologized again and again, thanked my mother and me so much for agreeing to come. It meant so much to her, she said, and it meant a lot to Cadence, too.

  My father didn’t want me to go. He looked at me and I knew he saw the scar, remembered the trip to the hospital, the paleness of my little face as the blood flowed down and down, staining my shirt collar on that side. He locked eyes with me, and I noticed the lines spreading out from the corners of his eyes, the furrows in his brow.

  “I don’t think you should go,” he told me, and he wasn’t shy about it. I could hear the anger that remained still in his voice, held there for always. I don’t think he had ever forgiven himself. It was stupid, really; he hadn’t been at Leigh’s house that day, he had never been, and would never be, able to see into the future and give my mother and me precise warnings about the dangers of the world. Still, he was angry. He looked at my scar and he was furious. He didn’t storm out like he had all those years ago, but I could sense that he wanted to.

  “Dad, this is my thing,” I said. “It’s my choice. Cadence is dying, and I want to see him one last time.” Strong. I had to keep repeating that word. I had to be strong with everyone, not just Cadence.

  “Write him a letter if it means so much to you,” said my father.

  “You know that’s not the same.”

  “I wish your mother had involved me more in this,” he said, putting a hand to his forehead.

  “Well, she didn’t,” I said curtly. “It’s settled, Dad. Leigh bought the plane tickets. And it’s okay, really. I’m going to be fine. Nothing’s going to happen.” I didn’t usually speak to my father so brusquely, but I was afraid that if I listened to him long enough, I would start to second-guess my decision to go. And I couldn’t have that.

  “Sphinx, that kid is dangerous —” he began.

  “He’s dying,” I said. “He’s a human being who’s dying. I’m going to see him. Besides, haven’t you seen the pictures of him? He looks like he couldn’t crush a grape, let alone me. I won’t take any crap from him.” I felt the need to shrink Cadence’s tall, lithe form in my father’s mind and make myself seem stronger in comparison. Still, there was a tiny twinge of fear inside my chest, pulling and poking. I stuck my chin out, and raised my head, determined. “I could take him down if I had to.”

  My father laughed then, weakly. He looked at me again, closely, carefully, but his eyes passed over the scar. I knew he was thinking that I’d gotten older, so much older, and so fast. I was making decisions about people who were dying. I was going to make decisions about what to pack in my suitcase, what magazines to read on the plane. And soon, I would leave the house and leave him behind, this man who still hadn’t forgiven himself for something that wasn’t his fault.

  “I love you, Daddy,” I said, tears stinging my eyes.

  “I love you, too, Sphinxie,” he replied, and pulled me into a hug.

  Our flight was scheduled for a week from then, and we were staying in Leigh’s house. I informed my soccer coach that I was going away. My mother got me off school, took time off work. I told all of my friends. They squealed over me — England, England, it was so exciting, everyone loved England — until I explained why I was going. Then their voices died down, their faces closed, and their eyes turned downward. They hugged me and told me to call them if I needed to. I promised them that I would, and promised myself that I wouldn’t. That was the thing about my friends: I could tell them about secret crushes and rumors at school and new music to listen to, but I couldn’t tell them about Cadence. They hadn’t seen him shine as a child, they hadn’t been cut, they hadn’t been marked for life. My scar was like a wall between them and me.

  I packed. Clothes, my iPod, books to read on the plane, shoes, my favorite hairbrush. I packed it all into my suitcase by myself, although my mother wanted to help me, to make sure that I’d hadn’t forgotten anything. Did I have enough underwear? Yes, of course I did. Did I have my cell phone charger, my iPod charger? Yes, they were in my purse.

  I laid out my clothes the night before our flight: a brown polo shirt, my good jeans, and magenta ballet flats, dug out of the back of my closet. I’m not one of those girls with impeccable fashion sense and a closet full of trendy clothes, but I wanted to look nice. I wanted Cadence and Leigh to see that I had grown up, that I wasn’t always the tomboy kicking a soccer ball. I wasn’t sure if an appearance in magenta ballet flats was enough to cancel out all the soccer photos, but it was worth a shot.

  In the morning, I blow-dried my hair after my shower and left it down instead of pulling it back into a ponytail as usual. I dug a tube of mascara out of my purse and applied it. Then I stepped back from the mirror and looked at myself. I was all right, I supposed. I felt just the tiniest bit more confident than usual, and I thought it had something to do with the fact that soon I would be on a plane. There was nothing like the idea of getting flown to another country to make a person feel worth something.

  I lugged my suitcase downstairs and ate a hurried breakfast with my mother. She had all the flight information printed out, and she spilled coffee on the papers. She had forgotten to plug in her cell phone to charge, but we had to leave in order to make the flight, and we ran out to the car.

  “I’ll charge it when I get there,” she told my father. “Call Sphinx’s phone.”

  “Okay,” he said, starting the car. “Remind her to charge it, Sphinx, will you?”

  “I will,” I said. I was looking out the window as we pulled away from our house. Watching trees, sky, birds, neighbors, other cars. They rushed past my window in a blur, and the little fluorescent green numbers of our car’s dashboard clock changed. Life was going past, and nobody realized it. I didn’t usually realize it myself, but now it was different, because across the ocean, where I was going, Leigh was willing the clock to stop. Did Cadence watch it too, with those perfect burning eyes of his? Was he afraid of the passing of time, of how quickly a year went by? I felt an overwhelming sense of urgency. I had to get to him as quickly as possible. I needed to see what I could do to help before time ran out.

  At the airport, my mother and I hugged my father good-bye. He kissed us both and told us to be safe, be safe, be safe. Call him, call him. Say hi to Leigh and Cadence for him. Charge my mother’s phone, remember to charge it. He loved us, he loved us, and we loved him too. He stood there and watched us as we walked away from him and joined the line to go through airport security. When I looked back over my shoulder at him and waved one last time, he was smiling, but his eyes were worried.

  My mother and I checked our bags, passed our purses through the X-ray machine, watched the employees go through our belongings with gloved hands, checking this and that. They took a spray bottle of perfume that I had in my purse; I’d forgotten to put it in my checked baggage. And, feeling like a stupid little girl, I started crying. I didn’t want to lose that perfume. Deep down, I knew that I was really crying over everything else, over the fact that I was going, over the fact that my knees felt weak at the prospect of seeing Cadence again. The airport employee who had my perfume in her gloved hand gave me a sympathetic look, as though she could tell that there must be something else going on in my life to make me cry like that. She was a big black woman, and her fingernails were painted the same color magenta as my ballet flats.

  “We match,” she said, pointing to my shoes and displaying her nails for me. She smiled, and her teeth were perfect, a straight wall of white. “I’m sorry I have to take this from you. Have a good flight, honey.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and wiped my eyes. I still felt so terribly stupid.

  My mother and I hurried to our gate. The flight was waiting, and I was reliving it all, everything that had happened to me, over and over, inside my head. Every moment that had brought me onto that plane was playing in my mind like a movie on an old projector, images flashing in bright color. I took a deep breath i
n through my nose.

  The clock in the terminal said eight thirty. We boarded the plane, found our seats, tucked our purses underneath. The pilot’s voice came over the speakers, and we fastened the belts across our laps. The plane hummed and inched forward over the runway, and then up, and up, and up. My ears popped, frustrated with the change of pressure, and somewhere down on the ground, my father was walking back to our car, preparing to drive away from the airport, the distance between him and us growing with every moment. I had the window seat, and the passenger before me had pulled the shade down; I pushed it up and let in the blue of the sky.

  A pregnant woman was sitting across from me in the other aisle, and as we ascended, she put her hand on her stomach and smiled.

  It was raining when our flight arrived, and the clocks said 7:30 p.m.; we had lost the entire day somewhere over the ocean. We collected our luggage at the baggage claim and looked around for Leigh, who was supposed to be picking us up. She wasn’t anywhere that we could see, so we went into the ladies’ room. There was a mother in there with a little toddler boy at the sink, holding him up so that he could wash his hands.

  “Rub your hands together first,” she told him, moving his wrists back and forth. “Make some bubbles before you rinse the soap off.” I loved the sound of her voice; she had such a perfect British accent. It seemed a waste for her to live in England; she should have moved to the United States where everyone would really appreciate it.

  I still couldn’t believe that I was actually there, that within the next few hours I would be seeing Cadence. Thinking about it made my chest tighten. There was this weird mix of Christmas-Eve excitement mixed with death-row apprehension running in circles around my heart.

  I chose a bathroom stall and slipped in, sliding the little lock into place. My mother was in the stall next to me. I heard the door of the restroom open: The mother and her toddler went out and someone new clicked in on high heels. When my mother and I came out, the woman with high heels had already disappeared into another stall. My mother pressed the soap dispenser over her sink with the palm of her hand, but nothing came out.

  “There’s no soap in mine,” she said, pressing again, to no effect. “Is there soap in yours, Sphinxie?”

  “Yeah,” I said, shifting over so that she could get some.

  In the mirror over the sinks, I saw one of the stall doors behind me open. The woman with high heels came out, clicking over the bathroom tile floor. Her hair was shoulder length, hanging in a mass of bouncy blonde waves, a pair of sunglasses with shiny lenses perched on the top of her head. She wore a brown coat over a white blouse and well-fitted jeans, and there was an elegant string of chocolate pearls around her neck.

  “Sphinxie,” she said. “Sarah!”

  Her wide blue eyes were beautiful, enhanced with a tasteful amount of eye shadow, but with noticeable dark circles underneath them. It was Leigh, I realized suddenly. It was Leigh. I’d almost forgotten what she looked like. Seeing her in front of me was almost like seeing a fictional character suddenly sprung to life and standing before me in the flesh. Ever since she’d been gone, she’d just been part of my mother’s story, a past-tense presence. Now here she was in front of me, staring at me as though she felt exactly the same way I did.

  My mother whipped around from her sink, her hands still soapy and dripping wet, and pulled her best friend into a hug. Leigh bit her lip as they hugged; her eyes looked glossy with tears under the fluorescent overhead light in the bathroom. She smiled at me, but her eyes were dancing over my upper cheek, looking for the scar. I’d covered it up with concealer as always, and when she couldn’t find it, her smile spread wider. She and my mother broke apart, and she came for me, wrapping me into a tight hug. Her perfume filled up my nose, a light, rosy scent; her nails were long, and they were digging into the skin of my back through my shirt. I hugged her back as best I could without feeling awkward. I knew before setting out that it was going to be strange to see her again, but I’d underestimated just how strange. This woman had been like a second mother to me, yet I felt wooden in her arms, strained between buried childhood memories that made me want to pull away from her and hug her tighter at the same time.

  “Did you have a good flight?” she asked breathlessly when she had released me.

  “Yes, it was fine, really easy,” my mother said, looking a little teary-eyed herself. “No turbulence, right, Sphinx?”

  “No turbulence,” I confirmed, pulling a wad of paper towels out of the dispenser on the wall and drying my hands.

  “Isn’t this weird … we find each other in the bathroom, of all places!” said Leigh, moving to the sink to wash her own hands.

  “We were looking for you out there, but we figured we’d make a quick stop in here when we didn’t see you,” my mother said, laughing.

  “Same,” said Leigh, flipping her hair over her shoulder. “Can I have a few of those paper towels, Sphinx?” I still had extra clutched in my hand, and I gave them all to her. “I guess you already picked up your bags,” she said to my mother.

  “Yep, got everything.” My mother turned to me. “Sphinxie, why don’t you call your daddy? Let him know we got here safe and sound.” I obeyed, pulling my cell phone out of my purse and dialing my father. I talked to him as we walked out of the bathroom, relayed the story of finding Leigh, marveled over the change of time zones, and promised at least three more times to be safe and remember to have my mother charge her phone at Leigh’s house. He wanted to talk to my mother then, and Leigh, looking slightly shy, asked if she could say hello too.

  “Tell him to get off the phone,” my mother said teasingly after a few minutes, linking arms with Leigh. “We have some driving to do.” My cell phone was finally snapped shut and handed back to me.

  We found Leigh’s car in the airport parking lot, a sleek black Lexus. Leigh opened the trunk and helped us put our suitcases inside, the bags falling to the trunk floor with dull thuds. I blinked and stared at them lying there in Leigh’s car; this was really happening.

  “Who calls shotgun?” Leigh asked as she climbed into the driver’s seat and took out her keys.

  “You can have it,” I told my mother, and got into the backseat while she climbed into the front. There was a pair of brown lace-up guys’ shoes on the floor, thrown in a haphazard jumble with a deep purple scarf and a little paperback book, pages splayed open and bent. “There’s stuff on the floor,” I said, holding my feet up so I wouldn’t step on it.

  “It’s Cadence’s,” Leigh said. “You can move it to the side, Sphinx.”

  I buckled my seat belt and reached down to pick it all up. I hadn’t even seen Cadence yet, but I felt like his things were paving the way for his re-entrance into my life, giving off a presence that was distinctly him. And those shoes weren’t little-boy shoes; they were big, they belonged to a young man who was obviously taller than I was. I hesitated for a moment before my fingers brushed against the shoes: I knew the old Cadence would absolutely hate it if he knew I was touching his things. I shouldn’t be thinking like that, though, I reminded myself: Cadence had grown up, just like I had. He was different now. I couldn’t think about him the way I had when we were little.

  I grabbed the scarf and pulled it out from under the shoes, sending them toppling over, the book splaying out farther in protest. I winced involuntarily, hoping that I hadn’t permanently creased the pages. Carefully, I put the scarf on the seat next to me in a neat little pile of purple, letting my hands linger momentarily on the soft material. Then I tucked in the shoes’ laces and moved them out of my way, but not without inspecting them and making sure I hadn’t somehow scuffed them when I’d knocked them over by pulling on the scarf. Thankfully, I hadn’t. I picked up the book last, smoothing the pages down as best I could until they lay flat again. Then I turned it over to read the cover: The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka. I’d read that book for school, not all that long ago.

  I put the book down next to the scarf and turned toward the window,
feeling a little better now that Cadence and I had something more recent than childhood memories in common. We were already a little way from the airport, and I pressed my nose against the glass, taking in all the sights, fear and excitement mingling in my belly. We’d flown straight into London, but Leigh’s house was a fair way from the airport, and we had at least an hour’s drive ahead of us. I took my iPod out of my purse and put in the earbuds. My mother and Leigh were talking, catching up, and I turned the music up, not wanting to listen in. Later, I took out my cell phone and took a few blurry pictures of the view outside the car window with the phone camera, feeling guiltily like a tourist.

  We left the highway, entered a more suburban area, then a more rural one. I leaned my head against the window and watched the raindrops course down, racing each other, touching each other and merging. Soon we would be there, at Leigh’s almost-legendary England house. And he would be there, waiting. I traced the raindrops with my fingertips and turned off my iPod. The car radio was on, and all the radio hosts had such perfect voices.

  Leigh’s house surprised me; it rose up out of nowhere and pulled us up the driveway. It was a beautiful house, huge and relatively new-looking, but modeled after those old Victorian mansions that you see every now and again, looking like pages out of dusty old books. The lights were on in the windows, looking warm and inviting. Leigh pressed the button on her garage remote and the door slid open mechanically, flooding the driveway with light. I unbuckled my seat belt and opened the car door, feeling faintly giddy as I got out. My knees were a little weak, but I stood up as straight as I could and mentally promised myself that I wouldn’t let the butterflies in my stomach show. I couldn’t.

  “Do you want me to bring Cadence’s stuff inside?” I asked before I shut the door.

  “Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Leigh said as she helped my mother get our suitcases out of the trunk.