The Butterfly Novels Box Set: Contemporary YA Series (And By The Way; And For Your Information; And Actually)

by Denise Deegan

‘So?’

  ‘You’re not really going to miss him.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘That’s a bit cold.’

  I stare at him. ‘What’s a bit cold?’

  ‘You’re not going to miss him.’

  ‘Oh, my God. You’re so weird.’

  ‘And you’re so cold.’

  ‘What?’

  But he’s already walking away. Ahead of him, Sarah and Alex are waiting at the door. I shut my locker and go up to them.

  ‘What was that about?’ Alex asks as we walk along the corridor.

  ‘I have no clue.’

  ‘He looked upset,’ Sarah says.

  ‘I know, it was so weird. He kept giving me a hard time because I wasn’t more sorry that Josh was going to the States. He called me cold.’

  They look at the back of his head as he disappears into class.

  Sarah’s quiet for a moment, then she turns to me.

  ‘Maybe he was trying to tell you that you were cold to him.’

  ‘I was never cold to him. It was the total opposite.’

  ‘OK. Then I don’t know.’

  ‘That makes two of us.’

  ‘Three,’ Alex says.

  Monday night at eleven, I get a call.

  ‘You’re not going to believe it,’ Alex says.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We kissed. We were just watching Maggie fall asleep. It was, like, the most peaceful moment, leaning over the cot, watching her eyelids get heavier and heavier. Next thing I knew we were looking at each other and everything just stopped. Then we were kissing.’

  ‘What happened then?’ I ask cautiously.

  ‘He backed off. Totally. Said he wanted to stay friends, not ruin the way things were. So I kissed him again. Then - you’re not going to believe this - he told me that I didn’t want a serious relationship. I said, “Excuse me, but after Maggie, it’s the only kind of relationship I want.” I told him I loved him, Rache. He seemed so stressed. All he could talk about was what would happen if it didn’t work out; would we stay friends? I told him I felt closer to him than anyone. No offence, Rache.’

  I smile. ‘None taken, bitch.’

  ‘I told him we’d always be friends, no matter what. He actually made me promise. Weirdo,’ she says, with so much love in her voice.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then, he said he loved me. Oh, my God, I still can’t believe it. He loves me, Rache. He, loves, me. I’m going to die of happiness.’

  I laugh in relief. ‘I’m so glad for you, Alex. Both of you. The three of you. He’s a great guy.’

  ‘Really? You’re not just being Rachel?’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘You’re not just being nice?’

  ‘Shut up. I’m not nice.’

  ‘It’s not an insult.’

  ‘Yes it is.’

  ‘OK you’re a complete bitch.’

  ‘That’s better.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t like him, though,’ she says.

  ‘I do like him. I guess I just didn’t trust him to hang around. But you’re right, he’s changed …’

  ‘This is it, Rache. The real thing. You know what else?’ She sounds so happy. ‘He loved me when we were together. I always worried that Maggie wasn’t made with love and that she’d somehow instinctively know. But he loved me, Rache. And now I love him. You should talk to Mark,’ she says. ‘You should have this.’

  I go to see Mark on Tuesday and ask him out. No I don’t. I think about it. I imagine a few scenarios. In all of them, he turns me down. Or gets angry. Or both. He’s turned into such a grump. Why would I even want to go out with him? OK, I can think of a few reasons. Enough. I’m going to stop obsessing now. And think of leaves and trees. And puddles. And birds. I need to get back to the mountains.

  ‘D’you know what’s really weird,’ Alex says at lunch on Thursday. ‘After everything that’s happened between me and Louis, we’ve never been on an actual proper date.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘He’s asked me to dinner on Friday night. Dinner.’

  Sarah and I look at each other. ‘We’ll mind Maggie,’ we say together.

  ‘It’s OK. Dad’s offered. Well, Dad and Marsha.’

  ‘We’re doing it,’ Sarah says firmly.

  Alex smiles. ‘You sure?’

  ‘D’you want to live?’

  ‘It would be so unfair to kill me now.’ This girl is floating.

  ‘Have you told your dad you’re dating Louis?’ Sarah asks.

  ‘I probably should, shouldn’t I?’ She grimaces.

  ‘He might actually make more of an effort,’ I say. ‘When he calms down.’

  We laugh.

  On Friday, Sarah and I call over to Alex’s for our first official babysitting job.

  ‘Where’s Louis?’ Sarah asks.

  ‘Downstairs having a “chat” with Dad.’

  ‘God.’

  ‘I know,’ Alex says, putting on more mascara.

  Sarah and I start to get Maggie ready for bed. We opt for the Superman babygro.

  Finally, Louis appears. His hair is jelled. He’s wearing an actual shirt. A first.

  ‘What did he say?’ Alex asks immediately.

  ‘He told me if I ever hurt you or Maggie, he’d kill me.’

  ‘God. Sorry.’

  ‘I thought it was cool,’ he says.

  ‘It kind of is,’ I agree.

  He looks at me and smiles. And I know it’s changed between us.

  He goes over to Maggie. ‘Night, night, sweetie pie.’ He kisses her forehead. I think how she’s changed his life. Changed him. The person he almost ran from. Alex goes over to them. They look like that song by REM, ‘Shiny Happy People’. He calls them ‘his girls’. And I think, They don’t just look like a family any more, they are one.

  ‘About time they got together,’ Sarah says when they’re gone.

  ‘I know. It’s so great.’

  She looks at me. ‘Even though you don’t like Louis.’

  ‘Shut up. I do like Louis. And don’t call me nice.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘He’s a good guy - even if he is my brother.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘He’s always been good to me.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘He is actually a really caring person.’

  ‘It’s OK. I’m convinced.’ I hit her with a pillow and we laugh.

  We put Maggie to bed and bring the monitor downstairs to the screening room, where we fight over which movie to watch. Mean Girls or The Devil Wears Prada. I let Sarah win. So it’s The Devil Wears Prada, which I like anyway. I’ve just seen it too many times. It’s not possible to see Mean Girls too many times. We’re at that scene where Meryl Streep calls Anne Hathaway the ‘smart, fat girl’, when there’s a little cry on the baby monitor. One by one, the green buttons light up.

  ‘Shh,’ Sarah says.

  I pause Anne Hathaway with her mouth open. She still looks pretty. Silence on the monitor now.

  ‘She might just be moving around.’

  ‘We should check,’ Sarah says.

  Upstairs, Maggie is sitting up. She smiles at us.

  ‘Hello, you little monkey,’ Sarah says. Maggie laughs.

  I twist the knob on the mobile that hangs over her bed. ‘Hush Little Baby’ fills the room and tiny dolphins slowly turn. Maggie ignores them and just looks at Sarah with these pleading eyes. She knows what she’s doing.

  ‘You are such a softie,’ I say as Sarah lifts her up.

  ‘Want to watch a movie?’ Sarah asks Maggie.

  We bring her down. Sarah gives Maggie her soother. Maggie snuggles into her and in five minutes is asleep. ‘Night, night, little monkey,’ Sarah whispers.

  We bring her back up and settle her.

  ‘God, she’s so cute,’ I say when we’re back in the screening room. I reach for the zapper.

  ‘Rache?’

  ‘Yeah?
’

  There’s a long pause. I look at her.

  ‘Do you believe in reincarnation?’

  ‘Reincarnation?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She looks at me like she really needs a ‘yes’.

  ‘Do you?’ I ask carefully.

  ‘Sometimes I think. I don’t know …’ her voice trails off.

  ‘You think what?’

  ‘OK, this is going to sound weird.’ She stops. ‘You know the way Maggie was born at the same time Shane died? You don’t think …?’ Her voice tails off.

  Oh, God.

  ‘But then I think that Maggie is Maggie. Her own little person. And I don’t want her to be anyone else.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, with such relief. Because, for starters, what would Alex think?

  She looks at me, eyes so wide. ‘I miss him so much. Sometimes, I just need him to be here.’ She looks so suddenly lost. ‘I’m trying, so hard, to live till I die. But it takes so much energy. I have to push myself all the time to get up, get out, do stuff. When all I want is to lie in bed. I knew I was going to lose him. I knew it was going to be hard. I’d no idea it would be this hard, that instead of living till I die, I’d just want to die. I have all this love for him and nowhere to put it.’

  ‘Oh, Sarah.’ I hug her tight. And for ages she just cries. We both do.

  I stop first. Eventually she does too. She pulls back. Looks worried.

  ‘Don’t tell Alex what I said - about Maggie. She’d hate me.’

  ‘No, she wouldn’t. But I won’t say anything.’ I brush her hair back from her face.

  ‘Do you think I’m mad?’

  ‘No. I just think you miss him. How couldn’t you? I’m glad you told me, though. I thought you we were doing so well. And I wasn’t there for you. Then Rebecca was.’

  She looks at me. ‘No, she wasn’t. Not really. She helped me forget because she never knew Shane and, with her, it seemed easier to do the whole live-till-I-die thing. It’s all I wanted. Because it’s what he wanted. And if I could do it, then he wouldn’t have died for nothing. I can’t do it anymore though, Rache. It’s just so fake. And so freaking exhausting. I miss him too much.’

  ‘That’s OK.’

  She shakes her head desperately. ‘No it’s not. It’s like I’m giving up.’

  Then it hits me. ‘Sarah, sometimes, you need to give up.’

  She looks at me.

  ‘As long as you’ve known me, how hard have I worked?’

  ‘Too hard.’

  ‘And d’you know why I worked so hard? Because I was afraid of falling behind and being bullied again. I’ve stopped that, given up. I don’t care any more if I fail. Because I know I can handle it if I do.’

  ‘That’s different. If I give up, it’s like giving up on Shane.’

  ‘But he only wanted you to be happy, Sarah. That’s why he said it. And you’re not happy.’

  ‘I’ll never be happy again.’

  ‘You know where we’re going tomorrow?’

  She looks at me blankly.

  ‘We’re going to the mountains, OK?’

  She shrugs. ‘OK. Why?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  She thinks for a minute. ‘It’d be good to get away.’

  ‘You have no idea.’

  ‘How’ll we get there?’

  ‘We’ll work something out.’

  Sarah borrows her mum’s car. This involves a little white lie. Sarah has a provisional licence which means she should only drive with someone who has a full licence. She lets on that I do, so we can go.

  ‘I’m a great driver,’ she says as she starts the car. ‘It’s a stupid rule.’

  She checks the rear-view mirror, indicates and pulls out carefully. All the way up into the mountains, she drives confidently and well. We don’t talk. The farther we go, the more my mood lifts because it’s so good to be back. I roll the window down when we get to Maisie’s spot. I close my eyes and breathe in through my nose. I wonder if I could identify this place in a line-up of different smells. Bet I could. I open my eyes and watch nature go by, remembering how I felt the first time I came here - angry. Angry and lost.

  We park near the lake and walk down to it in silence. It’s like the world has stopped. And everything is still. Sarah starts to throw a few stones. I walk away and sit on a rock, to leave her to her thoughts. I wrap my arms around my knees and close my eyes, turn my face to the sun. After a while, I feel her sit beside me.

  ‘It’s amazing up here. Like a break. Or something,’ she says.

  ‘I was thinking. Maybe we could go somewhere for Easter. I don’t know. Rent a place in the mountains. And just walk. And play jigsaws. And eat soup.’

  ‘Sounds good.’

  ‘No TV or computers, just nature.’

  ‘I’d so like that.’

  ‘I’ll check it out. It shouldn’t be that expensive this time of year. And I wanted to do something good with the money from D4.’

  ‘We wouldn’t use it all up though?’ she sounds worried.

  ‘God, no. Want to go for a walk? I want to show you the woods.’

  She smiles. ‘Sure.’

  We walk for ages, then sit against a tree trunk on the forest floor.

  ‘He was my life,’ she says. ‘Nothing makes sense without him. Except maybe Maggie. I see Alex and Louis together and I know I’ll never have that again.’

  I turn to her. ‘You will. With somebody else.’

  ‘I don’t want anyone else. Just Shane.’

  I shut up. Because I’m not helping.

  She looks at me. ‘Do you think Alex is right about sending thoughts to a person?’

  ‘Yeah, I do.’

  ‘I still send him messages on Facebook. Do you think that’s weird?’

  ‘No. I’d do it.’ I think of Mark and how I’d die if anything happened to him. Still.

  ‘You don’t think I’m a failure, do you?’

  ‘A failure? How can you even say that? Sarah, you’ve been super-freaking-natural. No one can be as positive as you’ve been for as long as you’ve been. You can trust me on that. Telling yourself you don’t miss Shane is just a lie. You’ve lived it long enough.’

  ‘I know,’ she says. She looks relieved.

  Driving back, Sarah has all this colour in her face. In my head, I’m already planning Easter.

  She turns to me. ‘You should try again with Mark. You can’t just walk away from what you had. I didn’t have a choice.’

  And I know how annoying and stupid we must seem to her. ‘He doesn’t love me, Sarah.’

  She looks at me. ‘I feel like locking you both in a room. Jesus!’ she says, as a car comes flying round the corner we’re approaching, driving right into our side of the road.

  ‘Oh, my God!’

  Sarah brakes and swerves to avoid him. I can see his face, the shock on it. He has a beard. Oh, my God, we’re going off the road. The drop-off is steep. The car is in the air. We are flying, front tipped down. My stomach swoops like on a roller coaster. Everything’s happening in slow motion. We are totally quiet. No screaming. No sound. Sarah’s hands grip the wheel, her knuckles white. Ahead of those knuckles, through the windscreen, the brown and boggy ground is coming up fast. We look at each other. I think, My life is over.

  I’m lying on my back. My head hurts. I put my hand up to it and feel something. It’s a hat.

  ‘Why am I wearing a hat?’ My mouth is so dry, my lips are stuck together, the words barely make it out.

  ‘You’re awake! Nurse! She’s awake.’

  I squint my eyes open, look to the sound. Everything’s blurry. My thoughts scramble together. Nurse equals hospital. OK, I’m in hospital. But why? God, I’m thirsty. Maybe I’ve rabies. Why would I have rabies? I live in Ireland. Don’t I? I close my eyes to help me think. There’s movement beside me. The smell of perfume. I squint my eyes open again. An unfamiliar face. Smiling.

  ‘Rachel, I’m Nurse Kelly. You’re in hospital. You were in an accident.’


  Rachel. Nurse. Hospital. Accident. OK.

  ‘You were in a car accident in the Dublin mountains.’ She’s wrapping something cold around my arm. Blood pressure, I think. I remember a beard. Then a face. Then knuckles.

  ‘Sarah!’ I sit up suddenly. My head and chest roar in pain. ‘Where’s Sarah?’

  Her cool hand lowers me back down. Then she moves aside. I see a woman. It's my mum.

  She smiles. ‘Sarah’s great. Walked out of that heap of metal without a scratch on her. Then saved your life.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘At home in bed. It’s two in the morning. She was here all day. And all day yesterday.’

  ‘I’m here two days? Am I OK?’ I could be paralysed, I think. Then I remember I just sat up. And everything’s sore.

  ‘You’ve a little skull fracture,’ she says.

  ‘A skull fracture?’

  ‘They’re watching you very carefully. We’re all just so relieved you’re awake. Oh and you broke a few ribs.’

  ‘Makes sense,’ I say, closing my eyes in pain.

  ‘Nurse, could she have something for the pain?’

  ‘Absolutely.’ The air moves and the smell of perfume eases.

  ‘You’ll be in here for a little while,’ Mum says.

  I think of Sarah and the licence. ‘The accident. It wasn’t our fault. This guy—’

  ‘I know, pet. Sarah’s told the police everything. It was a hit-and-run. How a person could do that? Up in the mountains. With no one around to help. I hope he rots in hell.’

  ‘He has a beard.’

  ‘I know, pet. They need more to go on.’

  ‘I know his face.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it now.’

  The nurse is back with some painkillers, which I take. I lie back down and close my eyes. I’ve never been so tired.

  When I wake again, it’s bright. Sarah’s sitting beside the bed looking at my face. She smiles.

  ‘Hey! How’re you doing?’

  ‘I’ve a skull fracture.’

  ‘I know. Oh, my God, Rache. I thought I’d killed you.’ She starts to get upset.

  ‘It wasn’t your fault. That guy—’

  ‘Drove off. Left us up in the freaking mountain. Never came back to see if we were alive or dead.’

  ‘How did you get us down?’

  ‘Mobile phone.’