“Maybe.” Blister suddenly puts his arm on mine to stop me. “Listen.”
There it is. The sound of water slipping among the trees. We walk more quickly, almost running. Blister’s bag bumps up and down on his back.
The stream is tiny here. A thin line moving through the wet grass. We bend down to touch it, letting the cold sweep over our hands.
“It’s funny how it just keeps on going,” I say.
“And the bit of water we see, right now, is gone,” Blister says, putting his other hand in it, to make a dam with his knuckles. The water builds up slightly, but then pushes around the side. “We could put all the stones in the world in front of it, but it’d still find its way through.”
I imagine Kathleen facing the wall of water. She doesn’t have time to scream before she’s washed away.
I shake my wet hands in the air. The cold on my skin disappears.
“Shall we walk for a bit?” Blister asks.
“I’m going to walk in the stream,” I reply.
“I knew you would,” Blister laughs.
“Maybe I’ll spot some salamander eggs.” I take off my sandals and loop them through my fingers.
“It’s cold,” I say as the water soaks my ankles.
“Of course it is.”
“It’s nice, though.” I want to stand and watch my feet underneath the rippled glass, but Blister has started walking.
“Did you know that salamanders regenerate their lost limbs?” Blister asks. The stream hisses gently at me.
“So their legs can just grow back again?”
“I think so. And other damaged parts of their body too.”
If Tom was a salamander, maybe he could grow new lungs.
“Look.” Blister is pointing to thick grass at the bottom of a tree.
“What?”
“There’s a snake.”
I stop still.
“It’s an adder, I think,” he says. Slowly, he creeps forward. I watch as the gap between us gets bigger.
“Don’t, Blister,” I say quietly, putting my sandals on my wet feet.
“It’s not moving.”
“Then it’s sleeping. That’s even worse, if you wake it.”
Blister leans down carefully toward it.
“I think it’s definitely an adder,” he whispers.
“It’ll hurt you, Blister.” I’m edging toward him. I want to pull him back, to where he’s safe.
“I’ve always wanted to see one close.”
“You’ve seen it now.”
“I don’t think it’s asleep,” he says. “I think it’s hurt.”
He kneels down, right next to the snake. It doesn’t move. I walk forward slowly, wishing my feet wouldn’t make a sound.
“It’s been bleeding,” Blister says, pointing toward the coil of brown in the grass. There’s a big bubble of dried blood cracking out of the snake’s skin.
It must sense us. It uncurls slightly and tries to lift its head. I grab Blister back, but he doesn’t move.
“I don’t think it can hurt us,” he says quietly. The snake begins to roll strangely back on itself. “We need to help it.” Blister looks up at me.
“How?”
“We’ll take it back to our trailers. When I get home, I’ll ask my dad what to do.”
“To make it better?”
Blister nods. “Maybe Tom would like it more than a salamander.”
I look at the snake, shuddering in the grass.
“OK.”
Blister slides his hands along the knotted ground. He hesitates slightly, but then pushes them underneath the snake. I know he’s a bit scared, even though he’s pretending that he isn’t.
“Are you just going to pick it up?” I ask.
He nods. “I’ll carry it in my bag.”
“I think that would scare it.”
“I’ll just carry it, then,” he says.
“Hold your hands around its neck so it can’t bite you.”
“I don’t think they have necks.” Blister laughs a bit shakily.
The snake goes still as Blister picks it up.
“It knows we’re trying to help it,” I say.
We walk in silence. The snake’s tongue darts in and out, but I think it’s slower than it should be. Part of me wants to put my hand in front of it, to let its tongue touch my skin, just to see.
The forest seems smaller now, as if it’s closed in on us slightly. I want to tell it that we will look after its snake. I whisper the words in my head and hope that it can hear.
The snake begins to writhe slightly again.
“Do you think it’s hurting?” I ask.
“I don’t know. I hope not.”
Outside the forest, we walk in the heat across the grass. I steady Blister, as he steps over our fence, his eyes on the split brown skin in front of him.
“I think we should keep him in the school trailer,” he says.
“Inside?”
“If we leave him outside, an animal will eat him.” Blister itches his nose with his shoulder. “We’ll need some grass to make him comfortable.”
I rip up handfuls of the long grass beside our path, then follow them up the steps, my arms full of the dry green.
Our snake bucks slightly as Blister lays him down on the nest I’ve made. Then he’s still.
“What if he just slides off it and gets lost in the trailer?” I ask.
“He’s too ill, I reckon.”
I lie down on my belly so that I’m facing the snake.
“We need to name him,” I say.
“OK.” Blister sits cross-legged next to me on the floor. I look into our snake’s eyes. Round beads stare back at me, unblinking.
“You’re going to be OK,” I tell him. His tongue moves out slowly at me in reply. I smile up at Blister. “He’s trying to talk to me.”
Suddenly, Blister throws himself forward, pushing me away. There’s a shooting pain in my wrist. The snake hisses at me and curls back again, rocking on the silent grass.
“Did it get you?” Blister asks, with panic in his eyes.
“Yes.” I look up at him, but my wrist is hurting and I don’t know what else to say.
He grabs my arm and is pulling me out and down the steps.
“Wait here,” he says, but his words haven’t got the right breaths. “Don’t touch the bite. I’ll get my dad.” He’s already sprinting away.
“No,” I shout. “He’ll tell my dad and Kathleen. If she finds out about you she’ll stop us seeing each other.”
Blister runs back to me.
“You have to get to the hospital, June.”
“I’ll bike home. I’ll go from there.”
My wrist is going red. Already my skin looks puffy with the poison underneath it.
“It’ll take too long.”
“I’ll risk it,” I say. Blister knows I mean it.
“Quickly, then. I’ll come with you.”
“Not to my house.”
He’s dragging me again. We’re climbing over the gate.
“I’ll stay with you until you’re almost there.” He picks up my bike and holds it steady, as I climb onto it. “Can you do this? You’ve got to try to keep your arm still.”
“Yes.” But my hand feels distant on the handlebar.
“Hurry,” Blister says, and we pedal our bikes along the track and in among the trees.
“OK?” Blister looks over at me.
“Yes.”
But it feels like a bruise is being drawn up my arm.
“Was it definitely an adder?” I ask.
“I think so.” He stares straight ahead.
We bike along the road. Blister is fast and I have to keep up with him.
“What if they see you?” I ask.
“It won’t matter,” he says, as he keeps pedaling ahead.
“It will.” It will, Blister, it will.
Near my house I stop and he has to stop too.
“I’ll go on my own now.”
“They will be.”
“Go straight there.” He looks down at my arm. “Quickly.”
So I put my feet back on the pedals and start to move.
“I’ll see you soon,” I say, but I don’t look back.
Around the corner, my house stands looking blankly at me. I get off my bike, unclick the gate and go through.
I leave my bike tipped on the grass. My arm feels heavy now, but I can’t tell whether it hurts anymore. My elbow pulses in time with my steps.
I open the front door, but the house is silent.
“Dad?” I call quietly, but no one replies.
The kitchen is empty. In the living room, I see them all through the window. They’re clustered together in the backyard—my dad, Kathleen and Megan. It looks so wrong.
I stand and watch them. The pain in my arm heaves up again. I glance down at my swollen skin.
My dad finally looks up and sees me. He smiles and waves, beckoning me to join them. I stare back. It’s enough to make him stand up and walk inside.
•••
The hospital is very white. I’ve never been in one, apart from when I was born. I didn’t come here when my mom died. It was too late.
I am in a wheelchair and they’re pushing me along. My dad is running beside me. Kathleen and Megan are somewhere parking the car. I hope they lose their way and don’t come in.
It’s very bright in here. There are lots of windows on either side of the corridor, but still the long lights are shining on the ceiling.
“How long ago?” the doctor asks my dad.
“About an hour.”
The doctor nods. Light brown skin, peeking out of a stark, white coat.
We stop in a room and they lay me on a bed. They give me pills to swallow and they prod my bulbous arm.
“And it was definitely an adder?” The doctor peers at me kindly.
“I think so.”
I want to sleep and look at the round eyes of the snake again. Perfect circles, just watching me.
“It was dying,” I say. The doctor nods his head again, as he hooks a plastic bag filled with liquid to a pole.
“Where did you find it?”
“By a river.”
And Blister picked it up and carried it back.
“Near Creekend Pool,” I lie.
There’s a heaviness under my skin. A seeping of the snake into me.
“Kathleen will be here soon,” my dad says. His fingers touch my other hand.
“Don’t let her in.”
The doctor attaches a drip to the pole next to the bed. The liquid bulges in the bag.
“You’ve been one lucky lady,” the doctor says to me, his words crinkled around the edges. “Any other snake and things would have been very different.”
“But you shouldn’t have touched it,” my dad says.
“It was dying.”
“Snakes can still bite you up to an hour after they’ve died,” the doctor says.
“I didn’t know that,” my dad says.
The ceiling is painted smooth. If it was water, I’d like to swim in it. It’d cool me down.
I look back to the doctor and he smiles at me. I think he has kindness in his bones. When I’m alone with him, I’ll tell him everything. He’ll make the bite better and he’ll make everything else better too.
The door opens. I don’t look, because I already know. I sense the two of them there, before they even say anything.
“June,” Kathleen says, and I hear her rushing toward me. Now the doctor won’t be able to save me.
“This must be Mom,” the doctor says, and he smiles for her, too, as he reaches out and shakes her hand.
After
“I didn’t tell anyone what Kathleen was doing,” I say. “Not properly.”
“Why was it so difficult to tell?” Reverend Shaw asks gently.
“Have you ever been scared?” I ask him.
“Yes.”
“But really scared. So scared that your thoughts shut down and you can’t see, or hear, or think properly?”
“No,” Reverend Shaw says. “I’ve never been that scared.”
“I have.”
“I know you have.” He reaches over and touches my arm gently. “It must have felt impossible to ask for help.”
“At the time it did. But now I want to find the little girl I was and tell her not to be afraid. I want to take her hand and help her say the first few words. Just the first few words is all it would take. I wish I’d had the courage then.”
“It wasn’t about courage. You had that. It was about opportunity and faith in human nature. Yet your faith in that was being destroyed.”
“But there were good people too, who would have listened. They would have helped me if they’d known. They could have saved me,” I say. And the pain of it crushes me so hard that I curl my head into my knees.
“Never blame yourself for that, June. You were just a little girl.”
I hear Reverend Shaw open his Bible. The pages are thin and sound like water. He pauses and then he takes a deep breath.
“Suffering produces endurance,” he reads. “And endurance produces character and character produces hope.” I feel his hand gently on my back. “And hope does not put us to shame.”
I let his words hold me. They fold around me and I try to let them keep me safe.
Before
fourteen years old
I look at the leaflet in front of me and try again. It says to sweep the powder over the lid and make it darker in the hollow of the eye. But, when I do, it just looks like someone has punched me. I rub at my eyes with a tissue and start over. I thought it’d be easier than this morning, but it’s not.
I imagine my mom next to me. If she was here, she’d take the brush and dab it on my eyelids. She’d make it perfect.
I want her to untangle herself from those weeds, swim through the biting water and come back to me. I want her to be my mom again.
Megan comes in as I try to wipe the mascara wand through my eyelashes without making big clumps. In the reflection, I can see her leaning on the doorframe.
“What are you doing?” she asks. She sounds like she genuinely wants to know, but I ignore her.
I stroke the wand through my other eyelashes. I’m scared to blink in case it smudges. If Megan wasn’t in here, I could go wrong and start again. She watches in silence as I finish and put the make-up back on the table.
“Is it difficult?” she asks.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” I say coldly. She looks upset, briefly, and then she’s suddenly angry.
“Well, there’s no point in you wearing make-up,” she says. “You’ll never look pretty.”
I get up and push her roughly out of the way as I go out. She has to move so I can close the door behind me.
“It’s my room,” I tell her.
“I wouldn’t want to go in there anyway,” she says, and she walks away, jerking her head back so that her hair sweeps out. “I wouldn’t want to touch all of your dust.”
I want to hit her, but I keep walking down the stairs, out of the house. I get on my bike and I’m gone.
I don’t go too fast. If I do, it makes my eyes water and that’ll make my make-up smudge. And I want to stay looking nice.
I’ve cycled down this path so many times that I could ride with my eyes closed. I love it. It feels like the road to freedom, with my best friend waiting at the end.
I lean my bike against the gate and climb over. It’s a cloudy day, but warm, the sort of day that makes our trailers look a bit worn.
The paper streamers that Blister and I strung from the kitchen to the bones room has been battered by last weekend’s storm and it trails down limply.
Blister isn’t in the art room. He’s in the school room, as I thought he’d be, sitting on a beanbag with a big book open on his lap. I look at him through the window while he doesn’t know I�
��m here.
He’s so different from the boy I first met. He’s taller than me now and his face has gotten older. His shoulders are broader and he wears big sneakers, rather than the small sandals he used to have. He still has glasses held together with tape, since Si sat on them.
When he reads, it’s like the rest of the world disappears. I wish I was like that.
Something makes him sense I’m here. He looks up and smiles.
“What are you doing out there?” he asks.
“I didn’t want to disturb you,” I say as I go up and through the door.
“That’s not like you,” he grins, putting a piece of paper into the pages of the book and closing it. “What’s on your face?”
I reach up to touch my eyes. “Make-up,” I say quietly.
“Why?” he asks. I shrug. And suddenly, for the first time ever, I wish I wasn’t here. “You don’t look right.”
I didn’t think Blister would be like this. Cherry and Lauren teased me at school today, but I didn’t think Blister would.
“So?” I say. I have a rush of sadness and anger that I don’t know what to do with.
Blister is just looking at me strangely, as if he doesn’t like me anymore.
I jump down the steps and run down our path.
“June!” Blister shouts after me. But I block him out, scramble over the gate and yank my bike upright. “Where’re you going?”
Away. Away from it all. I’m going to bike and bike until I get to the edge of the earth.
I’m crying so loudly that I can’t hear anything else. I don’t even know that Blister has followed, until I see him biking along beside me.
“Stop!” he shouts. I look forward and keep going. He speeds up and swerves in front of me. My bike crashes into his and I fly from it. There’s so much pain in my arm and my hip when I land.
Our bikes lie tangled together on the bumpy ground.
Blister kneels beside me, shaking his head.
“June?” He’s here. Beside me.
“I’m OK,” I say, sitting up.
“Have you broken anything?” Blister asks.
“I don’t think so. I just hurt.”
“I’m sorry.” He puts his hand awkwardly in mine. “I didn’t mean that you don’t look nice. It’s just that you don’t need it.” He’s going red, but I can’t tell whether it’s because he’s hurting from the fall. “You look pretty enough without it.”
“Why do you say that when I’m not?”
Paper Butterflies Page 7
