Chasing Butterflies (15 page)

Yara

“Give that back!” I shout, reaching for my empty plastic box. “What have you done?” My eyes move frantically over the ground, noticing the crawling caterpillars that are being stamped on as the evil girls circle around me. “Get off them,” I wail through body-shaking sobs. “Leave them alone! Leave
me
alone!”

Jasmine laughs and purposely lifts her foot to squash some more. “Why are you so obsessed with them? They’re just horrible fucking creepy-crawlies. You need to get a life!”

“I have a life!” I shout. I look up at the butterflies that are struggling to fly, the ones that are too young to be free.
Fly, little butterflies. Be strong
. “Leave my property. Right now!”

They all laugh and throw some of the empty boxes before leaving my garden without another glance in my direction. Jasmine is the last, and just before she slips through the gap in the fence, she turns around and gazes up at my house. “You’re going to end up dead in there,” she says, pointing her finger at me and then behind me towards the house. “You’ll be just like your weird Grandmother, only no one will find you because no one cares about you. You’ll rot on that kitchen floor for years before anyone even thinks to look for you. You’re so insignificant that you could disappear and no one would notice…or care.”

“That’s not true,” I wail. “There are people that would know!”
But would they care?

“Who?” She raises her eyebrows at me and then looks down at her nails as if she’s bored by our conversation. I can feel my shoulders shaking from the sobs that I’m trying to control. My hands are balled into tight fists as I attempt to keep my anger at bay.

I want to tell her about Gabriel and what we did last night. I want to tell her how he made me feel…that it will stay with me until the second I slip from this earth. How the feel of his touch is burned into my skin. How the sound of my name being whispered from his lips will echo in my head for as long as I can hear. And if I could, I’d get a print of his hand and tattoo it onto my hip where it felt like it was always supposed to be. But instead of saying any of that, I say, “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”

She smirks
.
I wish I could wipe that stupid smirk off her face.

“Maybe now you’ll think about leaving school. Maybe you should take some lessons on how to take care of a house or something. This place gives me the creeps.” Her eyes lift, focusing on something behind me, and then I see them widen in shock and her mouth drop open slightly.

I spin around, wondering what she saw that freaked her out so much, and find Gabriel emerging from behind the weeping willow with a face like thunder.

“Ww-what a-are—?” Jasmine begins to stutter.

“Leave,” he growls at her. “Now.”

I turn back around, expecting her to tell him where to go, but Jasmine looks absolutely terrified. Without another word or so much as a glance at me, she disappears through the gap in my fence.

I slump to the ground, not caring how much my knees sting from the impact of the hard concrete, and start to gather as many caterpillars as I can.

“Is she the one that’s been bullying you, Yara?” he asks as he crouches down beside me.

I sniff and nod my head. “She and her friends, but it’s mainly her.”

“For how long?”

Dragging an empty box towards me, I carefully place the caterpillars into it and then gather leaves as well. “For as long as I can remember. But it’s been much worse these past few months.”

Gabriel puffs out a deep breath and then pushes the broken boxes towards the grass. I wipe my face with the back of my hand and pick up some bits of the shredded netting. I feel broken, just like my netting is. I never thought Jasmine and her friends could be this horrible. I mean, what did those butterflies ever do to them?

“Let me help,” Gabriel says when I start to weave some string through the broken netting to try and repair it.

“I can do it,” I tell him, wanting to sound strong.

“You have me now, Yara,” he says, coming up behind me. “You don’t have to do it all on your own. Please let me help.” His fingers curl around my shoulder, and then he pulls at me until I let the sashes slip through my fingers and give in. Turning around, I keep my eyes down and let him tug me to his chest.

“I hate them,” he says. “I hate what they do, and I especially fucking hate how they make you feel.”

“They’re not worth hating,” I whisper as tears silently stream down my cheeks. “I don’t want you even thinking about them, never mind wasting energy
feeling
something for them.”

Gabriel’s arms tighten around me, almost to the point of smothering, but I don’t pull away. My arms find their way around his back and then I squeeze him with all my might.

“We’ll find a way to sort it out,” he tells me, his breath moving pieces of my hair. “
I’ll
sort it.”

“How?” I breathe.

“I just will,” he says. “I promise.”

I don’t say anything back. I believe him. I trust him.

I just hope he’s right.

After a few minutes of holding me, Gabriel moves away and holds me at arm’s length. “Will you be okay?”

“When?” I ask, wondering which part of this morning he’s on about.

“Now.”

“Where are you going?”

He takes a deep breath and looks over my head towards the fence. “I have to go and take care of something, and I have to do it right now. It can’t wait. I’m sorry.”

“No,” I say, shaking my head at him. “I mean, it’s fine.
I’m
fine. You don’t need to be sorry.”

He nods quickly as his eyes swing back to my face.

“Will you be back today?”

I’m not sure,” he says. “I don’t know how long I’ll be.” He gently presses his mouth to my lips, and then he’s gone before I can ask him anything else.

I turn around and watch him slip through the gap in the fence. With a sad look around, I run back into the house and bolt up the stairs.

Tears wobble in front of my eyes when I stumble into my room. I hate Jasmine. I hate what she did to my butterflies. I hate that she’s made Gabriel see what a complete loser I am.

I hate her. I hate her. I hate her.

I glance around the room, wondering what I can do with myself until Gabriel comes back, and then I spot the letters on my desk.

Pain.
I never really knew what it was before now. Sure, I’ve twisted my ankle before, and the tattoo I got wasn’t exactly pain free, but nothing compares to the hurt that’s splintering my heart right now.

I thought the heart was just an organ that pumps blood around your body. Sure, it’s important…but still, just an organ. How wrong I was.

The heart is the centre of everything you do. It’s not your brain that controls your feelings; it’s your heart. It must be. Why else does it feel like it’s stopped beating? Why else do I feel like I want to push my hand in my chest and rip my heart out just so I can stop feeling like I do?

I crumple the letters in my hands. It’s not just my heart that hurts now. The pain feels like it’s slithering into my stomach, making me feel sick. My throat keeps closing against the tidal wave of tears and emotion that keep swelling upwards, trying to break free from me. I suppose my body is trying to rid itself of these sad feelings. I don’t want them inside me either.

I shouldn’t be here. I should never have been born. I wasn’t planned, and I certainly wasn’t wanted. But at least now I know why I’ve always felt like I didn’t belong here. Now I know why I’m such an oddball. And at least now I know that I was loved—even if it was only for a few hours.

My Grandpa wasn’t my real grandpa. He was my step-Grandpa. Apparently, my Granny left my biological grandpa when my mum was ten years old. They all used to live together somewhere else, but that all changed when Granny decided she wanted to live with the man I thought was my Grandpa.

The letters that I found in Granny’s drawer were from my mum—my mum who gave birth to me on her fourteenth birthday. My mum who was raped by my step-Grandpa when she was just thirteen.

I wish I didn’t know what that word meant, but I do. Men have raped women for centuries, and I’ve read about it some of my books. Thinking of what my mum must have gone through makes me feel sick. She was only a girl, younger than I am now, and she had to endure that monster forcing himself on her.

In her letters, she told me that she loved me. She said she was relieved when I finally inhaled my first breath…that when I was put into her arms, she felt love for me bloom in her chest instantly. She said she was sorry that she couldn’t stay with me and love me. She said I was beautiful and perfect, and that she was sure I would grow up to lead a happy life.

But what I’ve figured out is that she didn’t realise I was going to stay with Granny and the monster. She wrote that Granny promised her that they could put me up for adoption. She said she didn’t want me anywhere near the man that was capable of doing to me what he’d done to her. Granny promised my mum that she would kick him out and find a suitable home for me. Mum thought she was too young to look after me properly. It had all been arranged.

In her final letter to me, my mum tells me even though she knew my new life was all sorted for me, she couldn’t face her own life. Not without me. Not while still being able to remember how it felt to hold me, how her arms would crave the way my little body felt in them.

Reading those letters was like having her in the room with me. I’ve never heard her voice, but I felt like I could when I was reading them. Now I’ve finished, it’s like she’s gone again and I ache to see her. To feel her. To hear her. I’d give anything to have her love surrounding me.

Her writing is choppy and untidy in places, making it a little difficult to read. The words are scrawled across each page as if she couldn’t spare the time to correct her grammar or spelling. As if she needed to get it all out of her as quickly as possible.

I feel like that right now. I feel like I need to get it all out. And quickly. I hate that I’m the product of a rape. I wasn’t wanted. I was made from an act of evil. No wonder I’m crazy. No wonder I feel like I can’t breathe all the time.

Maybe that’s why Granny hated me. Maybe she didn’t like what she discovered about her husband, but she was a crazy bat that loved him anyway. I must have been a constant reminder to her of what a monster he really was.

I hate myself. I hate what I know is inside me.

I need to get it out. I
have
to get it out.

I throw the letters into the sink and peel my nightie over my head. Jasmine was right; no one wants me in this world. No one cares about me either.

Taking a deep breath, I climb into the tub that’s been overflowing and is now flooding my bathroom. The water sloshes over the sides as I lean back, letting my head disappear under the surface. I hold my breath for as long as I can and then burst back out of the water. Pushing my hair away from my face, I lean over the side and grab the razor blade. Granny said to not go too deep. Just a surface wound would be enough to distract me, she said. And I really need distracting.

The blade shakes as I hold it above my wrist. I’m not sure if the wrist is the right place, but it’s the only limb that’s not covered by water, and I don’t want to see all the blood. I squeeze my eyes shut, and with one quick swish of the blade, I slice my skin right open.

Gabriel

I clasp my hands in front of me and glare at my sister from across the table. “You’re going to go over there and apologise to her, Jasmine. For everything.”

Jasmine crosses her arms and scowls at me. “I am not.”

“Mum,” I growl, “tell her.”

Mum has been quiet, and if I were Jasmine, I’d be terrified right now. Mum usually yells and tells you how mad she is.

“I didn’t do anything!” protests Jasmine. She flings her hands in the air and turns toward our mum. “I was just in her stupid garden with my friends.”

“I saw you,” I tell her. “I saw you march up to her and yell in her face like she was a piece of shit to you. I saw you throw the caterpillars out and then kill them all.”

“They’re just bugs!” she yells. “I can’t believe you’re freaking out over some bugs. And what the hell were you even doing in the freak’s house anyway?”

“It’s none of your bloody business,” I shout back.

“Pft,” she scoffs. “Next you’ll be telling me she’s not really crazy and that she’s not the weirdest person you’ve ever met.”

“She’s not and she isn’t,” I say quickly.

Jasmine’s eyes narrow at me. “Mum, I can feel my pulse beating all over my body.”

Mums head snaps toward Jasmine. “Don’t use your epilepsy as an excuse to get out of this, young lady.”

“I’m not,” Jasmine says as she fans her face with her hands. “I feel hot and clammy. And I swear we’ve already has this conversation before. I’ve got déjà vu. Seriously.”

Mum doesn’t believe her, I can tell, but I’m guessing she still won’t take any chances. “Stop the arguing,” she tells us. “Jasmine, what you did was despicable. I know it was you because I found paint on your clothes the other day, and I noticed we’re missing a roll of brown tape from the drawer. I’m embarrassed and severely disappointed.”

Jasmine opens her mouth to protest, but Mum glares at her.

“Don’t say another word,” Mum tells her. “The next time you speak will be when you apologise to Yara—to her face. Gabriel will escort you over there in a minute.”

“But Mum!” she wails.

“I’m coming with you too,” Mum tells hers. “It’s about time this family started to right some of this village’s wrongs.”

“How? By saying sorry to
Yara
?” Jasmine sniggers and then shoves some of her sleeve into her mouth.

“Yara hasn’t done anything to anyone,” my mum says. “She’s a lovely girl who needs a helping hand right now. And we’re going to give it to her.”

“I’m not helping her with shit.”

Mum lunges from the chair and grabs Jasmine around the shoulders, hauling her up to her feet.

“Mum!” Jasmine gasps as her eyes go wide.

“Get out of my sight,” Mum says as she pushes Jasmine out of the room. “Go upstairs, get dressed and get ready to go and apologise to Yara.”

“This is a joke,” Jasmine mumbles as she walks up the stairs.

As soon as I open the front door, I know something is wrong. There’s water dripping from the ceiling and onto the floor in front of me.

“Yara?” I call, stepping through the puddle. I turn and beckon my mum and Jasmine towards me, watching as they tiptoe through the water as if walking on ice.

“What the hell?” whispers Jasmine as her eyes move over the broken things that are strewn all over the house.

“Shut up,” I hiss.

“Whatever.”

“Stop it, the pair of you,” my mum says as we trudge through the hallway.

“Yara?” I call again. “Are you here?”

“It must be a burst pipe,” my mum says, following me as I start to climb the stairs.

I bend down and swirl my fingers through the water. “But it’s kind of warm.”

“Maybe the crazy bitch wanted a swimming pool in her living room.”

God, I hate her sometimes.

“For God’s sake, Jasmine!” Mum spins around and swats Jasmine on the arm. “Behave yourself. I’ve not decided your punishment yet, and there’s always time to add more to it.”

Jasmine doesn’t say anything.

None of us say anything as we stare at the pink-coloured water that pours out from under the bathroom door.

“Oh, no,” says Mum, pushing past me. I stare in shock as she barges into the bathroom, where I can see Yara’s limp arm hanging over the edge of the bath, blood pouring from her wrist..

“It was just some creepy crawlies,” says Jasmine beside me. I can tell by the way her voice is shaking that she’s as shocked as I am. “No one kills themselves over caterpillars!”

“Gabriel, call an ambulance,” my mum barks.

I can’t speak. Yara’s bathroom, which was completely white, is now streaked with bright red blood. It’s worse than a scene out of a horror movie.

“Is she dead?” asks Jasmine.

I hate her more in that moment than I’ve ever hated anyone in my life.

“Nearly,” Mum says. “One of you call a bloody ambulance. Now!”

This can’t be happening.

“I don’t really remember much after that,” I whisper, even though I know she can’t hear me.

The scene flashes through my head like a drunken memory, some images more vivid than others. Images that will haunt me for as long as I live.

Yara being pulled from the bath…her naked body limp and pale, her hair dangling from her head....the screech of the ambulance as it peeled away from her house….the sirens that deafened me as I sat in the back, watching the life seep out of her.

I blink and rub my eyes. My nightmares about Alex and how I imagined her living out the rest of her short life are nothing compared to the nightmares that plague my dreams now. I look down at the bed and watch Yara’s chest rise and fall with each deep, sleepy breath she takes.

She was finally released from the hospital five days ago, and instead of taking her back to her house, I persuaded my mum to let her stay here so she can recover properly. But it’s not the end of her journey—not even close. People who try to kill themselves aren’t just let out of the hospital and told not to do it again. We know there’s going to be a visit tomorrow and we’ll learn about Yara’s immediate future, but for now, we’re just letting her heal.

The cut to Yara’s wrist was quite deep and she only missed her main artery by a single centimetre. She lost a lot of blood and Mum says transfusions sap the life out of you for a while, which is exactly why Yara’s been mostly sleeping. She’s also barely eaten, and when she is awake, she acts like she doesn’t really want to be awake. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say she’s depressed.

But that’s not the Yara I know. It seems she’s lost her sparkle.

“Hey,” she croaks as her eyes flutter open. Her hand squeezes mine. “What time is it?”

“Hey,” she says croakily as her eyes flutter open. Her hand squeezes mine. “What time is it?”

I glance down at my watch. “It’s almost ten.”

“In the morning or at night?”

I smile at her. “At night.”

“Oh,” she says, rubbing her eyes. “I don’t feel like going back to sleep now.”

“What do you want to do?” I ask.

She turns her head and looks across the room toward the window. “I want to go swimming.”

I frown at her. “Swimming? Where?”

“You know where.”

I shake my head. “I can’t take you there. You’re not well enough, and if my mum found out, she’d kill me.”

“Please,” she begs, turning over. She grabs my hand and tugs gently until I’m hovering above her. “They’re coming for me tomorrow. Just let me have this one night. Please, Gabriel. Take me back there.”

She’s right. She might not get another night here—not for a while anyway. And I’m pretty sure the Yara that’s going to come back to us isn’t going to be the Yara that chases butterflies around her garden and skip to the creek in the middle of the night. I’m going to lose her. The wild, carefree, energetic part of her that I’ve come to love is going to disappear.

“Okay,” I agree, “but you’re wearing two layers of clothes, and I’m going to carry you.”

She rolls her eyes but does as she’s told. She even lets me help her get dressed. I creep through the house, making sure we don’t wake up my mum, and sneak out through the back door. Mum sent Jasmine to our grandmother’s for a week while Yara is staying with us. We didn’t think Yara needed the shock of finding out Jasmine is my sister to add to her load of worry right now.

We’ve tried to get legal help for her too because of the situation with the house. If they take her away, the house will be completely empty. But Yara hasn’t been very cooperative. It’s almost as if she refuses to admit that there’s a problem.

I take a deep breath when we get outside. This feels like our last night together, and in some ways, it probably is. I’ll still go to see her wherever it is she’s going, but it won’t be the same.

It’ll never be the same.

“I don’t want to go,” Yara whispers as she loops her arms around my neck.

“That’s alright,” I say, turning around. “We can just go back in. It’s cold anyway.”

“Not that,” she says, snuggling in close to my chest. “I don’t want to leave tomorrow. They’re going to take me away, aren’t they?”

I look up over her head as I walk across the grass. “I think so. They need to make sure you’re well enough to handle things on your own. People that do what you did are usually very poorly. They’re just trying to help.”

“I know,” she says. “But I’m not poorly. I just wanted to distract myself. I was hurting.”

“Those aren’t normal thoughts or actions,” I whisper, not wanting to hurt her feelings.

“I didn’t mean to go so deep. I wasn’t trying to kill myself or anything. I’d just found something out and it hurt so bad that I wanted something else to hurt.”

“You mean the letters?”

“You’ve read them?” she asks, pulling back to look up at me.

I look down at her, noticing how the full moon reflects in her eyes as she gazes up at me. “Yes. I wanted to know what you knew so I could help you.”

“Well,” she says, “if you’ve come to try and understand me, you’ll have to get to the back of the queue.”

I smile down at her, recalling how her eyes bore into mine when she first uttered those exact words to me. I think about what she’s been through since then and how close we’ve become. I smile because she’s joking, even though right now really isn’t the time to be making jokes.

“Do you understand now why I did what I did?” she asks.

I need to think about my words carefully. She’s delicate and breakable in a way that I never really thought she was. “I understand that you were probably upset and sad, but I don’t understand why you wanted to hurt yourself. I don’t understand why you cut, even if you didn’t mean to go that deep.”

I hear her sighing, but she doesn’t say anything to defend herself or her actions. I’m not sure if I believe that she didn’t mean to kill herself. If she just wanted to cut, she could have done it anywhere. She knew going for the wrist would cause heavy bleeding. She must have, mustn’t she?

“Gabriel,” she whispers.

I clear my throat, concentrating on where I’m putting my feet in the dark. “Yeah?”

“Do you remember the morning we woke up at my house?”

“Of course I remember,” I tell her.

“You went somewhere pretty soon after those girls showed up. Where did you go?”

“I had to do something important,” I say. “I can tell you soon, but just not yet. Not tonight.”

“Do you promise to tell me soon?” she asks.

My eyebrows quirk in surprise. I was expecting her to argue, but maybe she’s just too tired. “I promise.”

“I guess I can live with that. Not like I have much choice in the matter now.” She giggles, snuggling back into my chest.

“What have I told you about joking?”

Feeling her laugh against me makes me ache for what we could have had. Things were changing for us.
We
were changing.

“Alex took her own life,” I suddenly tell her, realising that Yara needs to know the truth about her. “I want you to promise me that you’ll never hurt yourself again.”

“Why did she kill herself?” she breathes.

“Promise me, Yara.”

She blinks up at me, her eyes searching my face. “I promise I won’t hurt myself again.”

I release the breath I’ve been holding. “Good.”

“Why did your girlfriend kill herself, Gabriel?”

“She had a brain tumour,” I whisper. “It was growing slowly, and she was told she could live with it for a while but it would kill her one day.”

“So she was going to die no matter what?”

“Yes, but she shouldn’t have died then. It was too soon.”

“Maybe not to her,” she says simply. “You can’t know how much pain she was in, even if it was growing slowly. She might have been noticing differences in her health that might not have been obvious to you. Or,” she says, “maybe she just knew that it was her time to go. You can’t judge someone for deciding when the time is right for them.”