Chasing Butterflies (4 page)

Yara

“Am I dead?” My head hurts so much that it must mean I’m dead. People that are alive don’t hurt this much…do they?

“Not quite,” says a smooth, deep voice.

I wish I were.
“My head hurts.”

“I imagine it does,” he replies. “And your skin too.”

Where am I?
Now that he’s mentioned it, my skin
does
feel hot and tingly. I wince and open one eye.

Gabriel’s dark blonde hair has a ray of sunshine streaking through it. He turns his tanned face toward me and takes a deep breath. “How do you feel?” he asks.

“Like crap.”

I feel the rumble of an engine and push myself to a seated position. “Where are we?” He reverses the truck and I see the dark orange sun hovering just above the sea in the horizon. “We’re at the coast?”

He nods, turning around to check behind him. ““I thought the breeze coming off the water would feel good. I spoke to a nurse and she told me to keep you covered and to make sure you get lots of water,” he tells me. “She said you might have a headache.”

I rub my temples. “A headache is a bit of an understatement.”

He nods and hands me a bottle of water as he drives out of the car park. “Drink that.” He drives up the sandy bank and coasts through the narrow lanes until I see the speck of lights from our small village in the distance.

“Where was the nurse?” I ask.

“What?”

“You said you talked to a nurse,” I say. “Did you call the hospital?”

“No. My mom is a nurse, so I just asked her.”

I feel myself frown. “I thought she used to work at the salon.”

“She did, but now she’s a nurse.”

“Oh, okay.”

“You need to drink more,” he tells me, nodding at the bottle in my hand. “And eat this.” He hands me a bar of chocolate, which I snatch from him and unwrap like I’m possessed. I shove a square into my mouth and groan as the taste explodes all over my tongue.

Gabriel turns his head towards me and watches as I slip another square into my mouth. My stomach gurgles in appreciation.

“I’m taking you home,” he says gruffly.

I nod and fold my hands across my lap, realising for the first time that I’m wearing my dress—which means Gabriel must have dressed me. I feel embarrassed knowing he saw me in my fake bra and ashamed that he witnessed what I let Jasmine and her friends do to me. Before, it felt like he thought I was normal…just a girl who was a bit confused. But now he knows how crazy I am and how much everyone hates me. I know he’ll hate me too, just like they do.

We don’t speak the rest of the way. My eyes roam all over his Jeep, noticing the way the leather seats are worn at the edges and how there are empty water bottles and crisp packets littering the floor. It smells nice though, and I notice one of those tree-shaped air fresheners hanging from his rear-view mirror. He has roll-top bars that criss-cross over the roof and a dark green cover that fits snugly over the top of it.

“You know,” I whisper, feeling the need to fill the weird silence, “butterflies only live for a short while. They just emerge and then flutter about. They mate and then they die.”

I watch him rub the bottom of his jaw as he turns onto my road. “What do butterflies have to do with anything, Yara?”

The Jeep rolls to a stop in front of the tall hedges that hide the front of my house from the road. I quickly climb out, ignoring the way my skin tingles and my head hurts, and hop impatiently by the gate. I’ve never shown anyone what I’m about to show him. I hope he feels as excited as I hope he will.

I see him frown as he watches me through his window, and I gesture for him to follow me.

He climbs out of the Jeep by pulling himself up with his arms and then jumps over the door. “What’s going on?” he asks, folding his arms across his chest. I look up at him in the glow of the nearby streetlight and realise that he’s a really, really handsome boy. Or is he a man? I sneak another glance at him as he waits for me to answer.
A young man?

“How old are you, Gabriel?”

“Nineteen,” he answers. “How old are you?”

“What was that truck you were in earlier?” I fire back, completely ignoring his question. “And who were those other boys?”

He leans back against the gatepost and sighs. “It was the works truck and those
men
were my colleagues.”

“So you’d call yourself a man?” I ask.

He nods. “Of course. I stopped being a boy when I was sixteen.”

“What’s your job?”

“I’m a carpenter and a landscape gardener.”

“A carpenter?”

He nods.

“Like you make stuff out of wood?” I push.

“Yeah, sort of,” he says with a sigh. “I carve stuff, mainly. With my chainsaw. From trees, usually.”

“Oh, like those ones down by the beach? The sea creatures?”

“Yes,” he confirms. He smiles and it’s a real smile, the kind that reaches from ear to ear. I can tell that he really enjoys carving. “Those are mine.”

“They’re really nice. Beautiful, actually.”

“Thank you.”

I grab his hand that’s a little bit calloused, pulling him through the gate and up the narrow path into the backyard. The feel of his skin against mine makes my whole body shiver. I’ve never held anyone’s hand before, but instead of it feeling weird, it feels completely normal. Like his hand was made just so mine could fit inside it like this.

“Where’re we going?” he asks.

“I’m going to show you the things that make
me
smile,” I tell him. When we reach the ivy-covered fence, I pull the gate open until it gives enough to let us slide through. “In here.”

“What is this?” he asks as I drag him through the branches of the weeping willow until we arrive at the shed.

I point toward it and hold the wooden door open so he can go in first. His eyes flash up to mine, but then he steps forward and into the shed that’s illuminated from the setting sun.

He quickly screws his face up as if he doesn’t like what he sees when I show him the plastic boxes full of crawling caterpillars. “They’ll be ready soon,” I say, pulling on his arm to get him to follow me.

I lead him across the grass until we’re standing in front of the converted trampoline that I’ve covered in additional netting and sashes of white fabric. Gabriel narrows his eyes and leans forward, looking through the mesh. “Are they butterflies?”

“Yes,” I whisper.

He steps back and stares at me. I see questions in his eyes…lots of them. But I also see sadness and confusion, indecision and regret.

I frown at him, wondering what he could possibly be so sad about, and then he tears his gaze away from me. “Why are you showing me these, Yara?”

Because I need to tell you that I know something about you, too.
“You remind me of a butterfly,” I tell him. “Free, but still flapping to get away. Something is keeping you here and you hate it.”

“Flapping to get away?” he repeats, looking confused. “In what way?”

I grab his warm hand again and notice a tiny zigzag-shaped scar on the underside of his chin. I want to ask him how he got it, but instead I say, “I think you’re running from something, Gabriel.”

His eyes widen and he snatches his hand away so quickly that I almost stumble and fall before he walks away without another word.

Gabriel

I walk away from her, hating her in that moment. She was supposed to make me forget what I’d done, not confuse and trick me. She wasn’t supposed to question me, to make me feel like
I’m
the mental one. She wasn’t supposed to be so beautiful that it took my breath away, almost making me wish that
not
breathing was the way I could forget everything. She wasn’t supposed to make me remember the old me.

As I push the gate open, I start to feel bad for thinking like that. It’s not her fault. She’s young and immature. She doesn’t really understand. I have to keep reminding myself that she’s probably still a child. It’s then that I realise that she never answered me when I asked her how old she was.

I turn back around and see Yara reaching up to pull some of the netting down from the trampoline.
Shit, how old
is
she?

She has breasts and rounded hips, so she must have been through puberty already, and she wasn’t wearing the school uniform earlier. But she has a
really
young-looking face.

The white fabric blows in the breeze, flowing and dancing against Yara’s body, and then the air around her is suddenly full of fluttering butterflies. Like a tornado of beautiful bright colours that sparkle and flap all around until they float away into the sky above her. She twirls, making the hem of her dress fly up, and I see tears falling down her face as she watches them fly further and further away.

I swallow the horrible lump that’s now stuck in my throat and walk towards my Jeep.

Yara

It’s almost dark when I finally go inside, and I feel sick and dizzy from being burnt by the sun. I hate that those girls have managed to make me look like a complete idiot in front of everyone again. And I especially hate that they’ve made me look like an idiot in front of Gabriel.

I push open the back door, feeling deflated and lonely, and find Granny sitting at the pine table, drinking a glass of whiskey. By the smell of her, I’m guessing that’s not her first one.

“Who was that boy?” she hisses before I have a chance to say anything.

I grab a glass from the draining board and walk over to the sink, where I fill my cup with some water. “His name is Gabriel.”

Granny scoffs. “He might have the name of an angel, but that boy’s got the devil in his soul.”

“I don’t think so,” I tell her, gulping down the whole glass of water in one go. “He seems nice.”
Most of the time.

“He’s an evil little shit,” she spits. “I forbid you to ever speak to him again.”

Tears spring to my eyes.
Why is she like this?
“He’s the only person who speaks to me in this village!” I shriek.

“He’s evil,” she says, slamming her empty glass down onto the table. “And he’s only talking to you because of some stupid dare or to play a trick on you.”

I shake my head. Gabriel wouldn’t do that…would he?
Please don’t let it be true.
“He’s not evil.”

“I bet he’s asked you loads of questions, hasn’t he?”

I wipe my face with the back of my hand. “A few, but isn’t that what people do when they’re making new friends? You find out about them. You see what they like and if you like the same things too.”

Granny stumbles away from the stool and staggers towards the fridge. She pulls it open and peels some ham from out of a pack. “Did he ask you questions about me?”

I stare at her and the way her thin, grey hair is matted against one side of her face. Her skin is full of wrinkles and it’s saggy in places. Granny is getting really old. “He didn’t ask anything about you. Nothing at all.”

She slams the fridge door shut and then pours herself another glass of whiskey—straight from the bottle, nothing added—with her shaking, bony hands. “No one wants to be friends with you, Yara. You need to remember that. So tell me why you think this boy has started talking to you? What makes you so special all of a sudden?” I watch her eyes scan my whole body, and then she screws her face up and turns away from me. “You’re disgusting.”

“Why do you say things like that?” I wail. “You’re supposed to love me, to look after me and make sure that I’m okay.”

She whips her head around so fast I wonder how she doesn’t get a concussion. “I bet that devil boy asked you to say those things, didn’t he? You’re never so rude. Have you been saying stuff to him that you shouldn’t?”

I shake my head. “I would never.”

“Good,” she huffs. “And I don’t think you deserve to be happy or to feel loved. Not when I don’t.”

I open my mouth but clamp it shut again, staring at her, waiting for her to elaborate.
What does that even mean?

“I’m hungry,” I announce when my stomach gurgles loudly.

“I’ve cooked you a stew with vegetables. It’s in the oven keeping warm. Not that you deserve it after this little merry dance,” she tells me as she shuffles out of the kitchen and into the darkened hallway. “And stay away from that boy!”

I slump against the cabinets and rub my sore face. I can’t stay away from him.
I won’t.

I turn to the oven, and when I pull the tray out, a raw piece of meat stares back at me. I frown but lift it onto the hob, where I see pans of uncooked vegetables. I stare at the dials, wondering how I make the oven work, but then I realise that it’s too late to cook it tonight—not that I know how to cook it anyway. And I certainly don’t want to ask Granny.