The Butterfly Clues (30 page)

I lift it between my fingers and gasp as it splits neatly down the middle into my palm, revealing something small and thin and square tucked into the hidden space between its wings.

My heart skips a beat: a SIM card.

“Holy shit,” I whisper out loud. The air crests around me, sweeps away my fight with Dad and all of the beautiful, shattered things around me to a different, distant island. Out of sight.

I’m marooned in my own dry space. The only other thing in the room my nightstand, the cell phone on top of it. So, I grab it, and, trembling from toes to throat, unfasten the plastic back, slipping Sapphire’s SIM card inside.

CHAPTER 27

The screen blinks on. Little black dots solder together to make words:
Please enter your three-digit security code.

Shit shit shit.
I try random combinations of numbers, bargaining silently with fate to guide my fingers to the right ones.
Give me this and I’ll apologize to Dad; I’ll take better care of Mom; I’ll start fighting harder against all the weird, awful things my brain makes me do; I’ll help the homeless—does Flynt count?

Three-six-nine
; nothing.

One-zero-one
; nada.

Nine-nine-nine
; nope.

Then—something hits me—a divine spit of inspiration:
fourthree-seven—
the number Sapphire repeated to exhaustion in my dream. The number from her journal.

The screen blinks.
Loading
.

I kiss the screen six times, three seconds between each kiss, as a little computerized sand timer replaces the words, and computerized sand begins to sift slowly from one portal to the other beneath my lips. When I finish kissing, I look back to the screen—loaded. All of her contacts; all of her text messages. My fingers are shaking—my whole hand, in fact. My legs, too.

Tiny symbol of an envelope.
Click.

With trembling fingers I search her contacts:
Bird.

Old messages—loads of them, pages and pages.

I scroll to the first—the oldest—from over two years ago— when Oren still lived at home, just before he became a shaky, hollow-cheeked, zombie brother. And then I feel the
urge
to kiss the screen again, six times, three seconds between kisses; maybe he’ll feel that, too. Maybe he’ll feel how badly I miss him, all the time, every split-apart second of every jagged day.

I finish kissing, lift my eyes back to the screen. A series of texts, from almost three years ago, swims before me.

2/03 10:06
A.M
.: You’re sleeping next to me right now. You’re all wrapped up in blankets, and you look like a delicious lady-sandwich. I might eat you before you wake up. Just wanted to let you know.

3/12; 2:36
P.M
.: Yah. I’m at Clem’s until, 7 but Joe’s not here so maybes I’ll get to sneak out early for our pic-a-nic. And, yo girl, don’t forget the S-berries! P.S. You’re so pretty.

5/20; 5:11
P.M.
: I love you like crazy. I was thinking … let’s build a big nest in a tree and live there together!!! I’m SURious. K?!

I open the following message and a picture loads onto the screen, grainy and pixilated. I wrap my arms around my chest, feel my heart rise into my throat.

It’s him—it’s Oren and Sapphire. They are kneeling, holding hands beneath a giant bur oak. His face—my brother’s—looks happy, happier than I remember it being for a long time, and sober; she looks so
young,
wearing a clean white T-shirt, jeans, no makeup—not even her signature lipstick. They look so in love.

So alive.

My stomach knots up as I read further through my tears— closer to when Oren disappeared, the months and weeks before he must have rotted away all alone on a flat of cold cement—and the passages in Sapphire’s journals about Bird’s
unhinging
begin to become clear.

I can’t see you. I need to be alone. I’m about to rip my
skin
off.

And then:
I’m trying, baby. Nothing is working. Nothing will ever work. I think I’m going insane.

And:
I can’t tell you where I am I don’t know where I am I’m sick.

Finally:
I’m sorry I didn’t show up for our anniversary name thing—I couldn’t wake up. I can’t do anything.

He must have been going through heroin withdrawal. Mood swings—these were his flights, his unhinging, his mental slips. He was trying to stop using, and it wasn’t working. It didn’t work. But, still, he was trying. He wanted to get better. He wanted to live. I start shaking as I come to one of the last text messages he sent to her:
Sapphire, I will never not love you. That would be impossible. I think I will love you forever.

At the bottom of all of Oren’s messages is one—a solitary one, several years older than the rest—from a 937 number, no name. I open it:
Katherine, I finally tracked this number down from your friend Erin and have been calling and calling. Please let us know you’re okay. Love, Mom.

Katherine.
Her name was Katherine—her real name.

It hits me, my body filled with a rush of ice: Oren never knew. Their anniversary never happened; he missed it; he was too sick, laid up in that cold window-cracked warehouse, beginning his slow rot. He never knew her real name, and she never knew his. And, it stands to reason, if she didn’t know his name—she wouldn’t have known who to look for in the papers, how to attend his funeral, how to visit his grave. He was Bird to her, and she, Sapphire. They never found out the truth.

Shaky, heartsick, I perform a cursory scroll through her other text messages: hundreds and hundreds from someone named
Anchor
, back several months.

1/17; 6:01
A.M.
: I just had a dream about u.

1/17; 6:05
A.M.
: U were naked. I was naked.

1/17; 6:11
A.M.
: Now I’m horny; it’s all ur fault.

Scroll forward, further, a little bit closer:
2/28; 3:18
A.M.
: Where were u tonite??

2/28; 3:21
A.M.
: I needed to see ur body, and it wasn’t there.

2/28; 3:22
A.M.
: Do you understand what ur ass does to a man?

2/28; 6:05
A.M.
: So … will I EVER get to see you outside of the club?

And further, still, closer to the present:
3/09; 4:06
A.M.
: Ur a dirty whore.

3/09; 4:16
A.M.
: No, I’m not drunk. Don’t u know what a piece of trash u r?

My heart burns as I read—closer; closer. I hear Dad rustling around downstairs; the front door slams shut. There’s a brick lodged in my throat.

4/18; 1:07
A.M.
: $5,000. One Night.

4/18; 1:10
A.M.
: Well, how about I double it?

4/18; 1:14
A.M.
: $15,000. Just a BJ.

I hear the whine of tire against gravel and pavement as Dad’s car peels out of the driveway.

I scroll, shaking, to the top, to the last few texts from Anchor, hold my breath as I read from three weeks ago:
I’ll rip u in 2. U know I can.

Same night,
5:29
A.M.
: I swear if u don’t do what I say, I’ll make u pay bitch.

And the final text,
5:31
A.M.
: Slutslutslutslutslutslutslutslutslut slutslutslutslutslutslut.

Over and over again. Up and down, it fills the message, gets cut off at the end so it just says
Sl
— and my stomach starts to hurt thinking of the word, the same word, scrawled across Sapphire’s dead body in lipstick:
slut.

Whoever Anchor is, it’s clear he was obsessed with Sapphire. He’d harassed her, threatened her, tried to bully her into having sex with him.

Could he have killed her, too?

It flows through me, hot blooded, that force she’s radiated through me from the second I found her butterfly. I know who she was. I know she was loved. I know she loved back, even when it shredded her, dizzied her, drove her to madness. I know that my brother loved her till he crumbled away to teeth and bones, and that Sapphire—
Katherine—
and I found each other—connected through the air, through our cells, through some distant time-splitting, unknowable
force—
for a reason.

I can prove her life mattered.

I couldn’t save my brother. I let him sift like sand through my open palm, let him get sucked away with the tide. This is my chance—maybe the only one I’ll ever get—to do something. To change something. To reassemble, fix the leak, turn the shattered whole.

The grainy picture pops into my head: crisp white of her shirt, clear green of Oren’s eyes, their coral lips.

They were kids. Now they’re gone.

And as I move my eyes across the minefield of my room, her clean face seems to appear between the plaster and glass and broken things, rising from the debris to float there in the half-dark before settling back down in an arch of dust.

I see you, Katherine,
I think to it—to the air and the floor and the shatter—
and, soon, everyone else will, too.

CHAPTER 28

I stare at the cell phone in my hand, at the name I’ve scrolled to in

Sapphire’s contact list, now frozen on the screen:
Anchor
.

I need to know who Anchor is.

First I kiss the screen again, six times. Three breaths between kisses. Eighteen—wrapped around me, urging me forward in its calm, steady way.

Block my number; press
SEND
.

I hold my breath, shaky, as the
riiiiiiiiinnnng, riiiiiiiiiinnnnng
pierces through me. I wait, exhale quickly, swallowing up another shallow breath.
Riiiiiiiiinnnng—
again. A subtle
click
before an automated voice pipes through: “The cellular caller you were trying to reach is unavailable, please try again later.” I keep the phone pressed against my ear, waiting for someone’s real voice to crackle through announcing his name, at least. It doesn’t.

I return to Sapphire’s contact list—have to kiss the phone six times again when I reach
Bird
to be able to move on at all; eighteen means
go
, eighteen means
you will not meet harm
—and see the number for Tens tucked in with all the rest.

Her heart belonged to Bird. Maybe Anchor knew this. Maybe this drove him crazy.

I wonder if Anchor was one of Sapphire’s “regulars” at the club. Based on the hundreds of creepy text messages he sent Sapphire, he must have met her there. The club was likely the site of the majority, if not all, of their interactions.

The other girls must know him—to at least recognize his name, have an idea of who he is.

I have to go back to Tens, one last time. I’ve got a lead now, a name.

Anchor.

But I’ll need a disguise. I can’t risk it otherwise—can’t risk the narrow hallway, the stifling dark rooms, with doors that open like mouths to swallow me. The fist in my throat.

I’m all out of warnings—the man in the black mask told me so himself. I wonder if it was Anchor who practically strangled me in the dark.

I lift my book bag from the floor, retrieve Sapphire’s bustier from the closet. Makeup. Skirt. It’s all I’ve got—but it might not be good enough. I need to be unrecognizable.

I lift myself to my feet, wiping the wet from my eyes with equal force, three sweeps across each eye, stare at myself quickly in one of the mirrors on my wall—all nine still, mercifully, in tact. My bangs have shifted to the wrong side of my face revealing the white, hot dent above my left eye.

I start to brush them away but don’t—a thought interrupts:
Flynt
. Who isn’t Bird. Whose lips I’ve felt—soft, smooth. Maybe he wasn’t lying about any of it. Maybe he really did think I was
beautiful
.

I sniff, staring at my snowy skin; cheeks dappled strawberry-pink; dark, tangled sheet of hair; big eyes—green, more olive-y than Oren’s. I haven’t seen Flynt since the day we kissed and I ran away without explanation, without anything.

Flynt: he’s the person I need. Flynt: the boy who likes me— scars, bruises, and all. The boy who will hold me together, the boy who means
home.
The basin of my belly goes warm, tingly. He’s it.

And I owe him a very big apology.

On the bus ride into Neverland, I look through the window, watching signs whir by on the street. Pull the chord near the gee
WHIZ! CHEEZE WHIZ!
billboard that means Flynt’s makeshift home is close. The bus creaks to a stop.