The Butterfly Clues (31 page)

I
tap, tap, tap, banana
quietly, ignoring the stares of the people close enough to hear me, walk the two blocks to his barbershop squat. I watch cracks in the pavement, count squares to keep images of my screaming, cut-up room at bay. It assaults me nonetheless: cracked, plaster doll faces, scattered typewriter keys— plucked out, empty sockets where once they were cradled—no patient, warming groups of nine and six and three—just a single mass grave.

I reach the crusty marble steps of the barbershop—fifty-one squares between the bus stop and here. A jittery, bubbly feeling fills my body after I knock on the door. Six times. Three sides per panel. I wonder what’ll happen when he sees me: If he’ll pull me into his chest. If we’ll kiss. If I’ll have to kiss him first since I’m the one who ran away in the first place. If I’ll get to apologize. If he’ll let me.

But he doesn’t come to the door. I knock again. Nine, nine, six—I tap each of my legs between knocks on the door.
Cawww—
a bird shrieks behind me, three times. Three means
go; do something; you are protected
. I put my hand to the doorknob and twist it. It opens.

Tap tap tap, banana; tap tap tap, banana; tap tap tap, banana.

It’s dark, colder inside than it is out. I call his name, tentatively: “Flynt?”

Nothing.

I start down the curving, half-broken cement stairs. Everything’s coated in dusky blue light, smelling of cement and dry wall, nothing human.

When I reach the bottom, my heart nose-dives straight to my toes.

Everything is gone. Cleared away. Empty, except for the refrigerator wardrobe and the lumpy couch and a long table. I blink, hard, hoping that when I open my eyes the room will be full again, and Flynt will be balanced on his elbows over that long wooden paint-smattered table, sketching some willowy animal-woman with tree branches for arms and a zebra-tuft of hair sprouting from her scalp.

Blink: still empty. I move slowly to the table, run my fingers over the dried paint, wishing his would magically appear to meet mine on the other end.

Maybe he’s already left Cleveland—he always said he couldn’t stay in one place more than a few months—moved away to Portland or San Francisco like he said he wanted to do. Maybe he’s already rising from the ash of a different city, becoming something new.

I’m fighting a rising panic now. I search through my book bag for paper and a pen and the only thing I find is a crumpled receipt from Mighty Mart and it’ll have to do. I poise my drying-out Micron 005 between my fingers, flatten the receipt with the side of my hand, and begin to write, tiny pressed-together words.

Dear Flynt,

I’m so sorry. I don’t know what else to say. I was confused.
About you, and about us.

I think I might know who killed Sapphire now. I’m going back to Tens. I have to speak to the girls again. I know it’s not safe, but I have to do this.

It all feels very big and hard to say, but you’re the only person
>
I’ve ever known who makes me feel like I’m better. Like there’s hope.

So, in case you ever find this: thank you.

—Queen P

I take a deep breath, fold the note three times, and press it into my hand as I take a last look around, the funeral of light settling into every surface, blanketing Flynt’s old home like dirt.

The steps crumble behind me as I ascend. And at the top, before I leave, I’m filled with the
urge
to bow. Six times. Each corner, the floor, the mirrors, the ceiling.
Tap tap tap, banana.
It’s loud leaving my mouth. It hits the walls and echoes briefly as I shut the door behind me and leap to the street, bowing again, three times, to the stairs, to the sign, rocking back and forth in the wind, to the big-mouth sky.

I walk to the old birdbath and lay the note into its smooth, curved bottom, beneath a stone. Even if he never goes back to the barbershop—if he’s still in Cleveland at all—he might come back here. It’s the best shot I’ve got. I think of his fingers, pressing softly against my stomach, lifting higher, smoothing my skin. I bow again, nine times. A triangle of protection, a plea. Tree branches comb the moonlight. A thought occurs to me: Malatesta’s—maybe he’ll be there. And, if not, maybe Seraphina, the wig maker, will know where I can find him. Either way—I should go. That place must be full of disguises.

I weave through the streets. Streetlamp light bounces against the pavement, shimmying through the trees, guiding me to the metal hovel, the shack, the drippy black
M
.

The door is already slightly open—I peer inside—no sign of Flynt. My heart sinks a little more, but I
tap tap tap, banana—
three times—and step inside. There’s no time to be afraid.

Seraphina and Gretchen are hanging a giant, painted plank of wood on the back wall. “Put this down a second, Gretch,” Seraphina is saying, as I step through the doorway. “This isn’t the spot—the feng shui’s way off.”

I clear my throat. Gretchen’s hoopskirt swishes as she turns, spotting me. “Hey—Flynt’s friend, right?”

I nod. “I’m looking for him.” Seraphina turns, too. “Flynty’s MIA at the moment,” she informs me. “Haven’t seen him in a couple of days.”

My heart flips, again; the sinking feeling worsens. I push it away, remembering my mission. “Actually,” I say, taking a deep breath, focusing on the nine perfect planks in the ceiling, “there’s another reason I came. I … I need help with something.”

Seraphina wipes her dusty hands against her jeans, covered in blue glitter and gesso. “Sure thing—what’s up?”

“You make wigs, right?”

Gretchen grunts. “That’s, like, all she does these days. She’s
obsessed
.”

“Well.” I kick at a hardened clump of red paint on the ground. “I was wondering if maybe … well, if I could possibly borrow one?”

Seraphina’s face lights up. She skips across the room and through a curtain, revealing, for a moment, the storage space— stuffed with paintings, brushes, boxes. She emerges, seconds later, hugging a basket to her chest. It is overflowing with wigs. “I’m trying to get rid of some of these, anyway. Take your pick,” she tells me, smiling broadly. “Whatever you want … it’s yours. Got a costume party or something?”

“More like … a performance,” I answer. This, at least, is true.

“Need anything else?” Gretchen chimes in. “We pretty much collect costumes like it’s our job.”

“Anything.” I say. Seraphina ducks behind the curtain again and reemerges a second later, dragging an antique trunk spilling with clothes, shoes, bits of fabric and lace. “Everything.”

Rounding the corner at the end of the block, I pass the small swaying man with the hazy violet eyes—the Prophet. I pause, watching him moan and rock, in his own world. I remember how he’d described Bird when I’d asked, that night with Flynt:
a unicorn all the time. And a nightingale when it suited him.
At the time it had seemed like the tangled musings of a crazy man.

I watch his stooped little body swoop left and right, hands raised to the sky as if to pay homage. The Prophet isn’t crazy—he was right. Oren’s mole, that mystical point in the exact center of his forehead—it really was the
exact
center, we measured it once—made him a
unicorn
; his startling, beautiful whistling, a
nightingale
.

I fumble in my pocket for change, needing to thank him in some small way. Standing right in front of him, I bow six times— blushing furiously the whole time, even though I know he can’t see me—before plunking a fistful of change into the hat at his feet.

“Thank you, Penelope,” he says.

I draw back, too stunned to say anything. He’s smiling at me through half-empty gums, as though he
can
see me. But that’s impossible—he’s blind. Somehow, he just …
knows
, just like he knew about Oren’s unicorn mole.

And I’m comforted by it—by the idea that maybe one single person acts as a database for an entire world’s knowledge. And he just happens to live in Cleveland.

As I turn away, he calls to me from his light-swathed corner. A few insects beat their wings in silhouette above his head. His voice is high, heart-strung, a moth with holey wings. “He loves you, you know.”

My voice starts to catch in my throat; I push it out, past the choking feeling. “Who … loves me?”

He doesn’t respond, just keeps bobbing, up and down. The light at his back near-blinding, peppered by insects. The grass shivers beyond the pavement. And, suddenly, I understand. I walk back, heart drumming in my chest.

“Tell him to look for the note in the birdbath,” I say, stepping closer. He smells faintly of oranges and hums softly to himself, still not responding, still bobbing. “The birdbath,” I repeat quietly, two more times to make it three.

After standing there another minute, waiting, I start walking away; stop after six squares, frozen; something’s trembling through my entire body and it reaches my toes and, suddenly, I cannot move.

“I love him, too,” I announce, to myself, to the Prophet, to the grass. I breathe in the words, fastened now into the night—a rope stretched between us that I’d trace back to Flynt’s eyes and bear-eared hat and mouth if I could, fist by fist, wherever he might be.

I continue walking, on a tide of new strength. Moths whisper through the trees, giant flakes of salt across the spray of new leaves.

It’s not until I reach the end of the block that the Prophet’s belated response wings over to me. “I’ll tell him,” he says, humming again as soon as the words leave his mouth. My heart spins and beats, wild. Thrilled. Terrified.

CHAPTER 29

I change clothes in the Sunoco bathroom on Harrison Street, a block away from Tens.

Tap tap tap, banana.
The bathroom smells like tobacco and body odor; a bucket full of dirty sanitizer liquid sits in the corner, a cloth mop stuffed inside. I breathe through my mouth.

I wriggle into Sapphire’s bustier, and when I zip it up, feel her calm and strength holding me in again. The straps fall off my shoulders, I hug my arms into my chest, pull her closer in, draw three concentric circles around my heart with my pointer finger to try and soothe the maniac pounding below the skin. I lift a thick swathe of Malatesta’s borrowed dark purple lace from my bag, tie it around my waist, clasp a strand of rhinestones around my neck, tuck the horse pendant into the bustier.

I tug my hair into a tight bun, sliding Seraphina’s hand-ventilated wig over my scalp. It itches, hangs in long, wavy blonde strands around my face.

Penciling thick coal black liner around both eyes, I see Oren flash across my face, peek out from my pupils. I remember how he liked to make us brush our teeth in the dark, how giant his pupils would become when the light went out. It always scared me—they’d suck up the green of his irises—black holes, devouring the light.

Blink: he’s gone.

It’s the forever part that freaks me out most of all. The forever-ness of death. I can feel myself teetering between the two worlds— flesh and air; bone and dust.

I remember Mrs. Kim, my eighth-grade Earth Science teacher, telling us:
We never fully die; the matter we assume just changes. We become minerals, layers of sediment and rock after billions of years; food for plants, for sun, for air. If we did not die and our bodies did not melt into the earth, there would be no more life.

More from Malatesta’s trunk: heels—too-tall, red, scraping against the slippery cement floor; black pleather micro-mini; fishnet stockings.

When I’m finished, I’m not me. And I’m not her. I’m someone new—again—a stowaway beneath layers of cream blush and inky mascara and wild-wavy blonde hair. I shiver, bow six times to the chipped toilet—nearly gagging—three more to the mirror.

Juliet—resurrected. Brand-new.

The greasy boy at coat check glances up from his biker magazine as I enter the lobby of Tens, looking furtively around. His eyes go wider; he scratches his head, bites his bottom lip as I pass. In this new body, I don’t mind that he’s staring. I enjoy it. His eyes trace my body like long fingers. He is thinking about what I might look like underneath. Naked. Of how it would feel to touch me. He leans forward, watching as I stand before the door and
tap tap tap, banana
because I have to. Because there are certain needs that even Juliet cannot shake.