The Butterfly Clues (8 page)

A circle of people are pounding trash can lids or pots and pans with their hands. Others play guitars and all sorts of tinkling, booming, hand-made instruments. Some of them are singing, or maybe moaning. I can’t tell which. It’s a thing both amazing and terrifying to witness, and I can’t help but move to the rhythm. I forget the cold, the things I’d like to rearrange in my room, how Mom never stops sleeping and Dad never stops working.

I let myself go.

A tall, thin man in snowflake suspenders rises from the ground and approaches Flynt and me, holding out two sets of wind chimes. “Mind finding some sticks and joining us? We need some folks on chimes, yeah? We’re going for something somber but celebratory at the same time, okay?” He gives a nod and rejoins the circle.

I’m about to shake my head,
no thank you
, but then Flynt says, “No problem!” and grabs my hand, pulling me back toward the curtain, the entrance of Narnia. We find two twigs: long, sturdy ones with their bark still on them, studded in frost. Flynt holds his up to me and narrows his eyes. “En garde,” he cries out. “Produce your weapon!”

We spar for a minute before I knock the stick out of his hands and, faux defeated, he grabs it up, pretending to weep, and we run back toward the makeshift band and settle down to play.

I have never known anyone like Flynt
.

The rhythm sweeps through me. I don’t look up for three whole songs: three is a good number. Not as good as nine, but still very good. By that point, two people are arguing over who gets to play the largest trash can and someone has cracked open a bottle of Wild Dog and the guy playing the medium trash can is slumped over—he has just fallen asleep, or passed out, mid-drumming, mid-singing—and the rest of the band seems to be
dis
banding.

Flynt touches my shoulder with his twig. I touch my shoulder two more times to make it three. He laughs at me. I blush. “You’re a natural on the wind chimes, kid,” he says. And then, “You gonna be okay if I head over to that Dumpster”—Flynt points to a giant, dark blue basin—a makeshift Dumpster, I guess—“and scavenge today’s wares? I’m looking for some new inspiration.”

I nod. I see three leaves fall from a sycamore tree just beyond Flynt’s head all at once, and I’m doubly reassured that this is the right thing.

Flynt flashes me a big, toothy grin before jogging away toward the Dumpster. I feel oddly comfortable here, among my own kind—the weird and the forgotten, the invisible and ignored. At school, I’m the girl who eats plain grape jelly sandwiches wrapped in tinfoil, alone on the front lawn, or in the library when it gets too cold outside. I’m the girl who can’t enter or exit the bus, school, class, without tapping and
banana
-ing, the girl who doesn’t raise her hand when she knows the answer because if she did, she’d have to put it back against her desk and raise it again and repeat. Three times, or six, or nine—depending on a whole host of other factors she could not control—how many words were in the question, how many other people had raised their hands, how many times the person in front of me had scratched the top of her head. I’m the girl who cannot shower after gym class because she’d have to do that, too, at least three times and, by the time she finished, the school day would have ended.

In Neverland, with Flynt, I’m a killer trash can bowler, a musician. I’m—and I can hardly think the word before a warm, alien feeling flushes through my whole body—
pretty
.

Two boys several yards away begin to chant or sing again. They’re not wearing shirts, despite the cold, and they’re rubbing red tribal paint into their bare chests, and now they’re laughing, looking ecstatic, like they’ve never been happier, and I want to be near them, so I rise. Maybe I’ll even chant, too. Maybe I’ll throw my arms up to the air and dance around and sing and howl.

But on my way toward them, a conversation catches my attention. A group of girls—about my age—are huddled together, looking nervous and tired.

A blonde girl wearing thick purple eyeliner and a long black coat is saying, “But I haven’t talked to my parents in six months. They’ll think I’m lying. It’s what they’ve always thought.” She looks between her friends, pauses, bites hard on her lip before going on. “I guess I could call my aunt. She might lend me the money. I’d share it. We could just go. Tonight, even. I mean, if she wires me the cash somehow.”

“Yeah,” says a girl with aqua feathers pinned into her black hair. “But where? Where else are we supposed to go?”

“I’ve got a friend in Philly,” the blonde girl says slowly, like she’s piecing together the plans as she announces them. “I’m pretty sure she still lives in the same place. We can crash in her basement. I just want out, you know?”

A third girl in big black combat boots blurts to the group: “I’ve got fifty bucks. That’ll probably be enough for all of us, right? For the bus?” Her left heel hammers the ground nervously.

I hold my breath, also waiting—waiting for them to say why. Why do they suddenly need to leave Neverland so badly? I think again of Sapphire, of the blood patterned up her walls. Maybe they knew her?

The first girl, the blonde, opens her mouth to speak again; then Black Boots sees me lurking nearby and elbows her sharply in the ribs. She whispers something to the others, and they move away from me.

I jog a little on my feet to keep warm, trying to act as though I haven’t been standing there, eavesdropping. I continue walking down the alley, toward the dancing boys. But as I get closer, I realize that what they’re rubbing into their chests isn’t tribal paint.

It’s blood.

They’re cutting themselves, their chests and arms, with shards of glass from broken liquor bottles. The ground behind them is littered with empty bottles. One of them looks directly at me and smiles, wolf-grin, all teeth.

“Hey, you.” He points at me with a bloody finger. “Haven’t seen you in a real long time. You’re, like, never around anymore. What’s that all about, man?” His eyelids are fluttering. He reaches for me as though he wants to grab me; I gasp and turn, then turn back to him, and back away, again, again, again. Can’t stop turning. My brain says,
No
. My brain says,
Not yet
. My brain says,
Six more to make it twenty-seven
. Three nines. Good. Clean. Good. Clean.
Done.

I need to find Flynt.

Banana banana banana.
I don’t know if I’m thinking the word or saying it out loud. It bounces between the walls of my skull; I feel it pound, each syllable. Each piece. Each part. I hurry back down the alley. Suddenly, everything looks different, grotesque. Not a Narnia. A hell. The veil has been lifted and everything beneath it is covered. Stinking. Rotting. Everyone seems to be sick or about to be sick—shaking, moaning, twitching eyes rolling toward the sky. I don’t know how I ever thought they were happy. Maybe it was just Flynt tricking me into seeing things that weren’t really there.

Flynt Flynt Flynt.
I say his name three times aloud.
Flynt Flynt Flynt
again. Once more.
Flynt Flynt Flynt.
I don’t care if people can hear me. I stop and tap my right foot nine times. And then the left, another nine. And then I pull out six hairs. With each one I say his name.
Flynt Flynt Flynt Flynt Flynt Flynt.
Each a tiny death. Each a sacrifice that will bring him closer to me.
Come on come on come on.

And then I see him—I knew it would work—appearing as if by magic, clutching a plastic bag spilling with trash. “Some
great
finds around these parts,” Flynt says, as he approaches.

“I want to leave,” I say. “I want to go.
Now
.”

His expression changes. He comes closer to me. “What happened?”

“I—I don’t like it here. We have to go.” I squeeze my fists, three times and mutter
banana
below my breath.

“Wait, what? Lo, tell me—”

“Now,”
I say.

Find a wall. Tap three times.
Banana
.

CHAPTER 6

I think I’m shaking because Flynt puts his hands on my shoulders and starts hushing me like how my mother used to. He leads me back through the secret curtained entrance, where I
tap tap tap, banana
softer than I’ve ever
banana
-ed before, and onto the street.

Flynt says he’s taking me to a better place, a place he knows I’ll like. I try to tell him about what I saw—about the boys—as we pass through the curtained alleyway.

“Lo, hey, it’s fine, you got spooked. You’re just not used to the way people are around here.”

“Yeah, maybe,” I say, though I don’t believe it. I’m not so naive as to think what I saw back there was okay—just the way people
are
.

“Look, you’ve got to understand. It’s different here. We’ve got nothing to lose. We’re not part of that other world, the dead world of TVs and gadgets, you know? We’re more alive than that. We’re the scavengers. The hawks, way up in the sky, giant wings, swooping down to earth when we feel like it. Know what I mean?”

Flynt takes a deep breath, watching me, his cheeks growing redder in the cold.

I stare at his bear ears, then his blue-green-gold eyes. I’m filled, suddenly, with a surge of anger. “And what about when people
actually
die? Is that part of your twisted version of fun? Does that make you feel more alive?”

Flynt’s voice grows quieter. “I promise you’re going to like this next spot, okay? No drum circles. We’re almost there.”

I continue to follow him, even though the anger is still there, low and smoldering. He’s not listening; he doesn’t care. All he’s interested in is beautiful garbage.

We weave through alleys and tight corners and wide streets until we reach a tall building—tall for Neverland—and Flynt jimmies the lock to a door in back. I
tap
and I
banana
in three quick, secret cycles, the anger turning to a hot shame, praying he won’t notice. If he does, he doesn’t say anything.

Inside it’s dark, though with the door still open I can see the winding staircase a couple of feet ahead of us.

“Someone rich used to live here, a really long time ago. It’s been gutted by looters. Now all that’s left of this place is the stairs.” He leaps up onto the staircase. “Be careful climbing. There are some loose spots, and some of the stairs aren’t too stable. Oh, and there’s a monster here somewhere, too, a staircase monster. Be on the lookout for creepy tentacles.”

“I think I can handle it, Flynt.” I follow him up the staircase, picking my way over the broken or missing boards.

“It would just suck if you were eaten by the staircase monster. I’d probably be investigated in the homicide case sure to follow, and, to be honest, I don’t think the Cleveland police would believe that a Staircase Monster ate you. If they
cared
enough to investigate around here, I mean,” he adds, and even though his tone is still light, there’s a hard edge running beneath it. I think of Sapphire. I wonder whether he is thinking of her, too, or of other cases, of other Neverland kids who have slipped through the cracks.

We make it to the top of the stairs safely, uneaten by monsters, and the tiny window at the top lets in enough light for Flynt to see the frozen door handle and jiggle it open.

We walk out onto a wide rooftop, and all of Neverland and the whole city of Cleveland and the distant quilt of the suburbs, too, are spread out before us—brilliantly pink and orange and yellow in the glow of the waning sun. From here Neverland and all of Ohio beyond it look more beautiful than I’ve ever imagined they could look.

Flynt was right. This is a good place. My head begins to clear now. Maybe I did just get freaked before. I can see seven church steeples and four domed buildings. Seven is a bad number, and I turn a complete circle until I spot one more steeple in the distance, stained ruddy red in the setting sun. Eight and four—both awful, suffocating numbers—but twelve, even if it’s not always as perfect as nine, helps me breathe. Twelve is good for buildings. Twelve is solid, sure, safe.

Flynt moves to the edge of the building and spreads his arms out wide like he’s a plant receiving nourishment. I move closer and watch him for a second. “

So, where do you live?” I realize he has never told me.

“I move around a lot.” Flynt shrugs. “I find a different crash pad every two or three months. I’ve been on my own for five years, since I was thirteen, so it’s something I’ve gotten pretty good at. Moving, I mean.” His eyes glitter.

The roof is covered in something black and rubbery, and it’s peeling away in patches. “How come you’ve been on your own since you were thirteen?”

“Oh, you know. I was ready to leave; there was nothing in Houston for me anymore. Thirteen is considered pretty much full-grown in my family.” He squats low, starts aiming little rocks of gravel onto the rooftop across the street.

“Yeah, but what about your parents? They just let you go?”

“They were kind of checked out. It was no big deal.” He looks away for a second, maybe remembering. Then he turns back, smiling big big big. “So, the view from this roof is pretty amazing, right?”

“Isn’t it annoying? Constantly picking up and resettling?” I press, even though I know that, well, of course it is. I’ve done it my whole life.

“Actually,” Flynt says, “it’s not so bad. I’ve got a bag full of the essentials, and if I need to run, I run, and I find somewhere new, and that’s where I stay until I feel like leaving again. A beautiful system, really.”

“But what about, like, school and stuff?” I swallow, realizing I sound just like my mother. Or how my mother
used
to sound, before she retreated to her bedroom.

“Neverland is a
very
educational place,” Flynt says, winking at me. I’ve never known someone who could hold a smile for so long. “I’m planning on getting out of here for good pretty soon, though. I’ll probably head to San Francisco. Maybe Portland. I’ll turn to ash and scatter in the western winds and become solid again somewhere by the ocean. Like a phoenix. Or, more like a seagull, with a phoenix-like sensibility.”