Celia could spend hours inside the book. She touched the color plates with her dirty fingers. The butterfly colors leapt off the page: a skyrocket of red, the brightest blue you ever saw, the gold of a perfect sunset. On pieces of scrap paper nearby she drew pictures of the butterflies, some fantastical, some real. When she was done, she tucked these inside the book, like treasures.
“Celia?” It was Rich, in a hoarse whisper. Rich hated the library. He said the library made him smell like piss. Of course that wasn’t really true; it was just the warm, dry, close air that made it obvious. Celia didn’t tell him this.
“You can go. I’ll come later,” she told Rich, who put down his comic book.
“It’s almost dark—” he began.
“I’ll catch up to you. You know where.” Celia was lost in the butterflies.
Rich left. It was getting wet and cold outside, moisture dripping from the building eaves. The last of the day people were leaving their offices, hurrying through the darkening mist. Overhead a giant black clock ticked. Seven o’clock.
In the room above him, Celia was swinging her feet, smiling and reading. She pulled a piece of paper forward to draw another butterfly.
Outside the man with the mashed face and cauliflower ears was waiting. He saw Rich leave. The girl was alone, inside.
* * *
What is it you want?
When the butterflies talked to Celia, it was like the sweetest notes of music. She could hear them coming from afar. She could see them now, covering the misty library windows. They were above the fantastic chandeliers, flying all around, as thick as fabric flowers above the bowed heads of readers. She named them as they passed: painted lady, swallowtail, viceroy, brush-footed, gossamer. The original brimstone. Metalmarks, hairstreaks, nymphs, and skippers.
There was no creature at all like the butterfly—they were unique animals unlike any other. It wasn’t just their wings, covered in thousands of tiny reflecting scales. It was the truth of their complex bodies, their all-seeing eyes, their feelers. They landed on the table and smiled at her, tapping with musical feet. She smiled, drawing a wing.
Sometimes the butterflies sang to her, Celia, and their songs were like bits of music, the sound of a piano maybe. A single finger on a key, the note hanging in the air, too pretty to fall. Celia’s eyes filled with tears as the butterflies gave voice to her own wonder.
I want to be okay, she answered the butterflies. And the butterflies said yes, of course. They had promised this, from the time before she was born. They had made her mother promise this, too, before it was too late and the darkness overtook her.
One, two, three. Look!
The library lights flickered on and off above her, and the butterflies startled, rising in thick clouds. It was time to go. Celia slid her drawing into the book, gave it a kiss, and rose. Like the others with nowhere to go, she went down the stairs.
* * *
Having a baby sister had changed everything in Celia’s world.
Before, she became a wooden tree left in the bed where Teddy came on nights when her mom passed out on the couch. He put his thing into the hollow of the tree trunk, then held its lifeless branches until he groaned. But then her sister was born. During those long days when her mother slept, or sweated and moaned, waiting for her fix, it was Celia who rocked the baby, changed her diapers, learned how to mix the formula, and later, standing on a stool at the stove, boiled the carrots she mashed, testing with her own tongue to see if they were cool enough for the baby to eat. It was Celia who learned to read so she could understand the words in the Dr. Spock book she had found on the living room bookshelf. It was Celia who called the ambulance one night because she misunderstood the thermometer and thought her baby sister was dying of fever. Her mother, she explained to the ambulance driver, had the flu. That was why she slept through the entire incident.
It was because of her sister that Celia discovered time. Before she knew it, her infant sister was kicking in the dirty high chair, sucking on a pork-chop bone. Then she was two, and three, playing with pots and pans on the floor while Celia stood on a stool at the stove, cooking dinner. Celia, too, grew in these years, but she never stopped being a tree.
It had happened when Alyssa was five and Celia was eleven. She watched her sister change from being a baby to having a shape around her mouth, to having legs that lengthened and arms that took on a honeyed hue in the sun. She had the same copper hair as Celia, only lighter. She’s a pretty girl, strangers started saying, and deep in Celia the alarm sounded.
Make it me, Celia prayed. I will be the tree.
One day Celia took Alyssa out in their backyard to look for butterflies. The backyard had not been mowed for years. Celia liked it this way. There were little garter snakes in the grass, and baby toads, and sometimes the most precious of all, butterflies. “Butterflies are magic,” she told her sister as they hunted carefully in the tall grass, Celia whispering the names when they saw the ones she could identify.
A shadow fell over them. It was Teddy, come home from work. Teddy worked construction, and it was his money that bought the dope her mother now needed. Her mom was as captive to Teddy as Celia was captive to being a tree. He was standing behind them, a fresh beer in one hand, scratching his belly with the other. His blue eyes were on Alyssa. And in that moment, Celia saw how her stepdad was looking at her baby, the speculation in his glance. The planning. No, her heart cried, I will not let this happen.
The next day she went into the nurse’s office at school and reported what was going on at home. She knew exactly what she was doing; she was telling on Teddy to save her sister. She was going to save all of them.
It was the greatest mistake of her life.
Chapter 10
Naomi was climbing the steps to the library when a teenage boy came out. He had the unwashed look of a street kid, and his furtive glance, his eyes widening slightly, told her she was on the mark. She reached out, but the boy lowered his head and hurried off. The evening was getting cold, more rain clouds coming.
It was then she saw the man. He looked like a former boxer, his eyebrows broken with scars, his lips thick with keloids. He wore a blue repairman jacket, zipped up, old trousers, worn shoes. Silvery hair hung down to his chin. Not quite down-and-out, the look said. Dangerous. The man felt dangerous to her.
The man looked back at Naomi indifferently. His thick lips smiled, but it was a cold smile. He was standing under a small alcove sheltering him from the misty rain. Like he was waiting for someone.
Naomi went inside.
“We’re closing,” the librarian said as soon as she entered, not even looking up from her desk. She was absorbed in a worn paperback copy of The Shell Seekers, by Rosamunde Pilcher. Naomi smiled. It was one of her favorite comfort books, too.
“I have some flyers,” Naomi said, coming closer. “And a few questions, if you don’t mind.” She showed her detective license. The librarian put down her book, sliding a homemade crochet bookmark in place, and then put on the sparkly glasses hanging on her neck, leaning over.
A girl was coming down the marble stairs, holding a thick book. She was small and slender, wearing a dirty jean jacket. She had a heart-shaped face under a mop of messy hair, and her green eyes seemed to view the world with trepidation. She was absolutely filthy. Naomi saw a stain of dirt on her cheek as she came closer.