My phone buzzes again—this time a brief, single message alert—so I force myself over to my desk to clean up. But when I get there, the butterfly is upright, her wings folded back and her antennae poking about in the air.
I know she’s only a butterfly, but I’m so happy I could cry.
I watch, overwhelmed, as she crawls to the edge of my desk, her proboscis dipping, her wings preparing for flight. She takes off, circling the room a few times before she lands on the habitat, next to the orange slice I placed there.
I give her a moment to drink, before lifting her with the fruit and slipping her carefully back inside.
On my cell, the message is from Dad. My chest tightens. What if he’s changing his plans? I dial him back, my heart sinking, but it rings four times, and goes to voicemail.
Maybe that’s best. Maybe I don’t want to know.
The front door opens. I hear Mom move through the house, talking to herself, or to no one.
I lock my door, and sit in front of the habitat to collect my thoughts. My mother’s footsteps move toward me down the hall, but they stop short of my room, and there’s the sound of the bathroom door closing.
The shower runs. Good. I just want to stay here with the butterflies.
I watch the Jezebel scale the mesh, her colors flashing me as she moves to a perch and takes flight.
I did this.
I fixed her.
If only I could fix my mother so easily.
EARLY MARCH
TENTH GRADE
“Your mother will be fine. Let’s buy butterflies!”
It’s after one of our Sunday dinners that Nana suggests this. Mom has been acting weird all night. Not eating, staring off blankly in the middle of a thought. Slinking off to bed with talk of a migraine. Nana, per usual, is pretending everything is normal, head firmly planted in the sand.
I’d gone to the sink to help with the dishes, but she had shooed me away with a wave of her hand.
“I’ve got these,” she’d said, sinking yellow-gloved hands into soapy water. “You go get your homework done so you don’t end up like your boring old nana, cooking and cleaning without a thing of your own in the world.”
Nana is wonderful—supportive and doting—but she can be infuriatingly old-fashioned and oblivious. Maybe because she never worked, and never had to, having married my pop-pop so young. He owned a shelving business that kept them comfortable, which she sold to a big closet company for a decent amount of money after he died. Kind of how Dad sold his vitamin company to the big conglomerate in California. But Nana acts like she had no options when she had plenty. After all, Aubrey’s grandmother is an accountant at a fancy firm, and my friend Tanya’s grandmother was my pediatrician in middle school. But I give Nana leeway because with Dad still away, and Mom acting weird, she’s the only adult I can count on.
In the living room I try to focus on my homework, but I’m distracted by thoughts about Mom, about Max Gordon, about Dad coming home, finally, he promises, in May. And, by the time Nana emerges from the kitchen, I’m perusing an online catalogue called World of Butterflies.
“Oh, my! Would you look at these!” Nana says, sitting next to me, clearly not annoyed that I’m procrastinating. “Are they real? What are they?”
“Yes, real,” I say, clicking on the next close-up photo of a butterfly, transparent except for the wine-colored veins in its wings, as if it is made of stained glass. “Scientific name, Greta oto. More commonly known as a Glasswing.”
I’ve been eyeing the Tropicals for months, ever since the second batch of Swallowtails and Monarchs I raised and set free in our yard last summer. The varieties are endless, so pretty they make me hyperventilate. At first, I thought I might try my hand at the Blue Morphos, but their life-span is short, and I can’t bear the thought of them, all majestic like that, lying at the bottom of a habitat. So, instead, I’ve been looking at Glasswings, and a few others with longer lifespans.
“Glasswings, of course! That’s exactly what they look like,” Nana says, running her finger across the screen. I’ve told her a hundred times how it’s bad for the computer, but I don’t stop her. “They’re quite stunning, aren’t they? Shall we get some?”
“They’re too expensive,” I say. “They ship from the UK. And they don’t even live here. It’s too cold. They’re tropical, indigenous to Chile, Mexico, and Panama. They’ve also been spotted in Texas. But not here. They don’t belong here. There’d be no setting them free in our backyard. I’d need equipment. Lights. Plants. A way bigger habitat…”
“Don’t you sound smart on all this,” Nana says.
“I’m trying.” I say. “I’m learning.” And I am.
So far, I’ve only raised the common brushfoots and Swallowtails that came in the basic Butterfly House Kit Dad had given me before he left for LA, ones I’d set free the moment they emerged. These—the Tropicals—would be a lot more complicated.
“In that case, how about an early birthday present?” Nana asks, making me laugh. My birthday isn’t until the end of June.
“Nana, that’s months from now.”
“Well, we’ll have to get you something then, too. After all, a girl should have something truly special and beautiful when she turns sixteen.”
I click to change the image on the screen, anything to distract Nana from talking about my birthday. Lately, she goes on and on about me becoming a woman, making me sure she’s trying to hint something awkward about Max and me. She barely knows him, only that we’re dating, and I haven’t told her or Mom that he’s a senior, or worse, that, since he was held back, he’s already nineteen. Nana would have a stroke.
“Look at these,” I say, stopping on a page full of Painted Jezebels. “These are my favorites,” I tell her.
In the end, Nana chooses the Glasswings, Greta oto, and I choose the Painted Jezebels. Delias hyparete metarete, indigenous to Sri Lanka, India, and Southeast Asia.
The Glasswings are prettier, for sure. But I like the Jezebels with their plain white moth wings on top, their vibrant reds and oranges hidden underneath like a secret.
MID-APRIL
TENTH GRADE
I watch the splinted Jezebel for a few minutes more to be sure she’s really okay, before heading down the hall toward Mom’s bedroom. I haven’t heard a sound since she got out of the shower. But she’s not in there; her bed is made up, no slight swell of the covers. Apparently she hasn’t given up for the night yet.
A spark of hope flares in my chest. Maybe she’s up doing something normal, cooking dinner in the kitchen for a change.
“Mom?” I call out. Maybe today with Dr. Marsdan was the magic session, and her therapy will have finally helped things. Maybe this new cocktail of medications is working.
At the entrance to the kitchen, hope deflates.
She sits with her back to me, in one of her dumb kimonos, her shoulders moving slightly, the sound of a pen scratching along an unseen sheet of paper.
She’s writing one of those stupid letters. It would have been better if she were sleeping.
“Mom?” I have a hard time keeping the fear from my voice. “Mom.”