Butterfly (16 page)

Rachael elbows Caroline. “Caz wants to marry Justin.”

The pale girl shies backward. “I don’t! As
if
I do!”

“You do! You said you do! You want to have a wedding cake with a little plastic Justin and a little plastic Caz. And you and Aria can be sisters-in-law —”

“Sammy! Shut up! All I said was that he looks like a nice husband!”

“Yeah —
your
nice husband!”

“How do
you
know what a nice husband looks like?”

Caroline flails. “You can tell! You can! It’s that look, like he’d paint the house —”

“Paint the house!”
The words force the friends to the floor, six dissolving witches. They laugh because they’re sure they know everything able to be known and life holds no further mystery for them, not even about things they haven’t yet known and will not know for years — first touch, first defeat, nights shared, days forgotten, mistakes made, words unsaid, the saying of too many words. The heaviness of success, the gray valleys of loss, the clay feet of love, the greediness of time. Plum laughs because she can, it is so extremely funny; and because when they’re laughing at Caroline they are not laughing at her. Yet deep inside, a knot of disquiet ties up in her. Justin won’t marry Caroline — but other things will happen, and they will make Plum’s life, and Plum will have little choice about some of them, and no choice at all in many. She claws at the flank of an armchair, feeble with laughter; but life has turned to look over its shoulder at her, and life has the look of a dragon. When no one is watching she drags her wrist across her tacky lips.

They lie for a while side-by-side on the floor, beached on their unrolled sleeping bags, talking about songs and the lead singers of bands, about teachers and which ones have been made to cry, about the state-school boys who throw the private-school girls’ bags onto the tracks at train stations. They talk, of course, about Rachael’s Youth Group leader, whom some of the friends are beginning to hate.
“This is boring,” Samantha says suddenly; and they all recognize it then, as if boredom has a bad smell, and Plum is mortified. “Let’s go to your room, Aria. We’ll do some more modeling.”

Plum must clamber to her feet. “OK!”

Noisily they carry their glasses of punch and the bowl of Twisties upstairs. Plum’s bedroom is large, but the seven girls seem to fill every inch of it — they bump against the furniture, reach for the same item, squeeze past one another to look out the window. Their voices collide like clashing colors, crowd like balloons against the ceiling. Everything Plum owns is exposed to their slab-sided scrutiny. When she was young, last year, last month, Plum had loved showing off her bedroom to her friends; now, hedged into a corner as her clothes are inspected and the radio turned on, as her porcelain cats are tortured and the photographs turned to where the light will fade them and the teddy bears are made to attack, she feels awful, strangulated. This room is
her,
her one place in the whole world: but, “What’s this?” her friends are asking, demanding as seagulls. “Where’d you get it? How much was it? Why did you choose that color? What’s so good about that? Can I have this? I had one of these. It broke, so I threw it away.” And because defending the toys and the record albums and the brand-new jeans and her first pair of baby shoes would dangerously expose their preciousness, Plum can only stand in the corner, apologizing and disowning, barely coherent and grinning.

Samantha’s big head is in the cupboard. “You don’t wear peasant skirts, do you? They make your bum look huge, you know. Before you buy clothes, Aria, you should ask my advice.”

Victoria is tilting novels out from the shelves. “Can I borrow one of these? Or all of them? I’ve got nothing to read.”

Rachael is peering into the mirror, dotting Plum’s acne cream on her spots. “I’ve tried this stuff before,” she says. “It doesn’t work.”

Caroline is sprawled across the bed. “You’ve had that poster of kittens since you were little, haven’t you, Aria?”

“Only a few years.” The elastic around the bib of Plum’s dress is beginning to feel tight. When she shifts it, she sees it has carved a blazing line into her flesh. “Since I was ten.”

“Probably time to take it down,” says Dash. “Kittens!”

Sophie is trying on the roller skates, tightening the white laces at her ankles. Everyone knows Sophie can ice-skate and ride horses, and learned gymnastics for seven years. The skates fit her perfectly, and she stands and spins about. “Can I take them outside?”

“OK!” The word bumps up, lurching Plum from the wall. “Hey, everyone, that’s a good idea, let’s take the skates outside —”

“Shh!” says Victoria. “Listen!”

Like a herd of deer they lift their heads and look toward the door. There’s a man’s voice laughing somewhere below them; suddenly, a man’s feet coming up the stairs. It is
Justin, home. The girls swivel to Caroline: “Now’s your chance!” Samantha hisses. “He’s here, you can ask him! Wedding bells, wedding bells!” And Caroline, yowling with terror, drops from the bed and scrambles underneath it even as Justin appears in the doorway, as tousled and vital as an Olympian. His elegant face, his long legs, his twinkling eyes and baby-sweet smile eclipse completely the ugly bottle-shop polo shirt with its gallivanting bottle of beer. “Hello,” he says, and the appeal he radiates could loosen planets from their rotations. “Hi, old Plummy.”

“Hi Justin.” The friends hunker into themselves. Plum says, “Hi,” so casually.

Her brother slouches in the doorway, nudges a lock of hair from his eyes. “What’s been happening?”

“None of your business. We’re taking the skates outside.”

“Ah.” He glances around, and Plum realizes that he’s lost for words, is swamped with panic on his behalf. Then he notices the roller skates on Sophie’s feet, and, in a moment that scores into Plum’s heart unforgettably, he says, “Be careful, Soph. You could break yourself on those things.”

It’s like a slap with a rose: everyone is jealously and absolutely stunned not by the fact that he so clearly knows her name but that he actually
shortened
it. Sophie, red in the cheeks, mumbles, “I’ll try not to.”

“Good.” Justin searches the forest of staring faces for his sister. “So everything’s fine? Anything I can do?”

“No.” Plum has regained a cocky equilibrium —
indeed, she’s soaring. Probably nothing in the world is as wonderful as Justin. “You can go away, that’s what. Shoo.”

“All right. But I’ll be coming back later for birthday cake, remember.”

“Bye, Justin.” Her friends are a zombie chorus, immobile while they listen to him walk down the hall. Plum teeters, destabilized by reflected glory. Samantha turns and asks almost pleadingly, “Does he have a girlfriend?”

Dash gasps at the audacity. “I don’t think he’d like
you —
”

“Shut up, Dash, I’m only
asking —
”

“Lots of girls like him,” says Plum solemnly.

Caroline’s legs are kicking as she caterpillars out from under the bed — Victoria jumps sideways to avoid a flying foot. Gathering her limbs she sits up, blinking and splotched with dust. “Your husband’s gone,” Rachael tells her, “but he’s coming back later for birthday cake.”

Caroline, though, is looking at Plum. She unfurls a spidery hand and asks, “Plummy, what’s this?”

Later Plum will wonder why she didn’t hear the familiar
chock chock
of the briefcase latches springing open. While Justin had lounged in the doorway, the whole room had seemed to roar — but not so loudly that she shouldn’t have heard the sound of the coming catastrophe. Perhaps a warning would have made no difference, or even made things worse; but how fragile
power
must have been, how feeble must have been
happiness,
to have disintegrated so inaudibly, like crumbs dropped from a height.

In Caroline’s hand is the Fanta yo-yo. Its clam-like orange shell is as virulent as a fire alarm. Caroline had forsaken a small hill of chocolate to buy this thing which would be a lasting memento of a day at the Show. How proud she had been of making that choice. Often Plum has held the yo-yo to her lips, willing into its coiled string the words,
The choices I make will be the choices you make. I am important to you.
The dear yo-yo, the most humble of the objects: looking back, she would never have guessed that the
yo-yo
would be the one to betray her.

Plum’s heart starts to beat sickeningly. Her only choice is to brazen it out. “It’s a yo-yo, Caz.”

“But — it’s
my
yo-yo, isn’t it?”

“. . . No, it’s mine. It’s just a dumb yo-yo.”

Caroline frowns, not angrily. “But it
looks
like my yo-yo. My yo-yo’s lost. I’ve been looking for it for ages.”

“It’s just a stupid yo-yo!” Plum says it too vehemently into the silenced room. Her friends are watching her, their eyes cold stones. Pushed into the corner Plum says, “You’re not the only person who has a yo-yo, Caz. All yo-yos look the same —”

“Then what’s this?”

The girl on the floor opens her other arachnid hand, and in her palm is a tangle of silver links and tiny trinkets, a handbag, a heart, a trumpet. “Oh!” The word oofs out of Sophie, who staggers forward, weighted by the skates. “My charm bracelet! Plum — where did you find it?” And Plum, elbows against the wall, takes a final terrified glance at her,
this girl she’s liked and admired and even secretly loved a little, knowing she’ll never again see the delight that’s spilling over her face.

“Find it!” It is Rachael who is fastest at adding up a lost yo-yo and a lost bracelet and a hiding place under a bed. “She didn’t
find
it — she stole it! You stole Sophie’s bracelet, didn’t you, Plum? You stole Caz’s yo-yo!”

The accusation is so savage that Sophie steps backward with shock. “No!” Plum barks hotly. “I wouldn’t! As
if
I would! I
found
that bracelet —”

“Yeah? Where? In Sophie’s bedroom? On the day we pierced your ears?” Understanding arrives brightly in Rachael’s eyes. “That’s right, isn’t it? You stole the bracelet when we left you in Sophie’s bedroom, after we pierced your ears.”

“Oh my God,” says Dash.

“You slag,” whispers Samantha.

“I didn’t!” Plum writhes. “Why would I? I found it at school, in the quadrangle, I didn’t even
know
it was Sophie’s —”

Victoria pipes up wanly from where she’s huddled at the bookcase. “Don’t say she’s stealing if she isn’t, Rach.”

“But this
is
my yo-yo.” Caroline sounds amazed. “I recognize this scratch. I dropped it on the road and it got this scratch . . .”

The six girls stare at Plum then, who is packed into the corner and whose teeth are bared in fear. In the silence they hear the ginger punch defizzing in the glasses. Caroline
says, “Why didn’t you just
say
you wanted my yo-yo, Plum? I would have given it to you.”

Samantha asks, “What else have you stolen, bitch?”

“I didn’t steal anything!” The words rip from Plum — wildness is all that’s left to her. “This is stupid! You’re being stupid!”

Caroline looks at Samantha. “There’s a whole box of things under the bed.”

Plum cries out like a shot bird; Dash dives for the floor. The briefcase is pulled into the light, its unlockable lid thrown back. Plum lunges from the corner, to rescue her treasures or flee, she’s not sure: but Samantha’s bulk blocks her, and she digs into the corner again. Later she’ll be struck by how meager the objects had looked, lying there in their beds of silk and cotton ball. Such gewgaws could never have given her what she needs, she should have known they would leave her falling, with nothing to break her fall. “My watch!” bawls Rachael; “My necklace!” screams Victoria. The wristwatch and jade pendant are brandished in the air. Samantha plucks up the ancient coin with a derisive snort. Dash holds the Abba badge between two fingertips. Plum’s heart hitches to see Sophie reach out for the glass lamb. Held to the light, the lamb sparkles for Sophie just as it sparkled for Plum. “My grandmother gave me this,” Sophie whispers. “I’ve looked for it everywhere. I thought Mum had sucked it up in the vacuum cleaner.”

“Plum,” says Victoria, “how could you?”

“Why?” Caroline asks forlornly. “
Why
would you?”

Plum turns her eyes to the blankness of the floor. Her face is flaming and she would like to spurt a fountain of tears, but the weeping won’t come. Underneath her agony, she is dry and cold. What must happen will happen: but they cannot force her to explain. “It’s just junk,” she says thickly. “You didn’t need it.”

“So
what
if we didn’t need it? That doesn’t mean you could
steal
it.”

Victoria rests her head against the wall. “I didn’t need this necklace. I still liked it, though.”

“Same with this coin,” Samantha says. “I don’t
need
it. But I still want it. It’s
mine.
”

“You stole a bit of each of us.” Sophie frowns down at the lamb. She’s reaching for a reason
why,
but the answer keeps winnowing away. Rachael announces the only fact that is brutally obvious: “You’re a thief, Aria. You’re a thieving bitch.”

Plum cringes in her corner. “I was going to give it back,” she tries, but it’s a lie as thin as water, and the words drain away. Sophie takes a gulp of distress, sits down to unlace the roller skates. Rachael’s baleful gaze stays on Plum as friendships are severed and withdrawn. “This watch belonged to my mother,” she says. “It’s an
heirloom.
I lost it the day I broke my arm. You found it — and you were going to keep it. You didn’t care that I was sad about losing it. You didn’t care about any of us.”

“That’s not true,” Plum moans, but Rachael snaps back,
“Yes it is. You’re disgusting, Aria, Plum, whatever your name is.”

“And creepy,” says Dash. “Keeping our stuff in a coffin under her bed.”

“She makes me sick,” says Samantha.

Rachael slips the watch into a pocket, looks around at her friends. “I don’t want to stay here,” she says. “I’m going home.”

“Me too.” Samantha and Dash declare it together; Victoria agrees quickly, “Me too.”