Chance and the Butterfly (7 page)
The thistles were there. But they were small and green in May; it took Chance and Mark a long time to decide they were thistles at all. Finally they agreed to let Matilda be the judge.
Doug was in the front hall, holding Louise, when the two of them burst through the front door. He stood and stared, speaking not a word, as the two enemies ran up the stairs full tilt, hands full of greenery. Even Louise seemed to realize that she was witnessing something out of the ordinary. She was as silent as Doug.
This time Chance held Matilda, along with several soft, downy leaves, while Mark emptied the old leaves into the garbage and filled the container with the rest of the fresh ones. The little caterpillar lay curled in Chance's palm, taking no notice of the food so close by. Chance picked her up and placed her right on a leaf and then lowered it into the container along with the others.
“Let's just leave her alone now,” he said. “Maybe if we're not around, she'll eat.”
“Yeah,” Mark said. “I'm keeping her here, though, in my room. We'll take her back to school together tomorrow morning, like you said.”
Chance stood for a moment, looking at Mark, seeing his determination. Then he looked at the container, Matilda invisible inside among the leaves, maybe eating, maybe not.
Well, Mark had to sleep sometime.
“All right,” Chance said and marched out of the room.
Back in his own room, he flung himself on his bed. As he rolled onto his back, he saw that Mark had followed him and was standing in his doorway.
“Maybe now you understand why you shouldn't have taken the caterpillar, Chance,” he was saying, his words tight. Chance's head throbbed. Whatever Doug might say, Mark had deserved that head in the chest.
“Get out,” Chance said, sliding off the bed. “We're taking her back tomorrow, like you said. And she's in your room right now. So just get out.”
“She'll probably be dead by then,” Mark said. But he left.
Chance slammed his door and spun around, fists clenched. No more did Mark make him freeze up inside. Now he made him mad. Pretending to help and then taking the first chance to attack. Trying to teach him a lesson. And saying she would die! She wasn't going to die. She was probably munching away already. But Chance was not going to go back to Mark's room to check.
He didn't go down for supper either. Just ignored their calls. Maybe they would send him back. And maybe that would be best anyway.
Angie brought him his dinner.
She knocked, walked in and put a tray on his desk. “I don't like a member of the family refusing to come to the table, but I won't have you going hungry either,” she said, her words as brisk as her knock. Then her voice softened. “I know Mark's hard on you, and that is the last thing you need to cope with.” She pulled out the desk chair, took a seat and said, “But he'll come around. He doesn't understand why we weren't happy with him, why he wasn't enough for us. It's funny. It's precisely
because
we love him so much that we wanted more children to love.”
Chance stared at her in astonishment, but she just smiled and went on, “Because we love Mark so much, we wanted to bring you and Louise into our home so we could love you too.” And with that, she stood, pushed in the chair, touched Chance briefly on the top of his head and left the room.
Chance was not sure that what she said made a particle of sense. But it certainly gave him lots to think about.
He left the food. How could he eat, when that tiny creature was wasting away because of him? He did sleep though, finally.
When he woke up, it was very late. The whole house had settled down, wrapped in flannel pajamas and nightgowns and sleepers. Chance was curled up on his bed, still in his jeans and T-shirt. The quilt had been tucked around him, and his dinner tray was gone.
He curled up tighter, hugging himself. They could tuck him in, bring him dinner and tell him their nice little theories all they wanted. None of it made any difference where Mark was concerned.
Then he remembered Matilda.
His own loneliness forgotten, Chance crept from his bed and out into the hall. He turned Mark's doorknob. His skin crackling with fear and anticipation. He stepped inside.
Luckily the curtain wasn't closed properly. Light from a street lamp fell across the floor. Mark was a softly breathing hump under the blankets, but his desk, where Matilda had been earlier, was bare. Chance took a slow, shallow breath and looked around, but it was not until he had tiptoed right to Mark's bedside that he saw the Tupperware container pushed against the wall on Mark's bedside table. He managed to reach the container without making a sound, but as he pulled it back, his elbow caught on the bendy neck of the lamp. He froze. The hump on the bed shifted. The breathing sounds changed.
No longer trying to be quiet, Chance took Matilda and fled out into the brightly lit hall and back into his own dim room. He sat for a long moment on the side of his bed, catching his breath, waiting for his heart to settle back into his chest. Finally he reached out and flipped on his light.
Then, about to pull back the plastic wrap, he paused. What if Mark was right? They might have been too late with the plants, and she might be dead. Curled up and dead.
Steeling himself, he peered into the container. First off, he saw that she wasn't where she had been. One way or another, she had moved. He pulled the cellophane off the top and reached in, moving leaves aside with care. There she was in the bottom. Had she fallen there? Was she dead after all? But she wasn't on the plastic bottom. She was on a plant. As he watched, she inched her way forward and munched. He saw her munch on the plant. Then her head raised up, curious, and waved toward the light.
Chance's face split open in jubilation. He almost cheered out loud, but he stopped himself just in time. He did not want all those flannel figures rising from their beds. But he did have something to say to one. Dancing on quiet feet, he was outside Mark's room in a moment. Once again, he slipped inside.
“Mark,” he hissed. “Mark, wake up.”
Mark sat up, hair on end, eyes full of gluey sleep and squeezed tight against the light from the hall.
“Hey, it's the middle of the night! Get out of here.”
“No, you gotta come and see,” Chance said. “Come on.”
But Mark just mumbled “Get out!” again, flopped down and turned his back.
Chance reached out to yank his blankets off, but then he had a better idea. Seconds later he was back at Mark's side.
“Mark,” he hissed again. “Look!”
Mark rose up, ready to fight, but between him and his target was a Tupperware container, held right under his nose. With his free hand, Chance flipped on the bedside light. Mark put his hands over his eyes and groaned.
“I told you she was going to die,” he said. “You killed her. I told you.”
Then he came fully awake. “And what are you doing with her anyway?”
“Just look,” Chance said.
So Mark took the container into his hands and looked. It took him a moment to find Matilda, but when he did, Chance watched his face light up just as Chance's had.
“Hey,” Mark said. “She likes thistles, huh?”
“Yeah,” Chance replied. “She likes thistles.”
For a long moment Mark looked at Chance. Chance worked hard to hold his gaze. Finally, something changed in Mark's eyes.
“All right, kid. I gotta get some sleep. You want to keep her for the night, be my guest, but we're gonna take her back to school together in the morning.”
“Sure,” Chance said and, not wanting to risk another change of heart, hastily left the room.
There was no way to hide the fact that the missing caterpillar had returned. Chance had put her back in the tiny plastic container on top of the leftover crumbs of food. He added a few shreds of thistle plant for good measure and held the container tight in his fist inside his pocket.
Mark had insisted on carrying it the whole way to school, to keep Matilda safe, he said, making anger bubble up in Chance once again. But they had arrived before the bell, and Mark had been unable to resist the soccer field, so, “Here you go, kid,” he had said, and off he had gone.
Chance had the school door open before the bell had finished ringing, but other kids were close behind, some with parents in tow. They were all excited about the butterflies now too. Parents crowded into the classroom with their children to see the chrysalides slowly transforming inside their thin skins.
Once inside, Chance walked straight to the ledge where the slow bloomers were. He had Matilda out of his pocket now. He didn't have much time. Once they had seen the chrysalides, the kids always came en masse to see if any more caterpillars had attached. With his back to the butterfly bush, Chance whisked the lid off Matilda's tiny cup. Luckily he had kept it, and it still had some goop inside along with all the weird thready bits that the caterpillars left behind as they moved around. He grabbed the bits of thistle between his fingers and shoved them in his pocket.
“Time to attach, Matilda,” he breathed as he snapped the lid back on and set her down on the shelf. Then he turned and headed casually to the cloakroom.
The cry he had been expecting came almost immediately, “Ms. Samson, Ms. Samson, there're eight now. The missing caterpillar is back! It's back!”
Chance finished getting his stuff out of his pack. He walked over to the bush and took a look at the chrysalides. Please let Matilda be one of them soon, he thought, ignoring the excited hubbub around the return of the missing caterpillar. He pulled a chair off the stack at the back of the room and headed for his desk. That was when his eyes met Ms. Samson's. She knows, he thought, looking right back at her without blinking. Well, what's she going to do about it?
“Good morning, Chance,” she said. “Did you hear that our missing caterpillar has returned?”
“Yeah, that's great,” Chance said as he settled down at his desk and waited for what she would do next.
Then his eyes met Ken's. Chance couldn't decide which was stronger in Ken's expression, anger or curiosity.
Ms. Samson didn't give him time to find out. The class was to study their spelling words, she said, with small chalkboards and partners, while Ms. Samson herself took the two caterpillars who had recently attached and whose chrysalides were now fully formed and found them their spots on the butterfly bush.
Two days later, one of the remaining caterpillars died. The whole class trooped outside in the rain to bury the tiny creature. Three children cried. Chance did not. But his stomach knotted up at the idea that tomorrow they might be burying Matilda. Or the day after that. And if they did, it would be his fault.
“Crybabies,” he hissed as the class trooped back into the classroom.
“Ms. Samson,” Ralph called instantly, infuriatingly.
“Tattletale,” Chance said, at full volume now.
“Take your seat, Chance,” Ms. Samson said. “I'll speak to you after school.”
Mark had to wait outside the closed classroom door.
“What did you do now?” Mark asked when Chance was released.