The Butterfly Clues Read Online Free PDF

full of fluttering; I can’t believe the words coming out of my mouth.
    His eyes narrow. He’s sharper than he looks. He reaches out as if to touch me, and I draw back quickly. Instead, he runs his hands through his greasy hair.
    “Okay, listen. Now, listen up.” His voice is low, filled with urgency. “I found all this stuff in a bag in a Dumpster outside of the Westwood Center. That’s where I find lots of things I sell. All right?” He pulls out a pack of Marlboros and lights one, taking a long drag, exhaling loudly. “That’s all I know. Swear to Christ. That’s it.”
    Something about the tone of his voice makes me want to believe him—a gentleness, a genuineness. But if he is telling the truth—he did find all of Sapphire’s things tossed in a Dumpster outside of Westwood—then why was Sapphire murdered? Why would some out-of-his-mind junkie risk killing somebody for a few hundred dollars worth of things, only to immediately throw those things away?
    It doesn’t make sense.
    Mario continues speaking, keen to my hesitation, stubbing out his cigarette. He leans toward me. “Look, you’re not gonna call the cops or nothing, are you? ’Cause I don’t know what you need me to do to prove it to you, but I’ll do it. I don’t know nothing about this shit. It’s just coincidence. Just bad goddamn luck.” His knuckles are sidled against the edge of his display table, growing whiter and whiter. “This is my bread and butter, you know? It’s how come I’m not homeless today, right?”
    He lights up a new cigarette, taking quick, greedy puffs this time.
    “I’m not going to say anything to the police,” I say, and can see him relax. “It’s none of my business, like you said.” He doesn’t realize that I’d do pretty much anything to avoid a confrontation with the police myself. Not after Officer Clevinger dragged me into his squad car a month after Oren died, when my brain was the static of a TV screen and my limbs did things of their own accord, like swipe the little elephant figurine from the Tibetan store at Tower City. I didn’t even remember taking it, only afterward, curling against the cold glass window of the squad car, trying to disappear as his hot breath fogged my ear and he sneered: Get it together. I tried to explain, blubbering, I didn’t know, I’m so sorry, didn’t realize what I’d done . He just stared at me, like I was an unbelievable idiot. One more incident like this, and you’re on your way to juvie. Then you’ll realize .
    Mario reaches for the butterfly figurine still glittering on the table, mid-afternoon sunlight casting shapes in marigold across everything. He hands it to me. “For you,” he says. “Thank you. Thanks for being cool.”
    I nod but say nothing, and that’s that. Our unspoken contract. As he turns around, searching for something in a bag on the ground, the urge rips through me, fierce, insatiable. My arm shoots forward to the table, and I pull the horse pendent necklace into my fist and walk quickly, sharply away. Clutching tightly to the butterfly in one hand and the necklace in the other, I move through the market, passing tables of food and tables of fabric and trim and creatures made of wood and glass and metal and baseball memorabilia and faded T-shirts and old headdresses of satin and lace, but all I can really think about is her. Sapphire.
    Something about her is burning little holes into my heart. I wonder if what draws me to the butterfly is what drew her to it, too: not just its dark, pooling glow but the way its wings are folded back like it has just landed—and not a grand, proud landing but a solemn, lonely one, a head-bowed one, a middle-of-the-night leaving-of-somewhere-or-someone landing.
    I wonder whether someone, somewhere, misses her. There’s got to be someone, even if no one was there to claim her as a loved one, even if there were only strippers at Tens to speak not of her, but of her things. Now my brain is doing a gushing