The Butterfly Clues Read Online Free PDF Page B

kind of thing, in tandem with my heart, and I can’t stop the thoughts, landing like the heavy kind of snow that sticks and forms thick cold walls around everything.
    I wonder if Oren thought he was missed, as he eased down the gradual slope of his slipping away from us, from everything, into nothing.
    I clasp the necklace on to my neck, the small, cold horse resting against my sternum, and squeeze the butterfly in my palm. Nine, nine, six. Again. Nine, nine, six. Once more. Nine, nine, six.
    What happens to people when no one mourns for them? When no one cares what they were feeling when they died—whether it felt like a million points of light or endless mouths singing arias or whether it felt like nothing, like a wave raising itself to the stars and pulling the world back with it, into the vastness of everything that goes on and on and on.
    I have pieces of Sapphire now, pieces she left behind. And somehow, they make me feel I have a responsibility to her, too: to her life, to her death.
    We’re born alone, and all die alone, too. I read that somewhere, in some book. After Oren died I used to lie awake and think about that: think about the universe sucking up hope for us, soul by soul, until we’re so dry we all starve, all at once, and the sky takes our bones and crushes them into mulch and starts over again. So goes the cycle. So go the millions and billions of things we can’t ever begin to control. But it can’t be that way. It just can’t.
    Even though I’ve only stopped at four stalls instead of nine— the pain of four pulling at every one of my cells—I leave the flea market, stumbling out onto the sidewalk in a kind of daze, feeling caught between worlds, dizzy. Hey, Sapphire—can you hear me? Wherever you are, I hope you’re okay.
    I grip the butterfly hard, three times more. Are you okay?
    I look up at the sky. There is no answer from above—no answer from anywhere—other than a light drizzle that begins to fall.
    Or maybe that is the answer.

CHAPTER 4
    That night I dream that blue-black snowflakes are falling from the sky, settling like ash. I’m with Oren. I’m always with Oren in my dreams now; we’re walking beside a wide, cold lake. The trees are missing their leaves. Then, just as I reach some kind of conclusion in a point I’m trying to make, I turn, and he’s gone, and I understand that the lake has swallowed him.
    And in the dream I’m not perplexed at this having happened, only angry with myself for not having held on to his hand just a little tighter.
    The ash falls on my head and my hands are covered in it. The dream-lake that swallows my dream-brother is full of it, and he is full of it now, too. His dream eyes. His dream tongue. His dream throat.

    Sapphire’s butterfly figurine sits perched on my night table. I carry it with me as I dress for the day, attempting to cover the awkward lines and angles of my body: dark jeans with the cuffs rolled up, the horse necklace, tucked against my chest beneath a gigantic blue felted pullover that was my mother’s once, a navy blue knit hat shoved low over my ears. I push my bangs up underneath it. But then the scar peeks out at me, white as chalk. I release the bangs from the fortress of my hat. My hair is dark and split-ended and long-suffering for a cut that I’m never quite prepared to give it. I’m just not good at parting with things, I guess.
    I should be doing homework right now for Intro to Economics— the elective my father decided would be in my best interest to take. I should be researching and performing basic statistical analyses of inflation and unemployment, but I just haven’t got any room for that: the only thing in my head right now is Sapphire; the moment she died. I don’t think what happened was random—don’t think it was just bad goddamn luck , as Mario would say.
    I’m going back to Neverland, back to the puke-yellow house with the daisies. I don’t exactly know what I plan to do once I arrive, but I’ve