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