or something. If it's not a bloodstain, it sure as hell looks like one.
My mind strays to the cut I noticed on Barron's left hand this morning, and the tiny red droplets on the wings of the butterfly in the necklace. The blood drains from my own face, and I feel suddenly lightheaded and dizzy.
“Be careful climbing through here; the rocks are sharp on the sides.” He starts climbing, in bare feet no less, and then slips into the crevice. The flashlight illuminates the opening from the inside as he waits for me to follow. My heart is pounding, but I can't resist the lure of the unknown, this day so different from all of the others.
Against my better judgement, I follow him, heart racing as I warily pick my way up the ragged edges of the limestone. It forms in sheets, one layer on top of the other. There's a smooth, table-like surface at the top that I balance on before avoiding the bloodstained rocks and grabbing a natural handhold in the stone.
I drop down to the soft dirt on the other side with a grunt, maidenhair ferns tickling my ankles. If I'd thought it was dark in the woods, this little valley between the two rock formations takes that darkness to a whole new level. The edges of each rock curve inward, meeting in a ragged kiss over our heads, blocking the pinpricks of stars.
“What are we doing here?” I ask as Barron turns to look at me, digging a box from his pocket. He passes it over to me, and my eyes widen as I recognize the red jewelry box as the one that I received from the Devils' Day Committee. Inside, I know what I'm going to find: an orange and black, male Diana fritillary butterfly.
“I was going to have this sent to your class, but plans changed.” He hands the box over, our fingertips touching with a zing that reminds me, oddly enough, of Raz. My cheeks flush as I pop the top and find the now-familiar necklace, the butterfly's still wings encased in resin, droplets of what I can only guess is Barron's blood staining the specimen. I lift my head up, mouth in a small ‘O’ of surprise. I don't have to fake my surprise: I'd suspected Barron was the one to send me the necklace, but I never thought he'd go out of his way to give it to me.
“You know this is an endangered species, right? And the state butterfly of Arkansas?” I don't mean to sound like an asshole, but I still can't decide if his gifting me the necklace is meant as a gift or a prank.
“I know. I didn't kill it; I found it dead.” He nods his chin to the dark crevice surrounding us. “Here.” Barron turns the flashlight down to the fern-dotted forest floor, still damp from this morning's rain. “Look,” he commands, and I follow his attention down to our bare feet … and the dozens of blue-black and orange-black butterflies dead on the ground. Female and male Diana fritillaries, I think, remembering that their specifies has strong sexual dimorphism, that is, when males and females appear quite different in a species.
“Where did they all come from?” I breathe as Barron redirects the beam of the flashlight to the rock ceiling above our heads. The necklace nearly falls from my hands as I gasp, my eyes wide as I look up to see hundreds—more like thousands—of butterflies above our heads, their wings fanning slowly as they rest on the limestone rock.
“I assume one got in here to lay its eggs, and when the larvae hatched, they got trapped.” He shrugs his broad shoulders, causing the light to bob slightly with the motion. “Or maybe I'm totally full of shit, but I keep coming back here, and they haven't left.”
“How did you find this place?” I ask, rubbing my thumb over the smooth surface of the necklace. I feel much better about it, knowing that the butterfly was found dead.
“I come out here to draw,” Barron answers, and I wonder if, like with Raz, this is the single longest conversation we've ever had. “Stumbled on it. When I saw them, I thought of you.”
“When you saw hundreds of dead butterflies, you thought of me? That's not at all creepy.”
Barron laughs, dark and low, as deep as the shadows surrounding us. We've been going to the same school for three years now, and all I really know