Butterfly Read Free

Justin’s crowds of fabulous friends and the noisy fuss they’d made of young Plum; the highlight had come when a female guest fainted, and Fa had tapped her face until she revived. “Everyone’shaving slumber parties. Can I have one, Mums?”
    Her mother looks tortured, which means her daughter may. The girl scrambles upright on the pew. “I want everything bought from the supermarket — nothing homemade. I want mini pizzas and chicken wings, and cashews and macaroons. An ice-cream cake from a cake shop, not some horrible sponge. No balloons or streamers or games either. And punch instead of soft drink —”
    “And bags of lollies to take home?”
    Plum’s lip hoists. “We’re
fourteen,
Justin. You don’t get bags of lollies at our age.”
    “Do you giggle about boys instead?”
    It’s the kind of brotherly comment that makes Plum feel like a deer in a huntsmen’s forest. She glances past the casserole dish to where Cydar sits in dimness, wrists bent above his plate. She does not need light to know his eyes are still and cool on her. “None of your business. We’ll talk about whatever we want. You’re not invited, so you’ll never know.”
    Cydar says nothing, which is more disconcerting than words. Mums is standing to saw slices from the lumpy loaf. “And what do you want as a present?”
    The miniature television in its globe of chrome flames like a star in Plum’s mind, blinding Cydar from sight. The television is, without question, the most desirable item she’s ever seen. None of her friends have a TV to themselves, let alone one so enviable. Nor, Plum suspects, will she, for its price tag had made her swing away, swallowing withdisappointment. Her family isn’t poor, but some things are beyond the realm of reasonable expectation. Nevertheless she has cleared a space on top of her dresser, to prove that the object would fit. She has lain on her bed and imagined watching the pint-sized screen. “I don’t know,” she mumbles; to her horror, tears are close. She has seen herself unwrapping a television-sized box on the morning of her birthday; she’s accompanied herself to school, casually announced the new possession, reveled in the envious mewls of her friends. She’s constructed a new and entirely perfect life around something that is, in reality, as unattainable as Everest’s peak. It’s the kind of make-believe thing a child would do, as poignant as a broken heart. Indeed, Plum feels her heart
is
breaking over the loss of what never was. She dredges her voice past a clot of grief that has bulged inside her throat. “The only thing I want is something you won’t let me have. I won’t even bother telling you what it is, because I know I won’t get it.”
    “Oh no,” Justin sighs. “Not another bloody pony?”
    Tears, humiliated and humiliating, spurt from Plum’s eyes: she throws down her cutlery and struggles to her feet. “Shut up!” she wails. “You always laugh at me! I’m a
person,
I have
feelings,
I’m not a
joke
! Why can’t you all just
leave me alone
?”
    And having clambered over the back of the pew Plum departs the table, pounding through the house like a rock down a cliffside, storming up the stairs like a centurion.

 
    I N HER BEDROOM SHE DROPS TO HER KNEES, reaching into the darkness beneath her bed for the handle of an old briefcase, which she pulls into the light with such aggravated force that the case leaps like a seal into her lap. The latches snap open militarily,
chock chock,
and as Plum lifts the lid her breath comes out snotty and rasped. She gazes upon the case’s contents with an archaeologist’s eye: here lies her treasure, her most sacred things. She has lined the briefcase with lavender satin and provided several bags’ worth of cotton-ball cushioning so that each token sits within its own bulky cloud, untroubled by her manhandling of the case. Plum brushes the items with her palm, incanting as she does so a string of whispery words. The glass