Butterfly Read Free Page B

there
are
demons, and one of them has come for her. And suddenly Plum would rather be ordinary after all.
    “Plum? Are you hurt?”
    Her sights plunge toward the ground, over the fence and into the garden of the house next door, where their neighbor stands with her hands clutched together, peering up troubledly. “Can I help you? You’re so sad.”
    Plum’s face scalds. The Coyle family is not on such personal terms with the people next door that the woman — whose name,
Maureen Wilks,
Plum knows, but little else, and nor does she want to — may take the liberty of intruding in this way. The Coyles have lived in this street forever, their Wilks neighbors for only a few years, qualifying Plum to regard them with the hoitiness of landed gentry. Shetucks the MARS Bar out of sight, smears her eyes with the flat of a hand. “I’m fine,” she says, infusing each word with enough curtness and weight to impact into the earth. “I’m not — sad.”
    Maureen Wilks considers her openly, so Plum feels her gaze like probing fingers. She would back into the darkness of her room, heave the window and pull the blind shudderingly, if only that would not appear rude the way this spying lady is rude, staring and listening and intruding. “You look like Rapunzel in her tower,” the woman says. “Standing up there, waiting for a prince to rescue you.”
    Plum bridles: Rapunzel is her most-scorned distressed damsel. Those coils of moldery moth-eaten hair, the idiocy in never thinking of lowering herself to the ground, rather than waiting to be climbed. “Do I?” she answers uncivilly.
    The neighbor steps forward, her shadow skimming the fence. Her head is tipped to see Rapunzel, and Plum can see down her cleavage. “Would you like to come to David’s party, Plum? We’re having a picnic. There’s plenty of food, and we’ve filled the pool, but there are no guests except me.”
    Plum’s window is high enough to overlook every corner of the neighboring garden, and she notices now, in the shade of a tree, the small boy lying on his stomach in a shallow wading pool. She’s seen him in the garden before, breaking twigs, investigating. Laid out on a rug at a safe distance from the pool are platters of food that say only
childhood:
triangles of bread dotted with hundreds-and-thousands,frankfurters pierced with wooden toothpicks, lemony cupcakes and bowls of Smarties, bottles of garish fizz. Every immature morsel Plum has banished from her own party; everything she’s loved, and still does. Though caramel yet clings to her teeth, her heart longs for cupcake, her heart demands fizz. “Is it David’s birthday?”
    “Yes; he’s four. Please come. His father’s away, there’s only me. He would love to have a guest. Wouldn’t you, David?”
    David, startled by inclusion, dips his face into the water. Plum hesitates, naturally antisocial: but her desire for the party food is like the tug of a clutching hand. She needs a frankfurter, she pines for sparkling drink. In the space of mere moments she could be sitting on a rug, being six years old again. And if her mother opens the door, she will find her daughter’s room deserted. Plum’s absence will first puzzle, then worry her family, and make them think back on how they’ve treated her. “I’ll come,” she says. “Wait a minute.”
    She shuts the window and quickly changes out of her pajamas, pulling on a T-shirt and a pair of toweling shorts. From a shelf she takes a picture book that has no place in her heart.
Dear David,
she writes on its opening page.
Happy
. . . She doesn’t know whether it’s forth or fourth.
Dear David, Happy birthday. Love from your neighbor Miss Ariella “Plum” Coyle.
Underneath this she adds the elaborate flourish she’s been practicing of late. Then she creeps downstairs, book under her arm, Roman sandals soundless on the uncarpetedstairs. She hears her parents and brothers talking at the dinner table — Plum would like to know if they’re