Page 14

Butterfly – Mariah Carey

We stopped again not long after we’d crossed into Wyoming, in a two-stoplight town nestled at the foot of mountains that had snow on their peaks.

I could fall in love with towns like these.

The air was soaked with the deep smell of pine, making everything feel fresh and clean.

This one had just one motel, a Mom-and-Pop place with a golden-yellow exterior.

I felt safer out here, especially now that we’d left the tracker behind with Luca.

It was calm, and quiet, and strangely wholesome.

Before we got into the motel room and unpacked, we needed to stock up on some essentials: gas, snacks, toiletries. Brooke checked in, then gave me printed directions from the front desk that would take us to a supermarket on the edge of town.

‘Can I throw some stuff in the laundry before we go back out?’ I asked as we walked into the afternoon sun.

‘Ooh, good idea.’

We found the tiny laundry room that smelled like clean linen just off the parking lot. I had a handful of quarters in my pocket, and it didn’t take long to shove our dirty clothes in one of the washers. I checked the time so I’d know when to go back and move it over to the dryer.

Brooke hooked her arm in mine as we walked toward the car, and I tried not to be affected by that. She was just being friendly. That was all.

‘The supermarket is actually back the way we came in,’ I said, studying the directions when I was settled in the passenger seat. ‘Just off the highway.’

‘Great,’ Brooke said.

After a few minutes of using the directions to navigate, I tapped her on the arm.

‘Can we pull over?’ I asked.

‘Sure.’

The town had signs directing us to a nature park with a walking trail, and though it was too late in the day to go for a hike, I wanted to get out of the car, off the road and near a tree for a minute. I wanted to smell some flowers, not road dust and gas fumes.

Brooke grabbed our last bag of chips from the trunk and followed me, not saying anything when I laid on the grass in the late afternoon sunshine, my arms and legs splayed wide. She took the picnic bench instead.

‘You okay down there?’ Brooke asked after a few minutes.

‘Yeah.’ I had my eyes closed. ‘I’m reconnecting with nature.’

I heard her snort with laughter, then crunch on a handful of chips.

The sun was low in the sky, but still warm enough that my skin could feel it. On impulse, I pulled my sneakers and socks off and buried my toes in the scratchy grass.

‘Do you think anyone is looking for us?’ Brooke asked.

‘Like Chris?’

‘No, not that asshole. I’m not worried about him anymore.’

‘Really? I am,’ I muttered.

I propped myself up on an elbow to look at her, shielding my eyes from the sun with my other hand.

Brooke shook her head. ‘If we spend our time freaking out about every rude, slimy asshole of a man we come across, we’ll never get anywhere.’

I laughed, and Brooke grinned.

‘Forget him,’ she said decisively.

I wasn’t convinced, but I’d go along with her, for now. ‘Do you think someone’s looking for us?’ I asked.

Brooke shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

‘I think someone is looking for you ,’ I said, pushing away thoughts of my own issues.

‘No,’ she replied quickly.

‘Why not?’

‘I left a note.’

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes and laid back in my nice patch of grass. ‘Oh, that’s all right, then,’ I said, letting a little sarcasm creep in. ‘You left a note .’

Brooke frowned. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Have you ever done this? Run off and just left a note?’

‘No.’

‘Then they’ll be looking for you,’ I said, stretching my arms over my head.

‘Why will they be looking for me and not you? I’m almost eighteen. I can do what I want.’ She sounded annoyed.

‘Because people care about you, Brooke, and they don’t care about me.’

‘I’m sure that’s not true, Mouse. Your mom and your friends will wonder where you are.’

‘I don’t have friends,’ I said simply, because it was true.

‘Have you ever run away before?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘And I didn’t leave a note.’

‘What happened?’

‘I got a flag on my file to say I’m a flight risk.’

‘That’s it?’ she said incredulously.

‘Yeah.’

‘Jesus Christ.’

I put my palms down on the grass, then moved my arms back and forth like I was making a snow angel. The movement sent the smell of grass and pine into the air, and I took deep, greedy lungfuls of it.

A white butterfly danced by, a few yards away from me, and I watched it for a long moment.

I was twelve the first time I ran away, and I didn’t get far – I was picked up by mall security when my mom told the cops that was where I sometimes hung out.

I couldn’t remember exactly why I’d run off that first time.

It had probably been some stupid argument, and I was feeling too boxed in, too smothered and suffocated, and I had decided to just go.

Since then, I’d taken off a few more times, never getting very far on my own. If Brooke hadn’t picked me up, I probably wouldn’t have made it far this time, either. I owed her so much. Without her, I’d almost certainly be rotting in a jail cell back in Seattle.

‘Do you want someone to be looking for you?’ I asked.

‘No,’ Brooke said quickly. ‘No. I want … this .’

I nodded. ‘Me too. This is better than I thought it was going to be.’

That was the understatement of the century.

In all the daydreams I’d concocted during Chemistry or Algebra, I’d never thought I would actually end up hanging out with Brooke Summer.

None of those daydreams had come close to the reality of her, either.

When she smiled at me, or laughed when we were talking about something inconsequential, it felt like things clicked into place.

I knew who I was now, a hundred times more than I had when we left Seattle.

I couldn’t believe it had only been four days. So much had happened already.

I sat back up and started pulling pine needles out of my hair.

‘Do you ever do anything with your hair?’ Brooke asked.

‘I hate it,’ I said immediately.

‘Why?’

‘It’s just … fragile and gross and horrible. I have to wash it every day otherwise it gets really greasy, and because I wash it every day it gets super frizzy.’

‘You could cut it.’

‘So I could look more like a twelve-year-old boy? No, thank you, Brooke.’

‘What if you didn’t look like a twelve-year-old boy, though?’ Brooke asked. ‘You need to cut it really straight at the bottom, and shorter, so it doesn’t get so tangled.’

‘You sound like you know what you’re talking about,’ I muttered.

‘I cut my own hair all the time. And Kendall’s and Madison’s.’

Kendall and Madison were the other popular girls at St. Catherine’s, like Brooke.

Madison was in my Chemistry class and was okay, but Kendall could be a bitch, especially when the others weren’t around to keep her in line.

I’d always wondered why the three of them were friends.

They’d seemed to go everywhere together for a few years, though recently I’d seen Brooke with other people more often.

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Why did we cut each other’s hair?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I started doing it a few years ago, mostly just putting box dye on my friends’ hair and styling them in updos, you know, for homecoming or whatever.’

I’d never gone to homecoming or any whatever , because I’d never owned a nice-enough dress or had anyone to go with, and I didn’t want to stand around looking awkward while my classmates danced. I’d seen photos, though, so I knew what she was talking about.

‘I can’t do fancy cuts,’ Brooke said. ‘Only simple things, trimming bangs, you know.’

I nodded like this was normal. Maybe it was.

‘So,’ she said decisively, ‘do you want me to?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, Brooke. We probably shouldn’t be wasting money on things like hair dye.’ I never spent money on myself like that. Especially not on my appearance.

‘Don’t worry about that.’ She waved away my concerns. ‘I want … I don’t know. I want to help give you a lift.’

I laughed. ‘Like your car?’

‘Exactly! Let me boost you up and fix you.’

I wasn’t sure how easy that would be, but the idea was tempting. More than a little tempting.

‘Okay,’ I said.

‘Great. I’m going to go to the supermarket. Do you want to wait here?’

My knee-jerk reaction was to say no. I didn’t want Brooke to abandon me. I didn’t want to be left on my own in a strange town where I didn’t know anyone.

Brooke rolled her eyes, clearly reading my thoughts. ‘I’ll be, like, twenty minutes, tops. I don’t want to interrupt your moment.’

‘Okay.’ I lurched to my feet. ‘I’ll grab my bag.’

The sun was starting to set, and it was beautiful out here, so I didn’t mind staying behind, really. While Brooke was gone, I finished the bag of chips and read a few chapters of my novel.

Even though Brooke was teasing me about being obsessed with these vintage romances, I unironically loved them.

Sure, they danced a line between desperate longing and stalking sometimes, and there was a vague whiff of misogyny hanging over some characters, which totally tracked with when they were written.

But they were also swoon-worthy, heart-stoppingly romantic, with characters who knew they couldn’t possibly live without each other.

I related to that feeling.

She beeped the horn at me, and I jumped before my brain caught up and reminded me who it was.

‘That was quick,’ I said, letting myself into the passenger seat.

‘I was gone thirty minutes.’

‘Really?’ I asked incredulously.

‘Really,’ she said with a laugh. She pulled out of the parking lot and headed back toward the motel. ‘I thought you were going to be freaking out.’

Two bags stuffed full of non-perishables were in the footwell, to top up the supplies we kept in the trunk, plus two different types of dye and a pair of decent hairdressing scissors.

‘Where did you get all that?’

‘Don’t worry about it, Mouse.’

‘Seriously, Brooke, that stuff is expensive.’

‘Mouse,’ she said, grinning wickedly. ‘I didn’t pay for it.’