Pinned Butterflies

Chapter 1

A big thanks to kimathy for the lovely banner!

"Sometimes the person you love just doesn't understand how much you love them."

-Anonymous

Snow fell silently in the town of Story, Wyoming. It came down in a steady blanket, covering everything in a thick dusting. A raven haired girl trudged her way through the falling snow, grimacing as it worked it's way into her boots and melted into her socks. "Why do I have to live in such a cold town?" She grumbled, pulling her fuzzy scarf up over her chin. 

"What was that, Tish?" A little boy came up beside her, looking like a plump marshmallow in his winter coat. He waddled along at a slow pace, his boots much too big for him. 

"Nothing, Simon." Tish eyed her little brother lovingly as he concentrated of making his way through the thick snow. 

"How much longer till we get to school?" He looked up at her with big, brown, doe eyes, his voice muffled around his scarf. 

"Not much longer," She pointed ahead of them, "you can see the top of the school from here." He nodded, happy to be almost out of the cold. They shuffled on, leaving footprints in the snow where they stepped. Wind whipped Tish's hair back as she bid farewell to her little brother as he pranced off to the elementary school. Mounting the high school steps, she mentally prepared herself for another day as a sophomore. 

She made her way through the halls to her locker, stripping off her scarf and coat along the way to reveal a gray cashmere sweater. She wore a pair of light colored skinny jeans with a bar-b-que sauce stain on the right thigh. She was too lazy the previous night to put them through the wash, besides, what was a little stain? She scuffed her black Penny Loafers on the floor to knock some of the snow off, and continued lazily to her locker. 

183. 184. 185. 186, aha. Tish thought, stopping in front of the dented blue locker with a tarnished number plaque. Entering her locker combination, she recalled when the dent in her locker had been made. Bryan Mahoney had picked a fight with a jock named Tristan Tims over some sports team conflict. 'Make your pigskin fondling dimwits stop assaulting my rugby team.' Then Bryan shoved Tristan, and he had flew into her locker. All two-hundred something pounds of him. 

She opened her locker, chuckling at the memory. In the middle of shoving her bag into the space between her textbooks, Tish yelped in surprise. Something had fallen from the top shelf of her locker and onto the top of her head. She peered curiously down at the square object that bounced off her head and landed in her hands. 

"What in the freaking world?" Tish frowned, flipping the thing over. It was a box, with a note attached to the front. She pulled the note off, noticing it felt like cardstock. There was a red 'F' scrawled in fancy script on the front. She unfolded the note, opening the box cautiously. 

Her eyes skimmed over the neat writing in black ink:

'You're a black butterfly with your wings frayed and torn, laughter's your's and so is scorn.

Until we meet,

F'

Tish looked the note over a couple of times, dumbfounded. She looked into the box and found a necklace made of leather, that had some sort of bone hanging from it. She held it away from her in disgust as she peered back into the box. There was one other thing. 

Putting the bone necklace into her locker, she delicately pulled out the other trinket. It was a butterfly, pinned to a piece of cardboard and labeled; 'Female Pipevine Swallowtail.' It was solid black, aside from a faint blue color when the light hit it. She looked around, trying to see if whoever left the gift in her locker was still hanging around. But, she didn't spy anyone suspicious. The late bell rang, and Tish rushed to put everything back in her locker and grab what she needed before running to class. 

She couldn't shake the feeling someone that someone was watching her. Whoever it was, she had a feeling it was the same person who had put the box in her locker. 

A/N: The lyrics from the note is from the song Black Butterfly by Ellington Duke