Stealing Butterflies

Chapter Two

I've always hated barney.

Even when I was a little kid, I always despised the creepy green and purple dinosaur. Then Claire came along, and I got trapped in a three-hour Barney-watching extravaganza with Quil, sitting there like a good little dog.

And my hate grew. You know, that dinosaur is seriously scary and creepy. I mean, think about it: an old guy running around in a suit getting paid less than the person working the graveyard hour at McDonalds to pose dramatically and make huh-huh-huh noises.

I felt totally violated when he looked right in the camera. I mean, it was like he was staring straight at me. Some stranger. A guy I didn't know, a guy in a huge dinosaur suit that was always narrowly missing thwacking kids in the head with his fat tail. It scarred me for life.

If that's not a whole knew level of freaky I don't know what is.

See, right now, across from the street was some chick, staring at me with her mouth agape. The rain was pouring, soaking through her thin grey sweatshirt, and she had a newspaper held over her eyes to shield them from the downpour.

Okay, so maybe it wasn't the same exact feeling to catch a girl checking me out as a crazy dinosaur glaring me down, but still. That show seriously scarred me, so that's what I think about whenever this happens. Which is a lot.

Not to sound cocky or anything, but, well I'm just being honest.

The first Embry Call got laughed at for his attempts to be "smooth" or whatever, but the new Embry Call just had to smile and he had a whole row of girls fainting.

They are not me. I'm just Embry. I'm not smooth or anything, and I sure as hell am not bad with girls, I just... well I guess I, the real me, is just on the middle ground. Then again, after people started imprinting right and left I gave up on the whole dating aspect. I mean, what if I imprinted and broke some girls heart? That would not be good. We didn't need a Leah-repeat. (She'd kill me if she heard that.)

So instead I went through this whole phase where I would try to purposefully imprint. You know, lock eyes with the girl who worked the gas station checkout counter, trying to feel something. And nada. No spark, or fireworks or whatever it is that romantic movies preach about.

Instead I'd just freak the girl out, then feel like an idiot and slink away trying to outrun her confused glare. Which is hard. Because eyes follow you, even through windows, and sometimes walls. I know this because I have felt it, and it is not a very fun experience.

I didn't stop doing that, the whole trying to imprint thing, until Kim made Jared smack me for freaking out her best friend. Then I got a speech from her about how I was trying to "push fate" and "speed up the order of events" and how I needed to "slow down" and "focus on the present" and how "what was meant to happen would."

But, the present hadn't been exactly all sunshine and rainbows at the moment, so I wasn't too thrilled to hear that.

Then again, this girl staring at me from across the road was the most exciting thing that had happened all month. Sure, it could be problematic if she was one of those over thinkers who got worried as to why I was wandering out in the woods in the middle of a rainstorm.

Then again, I didn't really have anything better to do.

It was way too early to go home, because I would wake mom up. I mean, sure, I can be stealthy, but I have to really  think about it. Otherwise, I'm still pretty loud and obnoxious. I can't help it.