Crânio Borboleta (COMPLETED)

Chapter Eleven

Clay

It was maybe two months after Ian and Juliette broke up. I hadn't heard from her or seen her much. I was worried for her. After she yelled out in Art that one day after Truman touched her back made me petrified. I knew her brother did something. I wanted to help her. She was so distant. In Art, she never looked at anyone. Her drawing was beautiful. But her ways of drawing it were strange.

I would see on her phone she would listen to one particular song for the entire class period, it would be on a one hour loop. And while this one song would continuously play, she wouldn't even look at her paper to draw. Her hand would scribble crazily all over the page, but the end result would be a beautiful skull-butterfly. I wondered what it meant to her. I wanted to connect with her again, to be a part of her life. To be with her.

******

Juliette

It was Gym. I was doing better in Gym,  you could say. Our teacher, Ms. Lutch, wanted me to join the basketball team. I told her I would think about it. I never did. But I appreciated she thought I had a talent. After running two miles, we all got dressed into our other clothes and left for our last hours. I listened to Momma's favorite song "Embody Me" while walking to class, and a hand took mine. I turned. It was Clay. He was holding our Art supplies. I took an earbud out.

"Mr. Truman said we could work somewhere quieter," he said.

I swallowed and he pulled me beside him, walking down a hall I had never been down. It's where the seniors usually were. It made me nervous. Why was he talking to me? I thought he hated me.

   We entered an empty white room with old desks pushed to the walls so there was a large empty space in the middle. Clay set our things on the floor, but I grabbed an old desk. If I laid down, my shirt would touch my welts.

"Why don't you stay on the floor?" Clay asked as he laid on his stomach on the white marble flooring.

"Hurts my elbows." I replied.

He didn't say anything. I replayed "Embody Me" and got a new sheet of paper from my sketchbook, grabbing a charcoal pencil. I liked charcoal. It looked pretty. I rolled up the sleeves of my sweatshirts and looked at the whiteboard across from me. I thought of a memory.

******

"L - Let's play a game of hide and seek." Momma said to me with tears in her eyes as she crouched in front of me. "Ready? You hide, I seek. I'm going to count, and when I say 'ready', I want you to find a hiding place outside. Okay?"

I frowned. Momma always had a weird way of playing "hide and seek". Definitely not how I played it with my friends, but I nodded and ran upstairs to find my first hiding spot; in my closet. I sat there with my knees to my chest for a long time, waiting for Momma's "ready". A door suddenly swung open downstairs, a loud slam shattering glass, and Momma cried out, "Ready!"

   I climbed out of my window and down the ladder against the side of the house, running into the woods and climbing up a tree. I sat on a thick branch and waited. I knew the real reason we were playing this; Daddy was home. And he was angry. I carved into the trunk of the tree with a pointy rock to pass the time before Momma found me.

   It was maybe fifteen or twenty minutes later before I heard Momma's voice. It sounded pained. She found me after a couple minutes. Her lip was bleeding. She had a bruise on her cheek.

"Come down, butterfly!" she cried.

I jumped from the tree, her safe arms catching me.