The Butterfly Box

September

The Girl on the Forest Floor

“I don’t know about you—but I think this is a bad idea.” Lindsay Gumford pulled on her braid as she watched the eighteen-year old brunette toss her bag overhead. The two girls held their breaths until they heard the plunk of canvas colliding with concrete. The hollowed silence that followed was instantly interrupted by the sound of their ragged breaths.  

“You’re overreacting.” The brunette swept a hand over her pale forehead, narrowing steel eyes at the dark bleakness looming above. “This wouldn’t be happening if it wasn’t for Carter.” Her breath inspired icy gusts as she spoke, and Lindsay shivered under her thick coat. “And Mrs. Simmons. And Bridgette, and—”

“—and the whole world. You always blame everyone else.” Lindsay crossed her arms over her chest, crunching the sole of her boot in the snow below. She watched the brunette out of the corner of her eye as she leaned her head back, calculating the height of the building. “Oh, why can’t you just bring Ms. Jenkins an apple on Monday and ask her to forget about the whole thing?”

The brunette spun around fast, gripping Lindsay’s shoulders. “Look, are you in this or not?”

Lindsay swallowed, biting her trembling lip.

“Good.” The brunette smiled and released Lindsay’s shaking shoulders, taking her fear for confirmation. “Then just give me a boost up, and we’re ready to go.”

Lindsay complied, and the two hoisted themselves onto the rooftop. The brunette got to work fast, rubbing her hands for warmth. Lindsay slipped her the pick, and she fumbled for a minute with the metal latch before flipping the rooftop window open.

“I guess this is it. Ready?” the brunette whispered. The girls exchanged one last nervous look. Neither of them knew what they doing, the brunette even less so than Lindsay. But they both knew they had gone too far to go back.

The brunette carefully creaked open the large windowpane, feeling her heart beat spastically inside with an eerie tone of warning. She ignored it. “Follow me.” She motioned towards Lindsay.

Lindsay slipped the rope around the brunette’s waist, slowly lowering her down until she heard her boots hit the floor below.

Then Lindsay took a deep breath and slipped through the rooftop window and into the building like her friend had minutes before, until she felt the stale gym atmosphere secure around her. A pale, thin ribbon of moonlight filtered through the window above, guiding their journey down. Once the two of them safely landed in the building, Lindsay felt her heart beat only faster. The brunette’s eyes locked with her own, and for a second, she became lost within the steel intensity of them, as if she were a drowning victim in a silver sea, incapable of movement. The eyes seemed to speak words of their own. But whatever they were saying, Lindsay couldn’t have comprehended for the world. All she saw was a fragile little girl, too young to be eighteen.

Lindsay shook her head. She knew what she was doing. And so did the girl standing beside her.

“Ready?” the brunette repeated again. Lindsay gave a small nod. At her confirmation, the two of them slipped out through the gym doors, and down the hallway. It might have been unsettling to sneak through the shadowy halls so late at night, with the only light peeking out from the gym doors, and the only sound emitted from the light patters of their snow boots. But their spastic nerves kept their concentration elsewhere from the hollow echoes of the hallway.

Finally they reached their destination—the lone door at the end of the west wing. The brunette looked to Lindsay in hopes of final reassurance, which was far from either of their hearts.