“Kim,” Marley says. Hearing her name in Marley’s voice makes my scar throb uncomfortably. “The grave you always go to,” Marley continues. “She was more than just a friend, wasn’t she?”
“Yeah,” I say, an avalanche of memories rushing at me. I can feel my hand in hers as she pulled me down the empty school hallway during junior prom. See her running onto the football field after I’d thrown the game-winning pass. Feel her lips on mine that very first time, when she found my message in her diary. “She was more.”
I remember the pain I saw in Marley’s eyes earlier. Something tells me I can talk to her about this, that she could understand in a way that my mom and even Sam can’t seem to. But I don’t know how to even begin.
So I turn back to the butterfly and watch as it drifts closer and closer to shore. Almost… almost…
“Kimberly didn’t make it,” I say, forcing myself to try to talk about it, but I keep my eyes trained on the butterfly’s blue wings. They give out, and the butterfly drops onto the water’s surface, so close to the bank but not close enough. It twitches, struggling against the current. I hurry to the edge of the water and carefully scoop the insect into my hand.
I glance down at the water. Something’s not right. I look closer and realize… I don’t see myself. I just see the tree branches above my head, the outline of the leaves. The stormy gray of the clouds in the sky just past them.
Frowning, I lean closer.
There’s even the butterfly, but not… me.
Like I don’t have a reflection.
I swallow hard and try to collect myself as the familiar pain blooms in my head. I fight to keep myself here and not let my broken brain take over as the words in Dr. Benefield’s note pop into my head.
Chill out. It’s not really happening.
I focus on my heart beating in my chest, my rib cage rising and falling all around it, the butterfly flitting around in my palm.
Another reflection appears in the water. Marley, her face concerned. I look quickly over at her, and the butterfly takes off, still struggling, but moving.
“Poor thing,” Marley says as she watches it go.
I look back at the water, holding my breath, and this time my eyes stare back at me, dark and panicked. Instantly I feel like an idiot. I probably looked like I was freaking out over a butterfly.
These brain spasms keep getting weirder, not better. I reach up to touch my scar but disguise it by running my fingers casually through my hair. Dr. Benefield said this is happening because I’m protecting myself. Maybe it’s because I was talking about the accident.
Marley leans over my shoulder to look at my reflection in the water. And of course, it’s right there, looking back at us, just like it’s supposed to be.
Her hair falls across my arm as she leans even closer, making my skin prickle. “With that scar, you look like Harry Potter. Without it, you’d practically be Prince Charming or something.”
All thoughts of my head injury disappear, because… Prince Charming?
“Oh no,” I laugh. “Is that the kind of fairy tale you write? Are you filling kids’ heads full of that nonsense?”
If I learned one thing from what happened with Kim, it’s that I’m definitely no prince. And love is not a fairy tale, no matter how perfect the story sounds. I don’t believe that anymore.
Our images blur as it begins to rain, heavy drops rippling across the pond’s surface.
“I hope it’s not nonsense,” she says, her voice quiet. “I hope there’s something better ahead to believe in.”
She raises her face to the sky. I take in the pink of her lips, the openness of her face to the rain. In that moment I want to tell her everything. Because even though it seems so impossible after all that’s happened, I want to believe there’s something better ahead too.
But the rain starts falling too hard, and before I can make up my mind, we have to leave.
* * *
That night I sit at the kitchen table, twirling and untwirling spaghetti around on my fork, my hair still wet from walking home in the rain.
“Well,” my mom says, scanning me with that X-ray vision all mothers have, “she sounds like a nice girl.” She takes a loud, crunchy bite of garlic bread.
I stupidly told Mom about Marley when I walked through the front door, soaking wet and holding a daisy. She asked me where I got it from, and my broken brain couldn’t think of any other possible reason I’d be holding a daisy.
I’m realizing now that any excuse would have been better than telling her the truth.