The Boy with the Butterfly Mind

by Victoria Williamson

  Elin ignores me. I don’t know why I want her to let me in, or why being shut out in the hall scares me so much. It’s like I know that things have spiralled way out of control and it’s not just my science project and Elin’s pottery that are broken beyond repair.

  There’s a big, nasty change coming, I can feel it.

  I don’t want to be locked out on the wrong side when it arrives.

  Elin finishes what she’s doing and finally comes stomping out again. She’s carrying a rucksack and her mouth’s so tight it looks like an elastic band about to snap. She marches past me and out the front door, and before I can catch her she’s halfway down the street.

  “Elin! Where are you going?” I call. I’m too scared to follow her. I’m tired and upset and confused and I just want my dad to come home.

  “As far away from you as I can!” Elin yells back. Her eyes are flashing and her face is all scrunched up in a scowl but I think she’s trying hard not to cry. “You want to live here? Fine! My house is all yours. You won the war. I lost. I’m leaving and I’m never coming back!”

  “Elin! Wait!”

  But she doesn’t. She just keeps marching down the street, turning the corner without looking back and disappearing from sight. I hesitate in the driveway, looking back at the house and then up the street again. I can’t decide whether to follow her or wait for Dad. Snap decisions are my trademark, but for the first time ever my brain isn’t telling me what to do.

  Dad’ll be back any minute. He’ll know how to fix this.

  I sit down on the doorstep and wait, the knot of fear in my stomach getting tighter with each car that passes and doesn’t turn in to our drive.

  Elin really went off the deep end today, and I went jumping right in behind her.

  I wonder which of us will be in the most trouble?

  Is the mess I made of her room worse than her wrecking my science project? Is there a ten-point scale of destruction that adults use to decide who gets the most blame?

  And what did she mean I’ve ‘won the war’?

  How can I win a game I didn’t even know I was playing?

  Part Four

  Taking Flight

  35

  Elin

  “Elin! What are you doing here?”

  Gran looked so surprised when she opened the door and saw me standing on her doorstep that I thought she was going to have a heart attack. The carefully prepared story I’d been rehearsing over and over on the bus all the way to Whitburn went flying out of my head, and I flung my arms round Gran’s neck and choked back a sob.

  “He’s ruined everything, Gran!” I cried. “I can’t go back there now, not ever! Can I stay here with you? Please?”

  Even now I was still blaming Jamie for the trouble I’d caused. I didn’t know what else to do. The truth was too painful, and I pushed it as far away as I could.

  “Aw pet, what’s happened? Come in and get warm and I’ll phone your mum.”

  “No! I don’t want her knowing I’m here.” I didn’t want to see her disappointed face when she found out everything I’d done.

  “Well at least come in from the cold and have some hot chocolate,” Gran said, glancing back up the stairs as though she was afraid someone would hear me. My imagination must’ve been playing tricks on me. Gran never had any visitors apart from me and Mum and Dad.

  “Is Dad here?” I asked hopefully, taking my shoes off and curling up on the sofa in the living room. Gran’s soft cushions surrounded me like a big fabric hug, and I felt safe and protected. Nothing could hurt me here.

  “Why do you ask that?” Gran sounded nervous, and her eyes darted to the hall door again.

  “Just wondered,” I yawned. I was so tired. Today had been the longest day of my life. “I thought I saw his overnight bag in the hall – the one he used to take on work trips before…”

  Before he left and the Mutant came and ruined our lives and he gave up work to look after her.

  He never gave up work when I was born.

  Because Dad loves her more, whispered a voice deep in my mind.

  Shut up! I thought angrily. You don’t get to tell my story.

  “It’s just us,” Gran said. “You sit there pet, and I’ll get some hot chocolate to warm you up, then you can tell me all about it.”

  She smiled her familiar, reassuring smile, but there was something wrong with the corners of her mouth and the smile didn’t touch her eyes. It was the same wary smile Paige Munro used to give me at break time when she asked if I wanted to play with her.

  It was strangely cold for an April evening. The central heating was on and Gran had her gas fire turned up almost full, but I was still shivering. My head was spinning, thoughts of Jamie’s medication and his ruined science display and my shattered ornament collection going round and round until I felt dizzy. Remembering the bombsite Jamie had made of my room made me so anxious I could barely breathe. I used to be so good at keeping things neat, and now I didn’t even know where to begin to clean up the mess.

  It wasn’t just Athena who was broken beyond repair. The mess I’d made of my family was going to be just as impossible to fix.

  It’s Jamie’s fault! I tried to tell myself as Gran warmed the milk in the kitchen. He started all of this. I just did what I had to do.

  Miss Morrison might still believe my lies, but I couldn’t convince myself any more.

  The only thing I had left to cling to now was Gran and her Enchanted Cottage that never changed. I looked round the room at the familiar photos on the mantelpiece and pictures on the wall, and for one long moment I felt safe and protected from the chaos of my life.

  Then I realised the pictures had all changed too.

  “There you go, pet.” Gran came back in and tried to hand me a steaming mug of chocolate, but I barely glanced at it. I was too busy staring at the pictures Gran had sitting on the mantelpiece.

  There in the middle was a photo of a little girl. Dad was giving her a piggyback, playing my favourite game of horses and knights. It was exactly the way I remembered it from when I was younger.

  Only the girl in the photo wasn’t me.

  “Who’s THAT?” I demanded, jumping up and waving the picture at Gran.

  She hesitated, her eyes going wide and guilty. She looked just like Jamie had right before I discovered what he’d done to my ornament collection.

  “It’s, um, she’s…” Gran didn’t finish. She didn’t need to. We both knew who it was. I looked round. Some of our other family pictures weren’t where they usually were when I came to visit. They’d been replaced with pictures of Dad and Sue and Beth. Some of the photos even looked like they’d been taken in this very house. Beside the TV was a box full of toys, and the glittery photo album I’d found here last year was sitting open on the coffee table. I’d been so upset when I arrived that I hadn’t noticed them.

  “Gran, what’s going on?”

  I didn’t want to believe what my eyes were telling me. I didn’t want to hear that Gran had been lying to me.

  Gran was my Fairy Godmother. She was supposed to be on my side.

  “Look Elin, it’s not what you think, it’s just—”

  Right at that moment I heard a padding of small feet on the stairs, and the hall door swung open.

  “Granny?” a little girl asked, rubbing her eyes and looking up sleepily. “Is Daddy here?”

  In that moment everything became crystal clear. Paul had replaced Dad in Mum’s house and brought Jamie to take my place. Now the Mutant was in Gran’s house replacing me. I didn’t belong anywhere.

  “How could you bring her here?” I cried. “How could you do this to me?”

  “Now look here Elin, Beth’s my granddaughter too,” Gran frowned. She’d got her breath back and she sounded stern, like I was going to get a row rather than a sympathy hug. “This whole silly pantomime has gone on for long enough. Come and say hello to Beth, she’s been dying to meet you.”

  Gran bent down to lift the little girl up, b
ut by the time her knees had stopped creaking I’d already got my shoes back on, grabbed my bag and was escaping through the hall. I flung the front door open and went running down the street, ignoring Gran’s worried shouts from the doorway.

  “Elin! Come back! Where are you going?”

  It was the second time I’d run away today.

  All my safe spaces were gone, and now there was only one place left for me to go.

  Don’t look back! I told myself, my heart hammering in my chest in time with my feet pounding on the pavement. Be brave, just like the princess in your story.

  I didn’t feel brave running away from all my problems though. I felt angry and helpless and betrayed by everyone. But more than anything I just felt scared.

  It was getting late and the streetlights looked like glowing yellow eyes against the inky sky, staring at me accusingly as I fled down the street. A car on the main road slowed down as it passed, the driver looking out of the window and honking her horn to get my attention.

  “Are you alright, pet?” she called.

  I cut down an alley to get away from her.

  There was one other route, and that was through the Tangled Wood. It was only called that in my story, but I used to play there with Lindsay and Olivia after school. Back then it had been our very own adventure playground, with hollow trees to hide our secrets and blackberries growing on the thick bushes. Tonight it looked dark and scary, and I hesitated on the pavement. The overgrown path no longer seemed to invite me in the way it used to.

  I heard a police siren wailing in the distance, and that made up my mind for me. What if Gran had called the police? Was running away against the law? Was I going to be in trouble for that as well as for what I did to Jamie’s science fair entry?

  I wasn’t going to stick around long enough to find out.

  I headed into the wood, pushing my way through the overgrown branches that blocked the path. I knew it was just a little patch of trees next to the swing park, but in my imagination it had grown to the size of a huge forest, filled with terrible creatures that were slithering through the dark towards me.

  Don’t stop now! I tried to tell myself. You can face anything!

  But I wasn’t a hero in real life, and I was very far from being a perfect fairy-tale princess. The sounds of the road had died away, and in their place were strange bird calls and the eerie whistling of the wind through the leaves.

  Then I heard something even worse.

  There were voices up ahead, coming from a group of teenagers in hoodies who were hanging about the clearing. Their laughter stopped when I stumbled into the light of the small campfire they’d lit. There was a long silence as they stared at me, then their faces relaxed again.

  “It’s alright, it’s just a wee kid,” one of the boys grinned.

  I was too scared to feel reassured by their friendly smiles. I turned to run back the way I came, but my foot caught a tree root on the uneven path. I went tumbling into a bramble bush, cutting my hand badly and tearing my school jumper on the thorns.

  “Are you OK?” one of the girls called, hurrying over to help me. I struggled up before she could reach me, choking back a sob and stumbling down the path clutching my aching hand to my chest.

  I had to get to safety.

  I had to go home.

  36

  Jamie

  “This was a bad idea – one of us should have stayed at home in case she goes back there,” Liz says, running her hands through her short hair again. She’s done that so many times since Mrs Watts called to say Elin had run off to Whitburn that her hair’s standing up in hedgehog spikes.

  “I’ll drive back with Jamie,” Dad says. “If she turns up I’ll call you and come back here to pick you up.”

  “What did you bring him here for anyway?” Liz mutters. She doesn’t even look at me, so I know she’s really mad. The only good thing about Elin running off is that now Liz has something more important to worry about than the demolition wreck I’ve made of Elin’s room. I haven’t told them about Elin messing with my meds yet. I can’t get a word in over their constant yelling anyway.

  “This isn’t Jamie’s fault,” Dad says defensively. “Elin started this by ruining Jamie’s science project. He spent weeks on that! She ran away because she’s ashamed of what she did.”

  Uh-oh. Not this again.

  “She ran away because Jamie destroyed all the things she’s spent years making!” Liz snaps. “One little science project can’t compare to the awful thing your son did!”

  “I’m sick of you blaming Jamie for everything! He’s bent over backwards to fit in with this family, and Elin’s been nothing but mean to him since the day he arrived!”

  “What do you expect? His behaviour’s so appalling he’s been making her life a misery! How can you expect her to—”

  “Enough, you two!” Mrs Watts steps between them before I can sink through the carpet in shame. “I’ve just got Beth back to sleep, and I don’t want her disturbed again. Now, think. Where might Elin have gone?”

  “She’ll have got the bus home,” Dad says. “I’ll go back with Jamie and check.”

  “No, not home, I’m sure she—” I begin, but Dad’s not in the mood to listen to me right now either.

  “We’re going back Jamie, that’s the end of it,” he snaps, grabbing his car keys. “I’ll phone the police again first to check if they have any updates for us.”

  “But I wasn’t going to say—”

  “She might’ve got on a bus to Edinburgh to see her dad,” Liz frowns. “She always said she’d never go while Sue and Beth were there, but she might’ve changed her mind now she knows Beth’s here. I’ll give Adam a call.”

  “I don’t think she—” is all I manage to get out before Mrs Watts interrupts me this time.

  “She used to play with that girl Olivia Sinclair, remember? They used to be such good friends at school when you lived here. Her mother’s still in my coffee club at church— I’ll call her and see if Elin’s gone to their house.”

  “But—” I try again, but everyone walks off to make their calls and I’m left standing alone in the living room with my mouth flapping up and down.

  I know where Elin went, I’m sure of it. The pictures above her bed of her old house in Whitburn were gone when she walked out, and I spent the whole drive here searching online street views on my phone to figure out which house it is. Maybe if I find her first then they’ll all forgive me for making her run off, and things will go back to the way they were. The way things were was pretty awful, but it was still better than this.

  I grab my jacket and head into the hall, closing the front door quietly behind me.

  I’m a man on a mission.

  It’s the one chance I have left to keep my family from breaking beyond repair.

  Running down the street in the dark makes me feel like a private detective in one of those TV shows. I have to track Elin down before something bad happens to her, but I have to break all the rules to do it. I’m already in the most trouble ever for wrecking her room, so running off now isn’t going to make things worse, is it?

  At least, I hope not.

  I’m so busy peering in the gardens and shadows as I race past that I don’t notice I’ve run straight onto a busy road until there’s a thump and a horrible screeching of brakes right in my ear. It’s only when I’m rolling on the ground that I realise the thump was my leg hitting the side of a van.

  “God! Are you alright?” A man comes jumping out and runs over. My head’s all muddled, and I have this weird idea that he’s a police officer come looking for the rogue private detective who’s breaking the rules, and before I can work out what’s real and what’s just make-believe, I’m giving him the thumbs up and escaping down an alley.

  To keep going in the direction of Elin’s old house, I have to choose between cutting though an abandoned swing park or a creepy forest that looks like something out of the werewolf horror film I watched the other night. I clim
b awkwardly over the fence into the park, hoping the werewolves all have better places to be tonight.

  There’s one swing still left in the frame, and I go and sit on it to catch my breath. Man-oh-man, that van was close to squashing me flat as a pancake. I wonder how big my bruise is going to be? The top of my leg’s gone sort of numb, but when it wakes up it’s going to register a definite ten on the scientific ‘ouch’ scale.

  I swing back and forth for a bit, rubbing my leg to get the circulation going again and listening to the rusty chains squealing. Come to think of it, if someone was going to get eaten by horror-film monsters, this park would be a great place for it. There are walls on two sides, and a group of dodgy-looking teenagers who may or may not be werewolves laughing at the bus stop.

  My leg’s itching, which means it’s waking up. I pull one side of my jeans down to find out if there’s a bruise, but it’s too dark to see and I realise standing in the middle of an abandoned park with my trousers down is not very detective-like.

  “You alright, wee man?”

  Uh-oh. The werewolves have spotted me and are crossing the road to the park. I pull my jeans up and gulp hard, backing away as the leader of the pack comes lumbering towards me.

  There’s nowhere left to run.

  37

  Elin

  I was crying so hard by the time I reached my old house that I could barely see the road ahead.

  I couldn’t pretend I was the Perfect Princess who didn’t shed a single tear any more, and I wasn’t strong and fearless like her. I was cold and scared, and the cut on my hand was throbbing so much I felt dizzy. If that wasn’t bad enough, I’d been stupid and selfish, and I’d ruined any chance my family had of being happy.