Breaking Butterflies

by M. Anjelais

  I nodded. She pulled me into a hug that I didn’t want, and blurted that I could always talk to her about it if I needed to, then changed the subject awkwardly fast, obviously eager to think about something else. And I wanted to take a step back in time, to untell her. I suddenly felt an overwhelming need to go to Cadence, to apologize for what I’d said.

  I felt guilty for telling her that he was in therapy, as though I’d betrayed his confidence, as though information about him were a secret that he’d bestowed on me, meant for my ears only. I knew that I didn’t have to feel that way — he couldn’t hear me anyway — but I felt disloyal. I couldn’t blame Kaitlyn for noticing his picture, because he was beautiful.

  I often thought about what had happened to me when I was younger. I knew the line of my scar as well as the story of my mother’s and Leigh’s plan. But it didn’t matter. I was fine. And in all likelihood, I was never going to see Cadence again.

  It was the year that we turned sixteen, in the fall.

  I was still plain and a little heavy, brown-eyed, with brown hair pulled back from my face into a ponytail. I didn’t like how I looked, and now I covered my scar up with concealer, smeared it over every morning and pretended that it didn’t exist, that it had vanished over time and I didn’t have to think anymore about the way it made me feel. My circle of friends was small, but better than nothing, and I thought a certain boy had feelings for me, and I had made it onto my school’s soccer team. I wasn’t really ecstatic about my life — for one thing, it seemed that everyone but me had, or had had, a boyfriend — but I was content enough.

  I came home from the team’s first practice feeling accomplished but frumpy. My ponytail was limp with sweat, and the studs of my cleats were caked with dried-on muck, on account of it raining the day before. I pulled them off and discarded them at the doorway.

  My mother was on the phone when I went into the kitchen. She lifted her head when I came in, smiling, but her eyebrows were stiff; from the look on her face, I could tell that whoever was on the other line was upsetting her.

  I watched her worriedly for a moment before opening the fridge and selecting a bottle of water. Then I walked over to the kitchen table and sat down, wrenching the cap off my bottle. There was crisp fall sun streaming in through the kitchen window, dancing over the tiled floor. I looked at my fingernails: short and bitten. Whenever I tried to grow them, they always broke, and whenever I bought those stick-on fake ones, they fell off. I took a drink of my water and watched my mother walk back and forth in front of the sink, pausing every now and again to tap her nails on the kitchen counter.

  “All right. Call anytime. I love you.” She stopped, her fingers curling around the counter’s edge, squeezing ever so slightly. “Okay. Talk to you soon.” She hung up the phone and shook her head once. Then she turned to face me, and the sun coming in from the window spread over her face. Her brow was furrowed now, and there was no trace of the smile that she’d put on for me when I’d first walked into the kitchen. There was definitely something wrong.

  “How was soccer, Sphinxie?” she asked me, still missing her smile. “Did you have fun? What did you do?”

  “It was okay,” I said, shrugging. “We just did drills today, really. It’ll be more fun when we actually play a game. Anyway, what’s wrong? Was that Leigh on the phone?”

  “Yes,” she said, her voice measured.

  “Oh, really? How’s she doing?” I took another drink of water. I could see my shadow moving on the kitchen floor.

  “She’s having a bit of a rough time, actually.”

  “Oh,” I said. I relaxed a bit. That was typical for Leigh; she was either being upset by Cadence’s bad behavior at school or worrying about his health. For a long time, Cadence’s rebellious behavior was all we heard about, although Leigh usually explained that away by saying he was just too smart to follow rules like other kids — and I was inclined to agree with her. But after a while, Leigh had finally opened up to my mother about Cadence’s health problems, and they had taken center stage from then on.

  Originally, she hadn’t wanted to bring them up; she already felt as though she was burdening my mother by unloading the endless tales of her son’s misfortune. And at first, she said, she hadn’t thought anything of them. They were just bruises. Sometimes people got bruises and they just didn’t remember bumping themselves. But then doctor’s appointments and blood tests started to crowd up Cadence’s schedule, and she’d told my mother what was going on. She was getting scared.

  “How’s Cadence?” I asked when my mother didn’t elaborate.

  “The same,” my mother said. Her eyes fell to the floor, and we both looked at our shadows. “They gave Leigh a diagnosis for him, Sphinx.” I looked up.

  “It’s acute lymphoblastic leukemia,” my mother said. The first two words meant nothing to me, but of course, I knew what leukemia was. A girl in my school had had it, and she’d lost all of her hair during treatment. I knew it had been horrible for her, and it had been hard to see her looking sicker and sicker until finally she had to stop coming to school for a while. But she was all right now. She’d come back to school wearing a wig, and she was going to be fine.

  “When are they starting chemotherapy?” I asked, without looking at her. I didn’t want to think about the stuff Cadence would have to go through. I pinned my soccer team’s game schedule to the fridge with a Mickey Mouse magnet.

  “Leigh says his case is very aggressive. Odds are it won’t respond well to chemotherapy,” said my mother softly from behind me. I turned around.

  “Well, they’re still going to try it, right?” For some reason, I felt littler all of a sudden.

  “No, Sphinxie,” said my mother. “They’re not.”

  “Why?” I demanded, shocked. “What’s the harm in trying?”

  “Cadence doesn’t want it.”

  I felt like the air had been sucked out of my chest. How could he not want to try to survive?

  “Why not?” I asked shakily, feeling stunned.

  “I don’t think it would do any good, Sphinx.”

  “How long did they give him?”

  My mother covered her mouth with her hand, and her eyes glistened.

  “Less than a year,” she whispered.

  I cried for him then, for the first time. I’d never done that before; I’d spent hours of my childhood crying because of him, never for him. But this situation was different. Cadence was special; he couldn’t die. My mother hugged me as if I were little again, and I looked over her shoulder, sniffling.

  “Leigh should make him try,” I said insistently. “She should make him try.”

  “Sphinx, this way he’ll be able to feel normal for as long as possible. He’ll get a chance to enjoy the time he has left without drugs making him throw up all the time,” said my mother, her voice cracking slightly. “I think Leigh … I almost think she feels it’s better this way.” As I stood there frozen, staring over her shoulder, feeling my hot tears coursing down my cheeks, the first thought that came into my head was a memory of staring over my mother’s shoulder so many years ago, as blood dripped down my face from what was now a clean scar. An odd, unwelcome sense of relief flashed through me: The person who did that to me would be gone, truly gone. But the brilliant boy who had been my best friend and shone his burning light in my eyes — he would be gone too, and I realized that I wanted to see that boy before he died, that I wanted to talk to him one last time despite what he had done to me. But the person who had cut me and the brilliant boy were the same person, a paradox, just like the feelings that were filling up my chest and my throat. The next thing I thought of was the plan, the life plan that had been made and then undone, and the lump in my throat swelled even more.

  “Mom,” I said thickly, “what was the plan? You never told me what was supposed to happen.”

  “Oh, Sphinxie,” she said.

  “Please,” I said, whining without meaning to. “Come on, what were we supposed to do, huh?”


  “You were supposed to get married,” she said hoarsely.

  A tremendous chill surged through my body and suddenly I was the one holding her, thinking of an alternate universe where I had not been cut, where Cadence had not gotten sick, where the eggs that were inside me right now, dormant and sleeping as their grandmother cried into my shoulder, became children. His children. Instead, their grandmother was crying for the other half of the plan, the first best friend, the almost-father. But what was supposed to happen to me? Me, with Cadence’s mark on my face, but no Cadence to grow up for, no one who would understand the plan, no one who would be able to comprehend what had happened to me. I wished that I could take my question back; I didn’t want to know this part.

  Soon, I thought, soon he’ll be gone. I pushed the plan to the back of my head, and forced myself to swallow the lump. And suddenly I was thankful for the picture of him with the Christmas tree, the old magazines in the boxes in our attic, the videotapes of us as toddlers, even the scar on my face. They were all markers, pages in a life scrapbook that would remain, reminding everyone, reminding me.

  Once, there was a person I called my best friend, my worst enemy, the shining one. He left these behind. He did this to me.

  He was here.

  Our phone wouldn’t stop ringing. Leigh didn’t have a husband or even a boyfriend to lean on; all she had was her faithful Sarah, her promised ally for life. She called at all times of day and night, and my mother always answered, never hanging up until Leigh had talked herself hoarse. I had to admire my mother for being so firmly grounded, so reliably there, ready to pounce on that receiver and offer sympathy, empathy, grief, anger, anything that Leigh needed.

  Each day, my mother would get off the phone and relay Leigh’s updates to me. She had pulled Cadence out of his private school. She’d asked him what he wanted to do. Did he want to see anything, travel anyplace, do anything in particular? Whatever it was, they’d do it. He mentioned Paris, the Louvre — he’d already been there, but Leigh took him again. She emailed us pictures of him standing in front of the Mona Lisa with his back to the camera, his beautiful long fingers clasped behind his back, his hair an organized wreck of golden-blond waves. And I found myself wishing that he’d turned around for the photo.

  Leigh wanted to take him everywhere. She couldn’t cure him, but she was compelled to do something, and day in and day out she begged him to tell her what he wanted. If he so much as brought up something in passing that he didn’t own, she bought it for him.

  But after a while, he didn’t want anything any longer. My mother told me that at this point, it seemed Cadence just wanted to be left alone. I could understand why: Surely, he was struggling with the thought of dying and wanted to escape from the constant reminders that came with Leigh’s hovering over him. He just wanted to paint … get him some canvases and leave him alone, he said.

  And so he painted: little canvases, huge canvases. They filled the loft space of Leigh’s England house, which had always been Cadence’s art room. Leigh said he was a genius when he painted. Some of the paintings were of people, beautiful but twisted up and broken, and some of them were of birds: in trees, on lines stretched between telephone poles, airborne with their wings spread wide. Most of them were of water. The ocean, rivers, ponds, puddles, fishbowls with fat goldfish. My mother said Leigh seized upon the common theme and asked him if he wanted to go out on any kind of boat. Did he want to see any certain river, any particular stretch of blue? No, he didn’t. Leave him alone, he said, he was painting. Leigh said he told her she was stupid to think that simply because he painted water meant he wanted anything to do with boats. I could understand that too, why Cadence was lashing out at her. People who are dying get angry at the world. It wasn’t surprising.

  Still, she kept on: Did he want to see anyone, anyone from school, anyone from when they lived back in the States? Did he want to see his father again? Leigh said that when she asked that, he painted a streak of dark, dark midnight blue across a blank canvas and told her bluntly, without looking at her, that he didn’t. But then he turned around, she said, and his eyes were burning.

  Sphinxie was what he said. Sphinxie. He wanted me.

  “I’ll understand,” Leigh had said to my mother on the phone, in a pale voice, “if you don’t want her to see him … but if it’s all right with you, I’ll pay for the plane tickets. I’ll fly both of you out here, Sarah, so she can see him. Just a week. Just a little visit.” Her voice broke.

  When my mother told me the next day as we were driving home from one of my soccer games, I expected her to end the story by saying that she wouldn’t allow it. That I had only to look in the mirror to see the reason why visiting Cadence — an older, smarter, more powerful Cadence, despite his illness — was not a good idea. I looked her directly in the eyes and waited for this verdict. I felt the line of the scar on my face, remembering how his cut had burned after the painless moment had slipped away, then stopped myself. He was dying, and he needed help, and I felt like I needed to go to him. Besides, he wasn’t a stupid kid anymore, and neither was I. My breath was caught in my throat.

  “I want you to decide,” said my mother. “You’re a big girl, you decide. Think about it.”

  I was stunned that the choice had been placed in my hands. People wait and wait until they’re old enough to make decisions for themselves, and then things like this are thrust on them. In the case of my mother, it was especially shocking: She’d planned out my whole life and now she was dumping the responsibility on my shoulders all of a sudden? I wasn’t sure I was ready. My mind was already too full.

  When we got home, I climbed the stairs to my room and sat on my bed. A thousand different thoughts went through my head: I would miss soccer practice, I didn’t want Leigh to pay for plane tickets. My kid self, shaking, with fresh blood on her cheek, was still alive inside me, heart still pounding. I didn’t want any more pieces of myself to be held captive by his eyes and his smooth voice, only to be sliced away. And so for a moment, I was about to go downstairs and tell my mother that I had made my decision, and it was no.

  But I didn’t. Instead, I stayed there on my bed, and I thought about how shocking and beautiful it was that Cadence and I were alive at all — that the plan of two little girls, hatched under a bedsheet fort, had come to be. And the memory of the knife in his room wasn’t the only one I had. I had all the shining days too, all the summers and the playdates and the birthday party and all the times he had ever made me laugh when we were little.

  He was still shining, oh God, he was still shining in my mind. We were both human, and we were made of the same bones and blood and flesh, even though he shone and dimmed me, even though I was living and he was dying. We, the two eggs, the two chances in billions.

  The plan that my mother had made and sown into me was never going to happen. It was time for me to take out her stitches and make my own. And I had cried for Cadence, I had known immediately that I wanted to see him. This was a journey I had to take, my new destiny unfolding before me. I had to go.

  I went downstairs again, into the kitchen. “I want to see him,” I told my mother. “Call Leigh and tell her I’m coming.”

  “Are you sure?” my mother asked me. She was standing at the sink, washing the dishes, but now she turned off the water and looked me in the eye. “Sphinxie, I have a feeling this is going to be very rough on you, you need to know that.”

  I gritted my teeth. I knew she was trying to be gentle with me, but she was stating the obvious, and it felt patronizing.

  “Mom,” I said after taking a deep breath, “he’s dying.”

  She called Leigh. She fetched pencil and paper and wrote down dates and information, spoke about flights and fares. She bit her lip and held back her own tears, letting Leigh do the crying. And then she held the receiver out to me, looking uncertain.

  “Say hello?” she asked, phrasing it as a question.

  I hesitated slightly, but I reached out and took it. The enti
re situation seemed unreal; I hadn’t heard his voice since the day he’d cut me. The plastic was warm where my mother had clutched it. Slowly, I brought the phone to my ear. My mouth was dry. I felt like I was auditioning for a play, as though if he didn’t like the sound of my voice, the plane tickets would be withheld from me.

  “Hi?” I said, questioning, just like my mother.

  “Hello, Sphinx,” said a cool, crisp voice. He’d picked up a British accent, and his voice had deepened, but only slightly: It remained high for a guy.

  “Hi,” I said, more firmly this time. If I was going to do this, I wanted to be kind and loving, but not naïve like I’d been as a kid. There had to be a balance.

  “You already said that,” he pointed out, which struck me as a very typical thing for him to say.

  “Yeah, I know,” I told him.

  “Are you coming to see me?” he asked, and his voice went a little higher.

  “Yep,” I said, taking a shaky breath and trying to steady my voice. I felt tears prickling suddenly at my eyes. “I’m coming.”

  The line was silent for a minute.

  “Thank you, Sphinx.” There was a long silence, and I waited, clutching the phone. “I am going to die,” he stated finally, and his voice shook slightly, like mine had when I’d last spoken. The line went silent again. It was as if he was waiting for my reaction to his statement. Perhaps he wanted to hear me cry for him.

  “I’m really sorry,” I said sincerely.

  Silence. I wondered where he was in his house, if he was standing or sitting, if he was looking out a window. And if he was, was he looking down … or up, at the sky? The line was still silent.

  Then he laughed and said, “You’re a good girl, Sphinxie.” And he hung up on me, leaving me standing openmouthed with the receiver in my hand, thinking, What was that all about?

  Perhaps he was embarrassed. Perhaps he was just as nervous as I was and didn’t know what else to do.