A warm breeze touches the back of my neck, while goose bumps appear on my arms. The air smells like ylang-ylang flowers. I look up, and so does Ate Nadine. It’s like we’re drawn to it somehow. The black butterfly.
It flutters down and lands on my forehead, but only for a second—like a kiss. It’s just like the way our lola liked to kiss us when she was still alive.
“Lola Cordia?” I whisper.
A tear slides down Ate Nadine’s cheek, touching that small smile on her lips. The butterfly flies into the light of the lamppost, vanishing before it reaches the top.
Ate Nadine puts her arm around me, and I rest my head on my sister’s shoulder. Even in death, Lola Cordia sends me a birthday gift—the love of my sister, my dad, my family.
It’s the best birthday gift ever.
“We should go back to your party,” Ate Nadine suggests. “Your guests are waiting.”
I take one last look at the place where the Butterfly disappeared. I’ll have many more birthdays to come, but a girl turns eleven only once, after all. “Okay, Ate. Let’s go.”
A lot of things in this book are based on real life but were fictionalized to fit a story that mixes reality, magic, and everything in between.
Even though I reside outside of Metro Manila now, I was born and raised in Quezon City like Sab. My dad is a photo journalist, and it was his love for sports, politics, and current events that inspired me to write for my school paper in college (just like Nadine).
It was my lola who first told me of the common Filipino belief that the appearance of a black butterfly means someone close to you has died. The funny thing is, she also said it wasn’t real. But it didn’t stop me from believing in it.
I believed I saw a black butterfly after my lola’s sister died. I saw one after a friend expired. And I was certain I saw one after my lola herself passed away. I would see these butterflies for only a few seconds, then they seemingly disappeared in mid-flight.
It may simply be a coincidence, seeing a butterfly just hours before getting the news of loved one’s death. Perhaps Pepper’s right that these butterflies simply made their way in from the garden. Maybe I just imagined the black butterflies. Or maybe this magic is real.
Maybe. Maybe not.
Either way, I hope this story based on the Filipino superstition of the black butterfly will give everyone a glimpse of my culture.
I also wished to write a story that would be a mirror for anyone who sees themself in Sab.
I’m brown and flat-nosed. Someone who looked like me was never the heroine in the books I read as a young girl. And as Nadine explained, colonial mentality is a reality in our culture—it made the lack of representation worse for me. So I promised myself I would one day write a book about Filipinos.
I did, and I hope that if you’re like Sab and me, you’ll remember that you don’t need a light complexion and a high-bridged nose to be considered beautiful. Because you are beautiful.
People’s assumptions are not always right. Sab assumed that someone like Jepoy was probably trouble—and that was also the assumption the cops made when they arrested him. But Jepoy was drug free. It was Sab’s own middle-class dad who had an addiction problem.
There are times when incorrect assumptions can take a deadly turn, like what happened to a seventeen-year-old student named Kian Loyd delos Santos in Metro Manila in 2017.
Similar to Jepoy, Kian was suspected of being involved in illegal drugs. But he wasn’t as fortunate. Kian was shot by the police. They claimed he resisted arrest, but witnesses and CCTV footage said otherwise.
Kian’s death became the subject of a Senate hearing, eventually resulting in stricter guidelines in the implementation of Operation Tokhang. On November 29, 2018, the Caloocan Regional Trial Court Branch 125 found the three cops involved guilty of his murder. Still, Kian’s death and thousands of others remain a bloody footprint in this war on drugs.
Kian died because of wrong assumptions, just because he fit the “profile” of a drug runner—a teenage boy from a low economic class.
Drug addiction is a reality that a lot of families—rich and poor—grapple with, both here in the Philippines and around the world.
If someone close to you is suffering from addiction, keep in mind that it’s not your fault. Addiction is a disease that is out of your control. As Sab’s mom said, this disease makes people do mean and silly stuff they wouldn’t do if they weren’t using. But that doesn’t make them bad people. They have a disease and they deserve help.
So do you.
Seek help from your elders. Reach out to your family and friends. It’s totally okay to talk about the problem. Remember, recovery is not just about your addicted loved one getting rehabilitation. Everyone in the family should get support too—and that includes you. Recovery is a long journey for the whole family to find peace and healing.
You can also visit these websites for more information about addiction and where to find help:
NACoA, or the National Association for Children of Alcoholics (nacoa.org), is an organization dedicated to help children with parents addicted to drugs or alcohol. They have a kit especially made for you that you can download from their website: nacoa.org/resource/kit-for-kids/
Al-Anon Family Groups offer support for the loved ones of addicts and alcoholics. al-anon.org
The American Addiction Centers website has a comprehensive guide for children of addicted parents. americanaddictioncenters.org/guide-for-children
NCTSN, or the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, provides a database of resources for children dealing with traumatic experiences. nctsn.org/resources
For Philippines-based readers, remember the pink-and-purple building Sab mentioned in the book? It was based on an actual facility in Pasig City, the Metro Psych Facility: Roads and Bridges to Recovery: metropsych.net. They also have a rehabilitation center in Cebu.
You don’t have to go through this on your own. You are not alone.
People say writing is a solitary art. Well, maybe the actual act of writing is, but this book wouldn’t be a book without the support and generosity of so many people.
I’m grateful for the kindhearted souls I subjected to reading early versions of my story: Elena Jagar, Akossiwa Ketoglo, Jessi Cole Jackson, Greg Andree, Maria Frazer, and Cla Ines. Your feedback meant the world to me. And thank you, Sarah Kettles and Joy McCullough, for helping me prepare for the querying trenches.
Without the guidance of my amazing mentors, my Writing Ates—Erin Entrada Kelly, Kate Messner, and Anica Mrose Ricci—my publishing journey would have taken so much longer. I can’t thank you enough for helping me become the writer I never thought I could be. And of course, many thanks to Justina Ireland for letting me be part of Writing in the Margins. To say your mentoring program changed my life would be an understatement.
My Scholastic family, who worked tirelessly to bring Sab’s story into the hands of kids everywhere—you have my utmost gratitude. Special thanks to Amy Goppert for helping me get the word out about my book, to Oriol Vidal for giving me the very Filipino book cover of my dreams, to Baily Crawford for the gorgeous book design, and to copyeditor Jessica Rozler and production editor Josh Berlowitz for their care and sensitivity. I’m so lucky to have worked with such a talented and hardworking team!
An infinity of thanks to my editor, Emily Seife, who took a chance with Sab and me. Your editing skills are nothing short of magic, turning my caterpillar of a manuscript into a beautiful butterfly—a colorful butterfly, not the scary kind.
I will forever be grateful to my agent, Alyssa Eisner Henkin, my fearless champion and sounding board, who has miraculously turned my “I cannot” into “I can.” Thank you for your faith in me, and for believing my stories full of Filipino quirks are worth sharing with the rest of the world.
I’d be lost without my girls: Rin Chupeco, Kara Bodegón, Hazel Ureta, Tarie Sabido, Alechia Dow, and Elsie Chapman. Your friendship, solidarity, and writerly talks make writing less lonely than it should
be. Same goes for my Write Pack—KC Johnson, Ronni Selzer, Ely Azure, and Rena Barron—you ladies rock.
My space princess, Rae Somer, and my Filipino mermaid, Isabelle Adrid, you two are the Pepper to my Sab. Thank you, Eloisa San Juan and Nina Fuentes, for accompanying me on food trips across Metro Manila whenever I needed a writing break.
Many, many thanks to my parents, August and Jocelyn, who have always supported my book obsession and encouraged my writing (and even the strangest of my hobbies). And to my younger sister, Joyce, who has been my number one fan since forever. I couldn’t ask for a more supportive family. Everything I am, everything I will be, is because of you.
To Marc, my husband, my best friend, and the love of my life: Thank you for putting up with my wild ideas, for making sure I don’t starve whenever I’m on a deadline, for driving me to places I need or want to be, for keeping my feet on the ground. I don’t know what I’d do without you and your unwavering love and support. I love you, forever and ever.
Last but not the least, thank you to my lola in heaven. I wrote a book, Mama Nena. I never would have been able to if you hadn’t patiently taught me to read. I hope I made you proud.
Author photo by August Dela Cruz
Gail D. Villanueva is a Filipino author born and based in the Philippines. She’s also a web designer, an entrepreneur, and a graphic artist. She loves pineapple pizza, seafood, and chocolate, but not in a single dish together (ewww). Gail and her husband live in the outskirts of Manila with their dogs, ducks, turtles, cats, and one friendly but lonesome chicken. Learn more at gaildvillanueva.com.
Copyright © 2019 by Gail D. Villanueva
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Villanueva, Gail D., author.
Title: My fate according to the butterfly / by Gail D. Villanueva.
Description: First edition. | New York: Scholastic Press, 2019. | Summary:
In one week Sabrina will be eleven-years-old and she would really like to get her estranged parents and her older sister Nadine together for the celebration, especially since the black butterfly landing on her locket has convinced her that she is going to die; Sabrina and her friend Pepper come up with a bucket list, and enlist Nadine’s help—but aspiring reporter Nadine is working on a story about the Philippines’ war on drugs, and she has uncovered something that may endanger them all, and prove the butterfly is indeed a harbinger of death in Manila.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018046396 (print) | LCCN 2018058288 (ebook) | ISBN 9781338310528 | ISBN 9781338310504 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Superstition—Juvenile fiction. | Drug traffic—Philippines—Manila—Juvenile fiction. | Reporters and reporting—Philippines—Manila—Juvenile fiction. | Sisters—Juvenile fiction. | Families—Philippines—Manila—Juvenile fiction. | Parent and child—Juvenile fiction. | Manila (Philippines)—Juvenile fiction. | CYAC: Superstition—Fiction. | Drug traffic—Fiction. | Reporters and reporting—Fiction. | Sisters—Fiction. | Family life—Philippines—Manila—Fiction. | Parent and child—Fiction. | Manila (Philippines)—Fiction. | Philippines—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.V54 (ebook) | LCC PZ7.1.V54 My 2019 (print) | DDC [Fic]—dc23
First edition, August 2019
Cover design by Baily Crawford
Cover art © 2019 by Oriol Vidal
e-ISBN 978-1-338-31052-8
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
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