My name was Kevin and I died in a blazing fire while fighting my alter ego.

But now I was standing at the bus stop.

“Yo, Kev, quit spacin’ out!”

The new girl waited for Jimbo and I to get on the bus, then slouched in behind us. If my mother knew that I’d so baldly entered a door while a girl stood so close behind, she’d probably kill me.

The stop sign I’d been staring at becomes a stop sign again as the bus drives away; it had been a giant red butterfly, like last time and the time before that. I’ve been seeing butterflies everywhere lately. But there haven’t been any people turning into butterflies. Until last week, when the new girl moved in.

She’s got a butterfly on her shoulder. Or in her hair. Or each shoe.

It’s strange.

So do her mom, dad, and three retarded brothers.

But not as often as she does.

“You got a lighter?”

I hand Jimbo a lighter and he lights his cigarette. By the time I get my lighter back, there’s smoke everywhere.

“Jimbo! Stop!”

Karen doesn’t actually want him to stop, though. She’s just saying that. Same as when she tells guys she doesn’t want to have sex.

Jimbo always makes me sit in the window seat, so I look outside. Lately I haven’t been able to handle very much socialization; it hurts me. Literally. I can only stand being around people when I’m faded. Otherwise my head starts pounding, I get nosebleeds and can’t see from the corners of my eyes. Like an extreme, painful orgasm.

When my mind is clear, though, the butterflies come in droves. Cars, clouds, paper, pencils, apples or basketballs – anything can and will burst into butterfly and leave me completely speechless. I’ve never much liked butterflies until now.

Reflected from the bus window I can see that the new girl is sitting in front of me. I hadn’t noticed before. I can’t see her that clearly; all I can really make out are her eyes – they’re huge and green. And her mouth, but that’s because she’s eating a flow of colorful butterflies.

ooooo

Rosemary smells like lavender. And might’ve seen me staring at her. Luckily, I’d been tired so she could have thought my eyes were closed.

When she introduced herself to the class I could barely hear a word she was saying because the obnoxious fluttering from butterfly wings was thundering in my ears. All around Rosemary they flew, landing on me and my friends, bursting into shards of light and color and then coming back together and returning to Rosemary, who was oblivious. So was everyone else.

“Did you get the assignment from the front office?”

Rosemary nods and pulls an M&M from her bag, putting it between her lips, which are pink and puffy, and walks to the front of the classroom with a few pages in her hands. Mr. Rickborn sits down at his desk and opens his legs widely, in that cocky way he always does to try and make the girls fear his upsetting virility.

“You’ve read the book, then?” he asks unnecessarily.

“Yes, sir,” Rosemary says. She talks like she’s always getting points for politeness. I noticed that earlier when I’d been watching her in the library, poring over books for Chemistry II because she’s behind. With Christmas Break starting in two weeks, she’s got that much time to catch up and prepare for midterms.

“So – give me the paper,” Mr. Rickborn says seriously. Rosemary hands it to him slowly. She’s always moving in slow motion, it seems. “Now in less than seven words,” we can all tell he’s making this up as he goes, “tell me what you managed to glean from reading A Handmaid’s Tale.”

Rosemary’s lips barely part as her eyes glaze over while her mind works under pressure. She stutters, “In A Handmaid’s Tale,” and Mr. Rickborn holds up four fingers. She sees him and takes a slow breath, thinking. “Women… are… subjugated.”

ooooo

Jimbo likes to smoke in the courtyard. He likes the attention. I like the tobacco. And the view.

“Do you ever see butterflies?” I ask him during our lunch break.

“Butterflies? Like the bugs?”

“Yeah. In the winter, I mean.”

“No. Why?”

Because there are butterflies all around me right now. My blue book bag has about three navy blue pairs of wings fluttering on it. Jimbo’s tie, dark red, has one flying around it. The green plants across the courtyard are covered in emerald and forest green monarchs. Most importantly of all is Rosemary, sitting at the foot of a tall, naked tree sprinkled with light frost and butterflies. She’s reading a book, plucking through each page as though they’re worth millions of dollars. Her mouth is open a bit, probably because she’s focusing, and whenever she slides her tongue between and over her lips so that they don’t get dry I start losing blood in my limbs.

“What’re you looking at?”

“New girl,” I say.

Jimbo leans forward to stare at Rosemary and her big green eyes, Rosemary and her milky skin, Rosemary and her big curly hair.

“Average. You think she’s cute?”

I normally wouldn’t. But the girl’s covered in butterflies.

“Sorta.”

“She’s in my Statistics class. The girl’s a nervous wreck. She acts like her dad’s standing over her shoulder all the time.”

“It could be natural,” I suggest.

“It’s gotta be. No chick can fake that kinda shy.”

I nod absentmindedly and lean over to keep staring at Rosemary. The butterflies around her flap and flutter obnoxiously, sometimes blocking her from my sight. Some of our friends join us at the table and in most cases I’d be an active member of the break discussion, but today I can’t help but stare at the girl and the flurry of wings surrounding her.

ooooo

I started seeing butterflies about three months ago. I woke up one morning with a butterfly on my alarm clock, bright red like the numbers telling me I was late for school. I tried to swat it away, but my hand didn’t touch it. I’m not sure what happened, really. The butterfly sort of exploded into red dust.

It was strange.

They can come out anywhere. In class, a green one may come from the board. White ones can come from snow, paper napkins or marshmallows. Blue, yellow, red, orange, pink, cerulean, indigo, oxblood, tangerine – any color, any place. But I haven’t seen one on a person until Rosemary.

Nobody else sees them.

Nobody else hears them.

I stare at myself in the mirror, every morning, with my shirt off and look at myself to see if a butterfly will finally appear. No tan butterflies have come bursting from my arms yet. No dark brown from my hair. Only the sky blue ones from my tile walls and pink from my sister’s towels. Or white from her plastic bag of Kotex. Sometimes those are orange, depending what part of the bag they come from.

“Kevin?”

My little sister, Elise, is staring at me. She crosses her arms and puts on a haughty expression.

“You are so vain,” she simpers.

“Why?” I ask.

“You’re admiring yourself in the mirror. That’s pretty vain.”

“I’m not admiring myself. I’m just looking. You’re the one who’s gonna be admiring themselves.”

“That’s not true.”

“I shat,” I say as I step around her. “I hope it still smells bad.”

Elise groans and makes an ugly face. In my room I pull on a t-shirt and go to my window, which faces Rosemary’s perfectly. She’s not there now, so I pick up a coat and a pack of cigarettes from the bedside table. Jimbo’s probably waiting for me to show up at his house so we can drink and play X-box, the way Jimbo likes to. Usually when we’re done we go downtown and pee over the sides of buildings, write graffiti on nice walls and break something as we practice parkour. I’ve broken my arm twice and gotten two more tetanus shots than I needed because I’ve got a bad habit of landing on sharp, rusty edges. Jimbo also enjoys going to libraries and coughing up phlegm into books he doesn’t like. I’m usually doing it with him. We share colds. I cough in his face, he coughs in mine.

Jimbo and I are brothers.

We broke into an abandoned building the night before it was supposed to be demolished and slit our knuckles clean across a broken piece of glass before pressing them both against each others’. It’s not the first time we’ve swapped blood.

When I say Jimbo is my brother, I’m not kidding.

That night I met Rosemary’s father. He works in the E.R. He put the stitches in my hand that night. He also stitched up my brow because I’d fallen on my face trying to do a flip from a three-story building.

“Basketball?” he asked me. I nodded as the stitches went in and out of my face. “Are you any good?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I used to play some b-ball myself,” Dr. Denson said playfully.

“Oh,” I said.

“How about a game sometime?” he knows I’m his new neighbor’s kid. “I’m new to the neighborhood.”

“Alright,” I said. We haven’t played yet because he’s rarely home and when he is, he’s asleep.

The first time I saw Rosemary was the next Monday morning. She’d been looking at my hand, bandaged, and my brow, also bandaged. She didn’t look disgusted, though; Rosemary looked curious. She always looks that way. Curious or nervous or both. We made eye contact as the bus rolled around the corner. It was short, though.

She doesn’t know it, but I only looked because a butterfly the color of her lips had flown past me before bursting into pink dust. It came from her direction, obviously.

That was one week ago, when Rosemary had just moved in, though. She’d been in different classes. Now that she’s in English with me, I can watch her. It’s nice.

ooooo

It happened at night in my dream. Or my vision. Or whatever you call a déjà-vú.

A red butterfly landed on my arm as I slept, or should’ve been sleeping. I saw it and followed it from my room. I learned something new.

His name is Kevin. My name is Kevin. We’re Kevin. And we’re standing over a bloody body with a butcher knife in our hands.

“More bacon, Kev?”

I shake my head as Elise comes around the table, crossing in front of the television. She moves in time for me to catch the last story about a man, Dr. Linnel, who’d been bludgeoned to death before having his arm almost cleaved off last night in his home by a stranger who’d been wearing socks.

Mine are soaking in bleach upstairs.

“What kinda nutcases do we have in this world?” my dad muttered from behind his newspaper. I put my last piece of bacon in my mouth and stare at the screen. Dr. Linnel’s dead body was found lying on top of a pile of his mother’s ashes. Someone wrote on his face with a magic marker. It reads, “die fucking pigs.” The police are now checking every store in the county that sells magic markers. They’ve started with Winn-Dixie, Walgreens and dollar stores. On the way in today we should see them at Sam’s Dollar Tree. Top suspects so far: first graders.

“It’s those damn activists,” Dad says from behind his newspaper. “Scared of abortions.”

Indeed, Dr. Linnel had received death threats about this before.

“Elise? If you ever got pregnant,” Dad nods for the TV screen so that our mother, in the next room, doesn’t hear. “I won’t complain.”

Elise nods and goes back to her oatmeal. She thinks it’ll make her skinnier. I’m not sure why. Two small butterflies, looking more like ugly brown moths, float over the surface of the oatmeal.

“Why’re you staring at my breakfast?” Elise snaps.

“Because it doesn’t care as much as you do.”

Jimbo lives on my left – Rosemary on my right. He’s coming out around the same time that I do. Rosemary is already there, pulling M&M’s from her pocket, each a colorful butterfly, and discretely slipping them between her lips. Her skirt is long – most girls from my school hem the uniform. And her socks are all the way up. Most girls let them sag. It’s cuter, I guess. To whoever they like, I mean. Elise doesn’t have to come out for another fifteen minutes because her boyfriend takes her in to school. I’m not sure why I let him, because he’s scared of me, but I don’t care too much. Not since I’ve been seeing these things.

“You finish that essay on the history of Iraq?” Jimbo asks. I shake my head and breathe deep as Jimbo curses and complains about Mr. Dorismond, our politics teacher. As my lungs expand I can feel the fluttering around me. It’s deafening. Pink butterflies, Rosemary’s lips, always around her and flapping in my face to make me turn around and just look at her, get one glimpse before we get on that yellow bus that’s full of ugly brown moths.

But the bus arrives. It stops in front of Rosemary because our bus driver, Pablo, loves looking at little girls and being nice to them. Jimbo and I get on behind her. She’s sitting alone towards the back. There’s an empty seat behind her. Jimbo puts his things there. There’s no question to me.

“Hi,” I say. Jimbo raises his eyebrows as I give him a meaningful glance and slide in beside Rosemary.

“Hello,” she says. In the irregular light from tree shadows outside, the butterflies sit calmly on Rosemary’s shoulders and hair. She keeps her eyes down and looks almost like she’s shrunken a bit. It’s uncomfortable.

“I’m Kevin,” I say, holding out my hand. She looks at it first – then at me. It takes her a moment to respond, or maybe she’s just slow. Mentally. Or socially, I’m not sure.

“My name is Rosemary,” says Rosemary. I grin slightly so she returns it awkwardly. It’s sort of cute. Then she puts her hand back to her side and returns to looking out the window and slipping M&M’s in her mouth.

“Can I have some?” I ask. Rosemary looks back at me, this time looking frightened. “M&M’s, I mean.” She nods carefully and stands up slightly so she can get the bag from her pocket. After pouring me four M&M’s, which burst into blue and yellow butterflies, Rosemary slips another between her lips and glances at my face a second time.

“Do you, um, like M&M’s?” I ask unnecessarily.

“Yes.”

“Any favorite colors? Or types?”

“Peanut M&M’s are my favorite. I don’t care what color.”

“I like red,” I say.

“I like all colors. I don’t like for one to feel alone… or that it’s not being picked while all its friends are.”

I smile again and make it obvious so that she doesn’t feel patronized, but it doesn’t seem to be working too well because Rosemary’s staring at her knees as though she said something stupid. She did, but I don’t care because this girl is the first person I’ve seen who has butterflies coming from her person.

She’s beautiful no matter how cagey she acts.

ooooo

“You think she’s into that Lolita stuff?”

I shake my head and lean against the wall lazily. Jimbo puts out his last cigarette until seven before nodding to me. Coach isn’t here today because his wife is in labor or something drastic of that nature. He’s left us here today and our team captain, Mike, made us do a pointless amount of suicides before sending us to the weight room to bulk up because half the team is anorexic.

“Freshmen faggots,” Jimbo keeps calling to the four boys who’ve been trading off between the treadmill and benching thirty pounds. “Freshmen faggots!”

They’re anorexic, or at least that’s what I think. The tallest one is about an inch higher than me and probably weighs half as much. I’d say it was because I’ve been working out three years longer, but the kid looks like a girl. It’s just weird.

Jimbo always has me spot for him even if I don’t always have him return the favor. I’m not really keen on rubbing it in his face that I can manage twenty more pounds than he can, though, because he takes any slight one-upping as a personal challenge. It’s not that big of a deal, anyway. We’re playing basketball. Not carrying bodies.

The showers are strange nowadays. Until the butterflies came, it’s always been me, myself and small snippets of Jimbo in the corner of my eye. Now there are butterflies, popping between each water drop and camouflaging with the water-colored tile. When I have a handful of bubbles, a butterfly will be there and burst into whiteness in my hair. Drizzle down my face. Sometimes a butterfly will burst in a torrent of water and I’ll taste it in my mouth, metallic and hot and thick, and I know it’s blood that I’m tasting.

I know that taste.

Jimbo and I have had blood in our mouths. Blood in our stool.

And while I wash my hair and see the yellow from sweat buildup trickling down my face, if I close my eyes I can see flashes of red and black from nights when I dream and beautiful things like Dr. Linnel and his blood, and what I see on TV. Dead bodies, dead soldiers, someone people loved now covered in his own insides with a mangled jaw and twisted dog tag. If I shake my head and get the water out I can see what really happened last week in that old woman’s house, where her husband didn’t kill her. Old man Rutherford didn’t have the balls to kill his wife, it’s been done for him, he confessed thinking he’d done it. He’d been dreaming. I can see what happened in his house, though. Dana Rutherford, small woman, white hair, bitchy attitude, white blood, red butterflies on my shirt and her room and covering the walls like a garden.

“…fuckin freshmen piss me off so much!”

And Rosemary, so sweet and pink, like her lips, and white, like Dana’s blood, but it’s red.

The butterflies were red.

Dana’s blood was, too.

I’m confused.

“…cheated last time, hope we fuck up those motherfuckers…”

And my brother beside me – his voice makes me think of Dr. Linnel’s noises. His insides. People. Bodies make weird noises after you get to them enough. After a soul is done crying, its case garbles and groans before dying, too. My hands squeeze the soap between my fingers, soft and slippery, and I want Rosemary here with me.

“…hot as fuck!”

Squee – that’s how it sounded when I pulled Dana’s trachea.

But I just turned off the shower.

ooooo

I just left Walgreens. There’s a picture of the type of sock that the Dr. Linnel killer had been wearing – a white tube sock. Mine wouldn’t get white, so I threw them away. In my pocket is a bag of M&M’s, all of them pink. It’s some funding for breast cancer. Hopefully if I ever get the opportunity to show them to Rosemary, she’ll think it’s cute.

I also bought a knife, stole two and hid one very well. They’re from a hunting supply store. The one I paid for is a standard pocket knife. I stole a switchblade and a fillet knife intended for use on fish. The one I hid is a bigger, hunting knife. I’ve got one at home, but I figured that it’d help in the future to have one hidden well; there’s a bear’s head hanging from the wall outside the bathroom at the store. I’m not sure anybody will be checking the stuffing of its nose. If they do and they aren’t careful, they may lose a finger.

As I walk from the Walgreens, I pull a cap on and then my hoodie because it’s very cold. My house is right around the block, though.

I am about to be accosted by a homosexual.

“Kevin!”

The faggot has a swagger in his step that’s almost stereotypical of him and his type. Not a complete flame, Ashton has known me since I was four. He always calls to me when I pass his house. I usually avoid it but today I was tired.

“Ash,” I say.

“How’re things going, Kev? How’s school?”

“Fine,” I say.

“You walking home?”

I nod so Ashton pats my shoulder and closes his white picket fence behind himself. We begin to walk for my house, Ashton moving his hips and swinging his arms uncontrollably.

“I’ve gotta work off my Thanksgiving dinner still,” he tells me. His ass is rolling and twisting and I almost want to look away. “This Christmas will be such a drag, I’ve gained three pounds since last year and that’s not including little things like bloating and after-dinner pounds and…”

This walk couldn’t be taking longer. The butterflies are getting scarce and scarier at the same time. They fly faster and look bothered. Like someone fired a gun. I’m not sure why, though, because Ashton isn’t that annoying.

“…and sweet mother of Jesus, are these the new neighbors?”

Ashton touches my shoulder so I look up and see we’re in front of Rosemary’s house. She and her mom are putting Christmas lights on a bush by the front step. Ashton and I stop to watch, Ash expecting a friendly greeting. He’s nice like that. He waits for Rosemary’s mom to turn around.

If I jump far enough from my own, then I could jump onto Rosemary’s roof and climb into her window.

ooooo

Ash was offended.

Something about being called a Sodomite by the new neighbor rubbed him wrong. If this had happened a few months ago, I’d have said something. I’m just so tired now, though.

I push my books into my book bag and lean against the desk. All the lights are off. The butterflies that are here all cling to the wall, not flapping their wings. I turn to the window and see Rosemary’s light is still on. It always turns off at nine, when her mom comes in and tucks her in as though she’s a three year old. The light doesn’t come back on.

She’s sitting at her desk doing her homework. I squint.

There are butterflies swarming in her room. All colors, mainly pink, like Rosemary’s lips. They fly everywhere, touching everything. She doesn’t notice. A tornado of wings is above her head and she just turns a page in her book. I pull out a pair of binoculars that I used to use for spying on my old neighbors when they had sex and use them to spy on Rosemary as she puts one M&M in her mouth at a time. Suck, chew, swallow. No variation.

Ten minutes to nine and her mom comes in to warn her that it’s getting late – I can read their lips. Rosemary nods and puts her books away. She sleeps in pajama pants and a sweatshirt every night. And she prays. Hands on Bible – serious praying. When she’s done, Rosemary gets into bed at nine on the dot. Her mom steps in five seconds later, tightens the comforter and kisses Rosemary’s forehead. She speaks – all I can make out is, “love you,” and “special.” Then she leaves. Rosemary’s day has ended. She shuts those pink lips of hers for the last time until tomorrow morning. Unless they pop open in the night.

Like they do when she’s reading.

ooooo

Our teacher tells us that we’ll have to meet in the Performing Arts Center for an announcement after lunch.

“What’s it?” Jimbo asks as we go to our usual table in the courtyard. “Hopefully one of our teachers is, like, dead or somethin’ like that. Y’know?”

I nod even though I couldn’t care less. Rosemary is sitting with Betsy Albertson today and I can’t see her. Nevertheless, I see the pink butterflies coming from where I know they are. So it’s just as good.

ooooo

We can go home today.

School’s out early.

Someone found a janitor curled up and dead as a doornail under the pool. It’s probably best if all of us don’t stick around.

Cheering. That’s what people are doing now.

Fwish, thump! Jimbo falls from the roof and rolls, spins, cartwheels onto the next. The crowd goes crazy for him because our school is very easy to climb and jump around. One of our friends joins him and they’re both doing flips and running up walls. People are going insane for this because they haven’t got the balls to try it. My stitches have fallen out but the scar over my eye and across my fist tell the crowd that I’m one of them. The daring and stupid and brave and stupid.

Girls love that.

The principal will be out to tell us that he said for us to scram. I can see butterflies the color of his suit hanging around in a corner, foreshadowing his entrance. I think so, at least. As I watch them drift in midair, waiting for his appearance, a pink butterfly flies past me. Rosemary.

Jimbo will wonder where I’ve gone to, but it won’t bother him too much.

“Rosemary!”

She turns around very slightly before stopping and moving her hand from her mouth, where she’d been putting an M&M. I stop a few feet in front of her and get scanned by her big eyes. This girl is so strange.

“You need help?” I ask. She isn’t speaking. I step forward and take the books Rosemary is carrying to seem helpful. “I can carry these for you.” She keeps watching me curiously until I raise my eyebrows and pray for a word.

“You’re Kevin,” Rosemary says. Her voice is so soft. It might get carried away in the breeze.

“Yeah… and you’re Rosemary.”

Finally – a smile. A small curvature of the lips. Softer eyes. She’s pretty when she smiles.

“Thank you for carrying my things,” Rosemary says softly. “I don’t really need you to.”

“I want to.”

We begin walking and I absorb the pink butterflies and lavender scent like a vacuum. How strange that a scent can seep into every single pore on my oversized body.

“How long have you lived here?” Rosemary asks.

“My folks moved here when I was little. It’s alright here. I mean, nothing big really happens. How come you guys moved here?”

“My mother didn’t like Chicago. Too many sinners.”

I look to see if she’d been kidding. She hadn’t been. She’s serious.

“Is your mom a Bible thumper?” I ask, and I put on a well-thought out smirk so that she knows that it’s all in jest.

Rosemary looks at me queerly and mouths the words bible and thumper two or three times. I can see her mind working behind her eyes, her feelings oozing from those pink lips. Behind her a flurry of butterflies works hard.

“No,” she says slowly. “My mother loves the Bible.” She stops and looks at me strangely. “Why wouldn’t she?”

“Nothing,” I say. “My mom loves it, too. Are you afraid of butterflies?”

Rosemary shakes her head and we continue.

“Have you ever seen a lot of them? Where they normally aren’t?”

She shakes her head again. “I’ve seen a lot of butterflies in gardens.”

“Oh… okay. So… what are you gonna be doing for the rest of the day?”

“Well… I can go home and study. Catch up on work I’ve missed.”

“You wanna hang out at my place? I mean, we can do work and stuff, too…. I can help you with the stuff you missed, too, if you’d, y’know, like.”

Rosemary stops again and frowns at me.

“I’m not allowed at boys’ houses.”

“My sister might be coming home soon.”

She bites her lip and looks at her shoes. “I’m not really supposed to talk to boys, either.” And now this is very awkward.

“…Oh.”

After I walk Rosemary home, I sprint upstairs to my room. Rosemary shows up in her window seconds after I do and sets her books down, crushing about one or two pink butterflies into pale pink dust.

I am so hard right now.

Author's Note: sorry for all those ooooo's... fp doesnt let you make regular SPACES :l