All the Butterflies in the World Read online

  “Where’ve you been?”

  “Mom, I told you this morning I was going to hang out with Nicole, remember?” I glanced toward the kitchen. A cutting board was on the counter with a pile of chopped onion on it. “You’re making dinner?”

  “Is that all right with you?”

  I threw my hands up. “I’m just asking.”

  “Well, you make it sound as though it’s so unusual.”

  I let out a sigh. “What are you making?”

  “What’s it look like I’m making?”

  I released the clip on my daypack. “You want help?”

  “What’s got into you? All this helpfulness all of a sudden?”

  “I help with stuff… when we actually cook something.”

  “Yeah, because I make you. But that’s not what I meant.” She nodded toward the sliding doors leading out to the deck. “The flower beds.”

  I looked outside, but all I could see was the deck and the woods beyond it. “What about them?”

  “You want something, don’t you?” Mom gave me her lie detector squint, which never worked.

  I stepped over to the door, slid it open, and walked out onto the deck. In the back corner of the yard was a bed of pink yarrow and Shasta daisies. It took only an instant to realize what was different about them. I hopped down from the deck and went around to the front of the house. I’d failed to notice when I arrived home earlier, but the beds of petunias were clean. The weeds had all vanished.

  Mom had been nagging me for weeks to do that. I was going to, eventually, but it was hard work. That and it was hot, sweaty, tedious, boring, backbreaking, dirty, and buggy. And the burdocks were the biggest pain in the butt with their roots extending to China.

  I returned to the kitchen. “Who did that?”

  Mom was standing at the stove in her favorite apron, which she’d ripped off from work—bright orange, with a big Home Depot logo in the center of the chest. She stopped and turned to me with a frown. “You didn’t?”

  “Mom, I was gone all afternoon.”

  “Those weeds were there when I left the house this morning. They didn’t just pop up out of the ground and run off on their own.”

  “It would’ve taken me days to do all that,” I said.

  She studied me for a moment. “I believe that. Whoever it was had a picnic on the back deck and left their trash behind.” She turned her attention back to the sizzling skillet, stuck a fork into a slab of meat, and flipped it over. “A plastic bag with an empty water bottle inside. There was also a note.” She pointed the fork toward the countertop at her left. “Here, I thought you’d written that for me.”

  A flat rock, roughly the shape and size of my palm, was propped against the backsplash. Someone had scratched “Thank You” across the smooth surface of the rock.

  I searched the counter. “Where’s the water bottle?”

  “The recycle bin.”

  I stepped into the utility room and rummaged through the bin.

  Mom stuck her head around the corner. “What’re you doing?”

  “I don’t know.” The bottles were all the same—all our brand. I held back a smile as my suspicion was confirmed. “Just curious.”

  She let out a huff. “Well, this is creepy. Make sure the house is locked up tight tonight.”

  chapter four

  John

  Except for the occasional rustle of small, unseen creatures and the rumble and growl of my belly, the forest was as quiet as snow. The night, just to the wrong side of cool, was too chilly for sleep. I would’ve started a fire if I’d had matches or a flint, but all I had were the coins and the Jules Verne book. Instead of sleeping, I lay on my bed of leaves, regretting my lack of preparedness while second-guessing most everything else.

  I spent a good part of the night thinking of Tess. I tried to convince myself that, had things been different, if she’d made it to that patch of woods I called the ribbon place—where her world and mine seemed magically bridged—we’d be perhaps talking about a shared future. But it didn’t go that way, and I wanted her all the more for it. Unfortunately, all I had to offer her was a little silver and some thin promises, which I feared wasn’t enough. I knew the coins I’d brought with me were worth considerably more than their face value, but I had no idea how to get money for them. I needed Tess’s help. A mite awkward, to say the least.

  I slipped in and out from snippets of dreams. As evidence of morning began showing through the branches overhead and the low hum and whispers of cars drifted to my ears, I gave up on sleep.

  I drew in a breath of cool air then lowered my nose close to my armpit. “Oh.” The fragrance was just shy of aggressive.

  I grabbed my box and went off in search of a swimming hole. The automobile noise grew in volume as I neared the outer edge of the woods. I crossed an open pasture then stood beside Rutland Road, watching cars, buses, and trucks fly by in a blur of colors. I would’ve liked to have taken a seat nearby and spent the day marveling at that parade of machines, but I figured there’d be plenty of opportunities for that later. I waited for a break then sprinted across the road.

  The train tracks were a stone’s throw away, and just a hundred feet farther was Otter Creek. I picked my way along the bank of the shallow stream and soon came to a small peninsula of rocks and sand. After slipping out of my shirt and trousers, I eased into the chilly water. I twisted and wrung my clothes then scrubbed my body with handfuls of sand until my skin was as pink as a thistle bud.

  It’d be a while before it warmed up any, as the sun had only just broken over the mountaintop. I figured if I waited for my clothes to dry, I’d be naked ’til noon the following day. So I worked back into my clothes, suffering the cold until I got moving. I was clean but wet and hungry.

  On the way to Tess’s house, I debated over how to explain my presence there. I was pretty sure her ma wouldn’t welcome me so soon after she’d warned me off. But I was confident, from prior experience, that I didn’t have cause to worry—not on that particular morning, anyhow.

  I pushed the little white button beside the front door—ding dong—then glanced to my left at the petunias. I’d done a fair job of weeding, which I’d hoped would soften up her ma a bit. She brought to mind my old neighbor, Mrs. Tabor, who always seemed to be having a bad day. If someone pointed out how pretty the snow was, she’d remind them of what a miserable nuisance the stuff was. I pushed the button a second time. A moment later, the door opened, just a crack. An eye peered out at me.

  “Oh,” Tess said.

  I heard the rattle of a chain, then the door opened wide. “Good morning, Miss McKinnon.” I smiled and bowed.

  “You… you’re risking your life, showing up here.” She glanced back over her shoulder. “My mom’s headed this way… with a meat cleaver.” Her eyes betrayed the smile lurking just beneath the lie.

  “Some things are worth it,” I said.

  She rolled her eyes. “Right.”

  “Truth be told, I remembered from last time.”

  “What?”

  “The first time I was here in 2009. Today’s the day I went back to my own time. Saturday, twenty-fifth of July. Being your ma had your car, your friend Liz gave us a ride to Greendale.”

  “Uh huh.” She looked down at my britches. “Did you fall into the pond?”

  “The creek down the way.” I held up my hand, my thumb pointing west. “An attempt to better myself.”

  “Jesus, aren’t you cold?”

  “Not so much. I just wanted to stop by and apologize for the other day, upsetting your ma as I did. I couldn’t leave my box there, though.” I held it up—a wooden box with a hinged lid and a brass latch, not much bigger than the book inside it—and patted the top. “Everything I own’s in here, plus the book I borrowed from the library, which I reckon they’ve likely given up on ever seeing again.”
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  “You coming back for your box didn’t bother my mom nearly as much as the flowers.” She glanced down at the petunias and snorted. “I mean, Jesus.”

  “She wanted the weeds left there?”

  “John, you just don’t go around messing with people’s stuff without their permission.”

  “Well, I know that. I pushed the button, knocked, and hollered too, but I reckon no one was home. I thought I’d return your bottle and bag. Anyhow, I figured the least I could do was pull a few weeds for you.”

  “Mom was thrilled to get her plastic bag back.”

  “Good.” I folded my arms across my chest and rubbed them.

  “You are cold.”

  I shook my head. “No, I’m fine.”

  “Your lips are blue. Why don’t you come in? I’ll throw your clothes in the drier.”

  I couldn’t argue past chattering teeth, so I stepped inside. Tess had me leave my box on a little table at the end of a plump doe-brown sofa then directed me to the bathroom, where I waited while she rounded up some dry britches. I stood there, as fascinated as ever by all the strange inventions. Tess couldn’t know it, but I’d once taken a shower there. I pulled back the curtain to refresh my memory. Just amazing. I pushed the silver lever attached to the side of the glossy white chair—Kawoosh!—and watched as the water spun around and down into the hole at the bottom.

  “What are you doing?” Tess stood at the door, holding a pile of folded clothes.

  I lowered the hinged lid. “That is really something.”

  Tess laughed. “It’s lovely. Here.” She handed me the clothes. “The sweats are big on me, so I think they’ll fit you. And you’ll have to go commando while your stuff is drying.”

  “Commando?”

  “Uh… I don’t have any men’s underwear, and I don’t think you’d want to wear mine.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t wear any, anyhow.” I couldn’t believe I was really having such a conversation with a gal, with Tess. I feigned interest in the curtain hanging in front of the shower stall. I wondered if men in the future wore underwear year-round, while the gals ran about with hardly a thing on.

  She cleared her throat. “Well, hmm… all-righty then. Climb into those then bring me your wet clothes. I’ll be in the kitchen.” She left the room, closing the door behind her.

  A short while later, I stepped into the kitchen, wearing purple britches and a yellow-and-green plaid, button-down shirt—my box in hand. Tess was busy digging around in one of the lower cabinets, her back to me. She lifted out a few brightly colored cardboard boxes and set them on the counter.

  “We’ve got Wheaties, Cheerios, and Rice Krispies.” She turned, looked at me, and sputtered. “Those are so not your colors.” She snorted. “Sorry.”

  I looked down and grinned. “They’re quite dandy, aren’t they?”

  I followed her back to a little room off the far side of the kitchen. She tossed my wet clothes into a big white machine then fiddled with some dials and pushed a button.

  I thought I heard the sound of running water. “What’s it doin’ to ’em?”

  She looked at the machine. “No one knows.” She smiled. “As soon as you open that door to find out, it stops doing it.”

  We took our breakfast out back to the deck. Tess sat across from me, eating something that resembled the Fruit Loops I’d had the first time there in the future—minus the unusual colors.

  As I scraped the last few Wheaties flakes from the sides of my bowl, she said, “You were hungry.”

  “That’s partly why I’m here. I mean, I have these coins, my wages from the mill, and I was wonderin’ if you’d help me sell ’em.” I was aware that she knew someone who could help, as she’d only recently told me so—though she couldn’t possibly remember that, it being back in my time. “I’d gladly pay you for your trouble.”

  “What? Like old coins?”

  I laid a hand on top of my box. “Want to see?” I lifted the lid, removed the book, then slid the box over to her.

  She lifted out a dollar and examined it, flipping it over and looking at the back side. Then she set it back in the box and picked up a quarter. She studied that in the same way. “These are really old.” Her head tilted to the side, and her lips parted. “They’re yours?”

  “Wages from my uncle’s mill.”

  Tess eyed the book. “And that’s old, too?”

  “I reckon it is now.” I picked it up and returned it to the box.

  “Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea? Have you read it?”

  “Twice.”

  “Is it as good as the movie?”

  “The what?”

  “Yeah, right.” She slid the box back then asked about my work at the mill and about my uncle.

  When she ran out of questions, I tried to steer the topic back to my problem. “I’d like to rent a room hereabouts and find some work.” Though I wasn’t sure what that’d be, as I’d only done gristmill work. My muscles and a willingness to use them surely counted for something, though.

  “Really? What about your travels?”

  “I’m thinking maybe I got to where I was going.”

  “Oh?” She cocked her head to the side.

  “If I could sell the coins…”

  She rubbed her chin. “I could ask my friend Nicole. Her dad collects coins. He might know how to sell them.” She nodded. “I’ll tell you what. Liz and I were planning on going over there tomorrow. I’ll call them later and ask.”

  “I’ll just leave the box with you then.”

  Tess reached for the box and turned it one way then another. “How much do you want for them?”

  “Heck, I don’t know. I have no idea what they’re worth.”

  She shrugged. “Me neither.”

  “You think we can trust your friend’s pa to be fair?”

  “Oh, yeah.” She glanced toward the woods. “Where are you camped?”

  “Well…” I confessed to my lack of gear and the consequent lack of sleep.

  After I changed back into my clothes, Tess loaned me her tent and sleeping bag, along with a few other items Then she helped me set up camp a few hundred feet behind her house, far enough that a fire couldn’t be seen from the house—her “secret spot,” as she called it.

  I didn’t let on that it wasn’t a secret to me. One of my fondest memories came from the night Tess and I had sat around a campfire there, sharing stories, roasting hot dogs, and listening to the owls hooting up on the mountainside.

  “If my mom was to find out about this,” Tess said, “she’d kill me.”

  “Why are you doing it?”

  “I don’t know.” She scanned the area. “I wouldn’t mind trading places with you.”

  “You’re fooling, right?”

  “Maybe I envy you.”

  “What?”

  “I took off once, about a year ago. My mom was seeing this guy. A real creep. And, well, I ran away, went up to Burlington and lived with a creep of my own for a couple weeks.” She closed her eyes for a brief moment. “It was an ugly time. The worst.” She clasped her hands behind her head and sighed. “I’m not kidding. I envy you. You’re like your own person. No one accusing you of bullshit all the time.” She smiled. “Except maybe me.”

  chapter five

  Tess

  Sitting on the edge of my bed, I raised the lid of John’s box and removed the book—Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea. The blue cloth cover made me think of those mail-order facsimile things, with the title and “Special Collector’s Edition” in gold and black lettering. Even the edges of the pages sparkled with gold. The pages seemed too white for an old book. I opened it to the title page and read, “Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1873.”

  I called Liz. “Hey, what would you guess fifty ancient coins and an original Jules Verne no
vel is worth?”

  “Jewels what?”

  “Jules Verne. He wrote Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea.”

  “I don’t know. Five dollars? Is it a paperback?”

  “Get over here. You should see this.”

  After hanging up, I dumped the coins onto my bed and arranged them by face value: one gold coin, smaller than a dime, six silver dollars, ten half-dollars, a dozen quarters, and a bunch of dimes, nickels, and pennies—each and every one dated before 1875.

  About fifteen minutes later, Liz appeared at my door, wearing her Counting Crows T-shirt—black with pink lettering. I once read a book on color psychology. The combination of black and pink supposedly suggests suicidal tendencies, but I didn’t really believe in that crap. I showed her my arrangement of coins.

  She picked up one of the dollars. “Whoa. You could hurt yourself with this.” She pretended to whack herself on the head with the coin then pointed at another one. “Is that gold?”

  “It looks like gold to me. But check out the dates.”

  She stared at the tiny date-stamp on the dollar. “1871.” She picked up another coin. “1862?” And another. “1868. Jeez.”

  I showed her the book. “If that’s a first edition, it’s worth a lot more than five dollars. Who knows? Maybe five hundred.”

  “You think?” Her eyes went from the book, to the coins, and then back to the book. “And possibly jail time. It’s all too weird, if you ask me.”

  I sighed. “Well, he might be a little messed up, but he’s nice.”

  Liz gave me the squinty eye.

  “And interesting.”

  “But so was Charles Manson.”

  “Charles Manson was ugly, though.” I laughed. “Anyway, what do you think I should do?”

  “Hmm.” Liz tapped her cheek with her index finger. “I’ll bet you an antique store was robbed. Call the police. Maybe there’s a reward.”

  “No, I don’t think so. I can’t believe that.”

  “No, right, forget it.”

  Then I thought, What if she’s right? If Nicole’s dad sold the coins and they turned out to be stolen, he could get in trouble. “No, you’re right. I should at least check.”