butterflywing

since leaving texas after juvie, she hasn’t planted herself. not when there’s this looming, leering precedent over her of drought and hope dredged from the dirt. she thought houston would have been it — it, like sitcoms of smiling families with their dog —, everything fructifying to normality, but the cold front of the incident blew in unexpected like an eviction notice or pink slip. she doesn’t trust weathermen. no one could have predicted david, with that gnarled simper and unmistakable depravity. remembering his name makes goosebumps pique her arms. they brush her long white sleeves, an undershirt to her blue tee. their pastor said she needs hide her tattoos, at least when she’s leading youth group, and he squints at her septum, her double stud over her eyebrow scar. she never thought god would draw the line at holey skin and not sickness like david’s. he’d been a christian. he’d stared at her arms, too, albeit in a glazed, grimy gaze instead of scrutiny.

so, she’ll wear the fucking undershirt. she’ll ignore jesse and joel asking why she’s dressed for chills when it’s at ninety, because she gets chills now anyhow. she’ll keep parading for youth group, skimming the scripture that shuns her being, because it gives her the best community service hours per her compromise with the law. she’ll shut her mouth, swallow her spit, and remember that she could have been transferred to the women’s jail when she turned eighteen if she hadn’t accepted her probation terms. she’ll wear the fucking undershirt.

jesse huffs where he’s sat on their sopping checkered blanket. “how many more bins do you think we need?” he talks and looks and acts like a bleeding heart country boy, tan lines and yard lines, teeth white no matter how many cigarettes they share in secret. people give him the benefit of the doubt. they don’t glare at him. he’s got that likable quality ellie doesn’t, the it thing, and it takes a lot of calamity and cancer sticks to whittle such an american cadence to a rasp like ellie’s. 

nobody really likes to hear her talk, but jesse does, and he’s a good guy, a somebody, so she does, albeit in cluttered curses and grumbled gripes. she mutters, “like, double… they went through this amount last time in ten minutes.”

sighing, he plops his balloon into the bin they’re filling, and ellie does, too. his is yellowish, burgeoned translucent by the water it dams, and hers is slate blue. the latex’s color fades the further it’s stretched. “are they all here?”

“um.” ellie thinks and raises her head, squinting against the sun. the pastor is speaking, gesticulating these grand gestures that could’ve told much more than the bible. he might have penned his own prose if it weren’t for expectation. the kids, eight to ten to twelve, look up to him from where they sit at the timber tables, a big gazebo shielding them from sunburns. she counts about fifteen. “i don’t think the ginger one is here.” she lowers her voice and continues, “too pale to come out during summer anyways, the little anklebiter probably stays in a bunker ‘til winter.”

“dude.” but he laughs.

“no, i don’t care, he’s a little shit.”

“what did he even do?”

she hisses, keeping quiet, “he stole my fuckin’ swiss roll!” shamelessly, he had looked her right in the eye as he gnawed on it with his gummy mouth, adult teeth not quite in. it makes her blood boil. she ties another balloon and chucks it into the bin, a pithy exclamation point.

by then, he’s red with chuckles. “he’s ten, man.”

“thou shalt not steal.” if christians can pick from the orchard, she’ll chop a whole tree. she’ll make its lemons lemonade. “that’s, like, one of the first things you fuckin’ learn.”

jesse’s eyes flick from the balloon in his hands to ellie’s shirt, and he says nothing.

“what?”

“... i know damn well you didn’t pay for that abercrombie — ”

“sh,” ellie hushes. “that shit is overpriced, i’m not payin’ twenty for a blue t-shirt.”

“get a job.”

she rolls her eyes and counters, “get a life.”

“damn, got me there.”

“you gonna cry to your girlfriend? you haven’t brought her up in the past hour, i think that’s a new record.”

his smile goes dopey and dazed as his eyes, and the next balloon he puts in is set gentler than the others. “she, uh… actually wanted me to ask you something.”

ellie blinks. she almost wants to see if somebody had stuck him in the neck with a tranquilizer, but it seems to just be the dina effect. “... you are so disgusting.” he’s built an entire house in ellie’s mind of this girl, whom ellie only knows her name. dina, in her mind’s eye, is lightning in a bottle, a bottle ship that will never sink, that sinking gut you only get before you fall. her voice probably lilts like lillies. she can probably buy not one, but two abercrombie tops.

she chews her coveting cheek and wonders if someone will see her like that. if someone will ever look at her gooseflesh and tattoos and loose roots without judgment.

her tease doesn’t get a response. “she wanted to know if you’d come to an end of summer party at hers.” before she can object, as if he senses it, he adds, “i think it’d be good for you.”

bristling, she gnaws harder on her cheek. “how would you know?” it’s a defensive disposition, she knows that, but she can’t stop, has never stopped doing it. her shoulders are forever slumped, her tail always rattling. it’s worse, because the claim hits. joel and jesse are the only people she’s spoken to often these past couple of months with the occasional call from tommy, maria, or riley. she’s homeschooled. she doesn’t have a job, doesn’t want a job. it’s too much expectation. she tells joel’s sheep more about life than any therapist will ever know. her journal harbors it all in stanzas and sketches and songs, her guitar strumming the soreness of her thoughts. and yet, jesse sees through her. he knows she’s not built for solitary. they’re solely out of necessity, her erected walls.

“because nobody should be stuck with just joel for this long.”

ellie admittedly snorts. “why, ‘cause he’s a fuckin’ dork?”

“yeah, and…,” he trails for a few seconds. “dina really wants to meet you.”

“dina wants to meet me.”

jesse hums.

he doesn’t understand why that strokes her so unusually. people that make others better never look twice to ellie. “... what the fuck did you tell her about me? are you ruining my rep?”

“i just told her about you.”

“... god, you are so cheesy.”

“watch what you say to who’s tying the balloons,” he warns.

“oh, i’d like to see you fuckin’ try.”

he did. he tried.

ellie drove home soaked to her bones with nasty faucet water and stray latex sticking to her clothes. her jeans cling to her skin. after he’d dripped her to nothing but a sodden rat, he declared that he won, as did the kids — whatever —, so she owed him an appearance at the party no matter how short.

her heart batters her ribs while she pulls up the long gravel drive, and the lights are on in the ranch house. at first, she thinks joel is making supper, but she sees his figure on the porch sublined by a guitar, the porch swing’s ropes rustling, their hairs frayed. joel doesn’t care that they’re weak, imperfect. he plays for them anyhow. for her. she wishes she could deserve it. every time she’s faced him after david feels like a walk to the gallows, no matter how warm his words, how kind his consoling. 

she’s exhausted. he looks up from his guitar and smiles softly, and she’s exhausted.

her lungs push every bit of air out, and she sags in her seat as she tugs the keys from the ignition. it’s easier to be here when she’s taller in her pickup, wheels high and rimmed, every chip of paint showing; her truck has scars just like her. but it’s bigger. more colorful. more useful.

reluctant, she exits and shuts the door behind. there’s always a slam wherever she goes, something startling and unnerving. 

joel doesn’t seem surprised when she approaches, feet dragging in the driveway, just amused by her wet clothes. “you have fun with the kids today?” he asks, sitting straighter, feet flat on the porch.

“oh, so much,” she answers, sardonic. “it wasn’t even the kids who fucked me up.”

“who?”

“who d’ya think?” her accent gets thicker around him.

joel chuckles and sets his guitar aside, propping it against the wall. “i like that kid.”

“yeah?” ellie tries to slink inside without more chatter.

“i think he’s, uh… i like him,” he says in that presumptuous, insistent manner that makes ellie gawky. he doesn’t mean to, she realizes that, but she can’t shake the feeling that she’s not the norm, pining for boys. “have you — ?”

“me and jesse are friends,” she mumbles, inching closer to the door. her face is burning with the spotlight. “he asked me to a… thing. like, a small, impromptu party tomorrow.” a beat. “or something.”

joel sets his jaw. he loathes the idea, she can tell, but he won’t be accusatory. not yet. “with a lot of people?”

ellie shrugs. “it’s at his girlfriend’s house.” a gentle, less core reminder of why she doesn’t want him. “i don’t really know her, so...”

“you gonna stay out of trouble?”

“... trouble finds me.”

“whatever you say.” joel crosses his arms and furrows his brow, knee bouncing, seeped in apprehension. “i dunno how i feel about it.”

it’s a perfect excuse. joel said no. but she doesn’t want to let jesse down. she doesn’t know if she could handle his disappointed gaze next sunday. “so that’s a maybe,” ellie says.

he stays quiet. a no.

ellie groans and slips inside, another slam following. the bangs never stop. not as long as she’s like this. joel’s saying something behind her, but she doesn’t listen, rushing upstairs to get pajamas and a towel so he won’t interrupt. if she showers for long enough, she can avoid the patronizing talk. he wants to make sure she’s safe. after what happened, she’s fragile. he doesn’t want her to get caught in the wrong crowds. every explanation is sensical, and it spurs her affront more, further.

fucking chills. they don’t stop.

ellie doesn’t know what she’s doing. the town is two particular sectors: trailers crowded like sardines and sickening, superfluous suburbia. she lives in neither, in the outskirts on joel’s acreage, but she’s never seen the wealthiest street. the houses all look the same, manufactured, and per the friday night frenzy, cars line the block in shitty parallel parking. nobody here can fucking drive, and she’s laid the horn more times than she has fingers.

she walks up the street, hands in her pockets with her uneasy frown and wrinkled nirvana shirt haphazardly tucked. no one’s seen her outside of sunday clothes. she doesn’t leave the ranch enough. she wonders if people think she’s a jesus freak, some anomaly, a christian with tatted skin and glinting piercings. this isn’t the place to break the status quo, she notices. all the girls dress the same, and — oh.

abercrombie.

her eyes roll like a sixth sense.

she’s still stuck with her dumb fucking undershirt. she has to roll the sleeve of it up to read the smudged sharpie on her palm. ruby st, some number… 219? god, joel would kill her if he knew she was here without a direction to boot. she slows her gait as she gets closer to the number, finally stopping in front of the prospect.

it seems quiet for a party. no lights are on except for one downstairs. the house is fenced, but the paint is chipped. she hadn’t expected that from dina’s place, nor the intimacy of the porch as she strides up. rose bushes bracket it, and there’s windchimes singing. a welcome mat is at her feet — the first thing she’s been above in quite some time. she knocks on the dark, warm mahogany, more intimate than a beckoning bell.

nobody answers for a half minute, and ellie almost turns to leave, but the sound of the door opening makes her stay it’s not loud. it’s a quiet creak, a soft splinter of a house built decades ago. a house that can’t keep everything in. that can’t keep you in.

you, clearly not the host of a party or anything dina would be, but ellie doesn’t want you to be. she wants to look at you for just a second longer. you have a blanket draped around your shoulders, a sick tinge to your skin. your nose is rubbed red, your lips are chapped, and your voice is nasally with a cold, “who’re you?”

ellie blinks and responds dumbly, “... ellie.”

“were you looking for dina’s?” you sniffle and cough into your elbow, eyes watering. you take a second to regain your voice. “she’s a couple houses down.”

“um — yeah.” she looks at her feet, the welcome mat a sinkhole. “sorry.”

“you’re good.”

it’s awkward. unsalvageable, really, her face redder than hell, and she opens her mouth to bade goodbye. nothing comes out. it’s drowned by the soft, luring flutter of music from inside the house, the shimmer of fleetwood mac. everywhere, she’s pretty sure, and her suspicions are confirmed when the guitar flares. “... i love this song,” ellie says, finally looking up.

you’re smiling. she doesn’t know why, but you’re smiling. “do you?”

“yeah, i know it on guitar.”

your smile gets bigger instead of rescinding, and it’s the first time ellie’s caused that in a long, long time. “cute.”

she blanks. “... why?”

“you’re all rockstar with that nirvana shirt, but you — ” you cut yourself off with another cough, cursing below your breath. “ugh, shit, sorry…”

“you’re fine,” ellie rushes, sheepishly backing from the threshold. “i should get going, i didn’t mean to bother you.” she can’t put her roots in. not now. not here. “feel better, yeah?”

she swears she sees your face fall, but she’s already moving away. that’s all she has: cold feet. “say hi to dee for me.”

the door closes. it’s not a slam.

dina’s everything she expected, a beacon of joy and the star of the throng, but sweet enough to dawdle with ellie of all people. dina nips at a glass of whiskey as they talk, and she’s got everything they have in the magazines. a low neckline. gold jewelry. the biggest smile anyone had ever seen.

aside from yours.