Chance and the Butterfly Read online

  Chance and the

  Butterfly

  Chance and the Butterfly

  MAGGIE DE VRIES

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  Text copyright © 2001 Maggie de Vries

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  De Vries, Maggie

  Chance and the butterfly / Maggie de Vries.

  (Orca young readers)

  Issued also in electronic format.

  ISBN 978-1-55469-865-3

  I. Title. II. Series: Orca young readers

  PS8557.E895C52 2011 JC813’.54 C2010-907922-1

  First published in the United States by Orca Book Publishers, 2001.

  (ISBN 978-1-55143-208-3)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2010941960

  Summary: Chance has problems fitting in at school and in his new foster home,

  but watching a caterpillar become a butterfly helps him let go of some of his anger.

  Orca Book Publishers is dedicated to preserving the environment and has printed this book on paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Typesetting by Jasmine Devonshire

  Cover artwork by Suzanne Duranceau

  Author photo by Roland Kokke

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  PO BOX 5626, Stn. B

  Victoria, BC Canada

  V8R 6S4 ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  PO BOX 468

  Custer, WA USA

  98240-0468

  www.orcabook.com

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  14 13 12 11 • 4 3 2 1

  For my niece Jeanie, who loved this book even before it was done; for my nephew Ben, who loves creatures of all kinds; and in memory of their mother, my sister Sarah, who loved us all.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 1

  “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” Chance shouted. “The butterflies are coming today.”

  He jumped off the couch, scattering papers and books and sending to ruin the Lego tower he had started the night before. No time to stop. Mark would be mad when he found his schoolbooks on the floor, but at least the tower belonged to Chance. His to build. His to smash.

  Hair uncombed, shoelaces dragging, Chance flew to the door and flung it open.

  “The butterflies are coming, the butterflies are coming,” he chanted, his voice drowning out even the cries of that sad baby that Angie, his new foster mother, was feeding in the kitchen.

  “Yes, Chance, I’m right with you,” said his foster father, Doug. He gathered up Chance’s lunch bag and backpack and followed him out the door.

  Then they had to wait in the car for Mark…just as they had waited every morning since Chance had come to stay here, three weeks ago.

  “I don’t see why we always have to go so early, Dad,” Mark groaned as he finally swung into the front seat. He ignored his younger foster brother, just as he had on the last fifteen school-day mornings. Chance knew, though, that Mark would not forget those books on the floor.

  Chance hunched down in the backseat. He concentrated his thoughts on the life cycle of the butterfly. Eggs, larvae (those were the caterpillars), chrysalides, butterflies. Eggs, larvae, chrysalides, butterflies.

  Was it so terrible that Mark ignored him? He had stayed in houses with other kids before, not foster kids, kids who belonged there, like Mark did. And they had ignored him before. And done much worse. Eggs, larvae, chrysalides, butterflies.

  Every traffic light was red on the route to school, and Doug insisted on driving just below the speed limit the whole way as usual. Then, when they got there, Chance couldn’t go in anyway, because it was nowhere near quarter to nine.

  Mark took off for the gravel field behind the school. The grade fours and fives always played soccer there before the bell.

  Chance stood right by the entrance nearest his class for the whole time. Doug waited over by the bicycle stand, keeping an eye on him.

  “The butterflies are coming,” Chance reported to any children who came near enough to hear him. But even the kids in his own class just shrugged their shoulders and moved on. Didn’t they care? The kids in this school were no different from kids in any of the other schools.

  But at least here he was going to be part of something. He had left one school two days after the chicken eggs had been placed under the warm hatching lights. He had arrived at another two weeks after a brood of ducklings had been taken to a nearby farm. Here, for the first time, his timing was perfect. On Chance’s first day in Ms. Samson’s class, they had just been starting to learn all about the life cycle of painted lady butterflies. This time he was going to see it through.

  Others in the class might not listen, but every word that Ms. Samson said about butterflies, Chance heard. Every picture that she showed, he pored over. The written words worked themselves into tangles and defeated him, but everything that he could learn about butterflies, he took right in deep. Not only was he going to be here until butterflies were flying around in the classroom, he was going to be an expert.

  Now, as Chance waited for the bell, a boy from his class, Ralph, tried to budge in front of him. Chance elbowed him in the stomach. Ralph grunted but did not take action. He wandered off, holding his belly. Would he tell? Chance wondered briefly. Another lunch at the office? Another talk with the principal?

  Only three weeks, and already Chance knew every bit of Mrs. Laurence’s office and every one of her tactics for dealing with unruly children.

  “The butterflies are coming,” he muttered one more time under his breath.

  Chapter 2

  The bell rang and Chance jumped, startled.

  For the second time that morning, he flung open a door. For the first time ever, he beat everyone else into the classroom. Not even Ms. Samson was there yet. As the others spilled into the room behind him, Chance searched. He was quiet now, wanting to make the discovery himself.

  Nothing in the room was different, except for a square cardboard box sitting on the round table. It had red and white labels on the sides. Chance could make out the word live, but none of the others. The box had been opened and the top tucked closed again.

  Still no sign of the teacher. It was easy to pull the box open and reach inside among the foam chips. He had a heavy container in his hand and was peering through its clear plastic sides at some muddy greenish substance when he was interrupted.

  “Chance, what are you doing? Put that down!” The voice sliced across the room, not too loud, but clear as clear.

  Chance rarely listened to teachers’ angry voices. In fact, most of the time he didn’t
even hear them until it was far too late. But something in Ms. Samson’s voice today reached him. He set the container back in the box and stepped back from the table.

  Ms. Samson crossed the room quickly, put her hand gently on Chance’s shoulder and steered him toward the cloakroom to put away his bags and his coat. Then she lifted the box and headed for the story corner.

  “Get your things put away and join me on the carpet, boys and girls,” she said. “I have something exciting to share with you.”

  Chance made sure that he was sitting right in front of her knees. Ms. Samson lifted a plastic cup from the box, exactly the same as the one that Chance had been looking at, with a white lid and the same greenish stuff inside, but only in the bottom.

  “What do you think these are?” she asked as she held it high.

  A lot of tiny dark things were on the inside of the plastic sides. They looked kind of wriggly.

  “Caterpillars!” the class called out in unison. A couple of voices said “larvae” instead. Ms. Samson seemed pleased.

  “Hands up for this next question,” she said. “Do you think the caterpillars will always be caterpillars?”

  That was silly, Chance thought. “No. They’ll become butterflies,” he called out. Ms. Samson ignored him and called on Martha, who was holding her hand up in the air. She was sitting, legs neatly crossed, right beside him. “No. They’ll become butterflies,” Martha said.

  Chance was hemmed in on all sides. He shifted in his spot, trying to gain himself a little space.

  “Don’t bother your neighbors, Chance,” Ms. Samson said. “That’s right, Martha,” she went on. “As caterpillars, their only job is to eat and eat and eat to get lots of energy so they can turn into butterflies. Do you know, boys and girls, that if a baby could grow as fast as some kinds of caterpillars, that baby would be bigger than a bus by the time she was four weeks old.”

  Chance’s brain reeled. “Then how big would the baby be by now, in grade three?” he asked eagerly, flipping onto his knees to see better how tiny they were now.

  Half a dozen voices complained immediately.

  “Sit down flat, Chance. And put your hand up,” Ms. Samson said.

  Chance collapsed onto his bottom and threw his hand into the air. He rattled off the question again. Of course, that wasn’t exactly what she wanted, but it was so hard to wait, and his question was so important.

  “Next time, wait for me to call on you, Chance,” Ms. Samson said. Chance gritted his teeth. Why did she have to do this every single time? Why could nothing ever just happen?

  But at least she answered the question. If the baby grew by the size of a bus every month, then they just needed to know how many months there were up until grade three. Together they worked it out. The baby would be about as big as one hundred and fifteen buses, since they were near the end of the year. Wow! The children gazed at the little caterpillars with great respect.

  Still, Ms. Samson pointed out that larvae don’t keep growing for seven years. They only have a month or so to grow in the outdoors, and they grow even faster in the classroom. Not like us. We have twenty years to grow. We can take our time.

  Then Ms. Samson explained again all the steps that the larvae would go through to become butterflies. At first, Chance listened carefully for new information, but they had already made a booklet that included everything she was telling them. So it wasn’t long before his body started to wriggle. He had never discovered anything that would keep him still once that had started to happen. His teachers thought he didn’t try. They were wrong.

  Ms. Samson looked down at Chance and ordered him back to his desk. He scrambled through the group of cross-legged children on all fours, not caring how many sides he jabbed or fingers he trod on. Then he took a roundabout route across the room, clomping his feet as he walked. She spoke to him again, more sharply this time. His shoulders slumped and his eyes rolled. He was going, wasn’t he? Nothing he did was ever good enough for anybody. He scraped his chair on the hard floor pulling it out, and then he shuffled it in, making as much noise as he could. This time Ms. Samson ignored him.

  So Chance didn’t get to press some food into one of the little caterpillar containers like everyone else. He didn’t get to watch Ms. Samson pick the caterpillars up one by one with something she called a sorting brush, just a little paintbrush as it turned out, and place them one to a container on top of the food. And even though it was Chance’s week as classroom helper, he didn’t get to help her hand the containers out.

  Martha did.

  Each time Ms. Samson placed a caterpillar in its tiny cup, Martha handed the container, a lid and a magnifying glass to the next in line. One by one, every child in the class but Chance settled down to examine a tiny creature.

  Over and over, Chance kicked his desk leg. Ms. Samson took forever to finish, but finally all the children were seated, chatting away about what they were doing. The teacher took the last container off the table, settled the last caterpillar into it, snapped a lid on and headed in Chance’s direction, magnifying glass in hand. Chance kept his eyes moving and his leg kicking. He fixed his gaze on everything in the class that was not human, willing his teacher to go away and leave him alone.

  She pulled up a chair and put the container on his desk.

  “Let’s look at this together, Chance,” she said.

  His shoulders were up around his ears, and his foot kicked one more time and then again. If she thought he wasn’t mad, she was wrong. He was mad still, mad that he never got a chance, mad that everything had to happen somebody else’s way. Never his.

  But the caterpillar was right there and the magnifying glass was at his fingertips. So Chance looked. Then he looked some more. He saw the beautiful pattern of white spots and little stripy lines on the larva’s back. He saw the tiny hairs sticking up all over its body. He saw its six little feet. As he gazed, the little creature became his. He would feed it. No, he would feed HER, protect her and watch her grow wings.

  He looked up at Ms. Samson and grinned. “She’s amazing,” he said softly.

  “Yes, she is. Especially when you think that she has everything she needs inside her to become a butterfly. The only other thing she needs is that food in there.”

  “Yeah,” Chance said. He reached into his desk and rooted around. Bits of paper drifted out and a couple of broken pencils fell to the floor. The desk tipped. Ms. Samson’s hand shot out and stopped the small container just as it was about to slide to the floor.

  “Careful, Chance,” she said. “What are you looking for?”

  “A felt,” he said. “I want to put my name on. So I’ll know which is mine.” He looked at his teacher. Her face spelled that familiar word, no. His face fell.

  “All the caterpillars belong to all of us,” she said. “That way if anything happens to one, we’ll all still have others. I kept just the right number, twenty-six, for our class. The grade fours are going to keep an eye on the rest, but I don’t want everyone claiming caterpillars for themselves.”

  Chance’s chin thrust out. He sat and stared at his desk. Ms. Samson touched him briefly on the shoulder as she stood and swung her chair back into its spot at the round table at the back of the classroom. Chance could almost feel his skin twitch where she had touched him. She said “no” and then she patted him. What did she think he was, a puppy?

  “Could you finish up, please, everyone?” she said. “Within five minutes all the caterpillars need to be on the work-in-progress shelf and the magnifying glasses need to be put away.”

  A few children got up and put their containers away. Chance watched. They were putting them in a jumble. He would never be able to pick his out again in that mess. And even if he put it somewhere else, it was sure to get found and moved. No. This one was his.

  He thought for a long moment. He wasn’t allowed to mark the container, but there had to be a way. There had to be. He wasn’t allowed to mark it so she could see, or so anyone else would know. Making sure that
Ms. Samson was not looking, he reached into his desk and felt around until his hand met his scissors. He tugged the lid off took a quick look in at the little caterpillar. She was curled up in the bottom. Still as still. Scared, he thought. She needed to get to her spot away from all the noise.

  Slowly, the scissors and the lid came together. One false move and he’d slice that lid right in half. Then he’d be in trouble! The first cut went all right. Now he just had to make another cut that met up with it. The scissors were small and dull. His thumb was thick and wanted to twist the scissors around the wrong way. And he had to hold everything right in his lap so no one would see. There! He made the second cut. A tiny triangle of plastic fell away. He snapped the lid back on. Yes. It still stuck.

  He shoved the scissors out of sight and looked up to see Ms. Samson approaching his desk once again.

  “Make sure the lid’s on tight, Chance,” she said, looking past him to check on the rest of them, “and put it over with the others.” Then she turned back to the class. “Time for a math drill,” she said. “Six times tables today.”

  Chance placed his caterpillar at the back of the shelf, where she would be safe. He had got three out of twenty on the last math drill. When Ralph had gloated about getting the only A+, Chance had drawn thick black lines across Ralph’s test. That had been the first time he had eaten his lunch outside Mrs. Laurence’s office. Today was different. Today he could get one out of twenty and he wouldn’t care.

  His caterpillar was getting ready to grow.

  Chapter 3

  Dinner was casual in this new foster house. In the last one the whole family sat down at the dinner table every night and stared at each other. Here, Mark, who was their son, not their foster son, often took his dinner into the den. Angie set herself up at the kitchen table to feed that sad baby, as Chance called her to himself. Doug and Angie didn’t eat until later, when the baby was asleep, if she fell asleep. And there didn’t seem to be any good place for Chance to eat his dinner, at least not after that first night.