Chance and the Butterfly Read online

  The baby’s name was Louise. Her mother had left her at the hospital after she was born. She had been sick and had to stay in the hospital for a long time. Then a family had adopted her. But she had been too sad for them. They had wanted a happy baby. And so they had given her back. After that, Angie and Doug had taken her in as a foster child. Two months later they took Chance in too.

  Louise was still sad. She cried all the time. She screamed and screamed. She screamed in the nighttime and in the daytime. She screamed in her crib and in her high chair and in Angie’s and Doug’s arms. Chance had a pretty good idea about why she was so sad. After all, he knew all about being abandoned and being given back. He was glad that Angie and Doug kept Louise. They held her tight, wrapped in her blanket. They sang to her and talked to her.

  Sometimes they seemed tired. Sometimes they even snapped at him or at Mark. But they never seemed to think of sending anybody back.

  On that first day, a Sunday, his caseworker had dropped him off in the afternoon. She had come into the house for a few minutes and had offered to stay longer, but he had brushed her away. “I’m okay,” he had mumbled.

  She had looked at him hard for a moment. “I’ll be checking in next week,” she had said. Then she had gone.

  The house was quiet that afternoon. The baby was napping for once, and Mark was at some kind of sports event. Mark had wanted to be here to meet Chance, Angie said, but his coach was strict and couldn’t spare him. Chance knew she was lying. The sons and daughters of foster parents never wanted him or any other foster kid around.

  “We thought that maybe it would be easier for you to get to know us gradually, grown-ups first. And Louise,” Angie said. Her smile was so big and warm that Chance was almost taken in. Almost. “You’ll meet Mark tonight at dinner,” she went on. “We’re roasting a chicken to celebrate. I even cleared the table in the dining room, so we can have dinner together for once!”

  Angie did seem nice. So did Doug. They showed him through the house, especially his room, where they put his bags. Then they led him into the kitchen and doled out milk and cookies. But his head felt stuffy and swollen, heavy on his shoulders. And pain ran up and down his back and legs. They didn’t know him yet. This was just another in a long line of houses and apartments, of smiling grown-ups with milk and cookies. Those smiles never lasted more than a few weeks.

  “Could I go to my room?” Chance said, his eyes on the table.

  “There are lots of puzzles and crayons and games, tons of Lego, in the front room. You could take your cookies in there if you like,” Doug said, his voice coaxing. Chance didn’t have to look up to know that he was giving Angie a worried look.

  “I just want to go to my room,” Chance repeated. He knew that he sounded stubborn, that he was supposed to be grateful, to smile back. His caseworker, June, was always telling him those things. But he didn’t have a smile in him.

  “All right,” said Angie. “Take some of these along. You must be starving,” she added, folding his fingers around two enormous oatmeal cookies. Chance was not hungry. His throat felt as if it was full of rapidly hardening cement, but he took the cookies.

  He froze halfway up the stairs as a horrible wailing poured forth from one of the bedrooms, the room that Angie and Doug had not shown him on their tour. “That’s the baby’s room,” they had said. “She’s napping.” He had not known then what a miracle that nap was.

  Angie came up the stairs behind him. “Well, I guess she’s awake,” she said lightly as she passed him. “I hope her racket won’t bother you too much.” The wailing turned to screaming, screaming that did not die down when Angie went into the bedroom. Keeping as far from the baby’s door as he could, Chance made his way to his own bedroom.

  Closing the door behind him, he stood and looked.

  He was in a small room with a big window right in front of him. The curtains were open, revealing a few trees and the next house, gray and plain. In front of the window was a desk. It had a small black metal lamp on it, a red mug holding a few pens and pencils, a new box of pencil crayons and a thick pad of paper. A small backpack sporting the logo of the local basketball team hung over the back of the chair. To the right of the desk stood a bedside table and then a bed. The bed had a blue spread on it, same color as the curtains. Chance’s small suitcase and sports bag were sitting on top of the spread. Two posters were tacked onto the wall above the bed. One showed all the planets in orbit around the sun. The other showed the night sky, with the Big Dipper dead center. The bedside table had a clock radio and another black metal lamp.

  A card was propped up against the lamp. He hadn’t noticed it when Doug and Angie had shown him the room earlier. On the card was a picture of some men and boys fishing.

  Chance walked across to the bed and sat down. He put the cookies on the table and picked up the card. First he looked at the picture for a long time. It showed three men and two boys in a big rowboat. They were in the middle of a lake. Every one of them was sprawled in the boat, holding a fishing pole, some sort of hat pulled down over his eyes. Five fishing lines entered the still water. Mist rose gently into the bright sky. The cement in Chance’s throat threatened to crack.

  He opened the card. It was full of words. Happy words, he was sure. Welcoming words. He looked at the words for even longer than he had looked at the picture. Then he laid the card down flat, picked up the cookies and dropped them into the wastepaper basket beside the desk, lay down on the bed and turned his back to the room, the house, the crying baby, and the kind and happy people.

  Chapter 4

  It felt to Chance as if hours passed while he lay there. The hands on the clock on the bedside table moved around and around, but round-faced clocks had never made sense to Chance. The baby’s wailing and screaming started and stopped, started and stopped. Feet traveled up and down the stairs and along the hallway. Twice they paused outside his door. The second time a gentle voice called his name, but he waited and the voice stopped, the feet passed on.

  The front door slammed soon after that. A boy’s voice called, “I’m home.” Then, “Is he here yet?” If any conversation followed, it was too quiet for Chance to hear.

  He was just wondering whether he should peek out the door, but was hating the idea, when the door opened and Doug stepped into his room. Chance felt the bed shift as Doug sat down.

  “I have a feeling that you’re awake,” he said, putting his hand on Chance’s ankle. Almost without knowing he was doing it, Chance kicked his hand off and scrambled to a sitting position at the head of the bed.

  “Listen,” Doug went on as if nothing had happened, “I know it’s rough to come to a new house. But we want you to get off to a good start. The longer you hide out up here, the harder it will get. Now, up you get. Mark is downstairs, and I want you to meet him.”

  Chance picked up a cushion and started twisting at the button in its center. He wasn’t going down there to meet that boy. “Come on, Chance,” Doug said. Chance looked up, met Doug’s eyes for a moment, shook his head and turned his attention back to the cushion.

  “All right. If you want to stay put, I can bring Mark up here to meet you. How about that?”

  Well, you had to give the guy credit. He didn’t give up, and he knew what was going on. Chance got off the bed and led the way out the bedroom door. But he waited at the top of the stairs for Doug to pass by.

  Mark was watching TV in the den. Chance looked him over. His hair was cut close to his head. Supposed to be tough, Chance thought. Mark was pale and pretty skinny, but tall, the wiry type. Finally he looked up, meeting Chance’s eyes first and then looking him over. “Hi,” he said and turned back to the screen.

  Chance opened his mouth to say “hi” back, but only a squeak came out, resulting in another glance and a small smile from the other boy. “Mark!” Doug’s voice was sharp. “Turn that off, come over here and meet your new foster brother.”

  “I said hi,” Mark said, but he clicked the remote, got up and came
. Chance pushed his shoe against the edge of carpet in the doorway. There Mark stood, facing Chance. There Chance stood, facing the floor. He raised his chin and looked at Mark again. Mark looked back. Doug watched them for a moment and then relented.

  “Come on, boys,” he said. “That chicken is roasted to perfection!”

  “Watch out for Louise,” Angie said, looking up from the electric mixer. Chance looked around, then down. There was Louise on a quilt on the floor, surrounded by stuffed animals. There was the chicken, golden brown, resting on the counter. The rest of the room was a madhouse. Potato peelings, onion skins and dirty pots and pans covered every counter and filled the sink.

  Mark got busy setting the table, and Doug started carving the chicken. Chance moved into the room and sat down on a chair at the cluttered kitchen table. Angie smiled at him and winked. He looked away and then jumped as Louise gave a loud wail.

  Angie turned off the beater. “Could you distract her for a minute?” she said. “I’ll put her in her high chair as soon as I get these potatoes on the table.”

  Chance stared down at Louise. Her face was red, her eyes were squeezed shut, and her wide-open, almost toothless mouth looked as if it was just getting geared up. Chance got down on his knees, clutched a stuffed rabbit and waved it over her. The screams continued. He dropped the rabbit, backed away and looked to see if Angie was coming, but she was spooning green peas into a bowl. Yuck, he thought and turned back to Louise. Her hands were balled into fists by her chest. He reached down and wrapped his fingers around one of those fists. The screams stopped. Her eyes opened. For a long second they stared right into one another’s eyes. Then she squeezed her eyes shut and let out the loudest yell yet.

  “Thanks, Chance,” Angie said, suddenly on her knees at his side. She reached under Louise, pulled a little blanket around her and swept her up into her arms. “I’m going to sit with Louise for a while in the other room. You go on in and get started. Doug’s dishing up.” And she was gone.

  Chance stood and looked toward the dining-room door. He bit down hard on his lower lip. He looked toward the door to the front hall, toward the room where Louise’s wails, a little quieter now, were coming from.

  “Come and get it,” Doug called. Chance wanted to go back to his room or to go into the front room and sit with Angie, wailing baby or no wailing baby. But he turned himself around, walked into the dining room and sat down in front of a plate heaped with food. Across the table, Mark was already gnawing on a drumstick. Chance picked up his knife and fork, even though he knew no food was going to get down his throat while he sat at this table.

  Doug left him alone for a while. He asked Mark questions about his day, about school. “Didn’t you have Ms. Samson in grade three?” he said at one point.

  “Yeah. She was fantastic!” Mark said, his voice warm for the first time.

  “She’s going to be Chance’s teacher,” Doug said, meeting Chance’s eyes for a moment. “Isn’t that great?”

  “I guess,” Mark said, but the look he gave Chance showed that he did not think that it was great at all.

  Doug turned his attention to Chance. “She does a lot of interesting things with her classes,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll like her. What’s your favorite subject at school anyway?”

  Chance stared. A favorite subject? That was a joke. “I dunno,” he said.

  “Well, I think you’ll develop some favorites here. It really is a wonderful school! You’ll see for yourself tomorrow.”

  Chance’s stomach turned upside down. School tomorrow? If he had eaten a bite, he’d be throwing it up right now.

  “May I be excused?” he asked. “I don’t feel so great.”

  “Don’t you want dessert?” Doug said. Then he looked at Chance’s plate. “Hey, you haven’t eaten a bite.”

  “He’s freaked out about school,” Mark said. Chance thought he sounded pleased.

  “Drop it, Mark,” Doug said. “All right, Chance. Off you go. One of us will be up to check on you after dinner.”

  Up in his room, Chance sat on his bed and gripped the edge with his hands.

  School.

  He had never had to go to school on the first day. Never. And if foster houses were bad, schools were worse. In schools they found out what you were worst at and made you do it over and over and over. In schools the other kids always knew you were a foster kid. And they hated foster kids.

  Chance grabbed the pencil crayons off his desk. He started with the purple pencil, sinking his teeth into it, deep into the wood, taking it out of his mouth and breaking it in two. Snap. He did the same to each piece. Snap. Snap.

  His stomach rumbled. He leaned forward and looked in the wastepaper basket. There were the cookies under a heap of pencil fragments. He grabbed the top one, gave it a shake and ate it in huge, ravenous bites. Just as he was wiping the crumbs off his chest, Angie opened the door a crack. “I’ll be in in a minute,” she whispered, showing him Louise sleeping in her arms.

  He stood up and looked in the mirror over the dresser on the other side of the room. He usually liked his gray eyes and heavy dark brows, but today his eyes looked small and red and his brown hair needed a comb. He smoothed it down as best he could with his hands.

  His first day there was almost done.

  Chapter 5

  The second day was even worse. That was when he found out what dinners were really like there.

  First came school. Ms. Samson seemed all right, but the other kids took a dislike to him like they always did, and by the end of recess he’d seen the inside of the principal’s office. When Angie and Louise picked him up at three o’clock, he was glad to get away, and equally glad that Mark was staying at school for a soccer practice.

  But Mark had arrived by suppertime.

  “Time to eat, boys,” Angie called. Then, “Chance, your supper’s ready.” A special invitation just for him.

  When Chance entered the kitchen, Angie was already busy with Louise. She did look over and give him a smile, but she turned right back to what she was doing. He could hear the TV going in the other room, Mark’s laugh at some show, and clinking cutlery. A plate had been prepared for Chance and was waiting on the kitchen table.

  “I have to concentrate on this one,” Angie said. “At least on weekdays, supper’s pretty casual around here. I’ll take a look at your homework after Louise is asleep. You’re welcome to sit here with me or to join Mark.” She gestured with her chin toward the other room.

  Chance picked up his plate and knife and fork and walked through the den door. There he stopped dead and waited for a clue. Mark was sitting at the far end of the couch. His plate was balanced on his knees, but he was caught up in what he was watching and didn’t notice the food in his lap or the boy in the doorway.

  A few footsteps into the room, though, and Chance had Mark’s attention. His eyes were chilly and blue and unblinking. “What do you want?” he asked.

  “I, ah, do you mind if I eat here too?”

  “Hey, eat where you want, kid. But if you’re looking for a friendly eating companion, you came to the wrong place. I’ve gotta tell you something right off. If I wanted a brother, it would be a real one, not some stray. So just keep your distance. Got it?”

  Chance stood and stared for long seconds after Mark had taken another bite and turned back to the TV. Then he walked out of the den by the other door into the front hall and up the stairs to his bedroom. He let his plate clatter onto his desk and sat on the bed, jaw clenched. Yes, he got it.

  The words, a real one, not some stray, echoed through Chance’s head as clear as if Mark was right there in his room taunting him. Finally Chance got up, took his dinner plate, knife, fork and food, and tipped it into the wastepaper basket on top of the pencil fragments and cookie crumbs. Then he picked up the card with the fishing men and boys. He looked at it, but the words blurred. Chance was pretty sure that the word family was on there, and he knew that was a lie. Bit by bit, he tore the card into tiny pieces, l
etting each shred of paper flutter into the basket on top of his dinner on top of the cookie crumbs. When he was done, he dropped the plate on top of the whole mess, feeling only a slight twinge when it broke in two. Then he pulled back the covers on his bed, wrapped his arms around his pillow and curled up as small as he could.

  When Doug came in later, Chance pretended to be asleep. Doug tucked the covers around his shoulders and whispered, “I don’t know exactly what happened with Mark. I talked to him, but if you ever need to talk to me about trouble with him or with kids at school, I’m right here.” It seemed like ages before Doug slipped out the door again.

  In the morning, when Chance woke up, the wastepaper basket, plate, knife, fork and all, was gone. Well, Doug acted nice, but what father was going to side with some stray against his own kid? Chance had learned long ago that you don’t tell on the “real” kids.

  From then on, whenever Mark was in the room, something in Chance froze. He became still. Careful.

  Once again, his greatest fear had been confirmed. Chance did not belong anywhere, with anyone. No matter how friendly Doug and Angie were, Mark’s words drowned out their kindness:

  If I wanted a brother, it would be a real one, not some stray.

  Chapter 6

  The caterpillars grew and grew. Every few days, the children took the little containers to their desks and examined the tiny creatures. Chance didn’t always manage to get his caterpillar in the rush, but he stopped by the ledge at least once a day, picked out the container with the nick in the lid and checked for movement and growth.

  One week after that first morning, on the same day that the new kid, Ken, showed up, Chance decided that he needed to get a real look at Matilda. That was what he had named her. Lunch was the best time. Ms. Samson always went to the staff room then and, after they had finished eating, no one was allowed to be inside. Chance was usually the last to leave, delaying the lunch monitors’ departure and getting his name on the board for refusing to cooperate. Today, when the outside bell rang, Chance went out right away, leaving the lunch monitors behind, mouths agape with shock. He went straight around to another door and reentered the school. The next few minutes he spent in a cubicle in the upstairs washroom. Then he slipped out, down the stairs and into the classroom. Perfect. The room was empty.