Butterfly Suicide
Contents
Title Page
Chapter One--Stephen
Chapter Two--Monica
Chapter Three--Stephen
Chapter Four--Monica
Chapter Five--Stephen
Chapter Six--Monica
Chapter Seven--Stephen
Chapter Eight--Monica
Chapter Nine--Stephen
Chapter Ten--Monica
Chapter Eleven--Stephen
Chapter Twelve--Monica
Chapter Thirteen--Stephen
Chapter Fourteen--Monica
Chapter Fifteen--Stephen
Chapter Sixteen--Monica
Chapter Seventeen--Stephen
Chapter Eighteen--Monica
Chapter Nineteen--Stephen
Chapter Twenty--Monica
Chapter Twenty One--Stephen
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Bayou Myth Excerpt
Copyright
BUTTERFLY SUICIDE
by
Mary Ann Loesch
CHAPTER ONE
STEPHEN
The butterfly hits the windshield.
The action is quick, probably painless, and yet it is the bomb, which sets the next phase of my life in motion. The gooey residue of death will stick with my family long after the windshield wiper scrapes away the obliterated body of the insect.
My seventeen-year-old brother laughs. It’s a grating noise, scraping the ears and the soul. Mom glances at him in the rear view mirror, the small frown line between her eyebrows growing deeper as she clutches the black steering wheel of our banged up Toyota Corolla. Her thin shoulders hunch, making her shoulder length blonde hair look longer than it is. I can tell she doesn’t like the sound, doesn’t like that he’s sitting in the dirty back seat which is overrun with fast food trash, forgotten store receipts, and who knows what else. She can’t watch him when he’s back there, but he refuses to sit up front. Every since we left the college prep meeting at the high school, she’s been sneaking looks back at him as if she’s worried he might explode.
Maybe she’s right to be worried.
Her oldest boy—the bearded man/child with his greasy, long black hair and hypnotic green eyes—is slipping away, drifting to an unknown manic future with lots of highs and way too many lows. He has been for some time, but it’s gotten worse the last two weeks.
Not that she will admit this out loud.
“Butterfly suicide,” she says, trying to make light of the insect’s sudden death.
Jude laughs harder, scratches is beard, and spends the next ten minutes of our car ride muttering, “Butterfly suicide.”
In the following days, it becomes his mantra, and he adds the little insect into his drawings—not that I’m supposed to know that. It should have been a clue, a warning, a small puzzle piece begging to be connected with its mate. Instead, we ignore it. Mom and I go on about the routines Jude has created for us, pretending the monster living in the house is a normal boy.
Jude Valley.
My brother. My antagonist. My nightmare.
The psycho who shoots seven students the last day of school.
****
Three months later
“You have to go.”
I yank the blue sheet over my head, grimacing at the clinging stink of it even as it blocks the harsh light of early morning breaking through the small openings in my tin foiled bedroom windows. Most of the time the sheets smell okay—a sort of mix of my body odor and Tide laundry detergent, but it’s been six weeks since I washed them, and even to my dulled senses, the scent is offensive. I try not to breathe in too deeply.
“Stephen? Did you hear me?” The sharpness of Mom’s words penetrates the fabric and into my darkened world. “You have to get up and go to school.”
I don’t have to do anything.
I pull the sheet tighter.
Mom sighs, and even though I can’t see her face, guilt stretches its legs in what’s left of my conscience. Maybe all moms have the same super power as their magic weapon, but mine takes the art of the sigh to a whole new level.
The mattress squeaks when she sits on the edge of my bed. “I need you to get up and get dressed, Stephen.”
I need you to get me the hell out of this small town, Mom.
“Everyone is watching us. I’m already the most terrible and hated mother in the world.” Maybe she thinks I’ll correct her on that one. Keep on dreaming, Mom. “I don’t need anyone else on my back because my ninth grader refuses to go to school. Please don’t make this worse for me.”
Worse for her? Really?
I fling the sheet off and it floats to the floor of my messy bedroom as I sit up. There’s a glint of sunlight reflecting off one of the silver framed band posters on the slate colored walls, and I blink, blinded by it. Mom stands quickly, blue eyes wary, head slightly lowered as if she is bracing for an attack. I don’t know what she’s so worried about. I’m not Jude. The only thing she has to fear is the remote possibility the pyramid of empty soda cans on my worn desk will sprout legs due to the mold inside them or that the disgusting lump of laundry spilling out of the closet may harbor a small mouse or two.
Her victim’s posture, the way her long, blonde ponytail tied at the nape of her neck quivers slightly like she’s shaking, the defensive flex of her fists at her sides—it pisses me off even more.
“It’s always about you, isn’t it, Mom? How people look at you. If it matters so much, then tell me why we have to still live here?” I grumble, slinging my legs to out and kicking a can of blue spray paint I hadn’t tucked all the way under my bed. It rolls forward and my mother eyes it, but before she can say anything, I ask the same question I’ve been asking for months. “Why can’t we just sell the house, take the money, and move away?”
“You know why, Stephen!” She snaps and then takes a breath, before pinching the bridge of her nose, massaging it as if she has a headache. “Our court appointment is in November. We can’t leave. Besides, where would we go?”
“We could move out of this fucking state.”
“Hey. Watch your mouth.” She glares at me. “And you know I can’t afford to move us. Not yet.”
Our small house is located in the crappiest neighborhood of Rockingham, Texas. With it’s chipped brown paint, missing roofing tiles, and overgrown front yard, our one-story, three bedroom house is a showplace compared to the other dilapidated homes surrounding us, but my mother makes practically nothing at the local fast food joint, The Taco Shack. She used to work in the administrative office of Rockingham ISD. That ended a month ago when they told her she’d used all her personal and sick days. If she’d been someone else, they might have cut her some slack, maybe even put a small fund together to help her out. But she was the mother of the Rockingham Rattler. Her boss wanted her gone.
Too much of a reminder, too much of an uncomfortable distraction.
Apparently, Taco Shack doesn’t care who your kid kills as long as there is a warm body behind the cash register.
Most days she walks the three miles to work to save gas money. Or maybe it’s to save for the pending lawsuits.
“Maybe if I dropped out, I could get a job,” I say, desperate to find a loophole in a three month old argument. “Maybe it would be enough to get us started someplace else.”
“You can’t drop out, and as for a getting a job…if I had trouble getting one, how do you think you’ll fare?” Mom swipes at her eyes, her voice softer, almost pleading. “Come on now. Get up. Go to school. You’ve got to walk in there and show them that what he did had nothing to do with you. You’re not him! We can’t be blamed for his actions.”
But we are.
A
nd a part of me thinks it is our fault.
Our eyes meet. Two months ago she’d been unable to get out of bed, stopped taking care of herself, and wouldn’t eat no matter what I did. She only recently started to try parenting me again, but it feels as if too much has happened. Our worlds shifted in May and I’m no longer her dependable boy.
“Stephen, I…” She struggles a moment, trying to get her thoughts out. My breath catches. There is so much we need to talk about, so much unsaid, so many questions I have. Maybe this is it; this is the moment where we get really honest with each other. Her gaze goes to the floor where the dinged up spray paint can lays. “That better not be what I think it is, Stephen. If you get caught again…”
I exhale and stand, defiantly snatching up the can. Setting it down on the bedside table, I say, “Well, this has been an enlightening talk as always, Mom. Why don’t you go take a pill and drift off to Oz or wherever the hell it is you go when you’re high? I’m going to get ready for school. Could you get out of my room?”
Mom’s shoulders slump at my rudeness, but she leaves, closing the door behind her. I win the battle of feelings this time though I’m not exactly proud of it.
Getting ready means pulling off the black Iron Maiden shirt I slept in and putting on a clean Lamb of God one. The jeans I’d worn to bed are fine for school. Not like anyone there is gonna give a shit about how I look.
The comb slides through my blond hair, settling down the rooster ‘fro I sport when I wake up. Brush the teeth. Tie the shoes. Find a backpack. Cologne or not? Screw it. Who will stand close enough to smell me?
I trudge down the hall that has pictures of our family in cheap frames tacked along the wall, showing off happier times. Not allowing myself to look at them, I move past the other two closed bedroom doors and into the untidy living room. Magazines have piled up on top of our leather couch, along with old blankets. I’m betting they probably smell as bad as my sheets. There are water rings all over the glass coffee table and a small crack runs down the side. Dust is thick on the pictures above the fireplace mantel. The room smells stale and musty and is in desperate need of cleaning.
Not my job.
Ignoring the state of the living room, I go into the kitchen and grimace at the pile of dirty dishes in the sink and the brown spots of…something…staining the white tile of the counter. A lone apple sits on top of a pile of bills. Grabbing it, I head to the front door, raising my voice so my mother, who has by now locked herself in the bedroom with a bottle of Xanax, can hear. “Thanks for breakfast.”
In the old days, she would have made pancakes and hash browns on the first day of school and packed me a lunch. She’d have wished me good luck on my way out and smile like she couldn’t wait for me to come home and tell her how it all went. New backpack, new clothes, new school supplies—all would have been part of the beginning of the year routine.
Clearly, all that domestic bliss shit is over.
Yet another thing I can thank my asshole brother for.
Outside, I stop a second, blinded by light and surrounded by Texas humidity. With my pale, blond hair and fair skin, the sun and I are not friends. An albino. That’s what Jude called me. Compared to him, I probably am one. He’d inherited our dad’s dark black hair and the ability to grow full facial hair at sixteen—something he’d capitalized on those final months. In fact, the last time I’d seen Jude, he’d been sporting a full black beard and long, greasy hair.
“What are you supposed to be? A disciple of Kurt Cobain?” I had asked, noticing even though it was May, he wore his favorite torn red flannel shirt. He probably didn’t even know who Kurt Cobain was. Mom had kept all of my deceased father’s Nirvana CDs and I’d listened to them hundreds of times. “When you gonna shave that shit off your face?”
He stood in the doorway of his room, watching me come down the hall.
“I look like Jesus would have looked if he’d been a pothead.” Jude punched me in the arm as I tried to pass, leaving another red whelp I would have to hide from Mom. He held his notebook, his sacred Bible of artwork, against his chest. “The bitches love my face.”
“I bet they love you calling them that, too.” I risked an ass whooping for daring to call him out on anything. “Maybe that’s why you don’t have a girlfriend anymore.”
Jude smiled and stroked his beard, an odd look on his face. Then he’d gone into his room and started typing away on his computer, leaving the notebook resting on the desk, an ever-constant companion.
If I’d known then what would happen a few hours later, I would have pushed harder for the ass whooping. Maybe he wouldn’t have done what he did.
Can’t dwell on that. I have to stay in the present, and believe me, it’s a goddamn 24/7 effort.
I plod down the road in the direction of the high school in no hurry to get there. No need to get immersed in the fear vibe too soon. No desire to be gawked at by accusing eyes.
No hurry to step into the cafeteria.
Sure, they’ve probably cleaned up the blood, maybe even purchased new white floor tile to trick the mind into thinking nothing has happened. Freshly painted walls will reveal no trace of brain matter or guts left behind to sicken the student body as they eat at the long, aluminum, picnic style tables. The windows punctured by the bullet holes are now replaced by bulletproof glass designed to make everyone feel safe.
There’d been talk of tearing down the cafeteria or even rebuilding the whole school, but Rockingham is a poor town made up of farmers and ranchers struggling to get by. Funding in our district is hard to come by and there is no building nearby which can house the student body while a new place is being built.
Easier to wipe up the blood, create a memorial to the fallen, and call it a day.
Cosmetic changes were necessary for the day-to-day operations of a school, but the high school administrative staff would never be able to erase what had happened. The hundred or so kids having lunch three months ago would never be able to eat in the room without thinking about my brother. No little plaque dedicated to the dead would ease the PTSD he’d created.
And what would the sight of me sauntering into the high school do to them?
One of the broken down houses I walk by on the way has a poster in the front yard with the words Never Forget. It is black with bright, yellow cursive letters. They popped up in the weeks following Jude’s actions, dotting the yards of small town Rockingham homes like weeds or overgrown flowers.
A woman with big brown teased hair and a cigarette hanging from her lip is in the yard watering what looks to be already dead zinnias dried up by the scorching Texas sun. She glances over at me, a small frown of disapproval growing larger on her face by the second and grasps the cigarette to keep it from falling. She knows who I am, and though the woman says nothing, her thoughts are obvious enough to fill in a comic strip thought bubble. I can practically see the one above her head.
Murderer. Killer. White trash. Just like him.
I force myself to walk past as if I don’t have a care in the world. Hell, I practically strut in an effort to show that judgy bitch how much I don’t give a damn about what she thinks. Given a few more seconds, I might even have shot her the middle finger just to be a dick. Lucky for her, I catch sight of the high school, and the lady with big hair becomes nothing but a footnote in what has been a shitty summer.
Any pretense of bravery shrivels as I study the school. It’s a long, brown-bricked rectangle with the main entrance in the middle and the classic silver poles out front where the state and American flags proudly fly. I suppose it looks like any other high school in the world, but right now I’ve never seen anything so sinister. The dark pall over the place stretches out, working with the sun to make everything slightly sepia.
Turn around and walk away.
So easy to run off and spend the day hiding out somewhere, listening to metal music and counting the hours until the weekend when I can hole up at home away from prying eyes.
No one will miss me.
But the admin staff will know if I’m not there. No doubt they’re on the lookout for Stephen Valley. I’m sure the counselor is prepared to pat me down, check my pants for weapons or drugs. I heard they even hired a security guard.
If I don’t go in, Mom will find out and this will lead to another verbal battle which will lead to more reasons why I need to be on my best behavior, why finding the spray paint in my room is such a big deal, why I need to not be truant so no one in authority will have a reason to harass me.
I take a deep breath, forcing my feet to keep going. In the parking lot, kids greet each other, giving high fives, bumping and jostling with their backpacks, light laughter streaking through the air. The sound is tinged with anxiety though and is made worse by the sight of metal detectors and security guards at the front entrance of the school.
They’ve changed the sign on the building. It used to read “Home of the Rockingham Rattlers” with a picture of a ferocious looking rattlesnake next to it. The new sign simply says, “Welcome to Rockingham High School.” A few years ago, we’d been the Rockingham Rodents, but the principal had decided he didn’t want our football team associated with rats. There had been a huge contest to find a new mascot.
Guess who won? That’s right. Problem child of the year, Jude Valley.
His design for the sinister Rockingham Rattler drew gasps of approval, and soon it became the school logo, showing up on all our district shirts, notebook covers, front office stationary—just about anything related to Rockingham ISD. The original artwork Jude had drawn used to be framed in a glass case in the long front hallway of the high school until somebody broke in over the summer and took it.
I hesitate in the parking lot, knowing I haven’t been seen yet.
“You coming in?”
The deep voice behind me is jarring. I jerk with guilt.
“Sorry.” A man steps beside me, gripping a silver coffee thermos in one hand. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”