Read The Butterfly Clues for Free Online

got to be there. I’ve got to reclaim her, whatever it is she was.

    It takes me a while to retrace my steps and find the place. The painted daisies are even more glaring in full daylight. No one’s here—no police officers, no one sniffing around attempting to right any wrongs.
    I walk cautiously to the front door, crossed with police tape. I tap tap tap, banana and bite the tip of my tongue lightly nine times before I try the knob: locked. I don’t know what else I expected. My heart’s hammering splinters in my chest as I creep down the alley, toward the door in back. I pass the shattered window, also crossed with police tape, and notice that the bullet has been dislodged from the wall. A new, sick fear flashes through me, making me want to turn around. But I don’t.
    I reach the back door. It looks pretty flimsy, like it might be easy to slip through. There’s a broken bit of wood by the knob; I start to work it with my fingers. It splinters quickly apart.
    Suddenly, a pair of strong hands grip my shoulders from behind.
    I let out a shout without meaning to and whip around, prepared to hit, prepared to run. I’m so scared that for a second what I’m seeing doesn’t make sense—it’s all fragment and fracture and bear and teeth and boy .
    Then I realize the hands gripping my shoulders belong to a guy in a bear-eared hat. It’s the boy from the flea market, the boy whose high-speed jaunt sent me crashing into Mario’s table. His eyes narrow for a second and then widen. He must see a flicker of recognition pass through my eyes.
    “What are you doing here?” he demands as I shake myself out of his grip.
    “I’m—I’m not doing anything. What are you doing?” I spit back. “You’re the one who—why would you—” My words tumble out, tangled fragments. “Why would you come up behind someone and—you could have been—” You could have been the killer, I almost say, but I can’t get it out, can’t tell this boy in a dumb bear-eared hat who I thought he was, what I thought he was about to do.
    He stares at me hard, seeming to assess me. Then, suddenly, his whole posture shifts, and his face softens into a grin. “Whoooa, man. Don’t shoot!” He puts his hands in the air like we’re playing cop and robber and I’m pointing a toy gun at his heart. He has blue eyes and scraggly dreadlocked hair. Oddly nice teeth. “Just a simple question. Don’t you remember me—Le Market du Flea—from yesterday?” He steps back with his left foot and bows, pretending to lift an invisible hat from his head in apology—but he leaves the actual hat with the bear ears on his head.
    Freak, I think, but don’t say it. “I remember you,” I say, still angry. “You crashed into me. Why the hell were you running so fast?”
    “Oh, you know. Just stretching the legs. Sorry about that. Where better for a quick jog than a crowded outdoor market?” Even though his words come easily, he’s still shuffling his feet, hopping a bit from left to right. He’s either got to pee pretty badly or he’s nervous about something. “I saw you from the alleyway, thought I’d come over and say hi.”
    His long dreadlocks are dyed blond in some places, though the rest of his hair is dark brown, and I can see now that his eyes are somehow blue and green and gold at the same time, like the old marbles Dad gave me and Oren to play games with as kids. He’s wearing scruffy black pants and big sturdy-looking brown boots without laces, tongues hanging loose.
    I narrow my eyes at him and he rushes on, “I’ve just been over there”—he motions to the other side of the house—“doing a little treasure-hunting Dumpster-diving, and I thought to myself”—he puts a finger to his temple—“if that pretty girl goes to the flea market, and likes creepy old things, I just bet she’d appreciate a good scare and then, the rare and impossible chance to check out my newly salvaged wares. So, we’ve got the scaring part over with,