Лаура Миллер - My Butterfly

The tractor and wagon pulled catawampus into the school’s parking lot, and fourteen guys and a couple of coaches jumped off. My feet hit the ground, and my eyes hit the crowd. Where was she?

“One state championship and one championship parade down,” I heard a voice call out from behind me.

I turned and felt the corners of my mouth start to rise.

“Julia, I wasn’t sure you’d come,” I said.

She laughed and glanced at the big crowd behind us.

“I didn’t want to be the only one who missed it,” she said, still smiling.

My eyes turned down to the ground at my feet. There was something about this girl that made me nervous every time I was around her.

“You hungry?” I asked her, as I kicked a rock back and forth on the asphalt.

I didn’t hear anything, so I looked up. She was still smiling at me, but her smile looked less soft and more suspicious. I stared at her staring at me. If this were some kind of staring competition and the winner got his way, I was determined to win.

Just then, her smile widened, and she nodded her head.

I stood there dumbfounded. I was pretty sure that that meant yes—even in girl talk, but I couldn’t be certain.

Her eyes faltered for a moment but then returned to mine, and as if she had been reading my mind, her next word was all the confirmation I needed.

“Okay,” she softly said.

“Really?” I asked.

There was a part of me that felt as if she were pulling my leg.

She nodded her head again.

I stared at her for another, full second. Then, I quickly scooped her up into my arms.

“Will, what on earth are you doing?” she squealed.

She was laughing, so I figured I was okay.

I hurried over to my truck, pulled open the passenger’s door and gently set her down onto the seat. Then, I closed the door and ran over to my side and threw myself behind the wheel.

“What are you doing, crazy person?” she asked, as I jammed the keys into the ignition.

“We’ve got to hurry, before you change your mind,” I said, only semi-joking.

I saw her out of the corner of my eye toss her head back and laugh. And within seconds, I was peeling out of the parking lot and heading toward the little diner at the edge of town.

Donna’s was filling up, no doubt because of all of the people in town for the parade. Julia and I quickly found a corner booth and slid in. A few seconds later, I watched as a shorter boy with shaggy hair and a Donna’s Café polo noticed us and shuffled toward our booth.

“Hey, man, congrats on your guys’ win,” the boy said after he had planted his feet at the end of our table.

I looked up at him. He had a cheesy grin on his face, and he was wearing a pin with our mascot on it.

“Thanks,” I said, through a smile.

“Hey, Adam,” Julia warmly said.

“Hi, Julia,” the boy replied, cowering a little.

He looked at her a little too long with that cheesy grin of his. Julia had already returned her eyes to the menu, so she didn’t even notice. I cleared my throat, which seemed to do the trick. It broke the boy’s stare, and he started instinctively scribbling something onto his little notepad. It couldn’t be words.

His pen eventually stopped, and he looked up and caught my stare. I was pretty sure I had a puzzled, though now slightly intrigued, look on my face. It was interesting how he had been so drawn to her to the point that I might as well have been invisible. But I couldn’t be mad at him. He probably only saw what I had always seen in her.

“Uh, I’ll just give you guys some time to decide then,” the boy said, smiling awkwardly.

I watched him jam the little pad of paper back into his pocket and scurry off.

My eyes fell back onto Julia then. She was still looking at the menu. I had a smile on my face that I couldn’t imagine wiping off.

“Cheeseburger or chicken strips?” she asked me, without looking up.

I heard her, but her words sounded more like a song than a question, so I failed to answer her.

Her eyes eventually turned up toward mine, and soon, her lips broke out into a smile.

“Cheeseburger it is,” she said.

She glanced at the paper menu one more time and then slid it behind a ketchup bottle against the window.

“So, how does it feel to be a state champion?” she asked.

My eyes faltered, and a laugh followed.

“Pretty good,” I admitted. “But I’m not so sure it’s better than this.”

She stared at me for a second and then laughed.

“You’re ridiculous,” she said. “I know that every one of you guys have been dreaming of a basketball state championship ever since the day you picked up a ball.”

I lowered my eyes and chuckled to myself.

“Julia Lang,” I said, pausing and then returning my eyes to hers.

“If you only knew how many cheesy Valentine’s cards I wrote you that never reached you,” I said.

She stopped and sent me a slightly puzzled look.

“Yeah, I know it might seem like I’m head over heels for a girl I barely know, but I know more about you than you think,” I said.

“Really?” she asked.

She sat back in the booth and smiled, in a challenging kind of way.

“Really,” I said.

Her suspicious eyes locked onto mine.

“You guys ready to order?” asked the boy, in a high-pitched, cracking voice.

He had reappeared from out of nowhere.

Julia looked up at him and smiled. He smiled back, held his stare a second too long, then quickly hurled his gaze in my direction.

I knew I must have given him a puzzled look again because he quickly forced his eyes back to his notepad and started scribbling nonsense again.

Eventually, my puzzled stare left the boy and caught Julia’s bright green eyes, and I smiled.

“I’ll have the cheeseburger with fries,” she said, her eyes still locked in mine.

I’ll have the same,” I said, only taking my eyes off of her long enough to make sure the shaggy-haired boy had gotten our order.

He finished scribbling onto his pad and then quickly disappeared.

“So, we played on tractors together when we were kids,” she said, now resting her elbows on the table, her hands under her chin. “That hardly counts as ‘knowing me.’”

I chuckled and sat back in the booth.

“Okay,” I said. “Fair enough. What about the basketball game in junior high when you broke your arm?”

I watched her brows dart together and her eyes squint a little.

“You were there?” she asked.

“I was,” I said. “I had my mom drop me off. We almost got lost finding the place. Turns out, those little, rural schools are pretty well-hidden.”

She slowly sat back in the booth again. She seemed to be thinking — back, maybe.

“You didn’t cry,” I said.

Her lips started to part into a half-smile.

“I was the one who held the door for you when you left the gym to go to the emergency room,” I said. “You said ‘thank you,’ and I remember thinking, Why isn’t she crying?”

Her expression looked soft and thoughtful, as if she was playing back each moment in her mind.

“And when we were nine,” I continued, “I was at the park, and I fell trying to skateboard and tore my knee to pieces. You stayed with me until my dad came and got me.”

“That was you?” she asked.

There was surprise — almost disbelief — in her voice.

“And there was another time,” I went on, “when you were at the movies with your friends and Jeff was being Jeff, and he strolled right up to you and hit on you — like you would expect a seventh-grader to hit on a girl. I couldn’t hear what you said to him, and he never told me, but you whispered something into his ear. But as you were whispering, you were smiling at me.”

I watched her cock her head a little. Her stare was now off somewhere in the distance.

“I said, ‘I have a boyfriend,’” she eventually said, returning her eyes to mine. “But I didn’t have a boyfriend.”

She shook her head, and a wide smile danced to life on her face.

“I remember looking at him — you,” she said and then paused. “I remember looking at you and then coming up with that excuse.”

Her stare faded away again before returning to me.

“Wow, now I see it was you all along, but it’s like it wasn’t you — like…”

“It was like you didn’t notice me,” I said.

Her smile softened and then slowly, she shook her head.

“It was like I didn’t notice you,” she confessed.

“Well, as long as you notice me now,” I said, smiling what I was sure was a goofy grin and sliding deeper into the booth.

Her lips broke open into a wide smile, and she softly laughed.

“I notice you now,” she said.

She was piercing my eyes with those beautiful, green weapons of hers. And I loved the hell out of it.

“I notice you now,” she said again.

“Julia,” I whispered as loud as I could. “Julia.”

I took out the few small rocks I had gathered from her driveway and had stuffed into my pocket and thrust one up into the half-open window. Then, I waited.

Nothing happened.

“Julia,” I called out a little louder.

I took a second rock and tossed it up at the glass, then a third. Then, suddenly, I saw a figure in the window. The shadowed outline pushed back the curtains and pressed a forehead against the screen.

“Will?” I heard a soft voice say. “What are you doing?”