January was cold and snowy; and yet butterflies appeared to Thomas everywhere. He cut butterflies out of salted butter and ramen noodle wrappers. Catalogs, gift bags, sympathy cards, old cooking magazines—they all begged Thomas to transform them into butterflies and save them from being dumped into the noisy recycling truck that lumbered down their street every other Thursday.
Thomas granted their wishes, smuggling the paper and cardboard into UnderLand, snipping wings after his father’s light went out and piercing the little cardboard bodies with Helen’s bobby pins. Giselle was his inspiration—her skirt, her jacket, her sunny moods, even her anger. Whenever he’d tried to draw her as a butterfly, Thomas felt limited by his drawing skills and the flatness of the surface. She had so many moods that butterflies and the extra clippings that were not butterflies piled up around him.
Thomas decided to take a butterfly with him on the first day back to school. This particular butterfly had been born from a midnight-blue greeting card and the writing—Thinking of you—was in gold glitter. Thomas had torn off the front and used his thumbnail to press a fold into the cardboard. He’d cut carefully so that as much of the glitter as possible would stay on the butterfly’s wings.
It comforted Thomas to slip the butterfly into the front pocket of his backpack; he knew that his father was meeting before school that morning with Mrs. Evans, Principal Bowen, and the school psychologist, Mr. Feeney, in the office to discuss Thomas’s refusal to talk.
Though he sat in the reception area waiting, Thomas could hear snippets of their conversation, such as “normal reaction” and “monitor the situation.” Mrs. Evans told Thomas as they walked to class that she would find a way to accommodate him. “For the time being, Thomas,” she said. Thomas knew she would make it her personal goal to be the one to “fix” him.
After the bell had rung and students got out their journals, Thomas thought about giving the butterfly to Mrs. Evans so that she would go easy on him. He reached into his desk and ran his finger over the smooth and rough surface of the wings.
“Answer the question on the board in your journals,” Mrs. Evans told the students after the morning announcements, leaning back in her chair and pointing in the direction of her whiteboard.
As he sat at his desk—not writing—Thomas watched George tap Bella on the shoulder and ask to borrow a pencil when he clearly had pencils of his own. It was widely known that George liked Bella—was that why he teased her so much? Thomas didn’t know what Bella thought of George, but judging from her expression when she turned around, he guessed not that much.
Thomas pulled his butterfly out of his desk. Using the eraser end of his pencil, he touched George’s shoulder.
George turned around. “What?”
Handing George the butterfly, Thomas gestured toward Bella. He showed George that it was a bobby pin.
George took the butterfly in his hand. After considering for a moment, George tapped Bella on the shoulder again and offered it to her on his outstretched palm. She took it and looked at him, confused. Then she turned back around. Neither Thomas nor George knew what would happen next.
“And why is Bella’s journal of such great interest, Mary?” Setting down her book on designing backyard playgrounds, Mrs. Evans huffed her way to standing.
“It’s not, Mrs. Evans. I’m sorry,” answered Mary, turning back to her work.
But something that could distract Mary Mallender from her full-time job of being perfect was something that intrigued Mrs. Evans. So she made her way over to Bella’s desk.
As it turned out, it wasn’t Bella’s journal that was attracting attention; it was her pencil. Mrs. Evans held out her hand. Bella had wound one of those small rubber bands girls put at the end of their braids onto her pencil and slipped the butterfly bobby pin into it.
“Very interesting.” Upon examining the pencil, Mrs. Evans looked down the row to Thomas. Only she knew who supplied a steady stream of butterfly questions to the Ask Mrs. Evans box.
“Thomas.” Mrs. Evans took a step closer to his desk. “Do you know anything about this?”
Thomas looked up at Mrs. Evans. He did not like to lie. Or, in this case, tell the truth. So he did what he was good at. He waited.
“I see.” Mrs. Evans thrummed her fingers on his desk, trying to figure out a way to get Thomas to talk.
“You’ve got the wrong kid,” George informed Mrs. Evans. “I made that. For Bella. Is that a crime?”
“In my classroom, Mr. Panagopoulos, distraction is a crime, but it was nice of you to do this. Much better than scaring her with a tarantula.” Mrs. Evans returned Bella’s pencil and asked her to put the butterfly away.
“Did you know,” she continued, looking directly at Thomas, “that some people call a group of butterflies a kaleidoscope and others call it a swarm or a rabble? Such colorful words. Which do you prefer, Thomas?”
The class waited for Thomas to answer. Except for Martin, they didn’t know yet about his not talking. He was hoping to keep it a secret for a while since he was very quiet anyway as a rule.
“He likes rabble,” George said, coming to Thomas’s aid once again. “Don’t you, Thomas?”
Thomas nodded his head. He knew, of course, what a group of butterflies was called, and he definitely preferred “kaleidoscope.” But he also preferred being helped rather than having his shirt grabbed, so he gave George a thumbs-up.
Later that evening, safely tucked away in UnderLand, Thomas pondered the events of the day. Did his butterfly change the story of Bella and George? Reaching to his side for a butterfly, he used the bobby pin to clip it to the bedframe. Then he fit another next to it, so that the wings overlapped slightly. Then another and another until all the butterflies he’d made so far clung to the mesh above his head, interspersed with the icicle lights Aunt Sadie had put there at Christmastime.
“Do you think my mother will like this?” Thomas asked Dave. “It’s a kaleidoscope.”
“I do,” Dave replied. “Very much.”