In the days following Helen’s memorial service, Thomas kept to himself. It was hard to find things to do that seemed like the right things. His story with the polar bear queen was over and a new adventure had not yet begun. The space Dave had occupied in his stomach seemed empty and hollow, and when Thomas spoke to his butterfly there was no answer. Where was Dave now?
Maybe he should write a story that featured his butterfly. Maybe that would bring him back. Or maybe Dave had moved on and would not be back. Maybe he’d left to help some other boy.
On Saturday morning, Thomas was lying on his bed thinking about Dave and story ideas that just didn’t seem ready to be stories when the doorbell rang.
“Thomas?” Giselle called up after his father had opened the door. “I haven’t seen you in almost a week. Tu me manques. I miss you.”
Thomas slid off his bed and went downstairs.
“Can you come out for a minute? I want to show you something.”
Thomas could feel a rush of warm air come through the open door; it was officially spring. He followed Giselle outside without putting on his coat.
She took him to the spot between their houses, near a tangle of bushes. “Here. This is what I wanted to show you.”
“What do you call this?” Thomas lifted a soft, cream-colored bloom with his finger so he could see it more clearly.
“It’s called a Lenten rose because it blooms in March, way before other flowers. See all these pretty pink speckles? My mom planted a purple one in our backyard, just for me.” She breathed in noisily through her nose. “Don’t you love the smell of spring?”
Thomas inhaled. He kneeled, poking his finger into the cold soil, he remembered that it was snowdrops his mother searched for in early spring.
“You never did, though, did you, Thomas?”
Thomas hadn’t been paying close attention, so he wasn’t sure what he’d never done. He asked Giselle to repeat what she’d just said.
“You never drew a picture of what I would look like if I were a butterfly.”
Picking up a dead leaf, Thomas crumbled it on his lap. His knees were wet from the ground.
“It’s okay if you didn’t. I was just won—”
“You were too flat when I drew it,” Thomas said. “So I cut it out instead.”
“Like when we made snowflake butterflies? Can I see it? Please? I’ll close my eyes and wait right here.”
“You can only see it upstairs.” Thomas stood up and walked back to the side door with Giselle following, chattering at him. They took off their shoes and put them on the plastic tray. Then he had Giselle follow him up the stairs, knowing that something was about to happen that would change UnderLand forever, just like his story had changed when he’d shared that with others.
“I’ll need your help,” he said, taking Giselle’s shoulders and positioning her near the end of the bed. “Now, close your eyes and reach down until you feel the metal part of the bed. Good. Are your eyes closed still?”
Giselle nodded, pressing even tighter.
“Lift up the bed,” Thomas instructed, standing on the other side and lifting at the same time. They stood his bed on its end, exposing the underside. His pillows and covers tumbled to the floor, the mattress started to buckle but was prevented from falling completely by the bed frame and wall.
“What are we doing?”
“Keep your eyes closed.”
“I am. I am.”
Thomas picked up the remote from his nightstand and pressed the on button for the Christmas lights. He moved the sweater boxes aside. Martin would need to make an accurate count, but Thomas guessed there was somewhere between one hundred and two hundred butterflies clinging to the metal mesh, softly lit by the white lights, their wings brushing against one another.
“Open your eyes,” he said.
“Ooh, Thomas,” Giselle cried out. “Are these all me?”
Thomas nodded.
Your dragonfly blouse, your sky-blue hair ribbon, the mossy green flecks in your eyes, the shiny purple of your jacket, the pink flush of your cheeks.
“It’s a kaleidoscope,” Thomas said.
“A kaleidoscope.”
“That’s what they call a bunch of butterflies.”
“A whole bunch of butterflies.” Giselle sank to her knees. “It’s so perfect. How long have you been working on this?”
“Almost since…” Thomas thought back. It seemed like forever since he’d been snipping butterfly wings, and yet his mother had never seen them.
Has it really been forever? Forever since she left?
“I got the idea from Officer Grant,” Thomas said. “She had one in her pocket when she came to tell us about the car.”
“And these lights?”
“Aunt Sadie put those there at Christmas.”
Sifting her hands through the snips of colored paper on the floor, Giselle asked: “Did you make them down here? Why is this one black over here?”
“It’s not black. It’s dark dark purple. That was for the day you bit Alexis.”
“I see. That’s for me when I’m angry. Just one? Oh, Thomas. You should see me at school. When Sandra imitates my French. Or last Tuesday when Alicia stole my dessert because she said I was getting too fat. I didn’t bite her, though. If I do, I’ll never get to the public middle school. And they have an orchestra. I could play my cello!”
Thomas nodded. “Should I make more? For all the times you’re angry?” he asked her.
“No! I like that this is how you see me.” Fingering a turquoise-blue wing with the letters “Happ” on it, Giselle looked up at Thomas. “This is how I want to be. Thank you, Thomas. Je t’aime. I love you! C’est beau! How beautiful! Can I take a picture to show my mom?”
Thomas thought that would be all right.
Giselle moved around the bed, looking for the best way to frame her photo.
After taking a few snapshots on her cell phone, Giselle examined the images. “Thomas,” she said, her face flushing. “Do you know what this looks like? An art installation!”
Thomas did not know what an art installation was, though he could see the connection pleased Giselle very much. So much so that she looked it up on Wikipedia to show him.
“See?” she said, pressing her cheek to his as they examined the phone. “It’s a site-specific, three-dimensional work. Of Giselle art!”
Having her own artwork made Giselle so happy she did a few salsa steps, catching Helen’s coat beneath her foot and slipping to the floor.
“Thomas,” she said after she’d righted herself. “Is this the coat…”
Thomas didn’t have to say yes or no. Giselle knew the answer.
“Where did Helen get this coat?”
Thomas didn’t know. “New-4-U?” he guessed.
“Do you know what this is?”
Thomas shrugged.
“Well, just look at the label. It’s a Dior! This coat was made by a French designer.”
Giselle held out the coat so that Thomas could look at the label.
But he did not see what she expected him to. That is, rather than focus on the long curled letters that spelled out Christian Dior, Thomas saw the label itself—the label that was stitched into the shiny lining of the coat.
Sewn on all sides but one, where the tiny stitches had been teased out.
Thomas was not seeing a label, but a mailbox. Thomas was remembering the story of the girl who longed for a slice of sky.
Of course, he wanted to stick his finger into the tiny opening but he resisted the urge. Thomas was good at waiting. Whatever was in there was not meant for Giselle, but for him.
His mother had written.
After they returned the coat to its place and lowered the bed back over it, Giselle said her good-byes. Thomas walked her down the stairs to the door and then walked back up the stairs. Sliding underneath the bed, he extracted a tiny folded sheet of paper from inside the label.
Dear Thomas, Remember this always, my love! 22:20–22:26.
Thomas crawled out of UnderLand and shouted for his father. He could hear him rushing from his office in response: into the kitchen and up the stairs.
“What is it, Thomas?” Mr. Moran said. “Are you all right?”
“She wrote!” Thomas shouted again, even though his father was right in front of him. “She did write to me. But…it’s like Mrs. Sharp’s journal about her father. I don’t understand it.”
“Is it…in another language?” Mr. Moran squinted at the slip of paper Thomas had handed over.
“No.”
“ ‘Remember this always, my love! 22:20–22:26,’ ” his father read aloud. “Where did you get this, Thomas?”
Thomas explained that it had come from Helen’s coat.
“The pocket of your mother’s coat?”
His father was presuming again and Thomas did not correct him.
Mr. Moran rubbed his head, thinking. “It’s so small, I must have missed it,” he said finally. “This is so unlike your mother.”
“Can we just imagine for a minute?” Thomas asked.
“Of course. You imagine.”
Thomas took the paper back. He’d seen numbers like this somewhere before. Not these exact numbers, but…was it on a digital clock? Aunt Sadie’s car had a digital clock. Martin wore a digital watch.
Where else?
“22:20–22:26,” he whispered to himself.
For some reason, he thought of Mrs. Evans and how she liked to show them YouTube videos on her computer to clarify points she had made during Ask Mrs. Evans from channels like Braincraft and Talk Nerdy to Me.
He wasn’t sure why he thought about that, so he stayed there for a minute, in the classroom, remembering a particular time when a girl with a British accent was explaining how blue morpho butterflies aren’t really blue at all but only look blue in sunlight.
But this isn’t about butterflies, is it?
No. It was something else. Thomas froze the image that appeared above Mrs. Evans’s head. At one point George tipped his chair and fell backward and they had to put on the lights to make sure he didn’t have a concussion. By the time they returned to the video, her computer had gone to sleep. She called up the channel once more.
“Where were we?” she asked after George was settled in the desk in the hall.
“Three twenty-two,” Mary Mallender had said.
“Thank you, Mary,” Mrs. Evans said, moving her cursor to 3:22 on the menu bar to continue the lesson. “It’s nice to know someone is paying attention.”
Thank you, Mary.
“I think I know what the numbers mean,” Thomas told his father.
“Please, Thomas. Enlighten me.”
“It’s for the time on Chef Philippe’s DVD. I think if we listen to it at this time, we will get a message from her. A message through Philippe.”
Thomas retrieved the DVD from the metal box underneath his bed, and brought it downstairs. His father followed and sat at Helen’s desk as Thomas inserted the DVD into her computer.
As the machine whirred to life, Thomas put his hand on his father’s shoulder and leaned in.
She has something to tell us—to tell me!
Mr. Moran pressed the cursor until he reached the correct numbers on the time code. Then he pressed play and they listened as Philippe said:
Even if I can’t be in the kitchen with you, you will still get an excellent result…