Epilogue

Chad and Jordan and Devon did the best they could to clean up Chad’s house after the party. They got Chad’s uncle to replace the back door, but the deck wasn’t repaired until Chad’s parents were back from China. Several people broke bones in the accident, but nobody was killed, and the ambulance attendants said that was a miracle.

The naked picture of Amber was all over the Internet and she didn’t come back to school in the new year. I heard she was asked to leave the swim team, but that might not be true. It is true that she gave up swimming. Maybe she just decided, when it came right down to it, she didn’t want to be a swimmer anymore.

After Christmas she was sent to finish the year at a private school in Toronto.

I went to visit her house once before she left and her dad asked me to wait in the porch (they call it the vestibule) and I stood there a long time while he talked to Amber somewhere upstairs.

He came back down and said she didn’t want to see anyone. I could tell Sean was angry with me. Maybe he was angry with everyone. I know now that he and Cindy were in the middle of separating. They’d seen the picture on the Internet, of course, and I think it was too much for them. Since then Cindy has bought a new house on the other side of town.

The winter wore on after all of that, and I pretty much kept my head down.

Now everyone is getting ready for prom and I’ve been on a committee with Elaine Power and Mark Galway (still crazy about each other) to promote a Green Grad. We raised funds for those who can’t afford prom tickets (myself!) and started a prom dress recycling program. In all, forty-two dresses were donated, in all shapes and sizes, most of them worn only once.

Elaine wanted a vegan menu too, but the meat eaters revolted. Nevertheless, I can’t help but think that if my father, the stranger who sailed into town on a yacht made of garbage, somehow heard of my existence and, furthermore, somehow heard that I helped pull off Green Grad and found forty-two economically disadvantaged young women beautiful prom dresses for absolutely free, and also provided free tickets to the prom for anyone who needed them, then maybe my father, whoever he is, would be proud of me.

On the day of my last exam, Kyle Keating asks me to the butterfly exhibit at Bowring Park. Elaine Power was telling him about it in the corridor and I was walking by and he asked if I would go with him to check it out.

It hardly qualifies as a date. I just happened to be there when they were talking about it and I said I would go. I had been kind of keeping to myself all term, concentrating on my studies, figuring out about university in the fall.

But I agreed because it was sunny after twelve days of rain and I thought it would be fun to hop on a metro bus and find our way out to Bowring Park. Also, when I walked out the front doors of Holy Heart onto Bonaventure that day, I would be finished with high school forever.

I left my biology textbook at the office, for some kid starting grade twelve next year who might not have enough money to buy one. I decided not to even try to sell it.

Also, I’ve had a text from Amber. The first one since she left for Toronto six months ago.

She’s coming home, and she really wants to get together for a coffee. That was all she said and I texted back, Sure, and I added an xo. Then she texted, I am so sorry.

I know Amber and I will never be the kind of friends we once were. But I can feel myself start to melt. I wrote back that I was looking forward to seeing her.

And that was it for the texts.

Gary Bowen is still making music with his band. The video Amber made has gotten over 300,000 hits on YouTube. And there are rumors of a CD in the works. Some scouts have expressed interest. He has a new girlfriend whom everybody says he’s cheating on.

The butterflies.

The air is moist and very warm and green-smelling in the big glass greenhouse in Bowring Park. Kyle opens the glass door and I duck under his arm and step inside. It smells of flowers and earth and algae growing in the rock pools. There’s a tinkling fountain in the center of the greenhouse and a few crying, terrified toddlers.

There’s one little girl with pale blonde hair the color of a peeled banana, and her cheeks are flushed as if she’s just woken from a nap. A butterfly lands on her nose. She screams in terror and tears squeeze out the corners of her eyes and roll down her rosy cheeks.

Butterflies everywhere.

They bat their wings in the soupy air in a slow/fast way, as if they have all the time in the world.

There’s a glass case full of chrysalises. Tiny papery-looking sacs, each carefully pinned to a wooden slat.

One papery sac has a hole punched in the bottom. I watch a wing unfold. It’s black and white with a strip of fluorescent pink.

It unfolds in the way all unfolding things unfold: pup-tents, origami cranes, inflatable rubber dinghies, the rest of your life. Popping out, unbuckling, flinging itself into being, already knowing what it will become. Unable to stop itself and not knowing but thoughtful about each unfolding pucker and undinted, undented, smooth and trembling wing and yes, yes. This is it.

Kyle Keating holds his fist under my nose. There’s a brown butterfly on the back of his hand. It’s a big butterfly and its brown wings are closed and it has subtle, dull markings. It looks like tree bark.

After a long moment the butterfly on Kyle’s hand opens. It’s as though it has decided to open. It’s had a think. The wings of the dull brown butterfly are iridescent green on the inside.

It is unexpected. I look up into Kyle’s eyes, and I see he thinks it’s unexpected too.

I would like to say that Kyle Keating gets the idea, during that unexpected moment of awe, to kiss me.

But what happens in that startling moment with the butterfly is something much more inexplicable. You know the phrase “weak in the knees,” or “turned to jelly,” or “lost control” or “overcome with rapture”?

Never mind those silly phrases. Banish them from your mind.

I will tell you what happens in the moist, sun-beaten heat of the condensation-swathed glass house while we are awed, Kyle Keating and me, in a flickering halo of butterflies. What happens is I stand up on my tiptoes and kiss Kyle Keating right on the mouth.

Some part of me has decided. And there it is. I kiss him.