CHAPTER SEVEN

Kai

The library is doing a wonderful job of impersonating a small wooden cottage, Kai thought. It didn’t look like the libraries in Baltimore. It didn’t look official at all. In fact, if it weren’t for the hand-painted sign on the white fence, she never would have cast a second glance at the one-story structure on the main street.

“Why aren’t we just looking up the moth on your dad’s computer?” Kai asked.

“This library has some stuff you can’t get anywhere else,” Doodle told her.

Kai lifted her eyebrows at the little old building. “Like dust mites?”

Doodle ignored her, pushing the gate, which yielded with a welcoming creak. The paint on the wooden steps and front porch had been rubbed off by years of people carrying books back and forth. All in all, there was something about the building that made Kai think of a friendly old woman, the kind who loves visitors.

“Doodle!” The young man behind the library counter looked delighted to see her. Colorful tattoos ran up his arms, creeping beneath the turned-up sleeves of a vintage gas-station attendant shirt with Vinnie written over the pocket. The sides of his dark hair were cropped close, ending in a bouffant that towered over a pair of black-framed glasses. “Wait there!” he said, ducking behind the counter.

“Who’s that?” Kai whispered.

“The librarian, who do you think?” Doodle said back. She did not whisper. Subtlety was not Doodle’s strength. “Carlos.”

“His name isn’t Vinnie?”

Doodle chuckled. “Don’t believe everything you read.”

Carlos resurfaced holding an enormous, battered volume. “Dug it out of the archives!”

“You’re kidding!” Doodle rushed over.

A very thin blonde woman with green eyes and a wide mouth shushed them.

Carlos lowered his voice to a whisper. “It was down there—hi”—Carlos glanced at Kai—“buried in the back. Completely mis-filed!” He said this like a man who had endured a great deal of incompetence.

Doodle reached for the book, then held back. “May I?” she asked.

Carlos handed her a pair of white cotton gloves, and she pulled them on.

“Are you going to look at it, or operate on it?” Kai asked.

“Carlos, welcome to Kai.” Doodle did not look up as she gently, gently turned the brittle pages of handwritten notes.

“Are you a lepidopterist, too?” Carlos whispered, and shoved his thick glasses up onto the bridge of his nose. They promptly slid down again.

“No, why? Is everyone in this town into moths, or something?” Kai asked.

Doodle looked up from the book. Both she and Carlos stared at Kai.

“What?” Kai asked.

“Whittier Springs used to be a huge tourist destination,” Doodle explained. “Because of the annual moth migration.”

“Tourists?” Kai repeated, smiling a little. She assumed they were pulling her leg.

“We had a unique colony of Celestial Moths; the only one in the country,” Carlos explained. “That’s why we have the annual festival.” He pointed downward. Taped onto the front of the counter was a flyer proclaiming 134th Annual Lepidoptery Fair!

Yep. He was serious.

Kai felt her face burn hot out to the tips of her eyelashes.

“A hundred years ago, people believed the moths could cure illnesses,” Doodle went on. “Even mental ones.”

“Yeah, but—” Kai squinched up her nose, face still burning. “You guys don’t believe that, right?”

Carlos frowned so hard that his glasses nearly fell off the end of his nose. “How do we know?” he demanded, slowly adjusting his glasses. “Lots of herbs and insects are the basis for modern medicine.” Kai didn’t really know what to say to this. Carlos had a good point, but Kai wasn’t used to being wrong, and she didn’t like it much.

“How would a moth cure mental illness?” Kai shot back. “Would it land on your head?”

The lady at the nearby library table shushed them again.

“I apologize,” Carlos said to her. His voice was sincere, but the woman frowned. To Kai, he said, “I think the answer to your question is pretty obvious, if you bother to think about it.”

Another point for Carlos, which made Kai feel like crawling under the carpet. Since nobody seemed to want to tell her she was right, she decided to drop the subject. “Oh,” she said. “Uh—so what’s the book?”

“The diary of an amateur lepidopterist,” Doodle told her.

“Doodle is the person who found the title in our old card catalog,” Carlos said.

“They just keep it for decoration,” Doodle put in. “Nobody ever looks in it anymore.”

“Nobody but Doodle,” Carlos said. “But she brought me the card from the catalog, so I started digging around for it.”

“We’ve found a few other rare titles that way.”

Kai was beginning to see that Carlos felt the same way about books that Doodle felt about moths. It was the way that Kai used to feel about the violin. It was that thing that settled into a space inside you, and made you happy whenever you thought about it.

Or, at least, the violin used to do that for Kai. Thinking about the instrument now only filled Kai with loneliness.

“Can I take it home?” Doodle asked.

Carlos looked pained. “I can’t,” he said. “It’s the only copy, Doodle.”

“I know, but—”

“I’ll keep it behind the counter for you. I won’t let anyone else touch it.”

Doodle hesitated, looking concerned. “Promise?”

“Of course!”

“Who else would want a book like that?” Kai asked, genuinely curious.

“Oh, my gosh!” Doodle yanked off the cotton gloves, gaping over Carlos’s shoulder. The librarian asked no questions—he simply pulled the book from the top of the counter and slid it onto the shelf underneath just as Kai turned to see Pettyfer approaching.

“Hello, Miriam,” Pettyfer said to Doodle. “Here to do a little research?” He looked at Kai with his flat, blue eyes, and she gave a little shudder.

“I could’ve asked you that last night,” Doodle snapped. “What were you doing by the graveyard?”

Pettyfer leaned ever so casually against the counter, unwittingly tempting Kai to give him a push and send him sprawling. She restrained herself. “I don’t think I need an excuse to stand near my family’s factory.”

“Are you sure you weren’t scouting moths?”

Pettyfer grinned with half of his mouth.

Kai resisted the temptation to smack the arrogant look off his face. She just wished he would go away. There was something about the smug coldness of him that made her furious and fearful, all at the same time.

Carlos’s nose wrinkled, as if an unpleasant smell had just wafted his way. “I need to go . . . file something,” he said, heading over to a book cart. He and Doodle exchanged a glance before he turned away.

Pettyfer’s gaze drifted to the cart, then snapped back. “I might have been after a Sphinx moth,” he said smoothly.

“Or you might have been hoping to steal whatever I got,” Doodle replied, “after I got it.”

“Why would I do that?” Pettyfer smirked his smirky smirk, sending a little shiver down the back of Kai’s neck. “I’ve already got a project for the Lepidoptery Fair that’s going to blow whatever sad little thing you’re working on out of the water. A demonstration.”

Kai couldn’t resist temptation any longer. “Are you kidding?” She let out a loud snort.

The blonde lady slammed her book shut and glared at them. “Keep your voice down,” she said in a loud whisper. “Some people are trying to study.”

Nodding, Kai turned back to Pettyfer. “Are you kidding?” she repeated in a strangled whisper. “We are working on something so amazing that it’ll probably make your brain explode and dribble out of your ears in clumps.”

Doodle shook her head and looked at Kai with huge eyes, silently telling her to cut it out.

Pettyfer looked doubtful. “Right. Like what?”

“Like it’s a surprise,” Kai snapped. “A big surprise! Like, the biggest surprise you’ll see for the next hundred years!”

“Please. Miriam has tried to win that five-hundred-dollar prize for three years in a row. And three years in a row, she’s lost. To me.”

“Why do you keep calling her Miriam?”

“Because that’s her name.”

Kai looked at Doodle, who gave a little shrug. “Doodle is technically my middle name.”

“And what’s all this about five hundred dollars?” Kai demanded. She hadn’t realized that the Lepidoptery Fair came with a cash prize. She looked at Doodle, who mashed her lips together and headed for the door.

“See you later,” Pettyfer called.

“Not if we see you first,” Kai shot back, adding, “Okay, okay, we’re leaving,” as the blonde lady let out a megashush capable of knocking the third little piggie’s house down.

Doodle was already storming through the gate. Kai hesitated a moment, unsure whether to follow. She had begun to think of Doodle as her friend . . . but was she, really? She hadn’t said anything about the five-hundred-dollar prize, and Doodle wasn’t even her real name.

Kai felt small, small as a dandelion seed. And as useless. She hated it—hated that feeling—but she wasn’t sure what to do about it.

Doodle stopped. She turned. “You coming?” she asked Kai.

Kai remained on the other side of the gate. “When were you going to tell me about the five hundred bucks?”

“After we won,” Doodle replied. “If we won.”

“Why not before?”

“Because the Lepidoptery Fair is not about money,” Doodle said slowly. “It’s not about winning.”

“What is it about?” Kai asked.

“It’s about the moths.”

That soft word, moths, hung there in the space between them. Kai felt her rage shifting, like the dandelion seed on the wind. It floated a moment, and then found a new direction—toward Pettyfer. “Okay, but we still can’t let that . . . that jerk win.”

“Exactly,” Doodle agreed. “He doesn’t care about the moths.”

Kai thought. “Well, it kind of seems like he does. He’s interested in them, at least.”

“He’s interested in killing them,” Doodle snapped. “He pins them to a board while they’re still alive, Kai.” Doodle’s voice was heavy with bitterness. “He isn’t a lepidopterist, he’s a collector.”

In Kai’s mind, she saw a frail moth, wings flapping desperately as Pettyfer drove a pin through its body. She wished she hadn’t imagined it. Now she couldn’t stop imagining it, and it made her nauseated.

“He doesn’t deserve to win,” Doodle murmured. “He doesn’t deserve anything.”

Kai nodded. They couldn’t let him win. They wouldn’t. Because Pettyfer did deserve one thing—he deserved to lose.

The next day, the girls returned to the library. Carlos insisted that the journal was too delicate for the photocopier, but he let Doodle photograph the pages with her dad’s iPad. Then they went back to Lavinia’s house, and sat down at the worn gold-flecked Formica kitchen table. Doodle scrolled through the images as Kai poured out two glasses of a drink she had concocted over the weekend: Luna Juice, named for the bright green moths. It was a blend of lemonade and green Kool-Aid, and was surprisingly good. Plus, it turned your tongue green. Lavinia had quickly become addicted to it, and for the past several days there had been a pitcher at the ready in the refrigerator. “Hoo, girl, don’t go giving out that secret recipe,” Lavinia had said. “We’re gonna make a mint! I’ve written ten poems since we started making this; I swear, it’s good for the brain activity!”

“So, what are these, do you think?” Doodle asked now, pointing to an image of five lines, with numbers, on the screen.

“It looks almost like musical graph, with no notes. But I don’t know what the numbers could mean.”

“Look at this.” Doodle enlarged another drawing. It was of an open-winged moth. The color was striking—pale blue, with white bands on the forewing and a large black-and-yellow dot that looked almost like an eye on each hindwing. “Irregular,” Doodle said, pointing to the scalloped wing edges. “It’s a Celestial.”

Kai looked at the old peanut butter jar that Doodle had placed on the table. Inside were a stick, several fresh leaves, and the resin-coated blob that might or might not be a cocoon that might or might not be from a Celestial Moth.

“There’s pages of them.” Doodle scrolled through the images, showing a drawing of a moth at rest, one on a red flower, one in flight. After that were sketches of other moths, then some butterflies, then a bunch of praying mantises.

“Someone was really into bugs,” Kai said.

“Everybody’s got a thing,” Doodle said. “What’s yours?”

Reflexively, Kai said “violin” before she was even aware of the word.

“Really?” Doodle looked surprised.

Kai winced a little, half afraid that Doodle would ask her to go get her violin and play, and half hoping that she would. “Kinda.”

“Cool.” Doodle turned back to the cocoon. “It’s just so hard to identify anything in this state.”

Kai’s fingers tapped against her thigh, playing out the familiar notes to her favorite Mozart piece. It was her thinking habit; she didn’t even know she was doing it. “What should we do with it?”

Doodle sighed. “I don’t know. Do you want it?”

“Don’t you?”

“I’m not really sure how to figure out what it is. If it’s a cocoon, the pupa is probably all dried up.”

“Okay.” Honestly, Kai did want the weird, fat little pearl. She liked the way it glowed in the darkness. She’d never seen anything like it.

“It’s yours.” Doodle pushed the jar toward her.

Several hours later, after dinner and a game (in which Lavinia took all of their Monopoly money, warning them to “Never talk money with a retired loan officer!”), Doodle went home and Kai took the jar up to her room. She placed it on the windowsill and then went to wash her face and brush her teeth. Kai changed into her pajamas, then shut off the light and sat on her bed, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the change. It took a moment to see the cocoon’s soft glow. But then, there it was, shining dimly at the bottom of the peanut butter jar. It seemed friendly, somehow.

Could it really be the cocoon of a Celestial Moth? If so, the caterpillar inside must be dead.

Beyond the window, insects pulsed and hummed with a hundred different melodies. Kai didn’t know much about insects, but she knew about music, and she could distinguish the cheerful creak of the cricket and the rhythmic buzz of the katydid. There were other melodies, too, and although she didn’t know the players, Kai liked the way the sounds made her skin vibrate.

It was amazing to think that a cricket, a being smaller than her smallest finger, could make a noise that would travel across the yard, through her window, past her hair, and right into her ear.

There was another insect, one with a clear tenor. She loved the sound it made—every time she caught a piece of the melody, it reminded her of the cello.

Ah, there it goes again, she thought, straining to distinguish the sound from the many others.

It sounded so much like the opening of the second movement of Bach’s Suite No. 1. Did Bach like bugs? Kai wondered, humming along. Filled with a sudden longing for her violin, Kai stood and walked quickly to the closet.

The black case lay in shadow, but Kai, knowing its familiar shape, kneeled and snapped it open. She reached for her bow, tightening and then rosining it carefully. She tuned up the strings, and then crossed to the window and sent a cool, clear note into the night. The insects seemed to pause for a moment as Kai played a melody that bubbled up from inside of her, and then the chorus swept over her and the hum and rattle from the grass and trees joined the notes like an orchestra.

A light blinked in through the open window and disappeared, like an ember winking out. Kai played on with her insect symphony, trying to cling to the notes, so that she wouldn’t forget them. I should write these down, she thought. The Bug Sonata.

The lightning bug floated through the room, pulsing with occasional light until it finally came to rest on the bedside table. It glowed and dimmed and crawled across the pages of an open book.

The bug was crawling across the The Exquisite Corpse. The band played on as Kai dropped her bow and crept closer to peer at the page. There was a bit of new writing. The firefly lurched into the air and meandered out the open window. Slowly, Kai crossed the room and skimmed her eyes across the line.

Perhaps the music was a dream, it read.

THE EXQUISITE CORPSE

Perhaps the music was a dream.

Ralph blinked up at the whiteness overhead. A slender crack ran along the top of the wall, just beneath the place where it met the ceiling. He had just awoken, but he did not feel awake. He felt heavy, so heavy, as if he might sink through the mattress and into the floor. Through the floor, and into the ground.

His eyelids sank closed, shutting out the unfamiliar, white room. He did not wonder where he was. He did not care. He just wanted to sleep again, and perhaps to dream of music.

For a short while, there was no sound but the gentle rasp of his breath. Then a long, high note like a song.

His eyes drifted open. The music refused to be silent.

Light streamed in from a window near his bed. The music pressed against the window, pushing against the glass like the soft pad of a cat’s paw.

Ralph turned his head toward the light and sound.

A woman bustled in. Her dark hair was precisely parted beneath a round hat that perched atop her head like a stack of pancakes, and her long skirt swished at every neat little step. Her nose was fat as a cherry tomato and her cheeks soft and almost jowly. She smiled sweetly down at Ralph, and he thought how plain she was, and how kind she looked. “You’re awake, then?” she said as she snapped the sheet back into place over him and tucked it up beneath his mattress.

“Where . . . ?”

“You’re in the men’s ward. Broken leg and a concussion—I heard you played a card trick on the wrong customer, tsk, tsk!”

Ralph winced as he tried to sit up. Another four years had passed, and Ralph was seventeen years old. He had become quite a cardsharp, and turned a tidy profit hustling other young men with a version of the shell game. But that career had its risks. He reached for the vial that he always kept in his pocket, and was shocked to find that he wore only a hospital gown. “Where’s—?”

“All personal effects are stored in the side table.”

Lunging for the table, Ralph let out a gasp, then fell backward onto his pillow. The nurse took pity on him and pulled open the drawer. “Is it in there?”

Ralph craned his neck, but was careful not to move his body. The drawer held a wallet. A watch on a silver chain. A set of keys. And a smoky purple vial with a silver top. “Yes,” he breathed.

“Good.” The drawer snapped shut, and the nurse reached for a dark metal crank at the end of the bed. With every turn, Ralph felt himself rise a fraction of an inch. “Your father’s been by. Lovely man. Lucky you, to get this nice bed by the window. You’ll feel better, looking out a bit.”

Ralph placed a hand on his forehead. “Do you hear that?”

“Oh, Billy and his moaning? Don’t mind that,” the nurse said. “It’s all in his mind,” she whispered, pursing her lips and opening her eyes wide.

“No, I mean . . .” He turned toward the window, and the light fell across his face like a soft breeze. The wall was made up of three tall windows, each arched toward the ceiling in a curving hump. His bed was the closest to one of these, but the angle was such that he could only see the sky beyond, not the lawn.

“Oh! The violin? That’s Miss Pickle.” The nurse held out a small glass of clear liquid. “Drink this, you’ll feel better.”

Ralph wrinkled his nose. “What is it?” he asked.

The nurse cackled. “It’s water! Honestly, did you think I was trying to poison you?” She laughed again, and held the water to his lips.

Ralph drank. He had never thought of water as having a flavor, but this was sweet and cooling. It seemed filling, too, like a piece of fruit. When he had finished, he leaned his head against the pillow. “Who is Miss Pickle?” he asked.

“Aren’t you full of questions!” The nurse winked at him. “Well, I suppose you’ll just have to get better and go see for yourself, won’t you?”

The music curled through the men’s ward, floating over the elderly gentleman in the large wheeled chair, and slipping past the man stretched on the bed beyond him. “How long will she be here?”

“Don’t know.” The nurse planted her hands on her hips and gave him a twinkly eyed frown. “She’s a patient, too, but she seems quite well to me. I suppose you’ll have to get better soon, or you might miss her.”