Chapter 17

JACK

Rooney’s staring into the open jaws of a T. rex. Her head is angled, like she’s trying to figure out something.

“He could’ve put his entire mouth around my head and plucked it off like a grape,” she says.

“Add a little cheese and salami, and that dinosaur’s got himself a nice afternoon. Okay, we should probably give the ID to the Lost and Found,” I say, analyzing the map to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles. “Olivia said Lucy has been on vacation for the past week but she’s back today. We passed the Help Desk on the way in but if we go back—”

“We love trying to understand where we came from,” Rooney says, clasping her hands behind her back. She’s clearly ignoring our mission. Which should be okay. That’s the point. To see where each Fate Test takes us.

I nod. “It helps us understand where we’re going.”

“Does it, though? How can we really know? Doesn’t all of this,” she says, gesturing around us, “feel like we’re trying to have control over something that we can’t? All we can do is let whatever’s meant to happen happen and then try to understand the meaning of it after the fact.”

I shake my head. “I don’t subscribe to the belief that we should be passive in life. If we want something, we have the power to go get it. To make it happen.”

Rooney reads a placard in front of a triceratops. “Sometimes things in life happen without us having to try very hard,” she says. “I think it’s those outcomes that are the most meaningful. We don’t even see them coming, like the dinosaurs. Not that I want their fate.”

“Between the volcanoes and asteroids, they certainly didn’t have it easy,” I say.

Rooney purses her lips. “Maybe it all happened as it was supposed to, and we were meant to be here.”

I cross around to the side of the assembled dinosaur skeleton. “Fate implies that it was intended to happen. That was another result of gravity.”

“We already have so many awful things to deal with as it is on Earth. Now we have to be on the lookout for asteroids?” Rooney asks with concern.

“Don’t worry,” I say with a tone of reassurance. “At NASA, we track near-Earth objects that pose a risk.”

“You can’t stand the thought of being out of control, can you?” she says with a grin.

I narrow my eyes at her. “Just like you can’t stand the thought of being in control.”

“We have different thoughts on how the world works. Try keeping your eyes open for the signs, Jack. That’s what I’m trying to do. That’s where the inspiration will come from,” she says, pulling her extra-long sleeves over her hands. It’s cool in the museum but eighty degrees outside. And yet, she’s still in a red sweater, though this one looks like it’s made of cotton. I’ve learned during our time together that she runs cold. She’s either wearing a sweater or carrying one with her, just in case.

“Have you ever considered not wearing red outfits made of string out in public?” I ask.

“Never. I like living on the edge,” she immediately responds.

“I guess it is practical. If you ever run out of material, you always have a spare roll or two.”

Rooney threads her fingers through her sweater’s knitted loops. “Oh, I’ve definitely had to unravel a sleeve before.”

I imagine it and laugh. These days, I’m laughing a lot more. And I know it’s because of Rooney.

“Besides, if I didn’t wear red,” she adds, “I’d be… String Girl.”

“That’s not as catchy,” I admit. “So these signs. How am I supposed to know when one happens?”

“They’re often personal so I won’t be able to say exactly what something might mean to you,” Rooney explains. “But pay attention to meaningful moments, big and small. Be observant to what’s happening around you. It’s like Jewel sang, you have to listen to your intuition.”

“Personal, observant, intuition. Got it.”

“Good. I think you’ll start to see signs in the most unexpected of places,” she says. “Speaking of places, wouldn’t this museum be perfect for an installation? Let’s make sure we check out the Rotunda.”

We leave the dinosaurs behind and head down the halls of the museum toward the Help Desk. Before we reach it, a woman in a khaki vest waves us over as we pass her, asking if we’d like to see some butterflies.

I slow my steps. “If I’m following the winds of fate, then yes, we would love to see some butterflies today. You did pick us out of all these other visitors, so… that makes us the chosen ones?”

“I never saw my job in that way before,” the Butterfly Lady says, noticeably happier. “Thank you. We’re having a special monarch butterfly event.”

“Oh, we really need to get to the Help Desk,” Rooney says to me with urgency, her eyes wide. She grabs my hand to try to pull me away.

Rooney scans the lady’s vest covered in colorful flying-insect pins. The Butterfly Lady looks between the two of us. “So is that a no?” she asks.

I pull Rooney back to me. “This feels like a sign. Bring us to the monarchs,” I say before turning my head toward the woman and adding, “please.”

She leads us toward the door. “Wonderful! Right this way.”

Rooney exhales. “You first.”

“After you,” I say, regrettably dropping her hand so I can gesture toward the butterfly entrance.

She takes a step back. “Lead the way.”

Rooney and I are at a standoff. Butterfly Lady doesn’t notice.

“Okay, sure,” I finally agree, jogging to catch up to the woman. I’m a few steps ahead of Rooney, keeping an eye on her in my peripheral vision.

We’re guided into an arched greenhouse and then left to explore on our own.

“Wait, you’re leaving?” Rooney asks the Butterfly Lady.

“I’m simply here to welcome people into the event. Enjoy!” she says, closing the door behind her.

Rooney stays close behind me. I feel her breathing on my upper arm.

“I am not used to this air density,” I say, turning around to face her.

“Did you say destiny?” Rooney asks, circling me and staying close.

“Density. What are you doing? Why are you so close to me?” I ask, taking her by the shoulders and guiding her a step back.

She looks on the ground behind her before putting a foot down. “Sorry! I didn’t realize I was too close.”

“Not too close,” I mumble, “just… close.”

She tiptoes over to a bench, keeping her body compact.

“What’s all this?” I ask. “Why are you crouched?”

“I don’t want to step on a butterfly,” she says. A monarch butterfly whizzes past us. Rooney yelps and ducks, grabbing for my waist.

“Are you… scared of butterflies?” I ask, looking down at her face near my stomach.

Rooney looks up. “Are you talking to me?”

“Nope. I’m talking to the other person attached to me.”

Rooney straightens. “Oh, no. I’m cool. Just wanted to feel what that felt like,” she says awkwardly, moving her fingers around animatedly. “It’s nice and tight.”

I cross my arms. “If you’re so scared of butterflies,” I say, more entertained than I intend, “then why did you come in here?”

“This is me saying yes. Fate Test 1. Check,” she says with a pained smile. A bright orange monarch flies by her head. She lifts her shoulders up to her ears, as if to protect the vulnerable parts of her neck.

“What is it about them that terrifies you so much?”

She blinks a couple of times as though she’s piecing together her thoughts. “They’re erratic. They fly without any sense of direction. That one almost ran into me!” Rooney hugs herself. “Some look like they have eyes on their wings. They’re insects that can land wherever they want. I’ve only seen a butterfly once in New York City and that’s when it followed me down an entire avenue. Pretty sure he had it out for me.”

I laugh and shake my head. “Okay, come closer.”

She takes a step toward me. I pull her in the rest of the way until we’re inches apart. “Stay near me. Any butterfly that tries to mess with you has to get through me first.”

She shakily laughs.

“I’ll do it, too,” I say sternly. “I’ll fight a butterfly.”

This makes her laugh harder. And for the first time in my life, I think I really would wrestle a butterfly if it meant she felt safe.

“Butterflies are actually in control of how they move,” I explain. “They bob and weave to trick predators. Their flight path is unpredictable on purpose. That does make it feel like a butterfly’s wings are going to slap you in the face. But their control means their survival.”

“So what you’re saying is they won’t run into me?”

“That’s the last thing they want.” Of course, as I say it, a monarch butterfly lands on my sleeve.

Rooney gasps, watching the butterfly on my arm stay perfectly still. It lingers for a few seconds before fluttering away.

I drop my arm. “That wasn’t so bad, right?”

“It felt like there was a real connection there,” she says. “Good thing butterflies aren’t the size of birds.”

I laugh at the absurdity of this image. “And they run cold, too, like you. They need warmth to fly. You’re my—a butterfly. You’re a butterfly. Out in the wild. Because you belong to no one,” I say, tripping over my words. What I say next flies out of my mouth on its own unpredictable flight path. “Maybe you can knit them little sweaters.” I close my eyes in horror.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Jack,” Rooney says with a smirk. “Little scarves, maybe.” She takes a half-step closer. “What else about them?”

I cross my arms in thought. “Legend has it that when monarch butterflies migrate south early, they’re letting us know it’s going to be a rough winter.”

“Do you believe that legend?” she asks, looking surprised.

I snort. “No. I also don’t believe that Punxsutawney Phil can predict the start of spring.”

Rooney smiles. “Figures.”

“When I was younger, my mom taught me that butterflies represent long life in Chinese culture,” I share. Warmth fills my cheeks. “And love.”

Rooney glances from the ground up to my eyes. “So that means we’re surrounded by love right now.”

“It would appear so,” I say, blinking slowly.

Rooney holds her fingers to her neck. “Okay, I feel better,” she says, breathing out.

We take slow steps in sync down the concrete pathway. Butterflies with stained-glass wings perch on flowers and leaves.

I lean closer to observe a butterfly’s white spot patterns. “They don’t have long life spans. They experimented with this one in space.”

Rooney follows my gaze to the butterfly. “That exact one?”

I hold back a laugh. “Yes! Isn’t that wild?” Rooney smiles as I go on. “They brought larva up to the International Space Station,” I explain. “They live about two weeks on Earth, but one week in orbit. They were studying their ability to grow in microgravity.”

“Wow. They start out so unassuming,” she says. “Minus the whole life span thing, you’re kind of like a butterfly. I think your colleagues see you in your chrysalis.” Rooney faces me and smiles. “I see you as a free-floating butterfly. You’ve got a gorgeous pair of wings on you.”

I’m not convinced of that. Only with Rooney do I feel like there’s been a crack in the shell. But mostly because she’s the one breaking it open. She reaches in and forces me out. Ever since New York, she’s been doing that. Even so, I’d hardly call it a metamorphosis.

“I think it’s because of you,” I accidentally say out loud.

“Me?”

“I mean us working together. Being your liaison.”

She smiles, and I connect the imaginary dots on her cheek constellation. The habit is officially back.

We pass various species of flowers. It’s a completely different world in here. It’s almost like being in the clean room. Both require heightened spatial awareness and remaining calm. But here anything goes. There are hardly any rules despite this being a home to living insects and bugs. Spending time with Rooney is still surreal, but there’s nowhere else I’d want to be.

“Think any other species snuck in?” she asks. “If you see one that’s black and white and slightly translucent, it’s the Idea leuconoe, or the rice paper butterfly,” Rooney says, reading off the butterfly identification board mounted into the ground. “Pretty.”

“I don’t know if the ones in here are, but in the wild, those are supposed to be poisonous,” I say. “So maybe avoid touching them.”

Rooney makes a face. “It’s like we’re back in the clean room. Look, but don’t touch,” she says, reading my mind.

“Exactly! But worse because you in a bunny suit is quite the sight,” I tease.

“Like in a Miss Bunny ooh-la-la way or Bette Midler as a singing telegram bunny kind of way? Because honestly, I’m good with both,” she says, fluttering her lashes and striking a pose with her hands bent in front of her. Though she’s much calmer than before, she still stays close.

“I was thinking more like Bugs Bunny,” I say with a smirk.

Rooney laughs and gives me a gentle push on my shoulder. When she removes her hand, a monarch lands in its place. Suddenly, it flits up to my neck.

“Oh, no. Where is it?” I say, angling my neck away from the insect.

Rooney holds up her hands. “Just give him the money, Jack, and do what he asks!”

She pulls out her phone and snaps a picture. She turns the screen toward me. I almost don’t recognize myself. I’m mid-laugh, a version of myself I rarely see, let alone in a photo.

“Cute,” she says. She avoids eye contact and turns away from me.

The hair on the back of my neck rises, tingling in the humidity.

“So these Fate Tests,” I say, remembering the reason why we’re at the museum. “You’ve shown up early somewhere. And you completed Test 1 by saying yes to this. We’re returning the ID, so Test 3 is in the works for you. As long as we make it out of here alive.”

“Ha, ha,” Rooney says with a roll of her eyes. “You think it’s funny until you’re a death-by-butterfly statistic.”

I stifle a laugh. “I’ll take my chances.”

Rooney casts a side glance at me. “We need to get ‘Fate Test 4: Interact with someone online’ going. At The Huntington, the guy who opened the door for me had a Cloud Lovers League shirt on. I looked it up and it’s this online forum where members share photos of clouds. That sounded sweet.”

“Yeah. Good idea,” I agree.

Rooney ruffles her bangs, letting them fall casually over her forehead. “I’ll download the app and add my first photo later.” She turns her phone toward me again. “Here’s one I took already. Doesn’t that cloud look like a dumpling?”

Against a bright baby blue sky, an oblong puffy white cloud hangs in the distance. The sides are slightly turned up.

I analyze the photo. “Yeah, there are the pleats. Yum.”

“What do you think clouds taste like?” she asks.

“In Los Angeles, smog with a side of avocado.”

Rooney smiles at me, and for a moment it’s only us in the room. Well, us and about a hundred butterflies.

Rooney slips her phone into her bag. “Any word on Sprinkles’s owner?”

I sigh. “Nothing yet. I’ve left a dozen voice mails and text messages by now. There’s no address, either, so I can’t swing by.”

“Maybe Sprinkles’s parents are out of town,” Rooney reasons. She’s still laser-focused on where she steps. “Someone will miss her and get back to you. Hey, I was thinking about something you said about your parents going on their expeditions and not taking you.” Rooney threads her fingers through her sweater. “It’s so interesting, how different our childhoods were. Yet I relate to so much about the way you felt.”

“It sounds like your mom kind of did her own thing, too.”

“My mom had me in her early forties,” she explains. “By that time, she had lived a good amount of life. She had settled into her routine. She was used to doing her own thing.”

“You mentioned a person named JR,” I say, hoping it’s not too nosy of a comment.

She looks surprised that I remember this detail from New York.

“Oh, he’s who my mom slept with to create me,” she simply states. “They weren’t romantically together ever. Just physically the one time. Neither had ever thought about kids for themselves. Truthfully, I was more like a friend than a child.”

“So you were a surprise for them.”

Rooney stops to watch a caterpillar munching on a leaf. “I wasn’t unwanted, per se, but I definitely wasn’t planned. My mom and JR had been friends in the art world. People always envision that I’m the result of a drunken wild night, but it wasn’t like that. They had been working on curating a show for his gallery, and one night they got together. I was made from mutual respect and attraction. But it wasn’t love. He wasn’t the man on the other end of her red string. My mom knew that.”

“So what happened?”

“Mom decided to have me, and here I am,” she says, raising her arms. “She didn’t want to force JR into something he didn’t want to be a part of.”

“How do you feel about it?” I ask.

My question seems to catch her off guard. “It was lonely sometimes,” she says. “JR’s identity was never a mystery to me, but I don’t know the man. He wasn’t involved. It was always me and Mom. I had a lot of independence at a young age, especially when Mom was working, even though I’d be with her on location. My childhood was a blur of new cities, paintbrushes and oil paints, and galleries and museums. We were always on the move, but that made us close.”

Rooney looks up at the leaves on a tree branch and adds, “Mom had me, but she also lives so much of her life independently. It’s one of the reasons why the Red Thread of Fate is important to me. Because of it, I never felt alone. I always knew that I was connected to someone out in the world, and that thought comforted me. It still does.”

I nod. “As a kid, when my parents were on the go, I felt like I was spinning in place.”

“Maybe it’s all that spinning that kept you together,” she says thoughtfully. “Like if the world stopped spinning, everything would go flying into chaos, right?”

What she doesn’t know is that all I wanted was to have time stand still. Just like I did that night in New York. Just like I do right now.

“I experimented with different ways to keep my parents with me,” I share. “I started getting in trouble at school. Speaking out to teachers, cracking jokes in the middle of class.”

Rooney raises her eyebrows. “You strategically planned out ways to get what you wanted? I’m impressed.”

“Experiments made me feel in control. They made sense. There’s a cause and an effect. I could hypothesize something and make it work. Except with my parents, it seems.”

“Parents are hard to change,” she says. “My mom is so confident in her beliefs, and she doesn’t have regrets. I admire the way she refuses to diminish or devalue her work. Which experiments of yours worked?”

“Getting in trouble at school got their attention. But what really made them notice was when I did well,” I share. “Getting good grades. Being well behaved. Studying hard. Advancing in my career.”

Rooney nods her head slowly.

“I’ll feel bad if I sound like I’m complaining. Is that how I sound?” I say. “I’m really grateful. My parents weren’t neglectful. I had everything I needed. Maybe I would’ve liked a pet. But they paid for all of my education and hobbies.”

“It sounds like you needed more from them emotionally,” she says, seeming to fully understanding where I’m coming from. “That’s a need, too.”

I nod. “Yeah, you could be right. The cosmos was my space blanket. It protected me when I felt vulnerable. How’s that for a figure of speech?”

Rooney maintains an even expression, but her eyes are playful. “They’re not your strongest skill,” she admits. “But I can see how the vast emptiness of the universe would make you feel safe.”

I try to mirror her neutrality. “Exactly. You know, with its lack of oxygen, balls of gas, and black holes.”

Rooney lets her grin grow.

“Though there are many unknowns, there are also a few things that are for certain. The universe is constantly expanding,” I add, counting off on my fingers. “Faster than predicted, in fact.”

“Excellent,” Rooney says.

“One day the world will end,” I tell her.

“I’ll be sleeping well tonight.”

“And every night, no matter what happens in the day, the moon is always right where it should be in the sky.”

A gasp escapes from Rooney’s lips. “That was really beautiful,” she says, placing her hand gently on my shoulder. I can feel her warmth through my sweater.

I can’t stop the grin that spreads on my own face.

That’s when a monarch flies straight at us, disrupting the moment between us.

“Come on, let’s go try to find that poisonous butterfly,” I say, extending my elbow. “And then we can go return the ID.”

Rooney nods, patting her bag where she’s put the lost object. “Right. The ID. That’s why we’re here, after all.”

She loops her arm through mine. We walk together slowly, tiptoeing around and dodging butterflies, on a mission to find one that looks like rice paper.