Page 78 of Hide and Keep

“Hi.”

Even though I don’t have nectar, the black-and-golden-yellow butterfly remains where it is, content to hitch a ride for a while.

Tears fill my eyes as I’m suddenly overcome with an enormous sense of gratitude for this insect’s trust in me. Aside from making outfit choices, nobody trusts me with anything.

Without jostling my stowaway, I carefully remove my shoes, then watching where I step, I start checking each feeder, removing any rotten fruit peels and making sure there’s enough sugar water to keep the sponges wet. Weaving between the plumeria tree and some pentas shrubs, I breeze by the garden of wildflowers, slowing next to a Queen Anne’s lace to watch a black swallowtail emerging from its chrysalis.

Since the atrium’s creation eight years ago, I’ve had over six hundred different types of butterfly species in it. With my nanny’s help, I used to order chrysalides from a supplier that imports them from a number of other countries, but I cut back after she left, and now most of the butterflies flying around were laid by their own mothers. From egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly, I’ve witnessed thousands of life cycles in this atrium.

For the most part, I’m the only one who gets to. Even if I did have friends over, I wouldn’t share this with any of them. They wouldn’t get it. Other than snapping some selfies for their feeds,they probably wouldn’t even care. It’s a secret I hold close to my heart.

Crue used to be another. I guess, technically, he still is. Well, our first meeting is. The night he protected me because he wanted to, not because he was being paid to. The night he saw me as something other than my last name. The night he touched me, held me, kissed me, and…cherished me. That’s how Crue’s attention felt. Like I was a treasure all on my own, no price tag required.

And now, after catching a glimpse of that expensive label, he’ll never look at me the same way again.

I’d rather him look at me with hate in his eyes than the same dollar signs I detect in everyone else’s. At least hate is complex, not one solitary emotion but a combination of several.

I’ve never gone hungry a day in my life, yet since my nanny’s “retirement,” I feel just as starved as if I had. If I’ll never so much as get a taste of love again, what other choice do I have but to gorge on hatred? Desperate people take desperate measures, and at this point, I’ll accept anything to fill the bottomless pit in my stomach.

All the chores taken care of, I sit on the bench near the pond. The three-foot-deep pool has its own small waterfall trickling into it, adding oxygen to the water for the fish as well as ambience for…me. Now. More people used to come in here. My mother, for one. And my father when she’d make him. He had this atrium built to not only cheer her up but also get her out of the house. It worked. Until it didn’t. My nanny, Winnie, and I took on the upkeep. Nowadays, it’s just me, unless I’m out of town, then I have to rely on Edwin to check on things.

The common birdwing on my arm flew away at some point, making me stowaway-free. Next to me is a dead owl butterfly though, its large wings open, making it appear like a set of owl eyes eerily tracking me. A butterfly’s lifespan after they eclosefrom the chrysalis stage is usually only about three to four weeks, so every time I come in here, I find at least a handful of dead ones. While it’s completely natural, it doesn’t make the discoveries any easier. Whenever Winnie and I would stumble across a lifeless carcass, she’d share a different meaning behind seeing dead butterflies. It wasn’t until recently that I learned she only told me about the positive premonitions, hiding the bad omens from me. Once I found out deceased butterflies also symbolize feeling trapped, suffocated in your own cocoon, that’s the one I think about most. It’s kinda hard not to given my current predicament.

A trio of blue morphos flap right past my cheek, their brilliant blue wings spectacular. For how eye-catching they are, they’re nearly impossible to physically catch. After many failed attempts to catch the fast butterfly myself, now I just wait for one to take a rest near me to admire it up close. I have yet to be lucky enough for one to land on me.

The owl butterfly tugs my attention back to it. A sign of repressing your creative side is another meaning for coming across a dead butterfly. I haven’t sketched anything in over a week, since before Nationals. I haven’t drawn an owl butterfly with both wings showing yet. The huge eyespots would look good in charcoal.

I clean up a little more, then head out the way I came, making sure to lock the door behind me. For the first time all day, Crue isn’t waiting for me and I don’t know how to feel about it. It’s positively stifling, having him around all the time. But it’s also…less lonely. As much as I hate to admit that, it’s true. I didn’t have siblings growing up, but I did have Winnie, and I guess my mother—sometimes—so I’ve never felt true loneliness until this past year. The day I turned eighteen, my father let my nanny go, a severance check in one hand, a restraining order in the other. When I asked about the restraining order, he shrugged, like itwas commonplace to give them to loyal, longtime employees. Winnie was my sole caretaker from the moment I was brought home from the hospital. Eighteen years later, she was ripped from my life. Poof. Gone. Like she was never even here.

When I begged him to let me call her, just call her, he told me I was an adult and it was time for her and I both to move on.

I wasn’t ready to move on. I still very much needed her. If I’m being completely honest, I still do. My eighteenth birthday wasn’t some special day where I woke up magically knowing everything. Even at nineteen I find myself wishing I had someone to go to for advice, guidance, or just…a hug, a hair tuck and gentle smile, any sort of tenderness whatsoever.

My father wants me cold, hard, a professional with her eye on the objective.

I’m not a sniper. I’m a nineteen-year-old student athlete with interests and needs and wants and…dreams? Once upon a time I had lots of dreams. Dreams of putting some of our fortune to good use. Not anymore though. Now I know better. The only good thing about Arthur Munreaux was his wife, my mother, Alette Munreaux. With her died any humanity my father might’ve had, leaving behind an unhinged version of the man I grew up around. He used to be somewhat decent, but like Winnie once said, “Even butterflies need gravity, otherwise they’d drift into space.” My mother was his gravity, the one thing keeping him grounded. Without her, he’s drifted. After Hide and Keep, I forced myself to stop looking for glimpses of redemption in him. He’s eternally lost to me.

No sign of him, or my bodyguard, I go straight upstairs uninterrupted. The door to my bedroom is locked, yet the moment I step inside, I can feel another presence. While my body freezes in place, my eyes begin moving—rapidly. Searching every square inch of the dark room, I finally land on an outline of a head and shoulders sticking out above my oversized armchair.

Poking my keys between my fingers, I warn, “I won’t make it easy for you.”

A soft puff of humor dances between us until it reaches me, obnoxiously tapping its feet on my chest.

5, 6, 7, 8.

“You don’t makeanythingeasy…”

Crue?

“Except making you drip.” That head shadow quickly tilts, then rights itself. “I did that without even trying.”

Crue’s voice somehow makes the tempo over my ribs increase. He’sinmy room.

He’s in my room?

“But, just like your stamina, it was short-lived. I’m all dried up now,” I inform him.

Relaxing my grip on my keys, I spin around and study the surface of my dresser…and all the crap on it.

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