All afternoon exams were postponed until the next day.

It was supposed to be the last day of school before summer break, and the extra-preppy eager-to-impress students that made up ninety-five percent of Eldnac Prep's population seemed thankful for an extra night of study. Vatakai had called a pest control team to filter out the rest of the butterflies yesterday afternoon, but butterflies do not like to be caught and Vatakai was only willing to pay the pest control team for an hour's worth of service anyway, so there were still many beautiful winged creatures floating lazily through Eldnac's halls. 

That morning, the halls were hectic. It was as if the previous morning had duplicated itself perfectly...hands shook as they shoved study guides into backpacks, cold sweat erupted across foreheads, teachers were irritable, and Lilly overheard many hilariously delirious things on the way to her science exam to prove that the ninety-five percent of hopeful brainiacs had officially lost their minds:

"Sine, cosine—ugh, tangent sounds like something I'd puke up."

"Is my brain melting a physical or chemical property?"

"The quadratic formula is the one with Napoleon in it, right?"

Buzzing beneath all this anxiety was pent-up summer energy, ready to be released at the bell. While ninety-five percent of Eldnac wanted to ace their exams, one hundred percent of Eldnac wanted exams to be over and to be released into the warm sunshine gilding every available surface outside. 

Many eyes flew to clocks during that exam session.

Lilly was having a hard time thinking during her science test. It wasn't the curious glances she kept getting from the other students or the white-hot glares Mrs. Siotang shot her, or the staccato tick-tick-tick of the stupid clock above the SMART Board, or the overwhelming smell of graphite on paper. 

It was stupid Maya Sturnly that liquefied Lilly's mind.

Before the exam, Maya sprinted through the classroom door, crashed into Lilly's desk, and panted, "I have...something really...bad to tell you."

Lilly had opened her mouth to ask her what was wrong, but Mrs. Siotang shut the door to start the exam and snapped, "Anyone else who speaks will be asked to retake the class next semester."

Maya, wide brown eyes glittering with gossip, ruefully slid away and slunk into her seat across the room. 

Finally, the exam was over, and Maya didn't waste a second as she rushed over to Lilly's desk. Lilly said, "Don't hurt yourself," because Maya was trying to close her backpack, fight through the crowd of eager classmates, and speak all at the same time. 

"Okay," Maya started, still yanking on her backpack's zipper. Lilly had known Maya and her backpack from fourth grade long enough to know that that zipper was like a stubborn child. When it decided it didn't want to close, no one fought it. "Hailey—"

The zipper popped off. Due to gravity and Maya throwing up her arms in frustration, the bag slipped from her shoulder and gutted itself on the crook of her elbow. Pink pens, crumpled paper, binders, and notebooks spilled in a pastel array across the floor.

Lilly bent down to pick them up. Maya bent, too, but Lilly said, "No. You talk. I've got these."

This was the way they'd become friends last year. Lilly had ignored a CAUTION: WET FLOOR sign and took a nasty fall. Her half-open bag vomited up school books and pens; the pens exploded into puddles of ink, covering her books and Lilly's uniform with wet black stains. Maya happened to be passing by. Always desiring to help someone, she helped Lilly get to her feet, clean up the mess, hide the more noticeable ink blotches on Lilly's uniform, and they were still two minutes early to social studies.

"Right," Maya said, lowering her voice so a group of summer-hyped boys roughhousing their way out of the class wouldn't hear. "Hailey Vatakai has that journal you're obsessed with."

Lilly dropped the stack of binders she'd just gathered in her arms. "What?"

"Headmistress Vatakai took it home with her last night. Of course Hailey knew what it was when she took it from her mom's desk; I'm sure her mom told her the story. She found an entry written in English and read it to some of us girls last night when we came over to her house for a study session and, oh Lilly, it's bad. Like, really bad."

"What?" The contents of Maya's bag abandoned now, Lilly rocked back on her heels, pressing her hands to her face. A million things were spinning out of her mind at once:

Hailey Vatakai, sweet Walker Vatakai's twin sister. Reading her father's journal. An entry. Written in English.

This was an awful equation for several reasons.

Hailey Vatakai agitated Lilly beyond all logical understanding. Lilly also agitated Hailey beyond all logical understanding. When Hailey complained about the elderly lunch ladies in third grade, Lilly took the girl's crayons and blew them up in the cafeteria microwave, thus starting their never-ending hatred for one another. It was a constant war Lilly didn't know how to stop, didn't know if she wanted to stop. Hailey's irredeemable complaints, ugly words, the bratty movements of her hands...every little thing about her set off Lilly's nerves. Because Maya and Hailey had been best friends since the fourth grade, Maya often found herself mediating between Lilly and Hailey. Whispers raged like wildfire about them in Eldnac, transferred mostly by the staff: "Don't pair Ci and Vatakai together..." "Sit those two as far apart as possible in class..." "Kettle Fire and Miss Vatakai got into it last week in the cafeteria..."

Last semester, they were paired up as partners for a social studies paper by a teacher who was brand new to Eldnac and apparently didn't heed the warnings. Hailey, who was tasked with printing out the essay, threw it in the trashcan at her house, blamed the whole reason they didn't have a paper to turn in on Lilly, and produced one she had written on her own "just in case something like this happened, as Lilly's an unpredictable monster who doesn't care about her schoolwork."

Lilly felt the panic swell inside her with the unpredictability of volcanic eruptions. 

Hailey read her father's journal. This was terrible. Horrible. Wrong and awful and wretched. "I've been through that journal a million times," said Lilly. "Never once did I see an entry written in English."

Maya knelt down to pick up a few uncapped pens. "She's bringing it to Khofie's tonight. I think she's going to show it to Sabrina and Elizabeth."

Khofie's was the local coffee shop across the street from Eldnac. Because the shop was so popular with Eldnac students, it had a celebration at the end of every school year that involved late nights and a nine-to-eleven p.m sale on local crafts, specialized drinks, pastel-colored saltwater taffy, maple walnut ice cream. Lilly had never been because Melissa didn't want her out that late, but Lilly never had a desire to go anyway. She wasn't a coffee drinker and preferred her own form of celebrating the end of the school year, which was going to the woods behind the town's old Baptist church and throwing plates bought at the flea market against trees with Melissa after she got home from work.

"What did it say? In detail?" Lilly asked.

Maya bowed her head. Her expression was so sad, eyes glistening, rose lips turned down, a tendon in her neck twitching...it was so rare that happy-go-lucky Maya looked this sad and desperate. Lilly wondered if all this was a dream.

How she so badly wanted to be dreaming.

Maya lowered her voice. "Please don't be mad."

"I don't get mad. I plan pranks."

"You wonder why people call you a sociopath. You have to read that entry for yourself. Your dad was so graphic in his descriptions—there was so much blood and—and someone died...poor, poor Emma."

How did I miss that entry? It pained Lilly to say, "You don't have to talk about it if it was that—" 

And then the name Emma sank in, and Lilly stopped talking. Her lungs contracted. Her throat had the dryness of desert air. The sour feeling of her torso being gutted and weightless rose up fast and unforgiving, and the sides of her vision pulsed with darkness. Emma Emma Emma.

Maya leaned forward. "Is Emma someone in your family?"

"My mom." Thorns in her voice. In her stomach. Piercing her hands. Puncturing her skull. 

"Oh, Lilly." Maya, ever-compassionate and consoling, took Lilly's hand and helped her to her feet. They walked out into the locker chamber together, which rustled with kids ready to drink in the summertime sunshine. "I can get the journal back for you."

"Let's see..." They stopped by their lockers to get the last of their things. Lilly's hands were shaking, so she kept them pressed to her chest. "I'm grounded, but Melissa has a meeting that'll go on late. I could sneak out about nine?"

"Or I could just get it back for you."

"Melissa won't be back until nine-thirty. I could cause a distraction to direct Hailey's attention away from the journal, like a coffee spill or maybe a—" 

Maya planted her hands on Lilly's shoulders and shook her. "Or I could just get it back for you. Do not make Melissa any angrier than she already is with you."

"Melissa's anger won't show up in sparks and flames. If I get caught, she'll just put me on lockdown until winter and give little hints of lecture until I go crazy."

Maya smacked Lilly with her backpack. "She means well. You make it hard for her to punish you."

Lilly backpack-smacked her back. "Because there's a purpose to my trouble. And I want Hailey to know that she can't get under my skin with this. I just sent a thousand butterflies loose in school to get that book back, so do not think for one second that I'm going to let her keep it." Lilly leaned back against the lockers, watching waves of sunlight ripple across kids as they exited the hall. She was already planning, thinking, shoving down the fast panic about missed journal entries and gory tales of dying mothers.

Maya mimicked Lilly's position against the lockers and sighed, "Melissa is going to kill you."

***

Lilly and Melissa were two very different people, so they clashed with as much force as two swords smashing against one another in battle.  

The result was jarring.

Not only did they look different, dark versus light in all physical features, but so were their personalities. The icy, introspective calculations Melissa ground to a pulp in her mind contrasted starkly to Lilly's fiery recklessness; however, they balanced each other out better than one might think. It only took a cool look from Melissa for Lilly to keep her mouth shut when she desperately wanted to say something snarky. On the other hand, Lilly had to spell things to get Melissa to open up: "I want your opinion, Melissa. Have an opinion. I already have the facts." 

Lilly loved her cousin in all her quiet ways and did her best to respect the punishments she was given for being such a mischievous and cunning kid, but the journal was something that she simply could not ignore.

Lilly sneaked out of the house to meet Maya at Khofie's a little before nine, right when the sun cast its deep hazy glow over Belle Village's busy streets. Consumers crowded around vendors; fishing boats rolled out from glittering canals for a long night of work. Along the docks, people shucked oysters, cleaned knives, lowered lobster traps. A group of homeless men stood at a street corner, holding up rugged cardboard signs asking for money. Gulls cut across a gilded horizon line, their silhouettes slithering over the docks. The whole world smelled of sea and salt and raw guts.

Lilly made a quick stop at a bait shop two streets over from Khofie's, and by the time she'd finally gotten to the cafe, it was crowded Eldnac students. Khofie's was filled with life. People lingered by the doors to examine terrariums hanging from old bookshelves or sniffed locally made candles and hand-cut soaps. The scratch of mismatched chairs on rustic wood and the hissing whistle of an espresso machine challenged the sad Lana Del Rey song slurring overhead. 

And, of course, the smells.

Bitter espresso, sweet sugar, honeysuckles. 

Lilly saw Hailey and Maya sitting at a nearby table with two other girls Lilly only knew by name. Maya looked apprehensive—her torso was drawn up as if a metal rod had been drilled into her spine, her lips were pursed, and she tapped a restless rhythm against the table's surface. Hailey was completely oblivious to Maya's nervous energy as she spewed about her plans for New York next week.

Lilly took a deep breath. Some people glanced at her, and before their faces turned away she could see they were filled with either disapproval or approbation. Butterfly heist girl.

Lilly tried her best to ignore them. She held a small tin can behind her back, shaking it as she marched over to Maya and Hailey's table. She yanked a chair away from an empty table and pulled it up beside Maya.

Lana Del Rey whispered stories of cashmere cologne and old lovers overhead. 

Lilly's heartbeat roared.

Hailey paused mid-sentence. Leaned back in her chair. Crossed her arms. She was so smug and Lilly despised it. "Can I help you, freak?"

The other two girls, Sabrina and Elizabeth, simmered. "Hailey," one of them said, "she's not worth it."

Lilly noticed the messenger bag in Hailey's lap. Emma. Emma Ci. My mother bloodied up in that entry. "You have something of mine."

"What, no heist to get it back? No extravagant plan involving butterflies or flowers?"

The song changed to another Lana Del Rey song. It was sassier, faster, something about Las Vegas pasts and cocaine heartbeats, and Lilly felt as though she was about to evoke a disaster they'd hear about all the way in Las Vegas if Hailey made one wrong move. "You took it just to get under my skin, but it didn't work. Give it back. It's not yours. It's my dad's."

Hailey was a pretty girl, but in a different way than Maya was pretty. Maya was maiden-pretty, innocent-pretty. Hailey, on the other hand, had the prettiness of sharks. Her hair fell delightfully straight, her cheeks were the pink color of the first fifteen minutes of sunrise, and her dark eyes were sharp with intelligence. It was a dangerous, witty, dagger-sharp beauty that caused her to often look like a sleek predator right before she pounced on her prey.

Lilly felt like a sleek predator right before she pounced on her prey.

Oh, she hated every inch of this girl.

She shook the tin can under the table, angering the contents. "Come on, Hailey. I know it must be nice for your mother to be the headmistress so when I get things confiscated you can steal them, but I want the journal back. Game's over. Give it."

"You're a selfish brat, you know that?" Hailey tucked a strand of hair around her ear. "Maya said your father didn't even send you a letter. How pathetic of a daughter must you be if your dad doesn't even enough to write a letter?"

"Don't involve me," Maya said. She leaned forward in her chair, her eyebrows pinching together. Lilly knew what Maya's eyebrows were asking: No heist? No plan? You're just...asking?

"How stupid of a person do you have to be to know that him leaving and not writing me a letter isn't my fault?" 

Hailey took a long, slow sip of coffee, then set her paper cup down. After a moment of thought, she said, "Why don't you go play with your creepy dolls or rob the bank with a toothbrush. Better yet, go home to that whore of a cousin and summon demons together."

Screamed filled Lilly's skull. She popped the lid of the tin can.

Creepy dolls, fine.

Robbing a bakery with a toothbrush, fine.

Calling Melissa a whore? 

Lilly knew the stories, and they were false, and it killed her. Melissa hadn't even dated anyone in years and often said these rumors only circulated because she was pretty and the villagers didn't like her and those two things were a deadly combination in Belle Village.

What Melissa never said, however, was that the people of Belle Village didn't like her because Lilly always got in trouble. 

Lilly hated herself for it. But her trouble always had a purpose. 

Lilly dumped the contents of the can over Hailey's head.

Worms poured out in slimy clumps. Hailey shrieked and jerked back, taking her chair with her. Maya, Sabrina, and Elizabeth sprang from their own seats, screeching as pink, plump worms tangled themselves in Hailey's hair. They inched across her face and wiggled into her mouth. Soil smeared black across her pale skin.

She didn't look so pretty now.

"You're such a worm," Lilly snarled, making a grab for Hailey's bag. Eyes all over the room flickered, then did a double-take at their table, and hands jumped to mouths as people realized what Hailey was screaming about. The barista missed the cup he was pouring milk into and spilled it all over the counter. 

Lilly got a handful of fabric, but Hailey was faster. Hailey whisked the journal out of the bag and hoisted it in the air. She scrambled on top of the chair she had been sitting in, wiping off dirt and smacking at worms.

"Don't you dare say anything like that about Melissa again!" Lilly seethed, tearing a hand through her hair in anger. "You know it's not true!" 

"I don't like her, and neither does my mom," Haily spat back. "She can't even keep you under control." To the rest of the coffee shop, she yelled, "Listen up! I have a story! Lillian Cart Ci here is about to get exactly what she wants." Hailey shoved her bag into Lilly's arms before opening the journal to a bookmarked page. "You want your journal back? Sit down and listen to every word."

The barista was opening and closing his mouth soundlessly. He was young; slender with frail arms and a face that looked as if it could disintegrate with a touch to the forehead. He started to say something, but Hailey peeled a worm off her cheek, laughed a laugh that belonged to a cobra and not a thirteen-year-old girl, and held up a hand to shut him up. 

"Dear Journal." She flicked a lock of soiled hair behind a shoulder and grinned at Lilly, who did sit down and cross her legs. The coffee shop had gone very still. 

Fine, Lilly thought, gritting her teeth. As long as Hailey was going to give the journal back, she would sit down and shut up.

Hailey read from the only journal entry written in English:

"'I've been swallowing happy pills, trying to forget the day I lost her. I watched Storm drag her through dirt and rocks. The clouds were spinning, the sky was red, and she was limp. I couldn't get past the barrier.'"

Hailey paused here, smirking, soaking up Lilly's expression and the fact that she had everyone's attention in Khofie's.

"I dare you to speak," Hailey hissed. Lilly pressed her lips together and did not speak. Her hands and legs were trembling.

"Girls," the barista finally squeaked. "I'm-I'm calling the police."

Neither Lilly nor Hailey spared him a glance.

Lilly imagined her mother, a mangled body with blond curls like hers, all blood spatter and entrails on rocks and red skies and spinning clouds. She shuddered inwardly. 

Hailey continued, voice dripping with exaggerated theatrics. "'So now I swallow pills. Happy pills, I call them, and they make me forget. It's taken me so long to write an entry because of the pills, and I'm sorry for that, journal. I am numb. I steal pills from the medics and nobody notices because everyone else is happy the war is over. But I'm not happy until I take my happy pills, because then I don't think about Emma or the way Storm slammed her head against the fence and those electrical sparks made her convulse—'"

"Stop it." Lilly bent double. Vomit climbed up her throat.

Her father, on drugs. Her mother, dead.

Her father, who told Melissa he went to look for Emma Ci. Well, he obviously wasn't looking for her now, because she was dead. Was that an excuse to get high? What if he didn't care about Lilly after all? What if he'd just abandoned her so that he could get high on his happy pills without ever having to worry about a daughter? About Melissa?

Had Melissa known Emma was dead this whole time? What war? 

Maya whispered, "Hailey, stop it. Lilly looks like she's going to be sick."

"You didn't stop her when she dumped a can of worms on my head." Hailey was breathing hard. She flicked soil and worms from her hair at Lilly. One fat worm fell into Lilly's lap.

"Look, girls," tried the barista for the third time. He seemed to have regained strength in his voice. "Take this outside. You're disturbing everyone. When the manager gets back, she'll—"

"Did she die?" a girl a little older than Lilly interrupted. "Emma. Is she okay? Good stories don't end in deaths."

"I didn't say it was a good story," Hailey snapped. "Let's ask Kettle Fire. It's her mother we're talking about. Shall I continue? I don't see you being a brave hero anymore, and it doesn't look like you have any more worms to shut me up."

Lilly dug her elbows into her knees and buried her head in her hands...every inch of her mind turned into an endless strand of thought that went something along the lines of my mother is dead my father is on drugs the sky turned red what are spinning clouds?

"I pop the pills like candy because they make me forget about Emma's brains smeared all over the place." Hailey had stopped reading from the journal. She leaped from her queen's position on the chair and snapped the journal shut.

"It doesn't...it doesn't..." Lilly couldn't breathe. She couldn't imagine...she couldn't think. The barista was on the phone with the police. The coffee shop held its breath, and in the years to come Lilly would wonder why no one had stopped Hailey from talking.

If they had, the next tragedy would've been avoided.

"I left my daughter because I love getting high more than I could ever love a freak like her," Hailey mock-read. "I'm happier on these pills than I could ever be with—"

"Shut up—"

"—killing my insides as I remember the day my wife was—"

"It doesn't say that!" Lilly screamed, standing up so fast her chair tipped over. Several people in the shop jumped to their feet as well, ready to break up a fight. Lilly didn't care. She shoved Hailey. "Shut up! Shut up shut up shut up!"

Hailey arched her arm back to strike and there were scuffling sounds and soon hands were all over Lilly, all over Hailey, trying to break them up. Khofie's suddenly swelled with noise.

The lights flickered out.

The hands on Lilly fell away. Several people yelped; Maya screamed as, for three intense seconds, the coffee shop was thrust into blackness filled with lumpy silhouettes.

Suddenly, furiously blinding cords of light exploded through the shop.

Lilly felt herself being yanked forward by the burst; the soft skin of her palms ruptured with agonizing blisters. Horrified, she realized the light was coming from her hands.

The light trails tangled around each other to create a web of translucent shapes: squares and circles and triangles, ethereal rivers twisting in midair. The force of this...this thing sucked Lilly's energy out. Glass shattered somewhere behind the barista's counter and the air became thick with shrill screams and curses.

"It burns!" someone screamed behind her. 

"Make it stop!" someone else sobbed. 

Lilly fell forward. Her hands slapped a floor wet and sticky with coffee. Her forehead snapped on the wood, and spears of pain rocked her skull.

The light turned to silver dust and fell to the ground like snow.

Lilly blinked. And blinked again. She lifted her head, saw seas of shapes panting, gasping, and clinging to people.

"Is everyone okay?" the barista called through the shadows. His voice, like the rest his gangly self, shook. "Is anyone hurt?"

Maya, to Lilly's right, lifted her head. She whimpered, "What sort of prank was that?"

Lilly pushed herself to her knees. Silver glittered between the blisters on her hands. She was numb and ice-cold.

Sorry, she tried to say through the thick syrup that filled her mind. She looked at Hailey, who'd toppled forward and was lying on her stomach. A worm wiggled down her shoulder.

At last, she could get her words out. "I'm sorry. I'm so—I'm so sorry."

"I'm calling the police," the barista hissed, still trembling. "You, young lady, stay right where you are."

"I'm sorry," Lilly whispered again. To her left, the journal was smoking. The paper had turned to white ash and the leather binding had gone black around the edges. It was useless, unsalvagable. She got to her knees, wobbly, kicking up silver dust in clouds around her sneakers. People shuffled and talked. She heard some nasty names being thrown around as the stillness lost its grip from Khofie's and life began to seep through the stunned silence.

The barista was on the phone with the police again. Hailey got to her feet. Maya crouched beneath a nearby table.

Lilly decided the best thing to do was run.

So she sprinted.

The barista exploded into screams and curses, which echoed all the way down the street and around the corner, and adrenaline flipped Lilly's stomach inside-out and upside-down.