"Try to get some sleep. You'll need your strength for what's to come. I'm sure you'll be the center of attention tomorrow, and especially the next day, when you return to school. News travels fast around here, especially news like this."

I nodded. He hesitated, looking awkward, as if he wanted to say something more.

"Well . . . good night," was all he added, and then he turned and left, closing the door softly behind him. I lowered my head to the pillow. A few moments later, I could hear Ami and Wade mumbling in the hallway. She was whining and sobbing, and he was comforting her. Then I heard their door close, and all become quiet again.

I felt so terrible having brought all this trouble to their home, and so soon after I had arrived. I thought I would start crying again, but that quickly made me feel melancholy and alone. Memories stirred as if they were nudged out of hibernation.

A long time ago, Noble and I sat by the front window in the living room and looked out at a moonlit night not much different from this one. He had just finished reading me a beautiful story about a caterpillar who fell in love with a butterfly, and promised her that as soon as he turned into a butterfly, they would fly off together. The butterfly stayed beside him and waited and waited. The strength of his love for her finally sped up his metamorphosis, and at the end of the story, he had beautiful new wings and they flew away together, carried along by a warm breeze.

"Where did they go?" I wanted to know.

"To a place where they would always be together and always beautiful," he said.

Where was this place? I wondered.

Was he looking for it now when he gazed so hard out of our window at the dark forest across the way? Was there a beautiful butterfly waiting for him, and did that mean he would leave me forever and ever?

He saw the worry in my face and smiled.

"What?" he asked me.

"You're going to go away, too," I told him.

It was just before if all happened, and he did go away.

"No, I won't."

"Yes," I insisted. "You will."

He stopped smiling. He always paid attention to the things I said. I remember that. He made me feel important. Mother would, too. Now, when I thought about it, I realized I didn't really know why I said some of the things I said. They seemed to know more about that than I did. How strange!

The day he left, I thought about the butterfly story. He'd always known in his heart he would go, I thought. He'd lied to me.

Maybe that was why I was so angry then.

It was another betrayal in the long line of many to trail behind me for the rest of my life.

All I wanted to do in the days that followed was turn into a butterfly, wave my wings, and fly away to wherever Noble had gone, to that magical place.

I'll spend my whole life looking for it, I thought as I closed my eyes.

In minutes, I was asleep, dreaming of apple blossoms rising slowly to return to their branches, until I realized that they were all white and red butterflies, stirred by something.

What was it? What stirred them up?

Somewhere just outside the door, the answer hovered, just as Mrs. Cukor hovered in the shadows of this strangely beautiful house with walls woven in mysteries better left untouched--but mysteries that would touch me.

I knew that as well as I knew my own name.

I could almost feel them swirling about my bed, drawing closer and closer until. . .

I woke with a scream, a desperate cry for Noble. Always, for Noble.

13 A Sense of Danger

. True to her promise, the next day after breakfast, Ami asked me to go out with her and sit in the gazebo near the pool for her so-called sisterly heart-to-heart, which I thought would simply be one of her long lectures about the evils of men, especially after last night. She surprised me, however, with her decision instead to reveal the second biggest secret of her life. She had already revealed the first by telling me she was currently in therapy.

She actually didn't come down to breakfast, but had Mrs. McAlister bring something up to her instead. Wade, reading in my face that I thought she was sick over what had happened the night before, urged me not to be upset.

Tags: V.C. Andrews Gemini Horror
Source: readsnovelonline.net