Counting Thyme (24 page)

BUTTERFLIES

THE WEEKEND AFTER VALENTINE'S, MOM SAT NEXT TO ME ON THE
couch and said, “You and I should go do something together.” She'd been chasing after me since the dance, wanting to spend time together. Now that Val's third round of treatment was over, she was trying even harder.

“There's a new exhibit at the Museum of Natural History. It's about
butterflies
.” She whispered the last word, like the idea of a butterfly was so enticing, I couldn't possibly resist her offer.

“I'm calling Shani at noon.” We didn't exactly have a call scheduled because Shani still wasn't talking to me, but I was planning to call her anyway.

“I mean after that,” Mom said.

“What about Val?” He'd finished his week of 3F8 in the best spirits yet, but he was still pretty wiped out. He'd been on the couch all morning, watching his Transformers.

“Your father can watch him.” She wasn't giving up.

The truth was, I did want to go with her, but some part of me didn't want to admit that. Maybe I was still mad about
all the times she couldn't do things with me. But this time, Mom looked like she really meant it, so I told her I would think about it.

I called Shani at noon, but she wasn't home. Again. According to the Calendar of Us, it had been eighty-five days since I left San Diego, and we hadn't spoken in four weeks. I told myself that it wasn't a big deal, but that hurt. A lot. I wanted to tell her about Jake and the dance. I wanted to tell her about Cori getting suspended but how Mom ended up being nicer because of it. And how Val looked like he was doing well, but we wouldn't know for sure until after his next set of scans, which might not be until after our birthdays. Shani had to understand that.

Frustrated, I put the phone back and got out some of Emily's fancy printed paper—a beautiful white-and-pearl pattern with swirls like clouds. I cut the paper in straight lines and folded the edges the way Emily had shown me. Then I tacked the folded sections together, but they weren't perfectly even, and my star ended up looking more like a squished flower. But that gave me an idea of something I could make for Mr. Lipinsky. He still wasn't talking to me, other than yelling at me to go away. But maybe I could make him something special, to help him feel better.

I took the star apart and cut one of the sections loose. Then I trimmed the others into triangular shapes and tacked the sections back together again. It took three tries to get it
right, but when it was finally done, I had a beautiful paper bird that sparkled in the light.

I ran downstairs and knocked on Mr. Lipinsky's door.

He didn't answer, so I said, “I made you something. I'll just leave it out here, okay?”

Then I left the bird on his doormat. Even if he didn't like it, at least he'd know I was thinking of him.

On Sunday morning, I woke up early, but when I ran downstairs to see if he'd taken my gift, I found the bird sitting there, untouched. “Mr. Lipinsky?” I called.

No answer.

I started back up the stairs, and his door creaked open. “You can't leave that there.”

A smile pulled at my mouth. I turned around and looked at him. He was wearing the purple robe again. “When someone gives you a gift, you should say thank you,” I said.

He looked down at the paper bird, then bent slowly to pick it up. But he didn't smile. Instead, he stared at me, his gray eyes hard and unkind. “Sorry, kiddo,” he said. “That's not how this works.” Then he crumpled up the bird, right there in front of me. I felt like I'd been slapped.

“I just thought—”

“You weren't thinking at all,” he said. “You think a scrap of paper can fix things? I've got news for you. Sylvie's gone. Everyone dies, and there's nothing you can do about it.”

Tears sprang to my eyes. I bit my lip to hold them in.

He shook his head. “Sorry, but it's the truth. With that
brother of yours, you should know something about that.” His eyes were far away when he said it, like he was thinking of something else, but all I heard was Mr. Lipinsky saying Val was going to die.

“You're wrong!” I shouted. “You're wrong because my brother's going to be fine!”

Mr. Lipinsky started to say something else, but I ran away before he could finish. I was done helping him. Done caring, even the tiniest little bit.

I burst into our apartment, and Mom looked up from the clothes she was folding. “You okay?” she said, but I just ran past her to my room and grabbed Mr. Knuckles.

All I could think was how stupid I was, trying to help someone like Mr. Lipinsky. I'd thought he was my friend. For the first time in a long while, I felt the tug of homesickness again, deep in my belly.

Mom walked into the room and sat on the corner of my bed.

“Thyme.”

She put her hand on my leg. It was warm like the sun. Even in the dead of winter, Mom's hands were always warm. “I'm sorry I haven't had more time for you. But I'm here now. And I'd like to do something with you, if you'll let me. But you have to tell me what's going on. I'm not a mind reader.”

And I'm lucky you're not,
I thought. Otherwise she'd know what a rotten daughter she had. Someone who, at that very moment, would have ditched her little brother if she could
to go back home and leave Mr. Lipinsky and paper birds and broken feelings behind.

“Why does he have to be so mean?” I said, swallowing back my tears.

“Oh, honey. Come here.” Mom drew me into her lap. Her cheek rested against my head. “He's still upset about Sylvie. It's hard to lose someone you love,” she said, but that only made me cry harder.

“I don't want Val to die,” I said, hiccupping between each word.

Mom wasn't a whole lot bigger than me, but her arms tightened around me like a shield. “He's not going to die,” she whispered. Her voice was all clamped down. She cleared her throat and kept going. “Your brother is going to be just fine. And Mr. Lipinsky will be fine, too. He just needs some time to remember that he's not alone. You're a good friend to him, Thyme, and I'm proud of you.”

I pulled away. “I thought you didn't like him.”

“Mr. Lipinsky's a mixed bag, but I love
you
, Thyme. And I'd really like it if we could spend some time together. Whatever you want.”

I hugged her again, and her arms squeezed my sides. “This is good for now,” I said. “But maybe later, can we go see the butterflies?”

“You got it, love.”

The butterflies turned out to be incredible. There weren't just real butterflies in cases, but huge models of caterpillars
and cocoons, with parts that lit up and moved, showing how everything worked to change wormy little bugs into beautiful winged creatures.

And better yet, watching the gigantic wings of a butterfly model gave me a sound idea for the tornado machine. All of a sudden, I couldn't wait to get back to school and work on sound production. We were more than halfway through February, which meant the show's debut was two weeks away, but all of our sounds had to be turned in a week ahead of time, so I had until Friday to get it done. My new idea promised to blow the sound team away. If I could only get it to work.

AUDITORY MEMORY

THE THING ABOUT SOUND IS, OUR BRAINS LIKE TO PUT A LABEL
on any noise we hear more than once. That's called auditory memory. And according to what I read online, our mental libraries for sound are always growing. Meaning, every new sound we hear gets added to the library and given a name. But when a sound changes, when it doesn't
sound
the way it used to, our brains get all mixed up.

That's why it took Val a while to get used to his hearing aids when he first got them. With a hearing aid, everything sounds different. A cow doesn't sound like a cow anymore, at least not to your brain. The hearing aids change the cow's
moo
just a tiny bit, so that it takes your brain longer to recognize it. You have to learn the new cow sound and retrain your brain.

Auditory memory is also what makes it really hard to fool people into thinking they're hearing a tornado when there is no tornado. If the sound you make is just a little off, people can't recognize the sound at all. They might think they're hearing the ocean, or an airplane, or some other sound in their sound library. But with the new idea from
the butterfly wings, I thought I might be able to pull it off.

During lunch on Monday, I went to the auditorium and worked on my design, cutting careful wings from cardboard scraps. It didn't take long to build up a pile.

Jake saw what I was up to and squatted next to me. “Something new for the tornado?”

I covered my work with my arms. “It's a surprise.”

“I guess you're a sound nerd after all,” he said. Then he bumped my arm with his. Since the dance, it felt like we had a secret language all our own. The arm bump meant “Good job. You can do it.”

Every day that week, I made a little progress on the machine, in between practicing with Mrs. Smith and learning my sound cues for all my other sounds. I'd started with a small black fan—the metal kind with two speeds and a wire cage—but the fan wasn't just a fan anymore. Thanks to the butterflies, the cage sported wings around the rim and a cardboard funnel at the center. The end of the funnel was covered in mesh and long strips of ribbon and plastic. When it was off, the fan looked like a winged flower with a colorful ribbon snout.

By lunch on Thursday, I was ready to test the machine for the first time. Jake joined me. While he watched, I crossed my fingers and flipped the fan's switch to low. A sound something like a tornado filled the backstage. After a minute, I turned it off.

“Wow!” Jake said. “It's too slow, but it's really close to a tornado.” His face was a mask of disbelief. “How did you do that?”

“These wings, all around here, they flutter so fast, it sounds like wind rushing,” I explained, pointing out the different parts of the machine and how all of the little noises added up to the sound of a tornado to our brains. “And when we turn it to high, it should be just right. But I want to make sure it's ready first. I think it needs a couple more wings to be perfect.”

“Cool.” He bumped his shoulder into my shoulder to emphasize just how cool he thought my invention was. Which sounds awkward, I know. But it was actually really nice.

That night, I tossed in my bed, too excited about the tornado machine to sleep. I was going to show it to the entire sound team the next day at lunch—our deadline for new sounds. Except for Jake, no one had any idea that I'd cracked the tornado sound. As far as they knew, I'd failed, and we were stuck with the dreaded substitute for real sound effects: a tape recording.

I sat up and rearranged my pillows for the hundredth time, and a noise filtered in from the hall, loud enough to hear over Cori's snoring: Dad's voice, muffled but urgent. I slipped out of my bed and snuck across the floor, taking care to avoid the squeaky spots. When I pressed my ear to the door, Mom's voice came through loud and clear.

“What if it doesn't go down?”

Dad responded, but his voice was too deep to understand through a thick wooden door.

A floorboard creaked. “I don't know,” Mom said, her
voice rising. “I just thought this once, things would go our way. And now, with a fever—”

“It's going to be fine.” Now Dad's voice was close enough to make me jump. “The cancer isn't back. It's probably just an infection like last time. We'll stay on top of it like we always do, and he'll be all right. I promise.”

“You don't know that,” Mom said.

More creaks. And then a sound like coughing, only quieter, with gasps in between each cough. “It's okay.” Dad's voice was distant again. And that's when I realized the sound I heard was Mom crying. She was outside, crying in the hall, while Val slept in their room.

I crept back to my bed, suddenly anxious for the warmth of my comforter. With the fluffy blanket pulled up to my chin, I thought about what I'd heard. Val had a fever. It seemed like it wasn't high enough to be an emergency, but still, it was bad enough to make Mom cry. And that was more than enough to make me worry.

In the morning, I watched Mom like a hawk, but she didn't give anything away about what had happened during the night, and I was too afraid to ask. I was so distracted I ended up late, and Mrs. Ravelli had to wait while I raced around the apartment, gathering last-minute supplies for the tornado machine. “Thyme!” she called as I rooted around in Dad's desk drawers. His plastic report covers would add the perfect slippery rustle to the tornado's sound.

“I'm coming!”

“We have to go. You make us late, Thyme.” She held the door open, waiting.

“I have to say good-bye to Val.”

“He's still sleeping,
bambina
.
Vai!
”

“Okay, okay!” I made a quick wish for Val and hurried out the door.

On the way downstairs, I stayed on my tiptoes past Mr. Lipinsky's door. I didn't want to see him. I wasn't going to give him another chance to say horrible things to me.

By the time I hustled up the steps at MS 221, my nerves were jangling. In a few hours, I would find out what everyone thought of my machine, which made me feel like smiling and barfing at the same time. So I tried not to think about it, especially while I was waiting for Mrs. Harris to dismiss us for lunch. Jake must have noticed how I felt, because he nailed me with a ball of paper and gave me a thumbs-up when I scowled at him.

At lunch, he walked with me to the auditorium. “Ready to blow everybody away?”

I swatted his shoulder and he laughed, and then we were there. I dragged the tornado machine out of hiding, and Jake called for everyone to come over, and my heart started thumping so loud, I could hear it in my ears. Amelia and Davis were there. Lizzie and Emily, too, grinning her megawatt smile.

“What have we got here?” Mrs. Smith asked.

“This is the Tornado Two Thousand.”

The other kids giggled at the name, but Mrs. Smith just said, “Well, let's hear it.”

A flutter of nerves made me freeze for a second.

Then I flipped the fan's single switch to
HIGH
, and the blades inside the metal cage whirred to life. A roar built in the air—a fluttering, whipping roar, with the dry rustle of leaves and a deep, howling undertone. To my ears, it sounded just like a tornado should. And judging by the smiling faces around me, my machine sounded just like a tornado to them, too.

But then a flap of cardboard flew off the fan and whipped into the crowd.
Oh no.

Mrs. Smith spread her arms wide. “Everyone, get back!”

I reached for the switch, but Jake grabbed my arm. “It's not safe,” he shouted as another part flew off, and then another. Bits of the Tornado Two Thousand flung in every direction. Kids ran every which way. I rammed straight into another girl and fell. Here I was, thinking that maybe I was figuring things out. I must have been kidding myself. I'd wanted so badly to do this one thing. And I'd failed. Completely, totally failed.

Suddenly, the stuttering sound of the tornado cut off. Mr. Calhoun had pulled the plug. His mouth was pinched, and I hung my head, waiting for him to yell at me for making such a mess of everything.

“Thyme. You need to come with me immediately.”

His voice was calm, gentle even.

“What?” I looked up. Mr. Calhoun had that look on his face, the one people got when they were acting like everything was okay but things were really not okay.

Lizzie started walking toward me, but I kept my eyes on Mr. Calhoun.

He pointed to the back of the auditorium, by the doors.

Mrs. Ravelli was standing there with her scarf in her hands. She spotted me looking and waved. A little rush of panic rolled up my spine.

“Who's that?” Lizzie said.

I snatched my book bag off the floor. “I have to go,” I said. Then I hopped off the stage.

“Is everything okay?” Jake called after me, and I felt bad for not stopping.

I don't know,
I thought.
I don't know.

I raced up the aisle to Mrs. Ravelli and led her outside the auditorium, where we could talk.

“What are you doing here?” I asked. That's when I noticed the bright spots of color in her cheeks, and the way she twisted her scarf in her hands. “Mrs. Ravelli? What's wrong?”

“It's little Val,” she said. “We must hurry,
bambina
. Little Val is in the hospital.”

Then I heard it. The panic in her voice. That was a sound I knew by heart.