It's as if He waits until Kurt is not here to make his move. Kurt is absent today, a head cold banging at the inside of his skull rendering him bedridden for today. I miss his presence in the hallways, the classrooms, the library. I've grown so accustomed to having him by my side.

He chooses to come up to me in Spanish. We've broken up into partners to practice conversing in 100% espanol. Nobody knows how to speak Spanish, though, and none of us are particularly inclined to do so anyways. Our teacher looks on unhappily as we break into groups and begin to gossip, smack our lips, whisper, giggle giggle. In English, of course.

This is a class I don't have with Kurt. Sometimes Mercedes is friendly and lets me talk to her, because neither of us have anyone else. But today Mercedes seems terribly busy texting, and I am left sitting alone in the middle of socializing teens. I allow myself to feel lonely for half a second when someone cures my loneliness. Him.

He swims up to me, a shark in a shallow body of water, a tiger shark, with stripes and fangs and glittering eyes. I wonder what His angle is. He cannot hurt me here, not in class, not amongst pairs of eyes. I try to stand strong, thinking of Kurt, as the shark approaches.

"Where's your boyfriend?" Finn asks me in a friendly voice, a smile widening his mouth. I stare uneasily at the gleaming fangs he's just revealed, dripping with saliva and blood. Maybe the latter is my imagination.

Me:

Finn draws a little closer. I flinch when his thigh brushes against mine.

"You told Kurt," he says plaintively. It is not a question. More of a statement. My English teachers would be proud.

It's so hard to look him in the eyes. My face burns foolishly. I keep my eyes lowered, scratching my pencil uselessly into my notebook. I begin to hear my heart beating in my ears. How is that possible?

He lowers to my height and his breath tickles my ear. "Rachel's been acting weird too, lately," he breathes. I jerk away, preparing to hide under a table, or run out of the room declaring a medical emergency, or something... My mind is overheated. I need to get a grip.

Before I can, He does it for me. Under the table he grips my hand, and I am frozen.

"You're tarnishing my reputation, Quinn," he murmurs. "I am not happy with you."

Fear prickles like shards of ice down my back. I close my eyes. I think of Kurt. He'd want me to be strong.

"I don't have to be afraid of you."

Finn raises a brow. His grip tightens on my hand. An amused smile plays at his lips, the lips I once kissed passionately. "Oh?"

I rip my hand from His. "You're just a human," I say softly, talking more to myself than him. "Humans can be defeated."

The amusement vanishes. He keeps his hands to himself, but I can see him undressing me with his eyes. I bet he's imagining killing me. For the first time I see the real danger in his eyes. A knife gleaming reflective. He wants to silence me, maybe as much as I want to defeat him. We make a lovely couple.

"Be careful who you tell your stories to, little Quinn," Finn says to me in a low rumble. "You're putting them in danger, too."

Kurt.

Rachel.

The teacher intervenes then, sending everyone back to our seats since none of us seem to be doing the assignment. Finn and I are separated to opposite sides of the room. I sit silently, ramrod straight, staring at my hands. I can feel Him watching me.

He controls me. He destroyed me, ripped me apart. Left a rotting carcass. Kurt came, he helped put the pieces back together. I am no longer a skeleton of dripping muscle and rotting nerves, but becoming a body again. A person. Because of Kurt.

And I will be damned if I let Him hurt Kurt because of me.

In the last seconds of class, I look up at Him. He's still staring. A slow grin stretches his lips.

I stare right back. I can feel the fear retreating into the back of my mind.

Only fire remains.

My mother's birthday draws near. January has crawled by, but February is only days away.

Her birthday is on the second day of February. Last year, I hand-made her a card and picked out a beautiful sterling silver bracelet for her with the help of my father's wallet.

This year her birthday is uncertain. I can still make her a card but my father and I seem to not be on speaking terms. He's distanced himself, inch by inch, for months now. I can see him crawling away, retreating deeper into his turtle shell. He used to be a very good man, but with each day I see more and more of his flaws.

It's funny, how as a kid your parents are the strongest people in the world. They're like super heroes to you. And then you grow up, and realize that your parents are just as flawed as you are.

I'm in my room, trying for what feels like the hundredth time to start my essay for Mr. O' Connors, when there comes a soft knock on my door. I find my father's face attached to the sound. He is dressed in his business suit. Must have just come home from work.

"Quinn, I was wondering. Would you like to go shopping tonight? For your mother's birthday, I mean?"

I'm surprised he was bold enough to enter my orbital. I'm even more surprised to hear he wants to buy things for my mother. I can't remember the last time I saw them kiss. I can clearly remember the last time I heard them fight. (Two nights ago).

But I'm not going to decline going to get things for my mother. So I agree. A few hours later, after another uneasy dinner filled with painted smiles and fake words bubbling above our heads in the air, my father and I leave for the mall.

The mall is a place I used to rule. As I enter under its holy roof, I realize this is the first time I've been here since summer. And I've been reduced to that kid who goes to the mall with her parent. Oh, well. Too bad I no longer care what the world thinks.

We find the mall virtually empty. It's seven o' clock on a Tuesday night; I guess it isn't a cool night to go shopping. Normally filled with sprawling teenagers acting like jungle animals and purchasing things with their parent's money, I catch a few mall joggers and some middle-aged couples window shopping.

It's quiet, save for the music in every store we pass by. It's like flipping the channels of a TV.

Finally my father settles on a jewelry store called Barb's. We go in, and I perch quietly behind my father as he explains to one of the workers he's looking for a birthday present for his wife, and money is not a problem. I hate him for throwing in that last bit. My family's wealth is a mixture of old money and money my father has churned up in the click-clack suitcasey office work he seems to excel at. He's always loved being rich, and I think my mother enjoys it, as well. I always accepted it as a part of life, but now that I've seen how other people live, it makes me despise rich bigots like my father.

To the worker's credit, she remains unimpressed and shows my father around to several glass cases filled with beautiful sparkling jewelry anxious to be bought and have a place in someone's jewelry box. I inspect each glass box, admiring the way the jewels sparkle.

I look up when I hear a peal of soft, girlish laughter. It's a different worker, this time a young woman. She's talking to my father, both of them all smiles. A few of my father's words drift towards me, and my ears prick up. Is my father flirting with that woman? I study their body language. Blushing, smiling, hair touching. It seems to add up.

I stare at my father in disbelief. How long has my father been flirting with other women? And why has it taken me this long to notice? I realize with a pang of guilt that it's because I haven't spent any time with my parents out of the house. The worst part is that my father is flirting with the pretty lady as if it's a daily thing.

Tears come to my eyes. My family is broken. I tell myself that it's not my fault, but I do a terrible job of convincing myself. Without taking another look at my father, I turn and exit Barb's. I find myself sitting on a lonely bench in the empty mall hallway, staring at the candy machines and movie posters and the occasional mall walker.

It takes my father some time to leave the jewelry store. When he does, I see a crisp white bag dangling in his fingers. He bought my mother a jewelry, from the store where he flirted with another woman. I find myself sickened.

"Quinn? You okay?"

I am used to the words in my throat being stuck. But right now it's all I can do to hold them back as my father joins me on the bench.

"You were flirting with that lady," I say, voice sounding almost childish.

My father's eyes meet mine. He doesn't try to deny it.

"Quinn... your mother and I are having marital issues. It's adult stuff, you wouldn't understand."

I am shaking. There is nothing more in the world I hate than when an Adult talks down to me. They all think just because they've lived longer that they know more about life than I do. They can talk down to me and call me a child and say there's things I wouldn't understand because I'm just a dumb kid. But my father has no idea. I have been through hell, and he's too buried in his own problems to see how miserable his daughter has been. To give a shit about me or his wife who's growing apart from him. He has no right to talk down to me when I've been through enough shit this past year to understand his adult problems.

"What wouldn't I understand about you cheating on your wife?"

That does the trick. As if I've pulled the trigger, his mocking patience turns into anger. He leans closer to me, shaking so that his blonde hair comes out of its wave. "I am not cheating on your mother. Stop talking about things you don't understand."

"You're a horrible father," I manage to choke out. Then the goo returns. Falling through my throat like poison. I can say no more. I am angered by the words that just disappear. My father waits for more childishness he can fight, but I am silent. He nods and gets up. He tells me to not mention this to my mother, before leaving. I have no choice but to get up and follow him. He is my ride home, after all.

I shouldn't be surprised, really. Their marriage has never been perfect, and now the weight of having a crazy kid is the last straw. I wonder if they'll get divorced in the future. If my mother will ever find out. If there's more women I don't know about.

What really breaks my heart is the happiness in my mother's eyes on her birthday when she opens her present. It's a very pretty necklace. My father knows his jewelry well. As she thanks him and gives him a chaste kiss on the cheek, I realize I cannot further destroy their marriage by telling my mother. Because I can see it on her face that she loves him, despite all of their fighting. There are things you cannot control in life, and this is one of them.

When she turns away to admire the necklace in the mirror, my father turns to look at me. His eyes say it all. I cannot bear it any longer. I duck my head and tell my mother I'm happy she likes it.

Later that night, I am at my laptop. I stare at the blank page, at the little white line that blinks every second, waiting for me to type. I am thinking about Mr. O' Connors and the purpose of life and my parents. All of it mixes in my mind and turns into a monster.

I fall asleep into a nightmare that night. The monsters quietly watch me sleep from their place on the ceiling, relishing my fear.

Once upon a time, there was a girl. She was born with a pair of wings. They were soft and beautiful, like bird's feathers. Her wings
were the color of snow, and turned golden when sunlight kissed the feathers.

But no one else had wings in her world. Her wings were not beautiful to the people in her world, they were ugly. They scared the people away from the girl. She was unique and alone.

One day, when she was flying, people of her world came and hurt her wings. She couldn't fly away, and she cried to herself, grieving her broken wings. A stranger heard her crying and kindly helped her up.

The girl was amazed to see that the stranger was a boy with wings. They were many colors, like butterfly wings. He had lived his entire life with wings, and had learned how to soar high in the sky without fearing the people of their world.

Kurt calls me every night now. It is always him that calls, almost on eight o' clock every time.

We talk about many things. At first I don't talk at all and he supplies the entire conversation, easily moving on whenever I don't reply or there is just static silence. In the beginning I am confused. I have no idea what he's trying to do. I'm frustrated by the thought he's trying to fix me.

I learn quirks about him that I never would have guessed- that he is terrified of spiders, he loves peanut butter toast in the morning, and enjoys swimming. He tells me his dreams of moving to New York when he graduates from McKinley, and becoming a part of Broadway. And he tells me his fears. He is afraid of falling in love, he misses his mother deeply, and fears there is nothing after death.

I tell Kurt things I have never spoken out loud before. I tell him that I am afraid of growing old. I confess that I fear turning into my parents, and that my children will hate me. I secretly love to read books. I have a fear of darkness. My father flirts with other women. I tell him all of these things.

I gaze up at my ceiling as he talks. The monsters are late tonight. The sun has set and the shadows have returned. But I see no crinkling eyes, no snapping teeth. The monsters never come when Kurt's voice is in my ear.

In late February, I meet his father for the first time.

Having finished The Great Gatsby, we've moved on to Native Son, by Richard Wright. So far it's a really good book. For class, Mr. O' Connors wants us to create a theme from the novel and draw an artistic interpretation of the theme. Kurt and I partnered up, and since I don't want to bring Kurt to the Museum again, he suggests we can go to his house. He knows it might be hard, because of the last time I was there, but I tell him I'll be fine.

When I ring the Hummel doorbell, it's not Kurt that answers, but his father. Kurt's father is middle-aged and balding, and wears a baseball cap with a logo stitched to the front. The first thing that strikes me is that he looks absolutely nothing like Kurt, and the other thing is how sad he looks. Not the had-a-bad-day sadness. The deep, tiring sadness that infects your very bones. The kind of sadness that inhibits you after you lose something very dear to you.

"Are you Quinn?" he asks roughly. He's looking at me curiously.

"Yes."

"It's nice to finally meet you. I'm Burt." He extends his calloused hand, and I shake his hand.

There seems to be permanent oil under his nails from the garage he works at, and his hands are rough, but he is careful not to grip my hand too tightly.

"Finally meet me?" I echo politely.

"Yeah. Kurt won't shut up about you sometimes." There's a smile hidden in Burt's features, but I can see the smile in his eyes, which twinkle slightly. It feels like I'm looking into Kurt's eyes, and it is in this striking similarity that Burt can claim Kurt as his own. "Hey, Kurt! You have a visitor."

I hear the basement door open, and feet across the floor. Kurt comes around the corner, smiling when he sees me. "Hi Quinn. I see you've met my dad?"

I nod, smiling.

"I hope he hasn't pulled out the baby pictures book yet," Kurt jokes, looking at his father with humor on his face. He's a little taller than his father, much more slender in pale, but right next to each-other I can see the similarity. I wonder if Burt looked anything like Kurt when he was younger, and in turn I wonder if Kurt will look anything like Burt when he is older.

"I'll show her those later," Burt retorts, chuckling.

Kurt shows me down to the basement. It's hard not to remember That Night as we descend into his world, but I try to push it from my mind. It's been getting easier recently, I've noticed. Easier to think about other things. Maybe one day I'll be able to move on.

We sprawl out on his floor and discuss Native Son for hours. After settling on a theme we get right to drawing. He brings out a big poster board from the closet and we draw in pencil first, then color in later. I'm surprised to see how talented he is at drawing.

"You never told me you're an artist."

He smirks. "I wouldn't call myself that."

When we finally finish, our fingers are splotched with colors from the markers and ink from the pens. We settle down in front of his television, feeling that we deserve a break. Kurt leans against the board of his bed, and I lean against the hard wood as well. We're quiet for awhile. I'm thoughtfully silent, not really focusing on the program we're watching.

I nudge his sneaker with mine. "Kurt?"

"Mmm?"

"Do you think we'll see each-other after high school?"

He senses there is something deeper in my voice. He sits up, flipping on the mute button. "Why do you ask?"

I have left so many things unsaid over the past several months. It's time to say exactly what I'm thinking.

"I just want us to always be friends. And I don't mean graduate and only talk at reunions. I mean- I always want to know you. Even when we're older."

Kurt's aqua blue ocean eyes are still. I imagine that they are the color of the eye of a storm. "Then we will," he says simply.

"We'll always be friends?"

"Yeah," he murmurs. I think back to the beginning of this school year, of the first time I heard Kurt's voice in Mr. O' Connors' class. How I was terrified that he remembered the night he let me sleep at his house. How we were strangers sharing a secret, unable to even look at each-other. And now here we are. So much has changed.

We lean against his bed again. But this time I feel warmth as his hand finds mine, and I let our fingers intertwine. I close my eyes, feeling the ice beginning to melt. I am the happiest I have been in a long time.

The ice is melting.

It's been a long and hard winter, but at long last Spring has poked out its warm head from the ground. March has arrived, and with it the world is slowly yet surely warming up. It is a very tedious process, and sometimes it feels as if nothing is happening.

But then there's a flicker of green somewhere. The trees are beginning to resemble healthy creatures once again, and not the skeletons they've been all winter. The cold grip winter has held on Lima is loosening. I imagine ice cracking far off in the distance.

I've never been more excited for spring. Kids at school can sense that spring is coming, too. The students are filled with ants, moving and laughing and itching to escape the cold. They are all so excited that they forget about me. There are less torments in the hallways now. My books stay firmly clasped in my hands. There are no red words awaiting me at my locker.

Even though I no longer go to lunch, I know that Rachel still sits there with Him. It makes my brain malfunction and stop thinking, all the fans whirring to a stop and all the bolts falling out of place. If I don't see Him, then I can continue breathing. I can reach deep inside my metal robot mouth and pull out the buttons that make me afraid.

I managed to steal a tall stack of blue slips from my Spanish teacher's desk, which excuse a student from class. They're magical little pieces of paper. Wave them in any teacher's face and they'll forget you were late, absent, mean, all of the above. That's how I got Kurt and I back
into the library. We are now there during lunch because a Mr. Smith believes we need to have more time reading during lunch.

Before, when I was a Real Girl, I rarely read. It was because I was a Pretty Cheerful Plastic Blonde Cheerleader who slaved hours away at Coach Sylvester's command. By the time those hours were served I barely had enough energy to take a shower and fall asleep. Now, as a Pretend Girl, I don't stop reading.

After discovering the haven of the library, I come in here often. I skip classes and just read books. During lunch I read. I've read dozens of books already this year. They keep my mind off of the World and keep me focused on the words written in tiny font across the pages. Books have always fascinated me. They're just thousands of words printed on pieces of paper that you look at. They shouldn't be interesting, but they are. You can create an entire world with just words. It's a different kind of power.

Kurt reads with me. Sometimes we'll read the same book. Other times we'll find different books and read quietly next to each-other. There's days when we talk about books; conversations mostly of Kurt talking about books and I quietly listen. He loves reading, too. He says his favorite book is To Kill a Mockingbird.

Mr. O' Connors gave me a list of books he thought I might enjoy. Most of them are classics, but there are some modern ones, too. I'm finishing one up by an author named Laurie Halse Anderson when a kid next to me drops a bunch of books. I automatically get up and help collect his books. They're all dictionaries, and I'm reaching for one that's fallen haphazardly open and pick it up. I'm about to close it when the definition next to my thumb leaps out at me from the page.

butterfly effect (n)
(Physics/General physics) the idea, used in chaos theory, that a very small
difference in the initial state of a physical state can make a significant
difference to the state at some later time

[from the theory that a butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world

might ultimately cause a hurricane in another part of the world].

I stare at that definition, the clockwork turning in my head. I close the dictionary and hand itback to the boy, before going back to my seat. I sit down, running a hand through my hair. It's grown a little bit since I cut it last August. It's almost down to my shoulders now. It feels good to have my hair again. It's like having a piece of myself back from the dead.

I go to the girl's bathroom, lock myself in a stall. I've spent so much time in these bathrooms over the past months, it almost feels like an extended part of my home. I know it's not sanitary and it's almost always cold/smelly, but I've been safe here. It's time to give back to these walls that have protected me for so long.

I take out a Sharpe that I found lying in the hallway this morning, like a little floating fish in a giant ocean. I rip off the cap, stick it between my teeth as I begin to draw.

The wall is blank, a piece of paper waiting for ink.

I start at the bottom. I create a wall, dividing the ground and the sky. There needs to be bushes, to start with. They're thick and curly next to the tall grass that sprouts towards the sky. I draw hundreds of flowers, some of them real some of them made in my imagination, all little black outlines traced onto the brick wall right next to the toilet.

Next I draw a tree. It is thick and sturdy. It's been through storms and wind and maybe even struck by lightning, but it still stands strong. I create its trunk first, ribbed and barked and there's even a hole where an owl peeks out. Then I draw its branches, strong arms reaching up to the white brick sky. I go back and draw in the leaves, thousands of little squiggles, blowing in the afternoon wind.

Around the tree is a tall fence. I carefully draw each picket for each piece of carved wood, paying attention to the chipped paint and the claw marks from squirrels running across it in the spring. The picture starts to come together. But I'm not quite finished.

There's statues spread among the flowerbeds. Their eyes are still but their mouths smile, as if grateful for the sunshine warming their stone backs. That makes me go upwards, reaching as high as I can go, to draw the sun high in the sky.

When I am finished, I take a step back. My Sharpe creation is almost perfect. There's flowers and flowerbeds and statues and grass and tulips and roses and thorny bushes and the sun shining down with wisps of clouds in the sky, and in the middle of the garden is a tree. It stands strong, looking out at me from its two dimensional spot on the bathroom wall and smiling.

My hands ache from all the drawing and twisting of my wrist, and my hands are bleeding ink from all the times the Sharpe has crashed against my fingers. But it's not quite done. I lean forward, wrist flicking one last time.

A butterfly flutters through the garden, just like it will in my real garden.

I smile and admire my work. I can almost feel the soft spring breeze, feel the sunshine on my back, see the last bit of frost melt. The smell of freshly cut grass and blossoming flowers overcomes me.

The seasons have changed.

A/N: When I was writing The Butterfly Effect, in my mind I kept imagining it as a movie. That inspired me to create teaser posters for this story, if it were to be made into a movie. I put the links to the pictures on my profile, and I'd love it if you took a look at them. I love how they turned out. As a side note, they work best if you pull them up on separate pages and look at them together. Cheers!