Page 11 of Butterfly

“I’m not fragile, remember?” I said, my voice breathy, shaking.

“No,” he mused, his fingers trailing over my ear. I had to freeze my body to stone to keep from leaning into his touch.

Stepbrother, stepbrother, stepbrother,I chanted to myself silently.Evil, evil, evil.

“This means war, butterfly. I hope you’re ready.”

With that, he released my hair and prowled out the door, closing it quietly behind him.

I collapsed onto the bed, suddenly exhausted.

What had I done?

I got pulledover the next day by cops, who claimed they had a warrant to search my car for drugs—which theyfound.If it weren’t for Paul’s attorneys—and god, wasthatan embarrassing phone call—I would’ve spent the night in jail.

When Paul asked how it happened, I told him it was a silly prank from high school friends.

“Some kind of prank,” he remarked, his eyes seeing too much. “Leslie, if there’s anything you want to tell me?—”

But it wasn’t only about my mother’s happiness, not anymore. Tattling on Mason would be the same thing as forfeiting, and I refused to lose this war. Even though my stepbrother was trying to ruin my life.

Instead, I sent an anonymous email to Harvard saying that he had cheated on his AP exams. They didn’t kick him out—they wouldn’t, when Paul had made such an extravagant donation—but it was sure to put him on shaky footing when he started there.

I heard them arguing in Paul’s office, after. I heard the words “absolute disappointment” and “what would your mother think?”

After, Mason slammed out the door, catching me on the top of the stairs.

He shook his head at me, his face grim—and haunted in a way that almost made me regret what I was doing. But I couldn’t stop—and neither could he.

We continued to one up each other throughout the summer, as the tension between us tightened—right under our parents’ noses. I would be lying if I said that trying to bring him down didn’t take over my entire life. See, having a nemesis is like drinking a vat of coffee on a day you’ve had no sleep—you feel shaky and tingly all over, like you can conquer the world, but you also want to cry, and time passes by in a blur while you behave without any sense of reality or consequence.

And sometimes it makes you feel more alive than anything ever has.

I didn’t know this at the time, however. Or if I did, I denied it to myself. All I knew was that at some point, this had to stop.

I was in the kitchen one morning when I expressed this to him.

“We need to call a truce, Mason.”

“Why, butterfly?” he said, smirking. His eyes were turquoise with mockery. “We’re having so much fun.”

I glared. “If we continue this way, someone’s going to get killed. What’s your endgame here, anyway? To get me to leave?There’s only six more weeks left of summer before we both head off to school—I’d love it if I could have some peace.”

He shook his head.

“Not going to happen.”

Why did that fill me with a fizzy, buoyant feeling?

“Then I’m telling Paul everything.”

He glared, then sighed.

“Fine. Truce.”

I stared at him, untrusting.

“You mean that?” I asked.

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