“My brother’s. From when he did the project last year. He said if we don’t nd everything on the list we can use his.” She still hadn’t looked me in the eye, though I was searching her heart-shaped face for clues to whether she still hated me or not. “That’s nice of him.” I whispered. “Well, he has a crush on you. It’s because you wear those v-neck shirts all the time. You can see right down them, you know.” And haunting her lips then, hesitant and slow, was her trademark smirk. My heart, oh my heart burst into a thousand bright buttery wings at that smirk. “I know you can see right down them, why else do you think I wear them so much?” Then came my own smile, lopsided and gap-toothed. I placed my hand on her knee and said we should start getting more insect specimens. My heart sank back down again, though, when I realized I had forgotten the milk jug, cotton balls, and polish remover that I promised to bring to the forest that day. We needed that strange assortment of household objects to humanely kill the insects that we found. We couldn’t crush them over the head or poke them with a stick; that would ruin the perfect specimens that we needed to get A’s. I hated having to tell her that I had aked out; I thought our friendship wasn’t cement again yet, that it was still vapor. Luckily her smirk reappeared and she jumped up, rustling the dead leaves beneath her. “Let’s just go to your house and get them. I haven’t seen your mom all summer, either.” When we returned to the forest it was quiet; even the cicadas had stilled their roars. The sun was barely breaking through the tree canopy, and together we tiptoed over mud and broken glass to nd the most neon green of the caterpillars and the most golden brown grasshopper. As we smothered the bugs (we did this by covering them with the milk jugs that were cloudy with ammonia fumes from the nail polish remover on cotton), we sang lullabies and leaned in close to one another. At one point, while I was running after a junebug, I looked over at my best friend. She held a dying buttery in her long hands, and was making little utter movements as if her ngers were wings. The buttery faded away, its wings slowly stilling.
(For Jenny)