Metamorphosis (short story by me)

I stand with a sick feeling worming around in my stomach. The corner of folded notebook paper digs into the palm of my hand. Deep breaths. I glance back at the gaggle of whispering girls behind me. They nod reassuringly. That is all I need to summon up the courage to pick my way across the room to the boy’s seat. He is still in the bathroom. Exhale of relief. My second-grade fingers inch the small square of paper into the gaping opening of his desk. As my hand disappears inside I imagine that the desk is a monster with a wide black mouth and sharp pencil teeth. I drop the note like it is on fire and yank my hand out of the boy’s desk, but the monster is gone. Now it is just me, a caterpillar on the brink of metamorphosis.

I hurry back to my seat and sit in my warm plastic chair, flustered and fluttering. An odd mix of pride and guilt spins its threads around my gut. I assure myself silently that it’s okay. It was just a joke - and he deserved it, right? Because he is the boy with the worn and torn clothes and the pasty skin and the thick southern drawl - the boy who smells of gasoline and body odor. He is the boy who all your friends warned you about - if he touched you they’d joke that you’d have to take a three-hour shower. He is the rail-thin boy who came to school with a black eye last year and didn’t even get an “Are you okay?” from anyone but the teacher. He is That Boy.

And I am that girl. The girl who sits putting the finishing touches on my paper cutout butterfly - a smidge of glitter here, a bit more color there - as the boy opens the square of wrinkled notebook paper. As he puts his head in his hands, the same hands that the class cowers away from, and cries. And all the while, I sit in my chrysalis, warmly embraced by the chatter of my friends. I don’t notice the tears running wet tracks down the boy’s grubby arms. My deed is done. In fact, I have already pushed the note out of my head - wrapped it up thick and hung it from a branch far in the back of my mind. That way the words, the cruel words scrawled in clumsy elementary school handwriting, will quit echoing in my head:

Your buterflly is ugly. -Anonamus.

But as I shove the thought away, the teacher notices the boy’s silent tears. She rushes to his side, offering him a tissue and asking the question, the one nobody ever asks. No one but the teacher.

“Are you okay?”

And then another rare question; “What happened?”

I look up just in time to see him scoot the tear-stained note across the desk. The cocoon in my head bursts open. There is no stopping the metamorphosis now.

Later in the day, the other students have pinned their paper butterflies to the wall and gone home. But I remain, my wings wet and paper-thin, my eyes filled with dread. The teacher has called my parents. They are coming to talk about the note. The guilt has come back to squirm in my stomach. I wish with all of my might that I had never let the desk monster gobble up that awful piece of paper and spit it out in the boy’s lap. Better yet, I wish I’d never written it in the first place. And the worst part is, I don’t wish it because I regret having hurt the boy. I wish I could go back and tear up the note into tiny pieces because I cannot stand to look my parents in the eye as they enter the room. The disappointment that is reflected there is too much for me to bear. I feel so small, like a quivering insect cupped in stern hands that could crush me at any moment.

I know that I deserve to be there. I am the reason the boy left school early with tear stains like riverbeds carved down his pale cheeks. I feel the guilt well up behind my eyes, turning them iridescent and making me see double. Big fat tears begin to spill from my eyes like dew drops. My mother enters the room and sits awkwardly in a child-sized plastic chair next to me, rubbing my back and murmuring words of reassurance. This only makes the dew drops fall faster because I know that I do not deserve my mother’s comfort. I feel transparent; freshly hatched and completely vulnerable.

The adults talk in stern yet understanding voices. They ask why I did it. I shrug my spindly shoulders. My voice comes out quiet and whispery. “Because… because I thought it wouldn’t matter. I didn’t think it would make him cry. It was supposed to be a joke.”

As the words leave my mouth I realize that the reason I thought it wouldn’t matter - the reason I didn’t expect the boy to shed tears over my silly corner of paper - was that I hadn’t considered him a person. To me, and everyone else in the class, he was just That Boy. Someone only there to be looked down on. Not a peer; not even a human being with feelings. And as I feel this realization blossom inside of me, I know that I must change. I must never let myself forget a person’s humanity again. The adults finish conversing and decide that I am to write a letter of apology. I accept my punishment with dry eyes and a high head, because this time I know that I will mean every word.



After an uncomfortable car ride home, a good cry, a warm spaghetti dinner and a good night’s sleep, I find myself standing again in the corner of the classroom as the morning sun shoots its soft rays through the blinds. And yet again, I hold a corner of paper tightly in my small fist. I look behind me, but nobody is there to cheer me on as I walk steadily across the room. I know I am alone, but I do not care. And as I slide the letter into the mouth of the boy’s desk, my wings fan out, beautiful and strong behind me.