Butterfly

Chapter Seven: Painted Lady

As Sophia walked back up to her room, she thought about who could have told her mum. Who would? All she knew was it most certainly wasn't Ashleigh, because he was dead. Lauren surely wouldn't have told her.

Maybe it was in the newspaper?
Now don't get carried away, Sophia told herself. Of course it wasn't in the newspaper.

Bloody hell.
Lord save me from this stupid muddle, she thought.

That Saturday, Sophia went over to Lauren's house.

"My brother is in court." Lauren said.

"I know, good, right?"

Lauren sighed. "Yeah, but sort of bad too. If he does get put in gaol, I'll never be able to see him again."

"Why not?"

"Because he'll never forgive me for this stupid thing."

"Come on, Lauren."

"He won't! If your own sister sent you to gaol, would you forgive her?"

Sophia thought a minute. "Well, I might. But I don't think Sam would. He has too much... Hate. He hates everyone!"

"Yeah... He does hate everyone actually. Huh."

As Sophia sat in her room after she got home from Lauren's house, she thought about Sam. Surely if you hate someone enough, it can become infectious and the person you hate starts to hate not only themselves, but others as well. Maybe Sam was so full of hate because everyone else hated him.

Well, Sophia wasn't about to start being nice to Sam after what he did. Horrible.

Sophia woke up on Sunday with sun in her mind. Even though it was only half past seven in the morning she decided to go and make herself some breakfast.

Dragging herself out of bed, she wandered over to the bedroom window and threw the curtains open. There was a beautiful butterfly with blood red wings, sitting on her window. She sighed. It fluttered its pretty scarlet wings, but didn't fly away. It still sat there on the window. That butterfly will never know how beautiful it is, thought Sophia. It can't see its wings. At this thought, she decided to draw the butterfly. She was very good at drawing. She got a piece of paper and a pencil and started to carefully mark out the outline of the beautiful butterfly. She noticed the pattern on its wings. Sophia started to understand how the shape of the butterfly went, how the curve of its wings were. She couldn't believe how the butterfly just sat on the window, letting her draw it. She drew and drew, all morning, until finally, her picture was finished. The butterfly simply sat there and sat there, it didn't move, or try to move. It just sat. When Sophia had finished drawing, she pinned it up on her door. She turned to the window, and the beautiful butterfly was gone.