“So your sister was on the Titanic? Hard to believe, Skye.”
My best friend, Tammy, sighs and puts 1912 down. We’re sitting on a bench by the bus stop, but whenever a bus tries to pick us up, we just wave them ahead.
“I’m not lying, Tammy. There’s this thing,” I point to where Beth explained the glass butterfly, “called the glass butterfly, and it made her immortal. Her own words, see?”
Tammy reads the entry. “She was lying, Skye. Really.”
“We both knew Beth, Tammy. And we both knew she never lied about anything. Why now? And why was my mother so protective of it?”
“I don’t know, Skye! But I’m not gonna believe that your dead seventeen-year-old sister died at one-hundred years old.”
“She might have been older.”
Tammy sighs and pulls a piece of her blonde hair out of her face. “Whatever. I have to go. Babysitting.”
Quickly, she walks away. “LIAR!” I call. But after she leaves, I pull out another journal of Beth’s--her most current edition--from my backpack.
The last entry. That’s what I’m searching for. The diary ends two days before her death.
October 29
It’s time for the truth.
And what truth, exactly?
Well, I have the face of a young, seventeen-year-old
girl. But in reality, I’m over a hundred.
Over two hundred.
Let me come out with this--I’m four hundred sixty nine years old.
Four hundred seventy in two days.
I need to die.
But why wait another sixty years without the glass butterfly? Why?
Suicide.
Good-bye.
~ Beth Mae Jenson
Four hundred seventy years old, exactly.
The rest of the pages are blank.
That night, I return the most current journal back to its place in the box. I also return the 1912 journal. I choose a specific year--2000. The year of my birth.
January 1
Life with the Jenson’s is going great. The mother, Susan, is reading my past journals and asking me questions about the Titanic. It’s hard to believe it was only 88 years ago. It seems like forever.
I sport the face of a twelve-year-old, with the help of the glass butterfly. Since my birth, I have only grown once, my first seventeen years. Then my own mother handed me the glass butterfly.
I love the fact that I no longer have my “monthly gift”. I love the fact that elementary school is so darn easy.
And I love the fact that I have parents again.
I smile and skip to a few months before the day of my birth.
August 8
Aah, summer is over.
YOU ARE READING
The Glass Butterfly
AdventureSkye Jenson's sister, Beth, committed suicide. Beth left behind her journals. And she left behind an antique glass butterfly. As Skye begins to read the journals, she discovers her sister's secret life as Beth herself traveled aboard the Titanic, en...
