I Can Fly, but Only at Night

by Tristan Moorhen

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Chapter 10

Do you like butterflies? I do. One time, a bad storm swept through the mountains of Mexico. Monarch butterflies were spending the winter there. The temperature dropped really fast. Freezing rain caused the death of 500 million butterflies. There were piles of dead butterflies three feet high where they fell from the trees.

 

The funeral was two days later on Tuesday morning at eleven o'clock. I was handed my backpack, taken out of school, and driven to Glenwood Cemetery by my principal, Mr. Nicodemas. Mr. Nicodemas was a nice old man, even if he was a little creepy. "Howard Hughes is buried here and so are his parents." Saying things like this only added to his creepiness. He was tall, but hunched over from being old. He had thick, kinky gray hair and a big scary mustache. His mustache looked like it grew out from his nose, instead of his lip. It moved up and down when he talked. Since he was so tall, everyone usually looked up at it. It was hard to talk with him and not laugh. And, since I was way shorter than he was, I was looking straight up at the wiggly caterpillar. On any other day, I would have laughed. But, no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't laugh.

 

No one really knew how old he was. There were all sorts of rumors about him being over a hundred years old. He was one of the original teachers when the school was built. Mama said he taught her when she was in school. And she said he was old then, too!

 

"Mama..."

 

Suddenly, I was brought back from these silly thoughts to the reason Mr. Nicodemas was driving me in the first place. Since, I wasn't paying attention to where we were, the sight of grave markers caught me off guard. I hadn't prepared myself for that, so it hurt worse.

 

"There she is. There's your mother!" He said it like he was proud of finding the right spot in the huge maze of a cemetery. He was so animated in the way he said, "There she is!", that it made me think Mama was still alive. I quickly looked up as if waking from a horrible dream that was now over. Of course, it wasn't all over. It was only just beginning. It was actually the kind of thing that is too terrible to be a dream. Even your mind can't make up something as bad as death. No, something that bad has to be real.

 

Your sun shall never set; the moon shall not go down- for the Lord will be your everlasting light; your days of mourning will end.

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Posted 05/02/2008