Page 6 of How Does It Feel?

The woman’s voice overlapped my worry.

“Okay, Mary, will do. Please keep me updated.”

I tapped the end button and tossed it onto the desk, not caring if it shattered into a million tiny pieces. I turned my head to stare at the new microscope. The glowing light and angelic sounds had receded and were now replaced with the anxiety of how much I’d actually spent when I should have been saving my money to follow the butterflies.

I wasn’t getting the position, and I knew it.

I swiveled my chair around, no longer excited about my new toy. Little squeaks greeted me as I watched Dorothy weakly flap out of the metal playpen and trounce into the open doorway of my small office. I wheeled over to her and stroked her back feathers.

“Well, look at you, miss two-winged hot shot,” I sang to the sweet bird.

Cecelia paused in the hallway to lean against the metal of the tiny office door frame.

“Is it broken?” she asked, nodding to the microscope sitting idly on the cluttered desk.

She crossed her wrinkly arms over her chest. The action made me realize how saggy her boobs really were. She was in her late sixties with a broad swollen upper body and thin legs covered in dark blue scrubs that made the gray of her eyes pop. Cecelia peered over her large framed glasses at me, reminding me of a mother watching her children pout. She brushed her grayish-yellow hair out of her face and back into the fluffy mullet it had fled from.

“No, well, I don’t know. I didn’t finish opening it. The butterfly lady with the group in Mexico just called.” I tucked my knees to my chest in the chair to get more comfortable as Dorothy pecked her way around the various cages and stacks of boxes in my office. It was a very small space filled with red and yellow speckled floors, white cement paver walls, and one shrouded window that looked over the woods and parking lot to the side.

My coworker shifted at my mention of the butterfly lady like she was secretly excited too.

“Well? What did she say, Callie? Are you going to Mexico and leaving us?” Her gray eyes peered over her glasses with the focus of a hawk.

“I don’t think so.” Saying the words out loud made them real, and I instantly wished I could vacuum them back in. “She didn’t say no, but . . . I guess the other scientists are concerned I’ll abandon the project halfway through to get married and have babies. Apparently, I haven’t lived enough at twenty-nine years old.”

I couldn’t look her in the face. I was too afraid of seeing someone else that agreed. I just wanted someone on my side for once. Why did everything feel so hard?

“Well, good,” she bit out defiantly.

“Good?” I said, a little surprised. “I have spent my entire life devoted to the saving of wildlife, and I’m about to get refused my dream position of saving more wildlife because I have done just that,” I huffed. “Instead of going out on dates, I stayed up all night researching. Instead of spending my weekends with my family, I propagated milkweed for the monarch butterflies, and now I’m going to miss out on my dream because I was too dedicated!?” I stood up, nearly screaming. Things were falling apart as quickly as they had come together.

“Oh, so what? I, for one, am glad they don’t want you. I’m tired of you thinkin’ you need to go all the way to Mexico to make a difference. Look at what you’ve done here in this hole in the wall. You’ve done more for the wildlife around here than all of us combined, and I am glad you’re not leaving.” She finished her speech with an actual harrumph.

She meant well, and to a normal person, that would have warmed me, but sometimes it was like I could only feel with half a heart.

I had a plan, and I wouldn’t let anything stop me from achieving my goals. The chance to follow a private society filled with special details of where the winged butterflies and moths migrated was a part of that.

“Well, she didn’t say no yet. She said she was going to talk to them, but I could hear it in her voice. Maybe it’s a good thing I’m staying,” I said in an attempt to comfort both of us.

“Yea, fuck ’em!” Cecelia shouted, making me jump.

“Geez, Cecelia!” I blushed at her aggressive swearing.

Call me old-fashioned, but Callie Peterson certainly wasn’t the type to use such crass language. I was a scientist, not a sailor. Was that childish? Either way, it made me feel like I was hearing something I shouldn’t be.

“You don’t need ’em. Save our damn butterflies. Show ’em what they’re missing.” The crass woman turned and walked back into the hallway, smiling.

“You’re right! I don’t need them!” I said, feeling a little more resilient.

I had moved here to follow the luna moth and hadn’t seen one yet. Maybe this was a sign to focus on what was in my own backyard.

I rested my hands on my khaki-clad hips and turned to look at the wandering turkey and curious teen bunnies that watched me.

“I’ll show them! I’ll save our own damn—” I coughed and mumbled like a child. I couldn’t swear. “Our own darn butterflies! Well, moths, to be precise but—” I was quickly losing steam, and I turned to finish unwrapping my new microscope. “I am going to find and save the luna when they come to Willow Springs.”

Chapter 4

Honey Holes and Hallucinations