"So what was she like as a first-grade teacher?"
Hayley tells how she needed glasses, and Mrs. Scarborough was oblivious, and Raquel helped her out. "I just don't understand it," she ends. "I would have thought you and Raquel would have been great friends."
"I don't understand it, either," I say, because I've been thinking the same thing. I don't know why we didn't click except that, as Hayley said, she was shy. And I'm not exactly outgoing, either.
"Oh no, oh no, oh no," Hayley suddenly gasps. "She's opening her bag."
But Mrs. Scarborough isn't bringing out the dreaded Miss Hap. She's bringing out what looks like a cookie tin.
"Snacks?" Hayley asks incredulously.
Mrs. Scarborough demands everyone's attention. She summons us to come closer and, in fascinated horror, Hayley and I comply.
Holding on to my self-destructing skirt so that it doesn't migrate to the South Pole, I whisper to Hayley, "You don't happen to have a safety pin, do you?"
Not only does she have one in that well-stocked purse of hers, but she knows exactly where it is and has it in my hand in under five seconds.
I have just finished securing myself when Mrs. Scarborough announces, "I have a little project here, to help commemorate and memorialize Raquel's life."
Hayley makes an exaggerated disappointed expression and mouths the words, Not snacks.
As she apparently was in first grade, Mrs. Scarborough is yet again oblivious to Hayley, and she says, "I have had my middle school students construct these paper butterflies for us tonight." She opens the tin and plucks out a parchment butterfly that is about the size of my hand. "What I'd like each of you to do is to take a butterfly..."—she starts handing them out, and I see that they are in a variety of colors, besides the off-white of regular parchment, also pink and pale blue and green and fuschia and turquoise—"and take a pen..."—she has brought a multitude of those, too—"and I want you to write a message to Raquel."
Hayley quirks an eyebrow, and several others in the crowd are just as confused and start asking questions.
Mrs. Scarborough explains, "You can tell her something you maybe didn't have a chance to say to her, or you can maybe tell her something you liked about her, or something you wish you could say to her, something to celebrate her life."
"Are you going to read these out loud?" Ned Freeman asks.
"No," Mrs. Scarborough answers in a tone Ned probably hasn't heard since he was in first grade, "these are messages for Raquel. We'll write to her, then we'll collect the butterflies in this fireproof tin, then we'll step outside, where I've made arrangements with the staff here, and we'll burn the papers, so that the smoke—and our good wishes for Raquel—goes up into the night sky."
Somehow or other I have ended up standing next to Mrs. Bellanca, who mutters, "Talk about your mixed metaphors," and I suddenly find myself liking her a whole lot better than I ever have before.
Despite Mrs. Bellanca's negativism, most of the people seem to think the butterflies are a fine idea.
Hayley snags two of them, and I think that it's because—as Raquel's best friend—she has a lot to say. But after writing a bit, she hands one to me, and I see that what she's written on that one is her phone number and a Web URL, which I take to be the Sword of Mawrth gaming site.
"Just in case you're interested," she says.
And—just in case I am—I put the butterfly in my purse.
* * *
Mrs. Scarborough's Butterfly Project
* * *
Vivian Vande Velde, Remembering Raquel
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