The Thirteenth Butterfly

Everybody has wishes. Some people can keep wishes inside forever. I almost never could hold a wish inside while waiting for it to come true. Now that I’d wished my biggest wish ever, I was determined to keep it secret. Except, I did whisper it to the one person I could trust more than anyone, my best friend Marolinda. I spilled the beans to Marolinda right in the middle of playing who could sit at the bottom of the pool the longest.

“I’ve got a secret wish,” I said, bobbing up and down in between round two and round three.

Marolinda joined in the bobbing, jumping in perfect rhythm with my bounces, but a little higher, because she was taller than me. “You can tell me,” she encouraged.

“I know,” I said, jumping faster. “But let’s go under first. Count of three…”

We bobbed and chanted in unison, “One, two, and three!” I took a giant gulp and submerged.

Marolinda sat on the pool bottom with her legs crossed, her fingers fluttering just the teensiest bit to hold her body under. Two small streams of bubbles trailed up from her nostrils, and her face was tranquil, even underwater. Marolinda had this magic power to be calm, even with a secret swimming in her belly. Inside me, my wish did back-flips. My arms were flailing to keep my bottom on the bottom, and I had to squeeze my lips tight like they were super-glued so the air wouldn’t burst out of my bulging cheeks.

Then, in one sudden “blurp” I launched myself like a rocket to the surface for air. “You win!” I said between gasps.

Marolinda did a bobbing ballerina twirl. “Now Lizzie, you have to tell,” she said.

I swam to the pool side and she followed. We both dipped our heads back to smooth our hair. It was near closing time on a Sunday night at the Swim-Plex, so there were only a few small kids and their parents playing in the shallow end. I watched as a little boy did his first belly-flop. “Ouch, that had to hurt,” I thought.

“This is my biggest secret, ever,” I said to Marolinda. “Ever.”

“You can trust me, Lizzie,” she said, turning her head down and giving me the serious knit-eyebrow look.

And I did. But suddenly, I couldn’t find the words to explain it…not all of it, anyway. “I think I might…I don’t know for sure…and maybe it won’t happen…”

Marolinda narrowed her eyebrows again and squinted at me, “Squeeze it out, girlfriend. Just say it.”

“I might get invited to the Wig-Ma Tea Party. Maybe.”

I heard Marolinda suck in a breath. Then she said in an overly loud voice, “Wow. The Wig-Ma Tea Party. Did Lucille tell you that?”

“Sssh!” I looked around to be sure the lifeguard hadn’t heard. Evidently Marolinda had already forgotten this was a secret. “No! No, Lucille didn’t say anything.”

“Then what makes you think you might get picked?”

“It’s just a feeling, like a weird kind of shivery, excited tingle I get when I think about it. It’s almost like I’m dreaming it. Have you ever felt that way?” I asked.

“Sure. Sometimes I know I’m going to get picked for a certain solo. Once I glanced at the list of songs that Ms. Hammond put together…like for last year’s recital…and I knew right away which song was mine. I heard the song in my mind and saw myself singing it.”

Marolinda ducked under the water again, popping back up to re-smooth her hair. There were no boys here tonight to impress, but still, Marolinda could be picky about her hair. She added, “Sometimes I get tingles, too. Like when I won the all-around award at the aqua sports banquet last year. I got the tingles right before the coach announced my name, and I knew.”

I didn’t feel as certain as Marolinda seemed to be. Marolinda was truly the ultimate in confident. In fact, she was so confident that she could be casual about things. My mom called her down-to-earth. For example, Marolinda hadn’t made a big deal about winning the award, and that’s one reason we got along. She was a person you really wanted to win.

“I wonder if it’s only a wish, though,” I suggested. “Maybe I feel jumpy about it because I want it SOOOOO bad. I wish you could wish something hard enough to make it come true.”

“You know what I’m wishing right now?” Marolinda asked.

I nodded. I did know. The Swim-Plex had the best rainbow icicles in town.  These icicles were an experience all to themselves, because they took our tongues “over the rainbow” while we walked home sucking them. We always raced to see who could advance their tongue to the next color the fastest:  first, cherry, then orange, lemon, kiwi, blue raspberry, blueberry and finally juicy grape.  I had a method of getting a little jump-start.  I would bite off the red cherry top of the icicle. Sometimes biting into the cold ice would give me a little “shizzle,” a shiver that made my body shake.

Marolinda pulled herself easily over the edge and squeezed the