My Butterfly

Lang,” I said, smiling and acting as if I had just now put her face with her name.
    “Yes,” she replied, slowly nodding her head.
    I watched as a coy smile fought its way to her face.
    “You remember me?” I asked, hesitantly.
    I was really hoping she only remembered the good parts—if there were any of those for her.
    I noticed her eyes fall on my hand, still holding hers, but she was smiling, so I kept a tight grip on her hand. It was soft and girl-like.
    “Yes,” she said. “How could I forget?”
    “The hardware store?” I asked.
    She nodded her head.
    “We used to play on those toy tractors outside, and all the old people would give us candy as they walked in,” she said.
    The corners of my mouth started to lift as I watched the green in her eyes light up.
    “That’s right,” I said, starting to laugh.
    But just then, her smile faded slightly.
    “You would never let me ride the big tractor,” she said, sharply pulling her hand back from mine.
    My laughter stopped. And then what was left of her smile turned into a smirk.
    Ugh. She remembered.
    “If I remember right, you said that it was a boy’s tractor and that girls weren’t supposed to drive tractors anyway,” she said. “And then, when we were nine, you…”
    “Okay, okay,” I said, stopping her. “That’s probably enough memories for one day. The good news is that the big tractor is still up at my grandpa’s store, and you can ride it anytime you want. Oh, and best of all, I have finally come to the ultimate conclusion that girls really don’t have cooties.”
    “Really?” she asked, giving me a sarcastic look.
    “Really,” I said, leaning against the row of lockers. “It was all a myth. Turns out, it was just some scorned second-grader who didn’t get a Valentine from his secret crush one year.”
    She glared at me with narrowed eyes.
    “And then after that,” I continued, without missing a beat, “the kid decided to ruin love for all kids from then on, declaring every girl was stricken with the cootie disease.”
    She laughed once and then went back to fidgeting with something inside her locker.
    I smiled, silently hoping that getting her to laugh was enough to erase the memories I had accidentally resurrected.
    She turned back toward me a second later and gave me a soft side-smile.
    “I have to get to class,” she said, pulling a book from her locker and then slamming the door.
    The door didn’t close on the first try, so I watched her put her weight into her next try.
    “Can I walk you there?” I asked, once she had successfully shut the locker door. “What’s your first one?”
    She shot me a suspicious look again and then pulled out from the back pocket of her tight-fitting jeans a small piece of paper with a set of classes and times printed on it.
    “Umm, history,” she said, stuffing the piece of paper back into her jeans. “It’s just down the hall. I think I can make it.”
    “I think doesn’t sound very confident,” I said. “I should walk you, just to make sure you’re not late for your first high school class. This isn’t kindergarten-through-ninth-grade anymore.”
    I smiled a confident smile. She, on the other hand, stared at me with two impatient eyes, then turned and started walking in the opposite direction.
    I shuffled to catch up to her.
    “So, I really did recognize you,” I said.
    She looked a little irritated, but she smiled anyway.
    “You do look a little different from the last time I saw you, though,” I said.
    She looked me up and down once.
    “So do you,” she said.
    “It’s the muscles, isn’t it?” I asked.
    I watched her eyes follow a path from my shoes to my eyes again.
    “What muscles?” she asked.
    I grabbed my heart and pretended to shrink in pain.
    “Ouch,” I said.
    She smiled a satisfied grin.
    “Don’t you have to be getting to your own class?” she asked. “What’s your first one anyway?”
    “Oh, I’m not worried about that,” I said. “The teacher’s my neighbor. Plus, I already know my way around a kitchen.”
    She stopped in the history classroom’s doorway and faced me.
    “Kitchen?” she repeated.
    I cringed on the inside, and my smile faded.
    “Did I say kitchen?” I asked. “I meant woodshop.”
    “No, you didn’t,” she said, accusingly.
    “Okay, look, I promise you I can build a coffee table, but home economics is a guaranteed A ,” I said. “I couldn’t pass it up.”
    She rolled her eyes.
    “Quite the scholar,”