By Skyelar Wiedrich

I hate butterflies. All of ‘em, especially those beautiful, shiny ones that are blue and catch the light like stained glass. I hate the way the wind carries them, so effortless and smooth; as if mother Earth breathed life into the world just to lift them along. I hate when people say that a flap of a butterfly’s wings could cause a typhoon, that some tiny little action’s got the potential to domino a drastic chain of world-changing events. If that were true, my girl would still be alive and dancing. She’d be swaying side to side in some short dress, complaining about how it rides up her thighs too far when she moves her hips. She’d be flashing a smile at any man that passes her on the street, spraying citrus body spray up and down her shoulders. She’d be alive. 

But no matter how I change the past, she stays dead — lifeless in some box. No matter how many times I slip on this silver dress and go back, no matter how I screw up the timeline, she always manages to get herself killed. I’ve seen her die a hundred times over, and it never hurts less, knowing that when I peel the dress off my sweaty skin I’ll be back in the present still without her. 

Icari was the only thing I ever wanted. When we were real little — ten-years-old and still rolling worms from the pavement to the grass — she put a slick hand on my shoulder and said some magic words: you’re my friend now, got me? And who was I to argue with a shiny girl like that? Seven years later she’d use some magic words on me again, bent in the dark starlight of her bedroom, knees pressed together as she leaned down to paint my bitten nails. When she’d said tonight? with her warm hand on my wrist, eyes locked on mine like a flame to a fuse, there was no way I was saying anything other than fuck yes. 

Icari and I were too young to be anywhere scandalous, but especially too young to be in that bar. We were seventeen and slid past the bouncer like water through some cracks. Icari had that superpower over men, over me. She would bat her big eyelashes and smile her big, white smile and suddenly she was the only girl in the world — she didn’t need no ID, no money. Just a short dress and those dark brown eyes that crinkled closed when she smiled. 

The bar was dark and purple and packed like a sardine tin. We were shoulder to shoulder with sweaty bodies, all of ‘em squirming to the sounds of something stupid and so painfully 2001. The first time I lived through this night I was a little scared, surrounded by drunk adults — adults who didn’t know my only slanderous experience was sipping a stolen can of beer. I prolly looked like a fawn caught in the headlights of a semi-truck, but, on that first night — before she died, before the dress and the time travel — Icari whipped her head around and grabbed my wrist and danced us through the schools of people. I remember myself staring into her shoulder blades as she dragged me to safety, noticing every little thing she had going on. Her dress was so tight and so orange, leaving little indents in her brown skin, covered seam to seam in sequins that shed light like the sun. And I had on this flowy silver number, some a-line party dress that glittered in all her little patches of light. I’d grow to hate the thing, feel it choking me each time I put it on and went back to this moment. But that first night, I felt beautiful just standing near her.

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She danced like a phoenix, the beat of the music her rebirth, moving through walls of people without flinching. She was good that way, smooth through any situation. Even when my breath would catch, my body would freeze, she’d just keep moving through the mess. Especially in places like this sleazy bar — she knew any business that sold booze like the back of her hand. 

She found us a pocket of space by the bartender. Glass bottles glittered up and down the back wall, catching the purple-pink strobe lights like kaleidoscopes. The bartender was preoccupied with some lady slumped over the counter, shitfaced. 

I leaned myself against one of the tall, leather bar stools, looking between the wriggling crowd and Icari’s shiny face, the sheer noise of the whole place creeping into my skull like spiders. My head was pounding, throat drying out like a jellyfish caught on sand. Icari must’ve been studying my scrunched up face, ‘cause she leaned into me, just inches from my nose, and took my hands in hers. Her touch felt so good that it hurt. Like little spikes in my chest, pinpricks where the blush rose in my cheeks. 

I’ve lived this next part a thousand times. No matter how I change the story, these words always leave her damn mouth and destroy me. 

“Marleni,” she says, and her voice sounds like cold raindrops on a roof. She’s silent for a second, looking me up and down, taking in the silver-white sparkles all over my skin. “This dress—” her grip on my hands tightens, and she’s looking into my eyes so intensely it could light me on fire, “—is so gorgeous on you. You look like the moon.” 

She was so close that I thought of kissing her. On the original night I held myself back, knowing she’d pull away from me, eyebrows furrowed. 

But, in some of the thousands of other timelines after that first one, I do kiss her. I lean forward and close that tiny inch of space between us, feeling my whole body ignite, senses engulfed by her touch. Her eyes always widen a little as she pulls herself away and — when I open up my eyes — I’m met with this look. A look coated so thickly in pity and disgust that I just wanna scratch all my skin off and melt into nothing. 

It’s never a good kiss. No version of Icari likes to kiss me. No version of Icari kisses girls. 

I don’t kiss her. She tells me I look like the moon, and I feel wonderful but don’t dare move any closer. My body relaxes automatically with her so close to me, stilled by her gravity like always, and when she can tell I’m not losing my mind anymore, she lets go of my hands. I watch her turn and glance around the bar, soaking in the lights, checking out the people glittering beneath them. She’s got her eyes on some guy against the wall, an iced drink slowly melting in his hands. Different timelines mean different guys, all of ‘em awkward and wallflower-y — easy targets for drinks. But I’ll never forget the guy from the first night: tall, strong, dark red streaks through long, curly hair. 

“Wait right here,” she says, “I’ll get us some alcohol.” She brushes locs behind her ear and walks over to him, hips swinging, smile wide. He doesn’t stand a chance. She’ll smile and blink and laugh and he’ll be all over her, out some $60 on drinks for the two of us.

3 

I remember watching her from across the bar, their conversation inaudible. I expected her to flirt with him, to brush his shoulder, lean against him. Icari’s had lots of boyfriends, and I’ve gotten good at not reacting, hiding the fact that I’d give anything to be in their place. So I expected the little touches; just to get across the fact that she wants a couple shots or some fruity little cocktail. I didn’t expect the arm around her back, the spin and dip, her laughter as he danced with her. The bar was bumping some ridiculous dubstep but they were ballroom dancing like it was something classical. Eyes all big and saucer-y, smiles wide and soft. 

My throat got all dry again, and I felt like I was choking on air. I could feel the flashing lights stabbing at the back of my skull, black dots dancing at the edge of my vision. My dress felt so tight and so itchy and I was watching him spin her around like he was a prince and she was his princess and my throat hurt. They moved to the middle of the dance floor, just a few feet away, and it felt like I was drowning in oxygen. Icari was shiny and beautiful and in someone’s arms that weren’t mine and never would be. I started to move. 

I pushed past them, trying to get to the doors. My shoulders became a threat: the spikes on the sides of semi-truck wheels. I didn’t know yet that it could get worse than this. I thought I would get some fresh air and remind myself that, even if I couldn’t hold her and kiss her and love her, at least she was still in my life. And I’d go back into the bar and watch them dancing and drown the feeling with whatever was left in Icari’s sweating glass. 

But Icari, who loves me in her own way, thought I was freaking out, having another one of my meltdowns where I need her to wrap herself around me and squeeze until I can breath again. She’s always there when that happens; always there to turn off the lights, quiet as many noises as she can, hold me. She squishes my balled up hands like right left right right left right until the world is bearable again. 

So she shoved her way out of the doors behind me, yelling my name. I remember covering my face with my hands as I ran across the street, not trying to get anywhere but away. I didn’t need her seeing the tears leaving some streaks down my face, the way they were screwing up my mascara. 

When I explain what happens next, I need you to understand that I have spent the last five years trying to fix this. Every single day, sun up to down, stuck in my silver dress at the same shitty dive bar, trying to keep her from dying. I’ve stayed inside the bar and endured, I’ve gone so far back in time that I prevented the bar from even existing in the first place, I’ve made it so that Icari never even knew my goddamn name. For god’s sake, I’ve killed people. Went back and killed the person that killed her, killed the bar owner, killed the boy that gave her her first taste of alcohol. But, always, it ends this way, with her laid out flat on the floor and me without her. You like butterflies? You think you can do anything besides what the universe has laid out for you? 

I reached the opposite side of the street. I pressed one palm against the warm concrete pillar of a glowing, yellow streetlight and stilled myself. I was heavy breathing and a mess: black mascara streaking down my face, concealer creasing and nasty. 

“Mars! You okay?” Icari yelled, and I finally picked my head up to look at her. She was beautiful even under the dingy, humid lighting of the street, running towards me. Struggling a

4 

little on some skinny four-inch heels, but running. Her face was scrunched in worry, glossy lips pressed into a thin line. I was relieved for a moment in my own twisted way, relieved that she chose me over the pretty man that had been spinning her around in the bar. 

I was too busy staring her in the face to notice the gray Chevy Express barrelling down the street like a bullet. No headlights, no sound. 60 miles per hour on a side road. It killed her instantly, the force of it tearing her skin up and laying her flat out. There was no dramatic moment, no me holding her as she said her last words and took her last breath — none of that. Just alive one second and dead the next. The sun snuffed out cold. 

Ever since I met her, I’d revolved around her, been locked in her orbit. Went where she went, did what she did. Now I’m just some chunk of rock hurtling through space, aimless. A few weeks after her death, I planned to kill myself. I’d slip on the silver dress — same one I was wearing the night she died — and die all pretty. It wasn’t some big, meaningful display or nothing. I just felt like I was already dead, like that van tore up my insides even though I wasn’t the one in front of it. But when I zipped up that dress, heard the soft sound of the sparkles scratching up and down my legs, I was there again. On the side of the street watching her die. If I thought harder, I could go back even farther. To the beginning of the night, to the moment me and Icari met ten years prior, hands covered in wet dirt. 

I could have just ripped the dress up. But here I’ve been, in this moment for an endless amount of time, trying. 

The bar is dark and purple and packed like a sardine tin. Icari and I are shoulder to shoulder with sweaty bodies, all of ‘em squirming to the sounds of something stupid, something that’s lost all sound now. I’m staring into her shoulder blades, shiny with lotion. That familiar pang of want bounces around my empty body, echoing. 

She pulls me to the bartender again, glasses of liquor warping the lights. The same woman, slumped eternally at the counter. 

I lean backwards against the bartop, calm. The first time I watched Icari die, I thought that if I had just kept my cool, hadn’t freaked out like a terrified child, then she wouldn’t have got hit. I’ve spent hundreds of these nights perfectly passive — indifferent to the noise and the mass of people and the beautiful man she dances with — and still she ends up backlit by headlights, sequins smeared all across some pavement. My calm is no catalyst. “Wait right here,” she says, like clockwork, “I’ll get us some alcohol.” 

And so I wait. I haven’t changed anything from the past this time, so she waltzes up to the same pretty wallflower as she did night one: the man with long, loose curls and a blaze of red highlights. They look real good together; two suns dancing, stray flames lapping at the other. By now, I’ve memorized their back and forth. 

He sets his drink down, placing one hand on her waist and intertwining the other in her right hand. She giggles, fake nervous, and he lifts her arm and spins her so quick and so smooth that her locs fan out around her head like a halo. She laughs with her whole chest, surprised for once by a man, and leans just right for the dip. He catches her, smiling at the hand she places on the side of his stubbled jaw. That feeling rises in me again, that choking desperation, that burning

5 

hatred. I want to believe it’s for him, with his strong arms that fit around her just right, his pretty face that captured her from across the bar. But I know exactly who I hate, and I always have. The idiot in the itchy dress, the idiot whose heart is nothing but some pitiful, quiet, hidden thing. 

I do what I always do, and I run. I shoulder the drunk dancers around me hard enough to leave bruises, just more dominoes that gotta fall to get to the end of this. My palms make contact with the cold metal of the exit, but I’m not free from nothing but the noise. The sky is black and beautiful above me. I only have a few seconds before Icari comes bursting out of the place, terrified. 

I lean my heaving body against the side of the building, avoiding the road. Its sharp, textured rock digs into my shoulder blades like acupuncture needles, and I remember that I am real and alive and have a chance. I can’t take another night of holding her broken body, of screaming until my throat is raw. 

Icari pushes the doors open so hard they almost hit me. There she is, lit again by the yellow light of the street, and I remember that I love her like breathing, like walking, like tying up my sneakers. Her eyebrows are furrowed as she turns to me, sweat beading along her temples. She drags her bangled forearm across her head, golden. 

“Mars? Are you okay? What’s going on?” Her heels make dull noises on the concrete sidewalk as she rushes towards me. She places a hand on each of my shoulders and squeezes, right left right right left right. I am beginning to understand something about myself, about this night, about her murder. I am the common denominator, the only unchangeable variable. “Let’s just leave, okay? I’ll find someone to get us home.” 

“No,” I say, so firmly and so quickly it shocks her into silence. Her eyes are deep and brown and filled with worry so fervent that I almost feel sick. I soften my tone to almost a whisper. “No, please. I’d like to stay.” 

She just studies my face for a moment, eyes flickering between my lips and forehead. The worry in her eyes slowly, slowly dissipates — like a tide receding from the sand — and she looks my body up and down, noticing the silver-white sparkles that manage to glitter even under these nasty streetlights. Her hands don’t leave my shoulders. I know exactly what she is about to say, and still, I can’t prepare myself. 

“Marleni,” her grip on my shoulders tightens, and she’s giving me that look again; the one that feels like she is a flame and I am just some wick, helpless beneath her, warm and then so hot that it hurts. Her lips are so glossy, her lashes so long. I remember the feeling of them against my cheek as I kiss her in random, failed timeline, soft as butterfly wings. “You look just like the moon.” 

I crumble. The pavement digs into my knees as I fall, drawing blood. I did this, I killed her that first night and I have ten thousand times since. She screeches my name, scared, and brings herself to the floor along with me. I’m crying, I’m crying, like we’re ten and I’ve just skinned my knee, and she’s frantically wiping my tears away, one after another, evaporating them with her touch.

6 

“It’s okay, Mars. I’m here. You don’t have to say nothing. Just breathe.” She wipes more tears from my cheeks, ignoring the black smudges all over her knuckles from my mascara. “Just breathe.” 

Except I can’t breathe, ‘cause there’s only a minute until the Chevy Express comes from somewhere down the street — silent, murderous, ready to take her. I’ve seen it, the thing laying her out in a million different ways: on the sidewalk, on the road, laying in the grass waiting for a cab. I’ll never be able to breathe, so I got one option: to talk. 

“Icari, Icari,” I’m choking on the words but they’re out, they’re audible. “Icari, I love you. More than anything, anyone.” 

She doesn’t hesitate. 

“I love you, too. You already know that,” she says, bringing one hand to the side of my face, her touch like a collar too tight around my neck. 

“No, no you don’t.” I’m yelling again, I can’t help it. “I want you, Icari. I wanna kiss you, stare at you till I go blind from how bright you are. I’m in love with you. It’s like — I don’t even know — like I pray every goddamn night that I’ll dream about you because I think you’re the greatest experience anyone could ever have.” 

And then it is silent except for our breathing, ragged and terrified. I am the reason she keeps dying. Me and my stupid, shitty feelings, my desire, my love for someone who can only stare at me, heartbroken, because she knows she can give me anything except for this. 

I stand up and take a step backwards, towards the road. She stands but doesn’t follow, afraid to touch me now that she knows what it does to my head, to my whole body. “How long have you—?” 

“Since we were ten. Since we met.” 

I take another step back, and I can feel the texture shift beneath my feet as sidewalk becomes road. Her mascara is running now, too, leaving dark streaks down her face like the night above us. 

“I can’t love you like that, Mars. I don’t. I’m sorry.” 

Another step backwards and I can only hear the Chevy Express coming ‘cause I’m expecting it, the silent glide of its body through the air. I imagine my spine snapping on impact, my ribcage in pieces inside me. 

“I’m going to get us a ride home, okay?” Icari says, taking her eyes off me for just a moment, looking side to side for a man with some car keys. The gold, glitter highlighter she’d brushed carefully along her cheekbones sparkles with each turn of her head. 

I let the image of her settle over me. Her locs that she’d been growing out since twelve, hugged by gold cuffs that match the bracelets around her wrist. Her lips, full and shiny, cupid’s bow like a heart. I’m almost glad to die like this; beautiful, sparkling white, my eyes on her. And it hits me — 60 miles an hour, no headlights, no sound.

–

Skyelar Wiedrich is a seventeen-year-old writer from South Florida. They enjoy working for their school’s literary magazine, Seeds in the Black Earth, and were recently published as winner of the New York Times’ “What High School Is Like in 2023” Multimedia challenge.