The Mourning Cloak

"Hannah? Hannah, it is 8:30, hurry up, now!"

The rap tap tap on the bathroom door along with her mother's fervent voice, muffled on the other side, urged Hannah's hand to swat down on the toilet lever with irritation.

The toilet gurgled and swirled, swallowing up the water enough to spew it back up again. Her stomach rumbled again as if to tease her, and she wretched. It was the dry heaves she hated the most. Two weeks of this, she thought through burrowed eyebrows as she searched her face in the mirror. Despite how pale she was, a pink glow blushed her delicately chiseled cheeks and she was pleased at least she did not need to add the powdered Cover Girl blush. Her hazel eyes curiously gazed back at her. 'Are you sure you don't need mascara though? Craig always liked these eyes. Dress them up.'

Too late, she blinked back and sighed, curling her nose with the egg-like taste in her mouth and heaved some more in to the open mouth of the commode.

The grey blue Corolla swerved in to the parking entrance of Weston Collegiate High. Through the piercing sun lit window, Hannah glimpsed the group of students compiling around the orange and black school bus docked and ready to be loaded.

Hannah's mother plunged on the brake, as Hannah released herself from the constricting seat belt.

"Now, you got everything you need? Your lunch, your..."

David Bowie replied with..."or we could be heroes...just for one day", through the radio.

Hannah wanted to stay here, in this car, with David and her mother.

"Yes...yes," Hannah finally replied, as if her tongue were caught like a fish on bait.

"You will have fun," her mother assured. And then, "Be careful", not too assuring then, as she leaned in to perch a kiss on her daughter's soft cheek, and folded her hand into hers.

"Thanks, Mom, " Hannah smiled faintly, feeling like the five year old girl she used to be on her first day of school, and still wanting to never let her mother's hand go.

Hannah weaved into the group of tenth graders, girls chatting profusely, chewing gum, some flipping their hair, aspiring to catch the glimpses of the fifteen and sixteen year old boys. Boys, just as lip smacking as the girls, the haw-hawing of insecure laughter. Brazen, shielding insecurity.

Her eyes scanned for Julia, as she awkwardly shoulder rubbed through the crowd, her knapsack juggling like a burden of a child on her mother's tired arms.

Then she saw her.

Julia sat on the curb, like a little bird on a large branch, cocooning herself in a book, with headphones clinched to her ears.

Julia glanced up then, as if aware of Hannah's presence, and ushered a quick, fast flutter of her hand.

"Hannah!" Julia rejoiced and pulled the ear phones from her ears. "I was waiting for you. I thought you were not coming."

Hannah positioned herself on Julia's large branch. The curb was warm and inviting on her bottom.

"I wasn't," Hannah replied, the sour taste in her mouth reminded her. "I was so sick. Field trips, you know? I hate them! Long bus rides, ugh!"

"Name call!" A masculine voice resonated in the chattering crowd, which subsided to a hush. Mr. Kennedy pivoted in front of his students, like a cult leader managing his followers.

One by one, their names were called, with a response of, "here", after each name.

"All aboard!" Mr. Kennedy folded his binder closed, once all of his followers were checked off the list, and led them into the awaiting orange bus.

The bus lurched and ground to a halt on the dirt road, following the sign "WELCOME TO BRUCE TRAIL".

One by one, the students filtered off the bus, into the great unknown. Trees and bush loomed in the distance, under the sun crested sky of May.

Mr. Kennedy swiped his hand over his head of snow white hair, as his students shifted over the dirt and gravel beneath their feet.

"This field trip counts toward your marks. So remember, take notes. What kind of trees, rocks, plant and animal life you encounter. Look out for the mourning cloaks! They are butterflies only seen in the spring and for eight months! And, we ALL stay together on this trail. Like Noah's Ark, we are all in pairs, BUT we all stay together!" he announced, with a wit that encountered a cackling of giggles from some.

Julia and Hannah exchanged glances. Knowing glances. They decided to be the last couple on the Noah's Ark.

The trail was trodden with dense bush and green and lush trees extending far into the sky. Rocks and stones crumbled beneath their feet and branches from sidelined trees whipped their faces. They climbed higher and higher up the escarpment. Ooofs and ahhs and snorts were reported from some. Nudging and laughter from others, as they quirked that there was a bear ahead, or a snake ready to slither out.

Hannah and Julia lessened their steps. The two boys in front of them lumbered on with the rest.

"Now," Hannah nudged Julia with a small elbow shot.

Julia responded with a nod of her auburn head of hair and a devilish giggle with a winking of her innocent eyes.

Their arms knotted around one another as they dashed like rabbits into the puzzle of bushes off the safe trail and into the forbidden.

"Let's have... lunch... now," Julia forced her voice strangled by wheezes.

Hannah agreed with a tiresome nod and observed her childhood friend with concern. "Got your inhaler?"

"I do," Julia said, as they both let their knees topple under them into a nest of purple and yellow wildflowers.

The sun moved behind an array of trees meeting pillows of clouds.

They were not sure how long or how far they had trampled through bush and trees, tickled and bitten by opportunist insects, and stumbling over pools of water, with which frogs danced at their parade.

Readily gathering through their knapsacks, and fumbling for their sandwiches clothed in foil and saran wrap, they ate in silence. The shrill caw-caw of a bird, jealous of their meal.

Julia gazed at Hannah. "I always wanted to be like you," the words wrestled from her tongue.

Hannah swallowed the last quarter of her salmon sandwich her mother made for her. The nausea was setting in.

"What? Why", Hannah quizzed. Julia's face was dotted with freckles, and even though she had an upper bite, her blue eyes sparkled with innocence. Her black hair curled naughtily around her neck. She would be a model one day, Hannah thought.

"You..you are pretty," Julia replied, embracing Hannah's deep hazel eyes, her long brown hair cascading over the side of her face. Her thick, cursive lips.

Hannah released a stinging laugh. "If...If I was so pretty, why would Craig dump me, then go for that Amelia Walsh!"

"Because he's dumb," Julia stated firmly. "Did you kiss him?"

Hannah sheepishly nodded, her fingers reached for the green grapes in the zip lock bag, only to squish them back.

"What's it like to kiss a boy?" Julia leaned back into the mound of wildflowers, resting on her elbows now.

"Don't ever...ever- let a boy kiss you until you know he really loves you!" Hannah admonished.

"Look!" Julia's eyes darted to the fluttering butterfly. Softly, like a black feather, it rested on the yellow petal of a wildflower, its wings spread like an elegant cape.

"That's the mourning cloak Mr. Kennedy told us about," Hannah fixated on its elegance, and was relieved the topic of boys was diverted.

There was a rustle in the trees. A clunk...clunk...then of heavy breathing...the birds became silent.

Boots shuffled toward them. Big, dirty boots. The wildflowers withered beneath them.

"You girls lost?"

The boots spoke.

As their eyes lifted, the boots had a face. A broad, grey straggly bearded face with oddly darting eyes.

"This...this is how you kiss a boy!"

The boot struck Julia in her groin, and the hand that belonged to the boot and the face tugged at the dark curls of her hair and began to drag her into the now crushing bushes.

"Nooo!" Hannah screamed and lunged for Julia's defeating, but struggling legs, pulling them back to her.

The force was too strong. The butterfly waved her wings and took landing on a cluster of rocks. 'Here,' it seemed to say. Hannah gathered a sharp edged rock right next to the mourning cloak and whipped it in the direction of the man's head. It struck the side of his temple, and with a thump and a crack, blood that looked like tar streamed the side of his face.

He howled and groaned, thrusting his hands to his wound, and coiled like a snake.

The terrain sent them fleeting down a hill of jagged limestone, slippery moss and finally to the neck of a wide flowing stream.

"Hann..ah, "Julia's voice wavered through the bubbling of the stream and the symphony of crickets. "Thanks...thanks for helping...me,"

The sun was gone. The stars winked at them now. The ground was hard and cold on their back. They shivered and their teeth clicked in unison as a flowery scented wind ushered in.

"I...I...hope Boot man doesn't find us, now," Hannah only spoke what Julia thought.

"We...left...our...bags..." Julia's chest rose, the image of her inhaler waiting.

"They...they will find us," the stab in Hannah's groin gripped her breath. Like a little man inside with a switch blade. She let out a small groan.

"You okay?" Julia's vision of Mr. Kennedy finding them, and then them sitting in the warm orange and black bus on their way home was interrupted by her best friend's groaning and now writhing.

"You...you wanted to know how it feels to kiss a boy?" Hannah soothed her friend's concern with a grudging smile.

Julia managed a giggle.

Hannah leaned over and set her cold but soft lips on Julia's wanting lips. They tasted like watermelon chap stick, Julia thought oddly.

"Hmm...," Julia sounded like a low key piano note as Hannah's lips departed. "Nice...but its yucky!"

Both girls squealed with laughter through aching bones and Julia wheezed, her lungs squeezing what air she could muster.

A warm trickle of what felt like hot caramel oozed down Hannah's thighs, as she felt a pulling, a ripping. She clawed the dirt and pebbles around her.

A baby cried.

As the sky welcomed the new morning sun, the two hikers found them.

Cocooned safely around each other, a pale infant in the crook of his young mother's arms.

The baby's fingers wiggled from the cocooning girls as the mourning cloak butterfly fluttered her wings and danced around the sleeping girls.