The people of Belle Village hissed Kettle Fire at Lilly as she walked by for two reasons: The first was because her older cousin was known for the teas she brewed; kettles were always whistling in their home, teas were always steaming from paper-thin cups or hearty thermoses, and many locals stopped by for a mug early in the morning before work. 

The second reason was because everyone tended to think Lilly was a troublemaker. Wherever that one goes, they said, flames follow.

Lilly thought it was a stupid nickname, as she adamantly claimed to anyone who would listen that if the stuffy people of Belle Village kept their noses out of her business, they'd find a lot more interesting things to do with their lives. If people opened their minds to their own imagination, Lilly wouldn't even have to make trouble in the first place, so technically the troublemaking part of her town-wide nickname was everyone else's fault. This morning proved to be a perfect example: If her journal hadn't been confiscated, she would not have had to create a butterfly-infested distraction to get it back before Eldnac closed for the summer. 

And Eldnac was asking for butterflies. Seriously, the beige walls really need a splash of color. 

Now Lilly sat across from Headmistress Vatakai in her office, the awkward silence that followed getting stepped on by the headmistress while hiding under the secretary's desk thick between them. There were many long things about Vatakai that Lilly thought were excellent for staring children down...long eyelashes fluttering over long eyes glowing with anger, long eyebrows pinched in disdain, long mouth pressed into a rigid line, long fingers drumming impatiently on the desk.

Beneath those long fingers was a leather-bound journal. Lilly tried to keep her gaze on Vatakai rather than the journal. 

Show no weakness.

"While we're waiting for your cousin to get here," Vatakai said, "can I just ask...all this? For some journal you bought at the ninety-nine cent bookstore across the street?"

Lilly lifted a shoulder and an eyebrow simultaneously, a skill she'd perfected when she was four. "You can't prove anything." 

Vatakai scoffed. "Please. You can't even begin to imagine the horrors I can inflict on you simply because I found you beneath my desk." 

"Are the horrors going to look like that rat's nest you have on top of your head? That's something to be feared." 

Vatakai's expression didn't even flicker from its stiff vexed countenance. She and Lilly had been in this position enough before for Vatakai to completely disregard Lilly's insults. "You have the respect of a nest of cockroaches, Miss Ci."

"I'm shattered you think so low of me," Lilly said sarcastically, leaning back in the uncomfortably wide chair. "I could have put cockroaches in the toilets instead of flowers last year, but Eldnac could've used the color. The butterflies are a nice touch. The butterflies are a nice touch to these beige monstrosities you call walls." 

The words had just barely left Lilly's mouth when the office door behind her creaked open. Lilly turned, and just like that, every ounce of vanity, pride, and stubbornness dissipated from her with the appearance of her cousin.

When she turned back around to face Vatakai, the headmistress was smirking. 

Melissa Stowe had the energy of a grenade poised forever in the moment right before it exploded. Intense, quiet, formidable...she could make politicians faint with one hard stare. She made people forget to breathe. Flowers and mountains wilted in her presence. Lilly often suspected Melissa had knives wedged down her knee-high boots.

It was not just the fact that Melissa was intense, quiet, and formidable that made people forget how to breathe or caused mountains wilted in her presence. She was also beautiful. People looked at her and did a double and then a triple take, and Melissa walked like she knew it, too, though she would never admit it. Tall, dark-haired, olive-skinned, and blessed with sharp features that should have belonged to a suite of daggers, she was unforgettable.

Lilly called her badass because she was one. The people of Belle Village called her femme fatale because they didn't like her and thought that a drop-dead-gorgeous woman whose cousin got into trouble from time to time was worthy of being judged such a title. 

Melissa unzipped her leather jacket and took a seat in the chair beside Lilly. She steepled her fingers against her chest and asked, "Butterflies?"

"I caught her in my office under Ms. Roach's desk, looking for something I assume is this." Vatakai held up the leather journal.

"All this for a journal," Melissa replied skeptically. Skeptically meant she was mapping out how Lilly could have possibly pulled off such a prank. 

"With all due respect," Lilly said, though perhaps a truer statement would have been with all due anger, "Mrs. Siotang took that journal from me in completely unfair circumstances. And I still hold to the notion innocent until proven guilty."

Vatakai threw up her hands and shook her head. "You've already been proven guilty, Miss Ci. I caught you. Your science teacher told me she took this journal because it was a distraction in class."

"She doesn't confiscate cell phones!"

"She doesn't have to. People aren't on them in class."

"That is the dumbest thing any educator has ever said."

Melissa hissed, "Lillian," as Vatakai slammed the journal on her desk and spat, "I would suggest you watch your tone, young lady." 

"The journal must be very important if you spent all that time creating such a grand prank," said Melissa diplomatically, staring at Lilly with narrowed eyes and lips pressed into just as firm a line as Vatakai's. "Simply asking for the journal would have been easier." 

"What's the fun in asking?" 

Vatakai clenched her fists and lifted her chin. 

Lilly went on before the headmistress could explode all over the horrific beige walls, "But it was my dad's, and...I did ask for it back. Three times over three weeks." 

There was a severely awkward silence, in which Melissa's expression did not change but Vatakai's did. Her features gentled, her middle-aged wrinkles softened from their previously hard lines to mere faint marks of age, and her mouth parted just enough for her to say, "Ah...I see." 

Lilly certainly didn't. She asked, "What do you see?" 

Vatakai ignored her, shuffling through a stack of papers piled neatly on her desk, slid a form and a pen over to Melissa, and said, "Alright Miss Ci, I'll give you a choice: expulsion or a hundred hours of community service to the school, accompanied by nine weeks of detention when the fall semester begins."

Lilly straightened in her chair. She not been expecting a choice after hearing Vatakai's anger several minutes before. "Seriously? That's it? Can I take the expulsion?" 

Melissa elbowed Lilly and said, "She's kidding." 

Vatakai dabbed the corners of her dark eyes with her sleeve. "You could have ratted my son out. I saw him walk into the office this morning. And who else could have gotten the butterflies through the air vents? Who else could have let you in to snoop around Mrs. Roach's desk?" Vatakai turned to Melissa. "I'm assuming you'll punish her as well?"

"You have no idea." Melissa signed the form with a flourish and passed the paper back to Vatakai.

"You're a scholarship student, Miss Ci. You got lucky this time. Let me file this, and I'll escort you both out." Vatakai took the paper, stood, and leaned forward. "If she had a mother who knew how to take care of a thirteen-year-old girl, this would not have happened."

Fireworks sparked across Lilly's vision, but Melissa's expression didn't even change. Her reply was even, low. "You're supposed to be the professional educator here, Miss."

Vatakai straightened and, clutching the form to her chest, strutted out of the room with the smug, patronizing arrogance of a peacock. When she left the office, Lilly turned to Melissa and pointed from the door to herself to Melissa. "You just...she just...what just happened?" 

"You do bad things and I get blamed for them." 

"Not that—but I am sorry—I'm talking about how she just let me off the hook. She was about to explode earlier! Why the change of heart?" 

"She knows your f—Headmistress Vatakai must be aware that estranged fathers lead children to make mischief, not that that excuses anything. I also expect you not ratting her son out for helping you must have played a big role." 

Lilly fiddled with the last button on her blazer to avoid her cousin's stare. "Ah...so...now we have to talk about my dad." 

 "Where did you even get that journal and how do you know it was your father's?"

"It was mailed," Lilly mumbled, shrugging. She worked and reworked that last button on her blazer, fingers sweaty, cheeks hot. The bravado of five minutes ago had smoldered, and in its place was crushing embarrassment.

Melissa was not supposed to know the journal belonged to Lilly's father.

"When?" Melissa asked, her tone sharper than before. 

"Mid-April. A few weeks after my birthday."

"By what mail?"

"What do you mean, what mail? There's only one sort of mail out there isn't there?" What sort of question was that? Ever since Lilly had found that journal on their doorstep in a box with the name William Ci on the front, addressed to Melissa, rage had been fizzling inside her. It was a vulgar, soul-crumbling rage, because if her father cared enough to send a journal written in another language but not a letter or a postcard or something, anything, what did it say about his love for her? He was still out there, alive and well enough to send a journal to Melissa. So why not a letter to tell her he was okay and well? Was this a cruel joke? 

There was no return address. 

It wasn't about what was written in the journal. The entries were written in a language Lilly was still trying to decode, a language she couldn't figure out no matter how much she researched. It was the leather-and-ink-and-spaghetti scent that meant so much to her; maybe her father smelled like spaghetti. It was his handwriting; maybe he practiced getting the curves and arcs of the symbols just right. It was the way some pages were dog-eared...did he dog-ear pages when he read? These simple, quiet details rocked her to the core.

"I think he dropped it on our doorstep and left," Lilly continued briskly. "Who cares?"

"Apparently you or you wouldn't have set butterflies loose in the school to get it back."

"You make it sound like I hid a bomb."

"The way Headmistress Vatakai was acting, it might as well have been. Lilly, I know you're upset, but you can't keep doing stupid things like this. Look at me."

Lilly looked up from her button and found herself kidnapped by Melissa's calculating gaze; Lilly could only guess what was going on in her cousin's head because her thoughts were impossible to read on her face. "I'm sorry." 

"Why didn't you ask? If you wanted that journal back so badly, why not just talk to Vatakai or Mrs. Roach or the teacher who took it?" 

"I did ask, three times. Mrs. Siotang didn't give it back and I hate to be that person, but I swear the only reason she didn't give it back to me is because she hates me. And you know that. She writes letters home every week telling you so." 

"So you set a thousand butterflies free because a teacher that only dislikes you because you purposefully get under her skin wouldn't give you your father's journal back?" 

"Was...was that not obvious?"

Melissa sighed and raked an exasperated hand through her dark tresses. "It was not smart, it was reckless, and it wasn't fair to all those kids who were in the middle of their exams because now they have to retake them. As for your father, I understand the desire to know him. But he's...well, he's." Melissa didn't even trail off; it was obvious she ended the sentence with he and shrugged to emphasize her point. 

But the unspoken words sat poised like a delicate, poisonous flower between them...fragile, in perfect bloom, and deadly if ingested. He's never coming back.

William Ci left when Lilly's mother went missing eleven years ago. Police looked everywhere for Emma, Melissa said, and when they were left with nothing but a cold trail and a letter from her saying she'd had no choice but to leave, William took off to look for her. Lilly was two at the time, so she didn't remember any of the chaos it had inflicted. Melissa volunteered to raise her until her father came back.

Ever since that journal had come in the mail, she catapulted herself into nightmares imagining all the possibilities of where her father might be: dead in a patch of wildflowers, no identification, cockroaches pouring out of his eyeballs. In jail. High on crack. A contortionist in the circus.

And the worst, the one that paralyzed her more than any of the others: he had fallen in love with another woman, married, had children of his own, and had completely forgotten about Lilly and Melissa.

"You can't keep flying off the handle every time something you disagree with happens," said Melissa. "Look at what this got you-no journal, nine weeks of detention, and a hundred hours of community service."

"Like I said, I'm very sorry. It won't happen again. I learned my lesson." 

"I'm not convinced." 

"You don't have to be. So...I'm grounded?"

Melissa rose from her chair. "Oh. Very."