but when she touched the first one, it turned into a butterfly.
Poof!
Just like that.
Pete dismissed it as some trick the light was playing on him. The tone of Maggie’s giggle rose half an octave. She grabbed a second doughnut, which also turned into a butterfly. The same happened to the third, fourth and fifth doughnuts. She screamed, grabbed the whole tray of doughnuts and threw it against the wall. The tray clanged to the floor and a whole swarm of rainbow-coloured butterflies fluttered to the ceiling.
Maggie collapsed on the floor, her back against the wall and her thick legs spread out in front of her. Huge mascara-stained tears ran down her round cheeks and onto her apron.
“Did you see that?” she sobbed, rocking back and forth. “I’m going crazy, I’m seeing things. They’ll take me away and lock me up and I’ll lose everything I’ve worked for my whole life.”
Pete fetched her a paper towel from behind the counter. “You’re not going crazy. I can see them too.”
She blew her nose into the paper towel, and sobbed even louder.
“I can see the butterflies, Maggie!”
The sobs turned into wails of despair. “I’m jinxed, Pete! Cursed! I’ll die of hunger! Every time I try to eat something, it turns into an INSECT! I HAVEN’T EATEN ANYTHING TODAY!”
This time Pete found it difficult not to smile in spite of his bewilderment. A little bit of hunger could only do her good. In fact, a lot of hunger would be even better.
“Come on, everything will be fine. Get up and wash your face; you don’t want people to see you like this.” Pete helped her to her feet.
Just then the door opened and a customer walked in. Maggie grabbed the roll of paper towels and fled into the kitchen, so Pete stood behind the counter to serve him. The poor man’s head was hidden in a cloud of butterflies. He waved wildly, but to no avail.
“May I help you?” asked Pete.
“I thought this was a confection bakery. Since when has it changed into a butterfly farm? What’s going on here?”
The man looked very familiar. Perfectly combed dark hair, smart suit and matching tie, a toothpaste ad smile.
“Er … It was the neighbour,” Pete said. “An April fool’s prank.”
“What? It’s May already!”
“He’s a bit slow. May I help you?”
“Five doughnuts with caramel and nuts, please.”
Pete went into the kitchen to get a new tray of doughnuts. When he came back, he almost bumped into the customer’s face as he opened the door. The man was peeking through the keyhole.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, and returned to the other side of the counter.
After the man had left, Pete opened the front door and most of the butterflies flew out. He then went to see if Maggie was all right. She wasn’t too bad, but she wouldn’t be able to work. Anything edible she touched turned into butterflies. So Pete hung the CLOSED sign on the door and went out to do the deliveries.
When he had done all the deliveries, Pete decided that he had to see Freddy. His only transport was the old skateboard he had salvaged from a dustbin and repaired with a little help from Mr Humperdinck and a lot of ingenuity. Taming the skateboard had been even more difficult than repairing it. The darn thing kept throwing him off like a wild horse. But with time and practice, Pete had become its master.
The first stretch of road to Freddy’s was level: past the Italian hairdresser, LORENZO ALTINTOPI, BARBER of DISTINCTION, next to AUNT ANNIE’S and the 24-hour supermarket, then across the street at the traffic lights. Ollie onto the pavement. The next bit was very tricky since the pavement was always crowded with people. Pete kept his right foot on the elevated tail of the deck, so he could lift the front wheels and change direction in an instant. In this way, he made his way through the crowd with only the occasional small collision. At the main road intersection he cut through the corner door of the convenience store (the girl at the till always shouted at him, but of course she couldn’t catch him) and then it was downhill to the station.
It was on this downhill stretch that Pete had had one of his more serious spills. One weekend, a shop owner had erected a brand-new billboard, and Pete, not expecting it there on the Monday morning on his way to school, made a magnificent crash into it. If it were on television, they would have shown the action replay over and over again, backwards, from different angles, and in slow motion. Such was the beauty of this crash. And Pete had a wonderful cut on his forehead to show for it.
When he arrived at school, his face and shirt were covered in blood. Aunt Nellie, the school nurse , cleaned him up and tried to contact his father, who was (as expected) not available. So she had to take him to the day clinic herself. Not only did Pete legitimately miss a whole day of school, but he also had not three, not five, but EIGHT stitches! And afterwards Aunt Nellie took him for the biggest ice cream of his life.
The next day at school everybody envied him his eight stitches. The girls in the class wanted to know if it hurt, and of course he said that it didn’t. For the rest of the week everybody regarded him with the awe and adoration due to a veteran of the racetrack.
After ducking under the new billboard, Pete ollied over a fire hydrant, and then raced downhill to the corner where he had to tailslide and grab the traffic light with his right hand in order to stop. When the light turned green, he sped across the street to the station and ground the rail downstairs into the large main hall. This was a skateboarder’s dream. A marble floor as big as two football fields with staircases and ramps for wheelchairs! Pete carefully stuck to the places where he knew the crowds of commuters would be less thick, and here he practised his stunts at breakneck speed. A few ollies to warm up. Flip ollie. Frontside flip. Backside flip. Rail flip.
And the three-sixty grab: Ollie off a low staircase, get phat air, grab your deck with one hand, do a full 360-degree spin, and then land facing in your original direction.
Suicide.
Pete landed half on his belly, half on his right side, with his right arm and hand stretched out to break the fall, and after a four-metre skid on the marble, he came to a stop at the counter of the station coffee shop. The guy behind the counter (his name was Vusi) was used to this. The first few times Pete crashed into a table and chairs before reaching the counter, but Vusi moved them so that he would have an open landing strip.
“Ladies and gentlemen, another perfectly executed Belly Skid, performed for your entertainment by Pete Smith, the Awesome Stunt Skater!” Vusi announced and helped him to his feet. There was a small round of applause.
Pete blushed and disappeared around the corner. The rest of the way to Freddy’s flat was routine skating any rookie could do.
Freddy was one of five brothers, and they all lived on the eighth floor in a flat with two bedrooms. Pete found him reading a book, while the rest of the family watched a soap opera.
“We have to talk,” said Pete.
Freddy nodded. “Let’s go to my office.”
His “office” was behind the lifts in a shaft where all the building’s
