Clematis Dean Loves Fireflies.

Clematis Dean waited for them all winter. She watched through her bedroom window, hoping to see just one flicker, but never did. She was always mad that the snow and cold killed all of her plant and bug friends for so many months. Fireflies were her favorite, though, and she could hardly wait to stand outside while they blinked around her like thousands of tired, tiny eyes.

Her third-grade class had just done a project on fireflies. They colored pictures of them and copied down facts that the teacher wrote on the board. One coloring page had so many fireflies on it that Clematis couldn't even color the little ones in the way, way back. On this page, she wrote in jagged purple crayon, "More than 2000 speshies." A boy in the class made sure the teacher added, “They smell like cucumbers” to the fact list. Clematis would make sure to smell them when they came back to her.

Once, her dad said his childhood best friend used to rip the lights out of fireflies and stick them on his fingers like rings. Clematis could never understand what he meant by that. Did he tie the tiny lights to strings and loop them around his pinky? And without the fly part, didn't the fire just go out? Would it die with its light ripped out? Did it hurt?

Did she want to find out?

When summer finally arrived, she continued to wait for that first light. She waited with her face pressed to the window every night and scanned the yard, until she saw it — a sparkle in the overgrown flower beds along the fenceline. Clematis sprinted out the back door, into the dark, and over to the first firefly of the season, floating near her mother’s marigolds.

She coerced it into her hand, promising that she was a nice little girl, and then just as it scuttled freely to her, she clamped it in her fist. Clematis felt the firefly delicately battling her palm with its wings and antennae. She put her eye to the hole created by that wrinkly patch between her thumb and pointer finger and examined the yellow glow in her hand. Then, she made sure to give it a good sniff. The smell was similar to a cucumber, she guessed, but more like warm, wet dirt — a cucumber trampled in a garden, filled with wriggling earthworms.

“How could someone hurt such a little bug?” She asked aloud.

She stood there, whispering to the bug until it told her it was ready to be released. Last chance, she thought. She was torn between the experiment and the attachment she felt toward her new friend.

She opened her hand, closed her eyes, and began counting to ten. If it was still there when she opened her eyes, she would do it.

“1...2...3...4…”

Its little legs tickled her palm.

“5...6…7…”

“C’mon, c’mon!”

“8 9 10!” She finished quickly.

She opened her eyes and it was still standing in her hand. It had crawled to the tips of her outstretched fingers and seemed to be taking in the cool, nighttime breeze.

"You should have flown away, buddy."

She grabbed it, flipped it onto its back, and used her thumbnail to sever and dig out its light. The bug wiggled and writhed in pain. She shook its body onto the grass, not wanting to worry about it any longer. She had her prize. She smiled and slapped the still-glowing light onto her finger. The leftover guts were just enough to make it stick.

The light faded a second later and was blackened forever.