#192 The Butter Dish 2

read the first part

When Mom found out that the butter had vanished again, she had plenty to say about it. Things like, "The joke is not funny anymore," and "Butter costs money, you know."

And then she went to the store. I guess to get more butter.

"Perfect," my sister said. "Now we can watch it and see what happens."

We put the very last stick of butter on the dish, put it in the middle of the table, then sat down to wait.

It was one of those summer mornings where the air conditioning just wasn't quite up to the job. The butter started melting while we sat around the table and waited for it to do something. It did something all right. A yellow film of oil crept under the crystal rim of the cover and started creeping up the sides of the dish. But that was all.

"Maybe the butterdish is haunted," My brother said. "Maybe there's no butter in heaven, and great-granny and gramps keep coming back for it."

"Why wouldn't there be butter in heaven?" My sister asked.

My brother didn't answer. He had propped his chin up with his hands, and was letting his head slide down so that it pulled his cheeks up and made his mouth hang open in a funny, buck-toothed, fish-lips face.

I had stopped caring about the butter and just wanted Mom to get home so I could go out biking before it got too blazing hot to even think about it.

None of us were looking directly at the butter dish. My sister stared at the ceiling as if trying to see into heaven to check if there was any butter up there. My brother's eyes were squished shut by his propped-up cheeks. I was checking out the window, hoping to see Mom's car coming up the sun-scorched pavement.

The butter dish clinked.

All three of us jumped. Then we stared. None of us had done it. The table hadn't moved. Our hands weren't anywhere near the dish.

And it was empty. Not completely empty. A thin pool of melted butter still swirled on the bottom of the dish when my sister picked up the cut-crystal cover. But the solid part of the butter was gone.

"We all saw it," my sister stared at my brother and me, her face serious. "We saw it vanish." It was a sort of pact. We knew for certain now that something impossible was happening.