“MY name is Chantel Norton and this is the story of the summer that changed everything.” This is the first sentence written in Chapter 1 of
Just Like Butterflies (JLB). This young adult novel tells us how summers changed Chantel’s life. [caption id="attachment_127513" align="aligncenter" width="680" caption="Just Like Butterflies ... ©Mamak Ketol™"][/caption] Chantel is a girl from Guangzhou, China who was adopted by Dan and Anne Norton when she was 8 years old. The Nortons live in a place called Northbeach somewhere in America. Chantel has "ugly" scars in her face and this makes her feel insecure with her appearance. In the past three summers, Chantel was an unhappy teenage girl. As the only child in the family, Chantel, now 16, gets everything she needs but love. Chantel spends the first summer with her cousin Grace who comes to visit her. It seems that Grace is Chantel’s only friend at that time. Grace teaches Chantel how to put some make up on and how to make a pass at beach guys. In the following year, again … Grace spends her summer in Chantel’s house. This time Grace meets a guy of her dream, and she decides to travel to Mexico with him instead of spending the rest of summer with Chantel. Chantel suddenly feels the need of having a “relationships”. However, Grace’s beauty and charm makes Chantel even more aware of her own ugly scars. Chantel feels lonely and gets deeper into self-pity of her horrible scars on her face. Chantel’s desire for friendship and even for a date is very strong. Here is Chantel’s reminiscence of Grace’s relationship with her boy friend:
Her relationships were often some sort of mutual understanding, something surreal and untrue, however, a relationship is a relationship, no matter how fragmented and untrue it may be. By then, I knew that all I wanted was a relationship; just something, if not, anything (p. 7).
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