When my brother told me he was engaged to Nancy, I forced a smile and said “That’s amazing!” — even though my stomach flipped. Nancy wasn’t just someone I knew in school … she was the girl who made my childhood miserable.
Nancy didn’t push or hit — she used words like knives, carving at me in ways teachers never saw and parents never understood. I perfected invisibility: lunch alone, head down, counting days until graduation. I moved away for college and thought I’d never think about her again.
But when my brother called with big news, saying she was “amazing and sweet,” something in me froze. I told him the truth: she bullied me. He brushed it off as kids being kids and invited me to the engagement party anyway.
At the party, everything looked perfect — light music, clinking glasses, and my brother beaming with joy. Then I saw her. Nancy, dressed to the nines, smiling that same look she always had — polite on the outside, razor‑sharp underneath. She greeted me with faux charm and backhanded compliments like we were old friends.
Her voice was sugary, her eyes mocking, each comment aimed to sting while everyone watched. I kept my cool — not because I forgot what she’d done, but because I’d grown past the scared kid she once terrorized.
That night, lying in bed with memories of old insults playing on loop, I remembered something: Nancy terrified butterflies. Not some heroic fear — pure panic. Back in freshman biology, she had screamed about them so loud the principal came running.
An idea clicked, and by morning I had a plan. I ordered two hundred live butterflies to be delivered in a beautiful gift box — with instructions that it be opened inside their home after the wedding. I even paid extra so someone would make sure it was opened properly.
At the reception, I played it cool. When Nancy asked why I hadn’t brought a gift, I smiled and told her it was waiting for her at home. Her eyes lit up — thinking it was something expensive, something thoughtful.
Later that night, they opened the box. Butterflies exploded into the room — vibrant wings everywhere. For a moment, stunned silence. Then Nancy screamed, the terror igniting like a spark in dry grass. She flailed, cried, and desperately tried to escape the harmless, fluttering creatures.
My brother was horrified. He called me furious, shouting that I “traumatized his wife.” I replied simply:
“How long do you think I spent crying in high school because of her?”
He sputtered and stammered that it was all long ago and I needed to let it go. I told him I had — but she never had to live through it.
That was the last time I ever heard from Nancy. And for the first time in years, I slept like a baby.
