Butterflies in the System is a story about love, incarceration, and perseverance. Inspired by true events, it follows a year in the life of five teenagers as they struggle through the youth protection system in Montreal. Through the halls of a group home, into lockdown within a youth detention centre, and onto the streets, Sam and her peers navigate through a world kept hidden from the public eye. Their future in the hands of judges, social workers, and childcare workers, the teens learn the value in empathy and friendship.
Jane Powell is an alumna of Ville Marie Social Services and Youth Horizons (now Batshaw Youth and Family Centres) in Montreal, Canada. She wrote this story to raise awareness of the challenge teens face while in youth protection, where they are subjected to variable and often unethical care.
Butterflies in the System is a story about love, incarceration, and perseverance. Inspired by true events, it follows a year in the life of five teenagers as they struggle through the youth protection system in Montreal. Through the halls of a group home, into lockdown within a youth detention centre, and onto the streets, Sam and her peers navigate through a world kept hidden from the public eye. Their future in the hands of judges, social workers, and childcare workers, the teens learn the value in empathy and friendship.
Jane Powell is an alumna of Ville Marie Social Services and Youth Horizons (now Batshaw Youth and Family Centres) in Montreal, Canada. She wrote this story to raise awareness of the challenge teens face while in youth protection, where they are subjected to variable and often unethical care.
July 31st
System rats. Thatās what they call us. Lost causes, fuckups, the unwanted. And they wonder why we run.
I took a long drag off my smoke and blew rings towards the sky. Swallows played in the morning mist that hovered over the river. The quiet was nice. I emptied the last few drops of my beer into the weeds and got up from the log I was sitting on. The place was littered with bottles and crap from the night before. Iād woken up on the beach by the river, under the train bridge. What a night.
Running my fingers through my hair, I shook my head to get the remaining sand out. The shaking made my face hurt. I stopped and held my head in my hands. Iād managed to get myself into two fights this time. Well, more like two chicks managed to get themselves into fights with me. I sure as hell wasnāt looking to fight. Some crazy jealous bitch at the party knocked me flat on my ass, then I awoke this morning to Frankie shaking me, screaming like a disappointed banshee.
I touched my swollen eye and flinched. Time to ditch this place.
As I began to walk, I remembered my right shoe was still missing. I found it next to the fire pit, partly melted. My toes didnāt quite fit in. I wore the shoe like a slipper, with my heel hanging over the back. It wasnāt comfortable, but it worked. I put my earphones on and pressed play on my Walkman. Madonnaās Live to Tell unwound, up along the wires into my mind, like a reflection with a secret.
My third day on the run. Freedom felt good, but mornings were damn lonely.
With no clear idea where to go from there, I stepped onto the tracks and headed south, Montreal-bound. The trains were real rattlers, and theyād be on Sunday scheduleāif one somehow surprised me, I would sure be surprised.
My thoughts whirled around my fight with Frankie. What was her problem anyway? Sheād turned into one of those annoying girls that had a perfect life but didnāt realize it. I mean, seriously? She has one rough spot and her happiness implodes like a dying star with a burnt-out core. The definition of spoiled brat, plain and simple.
Yet, something inside me had crumbled as sheād yelled at me. Deep down, I knew the shit between me and Frankie was more about my crap than hers. But what to do? I didnāt even know what to feel about it. āDeep-down-Samā was a big ball of twisted up junkālike yarn the cat got into, all knotted and screwed up and unable to escape the fate prescribed by someone elseās game.
Alone on the tracks in the boondocks, I held my emotions in check. Nope, not going to cry over someone elseās bullshit. Fuck āem. I am a survivor. I would survive this, show āem all, and rub their prissy ass noses in it. I am fuckinā strong!
With my music turned up high, I stretched my arms to the sky and howled like a wolf signalling a successful hunt. I am the hunter, not the hunted. I laughed aloud, then shouted, āFuck you, Frankie! Mom! Dad! Itās my ball of messed up yarn, so screw off! Assholes!ā
Startled, the doves on the power lines took flight. At least the boondocks are good for somethingāI could yell my guts out and only the birds took issue.
I searched my blouse pocket for the cigarette Iād bummed off some guy the night before. Iād bummed a few and this would be my last. Being broke sucked. Gripping the smoke between my lips, I felt my other pocket for my lighter, then realized Iād left it at the bridge. I stopped, cursed myself, and turned to go back for it.
Thatās when the trainās horn hammered me for the first time.
Looking up, I saw the approaching train in disbelief and momentarily froze. The sound of its horn vibrated through me for the second time. I tried to jump right, off the tracks, but tripped on a rail nail, and then hit my head hard as I landed.
Dazed, I attempted to roll away from the track, but my body wouldnāt respond. Adrenaline hit me hard. My mind became alert, but the rest of me was terrified. It was like trying to push myself through waist-deep mud. Everything but the train moved in slow motion. Its screeching brakes were deafening, the loudest nails-on-chalkboard ever. It occurred to me that this was it. This would be my ending. On the tracks, alone, after Iād told my whole world to fuck off.
People say that your life flashes in front of you when you are about to die. All that flashed within my head was complete and utter fear, no thoughts, just active unrelenting āget me out of here!ā FEAR. I was about to be cut in half, and my body was stuck in āparkā.
The scream trapped deep inside my gut surfaced, shortly before my failed defence system shut me down completely and I passed out.
I opened my eyes to strange faces, floating above me in a universe of multi-lingual concern and surprise. My lower body was under the front of the train and its wheels almost touched me. Never before had I considered myself a lucky person, but I began to re-evaluate. Holy shit, I'm alive! I think. Or was this some weird kind of heaven? I studied the faces above me.
An old guy in uniform with a handlebar moustache looked down at me intently. The moustache tugged at my memory.
āOh, Mon dieu! Fille chanceuse, quāest-ce que tu fais lĆ ?! You are one lucky girl. What de āell were you tinking?ā
Oh, yeah, the French conductor guy. The one that Frankie likes. What a relief! Not in heaven. I stared at him wide-eyed, amazed that I still lived.
A rumble of laughter gurgled up within me, slowly increasing in volume until it turned into a hysterical cackle. This wasnāt the reaction people expected, and I couldnāt explain it myself. Just happy to be alive, I guess?
Concerned, the train conductor asked me questions, but I couldnāt hear him through my hysteria, so he gave up and waited for the first aid crew.
The first responders concurred that I had likely sustained a head injury. They loaded me into the ambulance, and we headed for the hospital. Having trouble stringing words together to answer questions, no one could figure out what my native language was. This resulted in a jumble of French and English, often one sentence in the former followed by the exact same in the latter. Awfully amused, my laughter persisted, contributing Iām sure to the diagnosis of concussion.
I tried to tell them I was just thrilled to be living, but it came out: āJāsuis un loup! A lucky wolf!ā I howled laughing, āHappy to be en vie! Oui, oui, joix de vivre!ā Maybe they had reason to worry.
A ridiculous thought occurred to me: perhaps my motherās wish had come true, and Iād finally got some sense knocked into me. I howled again as we sped away towards the hospital.
I had never read a story about teens in the youth protection system, so it instantly piqued my interest. This is one of those books that covers important topics that aren't always easy to read about but are necessary to know because it's the reality for many of these adolescents. What I truly loved about this book is that it's a character-driven story and that, regardless of the decisions that they make, you still can't help but root for these teenagers from beginning to end. Because they are kids dealing with hard circumstances that not everyone can relate to. No matter how terrible their choices are or how unreasonable their thoughts may have been in my mind, I just wanted them to be okay. And that's what they wanted for each other too. Making your own found family is a big component of this book, which I deeply appreciated.
The main issue I had with the book was the multiple chapters that covered a lewd money-making scheme that the main characters had concocted. When I read the idea for their "business," I was like . . . huh? It was so over the top and off-the-wall that there is no way that someone would fall for it in the real world. But in the end, it felt like dark humor, which I'm a sucker for.
Jane Powell does a beautiful job of walking us through the lives of multiple teenagers in a situation that even if you can't relate to their circumstances, you can relate to their complex feelings and emotions. Being misunderstood, lost, angry, like you don't have a voice in your own life. We've all been there. Taking a peek behind the heartbreaking stories of living in the system is something that I'm happy I was able to experience through this incredible writing.