The Summer We Saved the Bees Read online

  THE SUMMER

  WE SAVED

  THE BEES

  Robin

  Stevenson

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  Text copyright © 2015 Robin Stevenson

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Stevenson, Robin, 1968–, author

  The summer we saved the bees / Robin Stevenson.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-4598-0834-8 (pbk.).—ISBN 978-1-4598-0835-5 (pdf).—ISBN 978-1-4598-0836-2 (epub)

  I. Title.

  PS8637.T487S94 2015 jC813'.6 C2015-901702-5

  C2015-901703-3

  First published in the United States, 2015

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2015935535

  Summary: In this middle-grade novel, twelve-year-old Wolf’s mother is obsessed with saving the world’s honeybees, but Wolf is less than enthusiastic about her plan to take her bee activism on the road.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Cover design by Teresa Bubela

  Cover images by iStockphoto.com

  Author photo by Sushi Rice Studios

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  www.orcabook.com

  For Amy Mathers, with great respect and

  appreciation for her Marathon of Books.

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Acknowledgments

  One

  MOM WAS SEWING when the twins and I left for school in the morning, and she was still sewing when we got home that afternoon. The floor around her was strewn with scraps of yellow lace and black velvet. The electric hum of her sewing machine sounded like the buzz of bees.

  Saffron dropped her schoolbag on the hardwood floor with a heavy thunk. “Are they done, Mama? Can we see them? Can I try mine on?”

  Whisper clutched my hand tightly and said nothing.

  “Almost done, kittens.” Mom scooped up Saffron and pulled her onto her lap. “Whisper, my love, come give Mama a hug.”

  Whisper let go of my hand, crept up beside Saffron and leaned her head against Mom’s shoulder.

  “After dinner you can try them on,” Mom said. “I just have to finish the wings.”

  “And then we can fly!” Saffron shouted.

  “And then you can fly,” Mom agreed.

  Whisper looked at me, and a tiny smile lifted one corner of her mouth.

  “I’m hungry,” Saffron said, wriggling free.

  “Me too,” I told her.

  Since I’d turned twelve a couple of months ago, I’d been hungry all the time. Like some switch had turned on and no matter how much I ate, it wouldn’t turn off. I could eat nonstop and still feel hungry. My stomach was getting pudgy and my jeans were too tight, but I had this gnawing emptiness in my belly that wouldn’t go away.

  “Violet’s making dinner,” Mom said, nodding toward the kitchen. “Wolf, why don’t you give her a hand? Saffron, you and Whisper can help me sew your wings.”

  In the kitchen, Violet was chopping huge quantities of tomatoes and onions.

  “What are you making?” I asked.

  “Chili.” She nodded toward a jumbo can of kidney beans. “Open that and rinse them.”

  I looked at her more closely. Her black eyeliner was smudged, and her eyes were glittering. “Violet? Are you crying?”

  She scowled at me. “It’s the onions.”

  I didn’t believe her, but I opened the can of beans and said nothing. Probably she’d had another fight with Tyler. Violet thought about nothing but her boyfriend, even though they argued and broke up all the time. When she wasn’t fighting with Tyler, she was fighting with Mom and Curtis about Tyler. I was tired of hearing about him.

  Violet sniffed, wiped her nose on her sleeve and swept the chopped onions into the saucepan on the stove. They sizzled in the hot oil. I dumped the beans into a colander and ran cold tap water over them.

  “Use a bowl,” she said. “You’re wasting water.”

  “Not much.” I turned the tap off. “There you go.”

  She poked the beans with her finger. “Still slimy.”

  “They’re fine.” I hooked my thumbs into my pockets. “What’s the matter, Vi?”

  “It’s Jade,” she said. “Stupid Jade. I hate her.”

  Jade is my mom. Her boyfriend, Curtis, is Vi’s dad, so Vi is technically my stepsister, or she would be if Curtis and Mom were married. The twins were born after Mom and Curtis met, so they’re like the glue that sticks us all together and makes us one family. At least, I think of us as a family. It’s hard to know what Violet thinks because pretty much everything makes her mad.

  “What happened?” I said. “Did you guys have a fight or something?”

  She stirred the onions and turned down the burner. “She says Ty can’t come with us.”

  “Where?”

  “On the trip, stupid. This summer.”

  “Oh.” I hadn’t known Violet wanted Tyler to come, but maybe I should have guessed. “Would his parents let him anyway?”

  “He doesn’t have to ask them, Wolf. He’s seventeen. He can do what he likes.”

  I nodded. Secretly, I was glad Mom had said no. I didn’t really want Ty around when I was dressed as a bee. It was going to be bad enough with strangers staring at us, but at least I’d never have to see them again. We’d just be passing through.

  “I bet he’ll find some other girl,” Violet said. “If we’re gone for months and months.”

  “Maybe you’ll find some other guy,” I said.

  “As if. I’ll still be Ty’s girlfriend, doofus.”

  I wondered if she was right. Loving someone doesn’t mean you own them, Mom says. She figures that’s where most people go wrong—getting loving and owning all mixed up. She says you have to hold love as gently as a baby bird or you’ll crush it. What if it flies away? Saffron asked once. Mom sighed. It happens, she said, and I
wondered if she was thinking about my father. He left when I was a baby, and he never came back.

  There was a shriek from the living room, and I could hear Mom shouting at the twins to “cut it out right now!” Mom didn’t yell much, but when she did, it made you feel like you had to do something right away. Like you had to fix things. “Maybe I should take Whisper and Saffron outside,” I said. “Get them out of Mom’s hair. She really wants to get the costumes done tonight.”

  “I don’t see what the big rush is,” Violet said. She poured the beans into the saucepan with the onions, added the tomatoes and dumped half a jar of chili powder on top of it all. “There’s still six weeks left before school finishes.”

  I shrugged.

  “This whole trip is the lamest idea ever.” She grabbed a wooden spoon and stirred the chili so violently that a few beans went flying. “And there’s no way I’m getting dressed up as a bee or taking part in any kind of presentation or guerrilla theater or whatever kind of hell Jade’s planning.”

  She sounded fierce. Time to leave. I backed out of the kitchen and joined the others. Whatever the problem had been with the twins, they seemed to have figured it out. And it looked like the costumes were pretty much finished. Whisper and Saffron were fluttering around the living room, a blur of yellow and black, wire-and-lace wings dangling limply from their skinny shoulders. Mom clapped and laughed. “Don’t they look sweet? My little honeybees.”

  I watched them for a minute, buzzing this way and that, Saffron climbing up on the back of the couch—“Watch me fly!”—and jumping off, Whisper hugging herself, lost in gales of helpless giggles.

  “Wolf,” Mom said, and her tone was suddenly serious, “the girls don’t know yet, but we’re going to leave a little earlier than we’d planned.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The website’s getting lots of traffic. The costumes and signs are done. Curtis has finished converting the van, and it’s running great.” She lowered her voice. “I think we could be ready to go in a few days. Maybe even by Monday.”

  Monday was only three days away. I stared at her. “What about school?”

  “It won’t matter if you miss a few weeks. Besides, traveling’s very educational, Wolf. You’ll learn more on the road than you ever could in a classroom.”

  “Mom. School’s important.”

  “So you can homeschool. You’ve done it before.”

  I didn’t go to school at all until fourth grade, because before that we were living on this tiny island called Lasqueti. It wasn’t like I really homeschooled though. I just helped Mom with the cabin and the garden and the chickens. I didn’t do lessons or anything. Still, when I finally started school, I wasn’t behind at all. I could read and write and do everything the other kids could do. I liked to think that meant I was smart, but Mom said it just showed that school was overrated and that counting chicken eggs taught you how to add and subtract just as well as worksheets did. “How can I homeschool?” I asked. “We won’t even be at home.”

  “Roadschool then.” She laughed. “Lighten up, Wolf.”

  I tried to smile, like it was no big deal, but I didn’t want to leave early. I loved my school, even though Violet, who went to the regular high school, said it was for losers. There were only about twenty students, including the twins and me. We had a garden, and we got to learn what we wanted, and all the kids did stuff together, not like ordinary schools where you are split up by age. Well, we sort of were—but just into two classes, one for little kids and one for age ten and up. The little kids mostly played, and my group did passion projects, which meant we picked a topic we were interested in, learned about it however we wanted and then presented it to the rest of the group. It didn’t have to be a speech or an essay or anything. One older boy was making Haida art, carving orcas and eagles from red cedar. And Caitlin, who was my age and mean to everyone, made dioramas, which sounds dorky but they were actually cool.

  For my project, I made a website about bees.

  That was actually how all of this started, as Violet reminded me on a daily basis.

  “This whole trip is your fault, Wolf. It’s all because of your stupid project. You’re the one that got Jade freaked out about the bees dying.”

  “But before my bee project, she was freaked out about climate change,” I’d reminded Violet. “Remember that? And your dad was too, at least as much as Mom.”

  Violet had scowled at me. “Yeah, well, they never dragged us across the country and made us dress up as melting polar ice, did they?”

  Violet was going to go berserk when she heard we were leaving early. She didn’t want to go at all, ever. “I don’t want to miss the rest of the year,” I told Mom.

  She ruffled my hair. “I know, love. But this is important.” She put one finger under my chin and lifted it so that I had to look right at her. “This is more important than anything, right?”

  “I guess. I mean, yeah.” I pulled away, turning my head and avoiding her eyes. “But we’re already doing a lot.”

  We did more than anyone else I knew. We recycled and reused, we grew our own fruit and vegetables, we rode bikes everywhere. We’d never owned a car before the van, and I’d never flown in a plane. When we lived on Lasqueti, we didn’t even have electricity until Mom moved in with Curtis, who had solar panels. Before we moved to the city, I thought composting toilets were the norm. And none of us ate meat, except me, once. It was on pizza at another kid’s house, and it was sort of an accident.

  “I know it’s hard,” Mom said. “But Wolf, when you’re facing a crisis, a life-or-death emergency…you have to think about the big picture. You have to rethink your priorities.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “We’re all going to have to make some sacrifices,” she said. “Set aside our comforts and our concerns about what other people might think.”

  “I just don’t see how waiting six weeks would make a difference.”

  “Don’t you?”

  I squirmed. I knew what she was going to say before she said it.

  “How many bees die each year?” she asked.

  “Millions?”

  “Yes. About thirty percent of all the bee colonies in the States die,” she said. “Every year. And what percentage of our crops is pollinated by bees?”

  “About a third?”

  She nodded. “Right. And what’s our government doing?”

  “Nothing?”

  She snorted. “A so-called study. Which has been going on for a decade. Meanwhile they’re still spraying poison and the clock is counting down, Wolf. We don’t know how much time we have.”

  There was a lump in my throat, and it ached like I’d swallowed some of that poison myself. Mom was right. It was stupid to fuss about school. Suck it up, buttercup, like Curtis always said. “I know,” I said. “You’re right. It’ll be fine. Will I get to say goodbye to everyone?”

  “Of course. You can go to school Monday and say goodbye.” She pulled me close and hugged me tightly. “My brave boy.”

  “I’m not brave.”

  “Yes, you are,” she said. “Braver than you think.”

  I hoped so. Because if Mom was right about the world going down the toilet, I was going to need to be.

  We all were.

  I checked Mom’s website that night, but she hadn’t updated it to say when we were leaving. I looked at the photo of our family, all standing together in the backyard: Mom and Curtis smiling, with their arms around each other’s shoulders; me standing behind Whisper and Saffron, my stupid red hair sticking out in every direction. The twins looked cute. I looked like a dork. Violet w
as standing a little off to one side, like she didn’t want to be associated with the rest of us, which was pretty much how she always acted.

  I read my mother’s words on the home page even though I practically knew them by heart:

  My name is Jade Everett and I am sharing my story here in the hope that it might inspire others to join us in our fight.

  I’ve always been an activist. For years, I went to protests, I wrote letters, I lived off the grid, trying to reduce our environmental footprint—but I knew I wasn’t doing enough. Every day I looked at my children and I imagined their future and I wanted to cry. The polar ice was melting, the reefs were dying, water levels were rising. Our world was dying all around us.

  I realized years ago that it made no sense to continue our day-to-day life, but I didn’t know what to do. It was my son, Wolf, who gave me the idea. He was doing a school project on bee-colony collapse. I realized that the bees were like the canary in the coal mine—and reading about what was happening to them was like seeing the future unfolding. Crop failure. Worldwide food shortages. Famine. Death. Maybe in the next decade! I may never see my children reach adulthood, but at least in these last doomed years my family can try to live in a way that we can be proud of.

  And so we will cross the country, traveling from west coast to east coast, stopping at towns along the way to raise awareness of bees and their importance, of the dangers of fungicides and pesticides, of the danger to our food supply if the bees are lost. To show people a glimpse of the future we are barreling toward, and to persuade them to join us in our fight.

  To do everything we can to save the bees—and our planet.

  Every time I read it, my stomach felt funny, and I got a weird kind of electric tingle down my arms, sort of like when you bang your funny bone really hard.

  I wished she hadn’t put that part in about it being my idea.

  Two

  ON SATURDAY MORNING we were eating breakfast in the kitchen when we heard a horn honking loudly: bwahh, bwahh, bwahh! We rushed outside and there was the van, parked in our gravel driveway.