The Summer We Saved the Bees Read online

  “Saffron! Smarten up!”

  She burst into noisy tears. “I hate you! I want to go home!”

  “Right,” Violet said. “Too bad we don’t have one.”

  “Violet!” I glared at her and raised my voice over Saffron’s angry sobs. “Like that’s going to help. She’s five, all right? Give her a break.”

  Violet looked like she might start crying too. “You think it’s easy being the oldest, Wolf? Because guess what. It isn’t. Actually, it sucks.”

  “But at least you—”

  “No, listen. You think I don’t feel like I’m abandoning you all? That I don’t feel totally guilty about it?”

  “So don’t do it,” I said. “You do have a choice, you know.”

  We stared at each other for a moment, Saffron screaming her head off, half the Walmart shoppers of Nelson staring at us. Violet ran her hands through her hair. “God, I hate my life,” she said.

  Ty was practically sprinting back toward us, Whisper bouncing up and down on his back with each stride. “Got it!” He waved a piece of paper at us. “Okay, so call your grandmother already. Let’s get out of here before we get kicked out.”

  Violet took the paper from him, stuck some coins in the phone and dialed. Ty and I watched, holding our breath. Even Saffron seemed to realize that this phone call was important and switched off the waterworks. Thank god, because that noise in the background would hardly endear us to our grandmother. Their grandmother, I reminded myself. Not mine.

  “Hello,” Violet said. “Um. Is this Diane Brooks? Um. This is Violet. Your granddaughter.” She looked at me and mouthed, It’s her. “Well, actually, we’re right here in Nelson…Well, me and the twins, and Wolf. Jade’s son… No, my dad isn’t with us.” She bit her lip, listening. “Right. He’s in Chilliwack, actually. Yeah, with Jade…On the Greyhound. We just arrived…”

  She met my eyes and held up crossed fingers.

  I crossed mine too.

  “It’s kind of a long story,” Violet said. “But we’re at the Walmart, and we were kind of hoping we could come and stay with you. Just for a few days.”

  My heart was racing. What were we going to do if she said no? We didn’t have much money left, and we had nowhere else to go. Saffron looked at me and held up her crossed fingers, and I wondered how much she and Whisper understood about what was going on.

  This whole idea had been completely crazy. Irresponsible. A thousand times worse than what my mom had done—at least she’d always made sure we had enough to eat and a tent to sleep in and a van that sort of worked. At least she’d had a plan.

  “We’re really tired,” Violet said. “And the twins are hungry. Could you come and get us? And we can explain it all when we see you?” Her voice wobbled. “Please?”

  She listened for a few seconds, nodding to us while she did. “Okay. We’ll be right out in front of the Walmart. See you soon. Thank you…um, thank you, Grandma.”

  She hung up the phone. “She’ll be here in ten minutes.”

  “Did she sound mad?” I asked.

  Violet made a face. “She didn’t exactly sound thrilled.”

  “I guess it’s probably a bit of a shock,” I said. “Us just showing up like this. Without our parents and everything.”

  “Well, she’s coming to get us,” Violet said. “So that’s something anyway.”

  “I hope she has ice cream,” Saffron said.

  “Me too,” I said. “Me too.”

  Twenty-Eight

  I DIDN’T KNOW what to expect this grandmother to be like. It was weird to think she was Curtis’s mother. Actually, it was weird to think Curtis even had a mother. Curtis and my mom had been together for over six years, but he hadn’t lived with us all the time, and he was away a lot, doing different jobs here and there—tree planting up north or working on fishing boats for months at a time. In some ways, I didn’t feel like I knew him all that well. He’d never wanted me to call him Dad or anything like that. Not that I wanted to, exactly, but it was weird being the only one who didn’t.

  Violet had said Grandma when she was on the phone, and I wondered if the twins would call her that too, and what I should call her. Diane? Mrs. Brooks?

  Maybe I’d just avoid calling her anything.

  We stood in front of the Walmart, waiting. Violet bit her nails. “I hope she’s not too mad,” she said.

  “Why would she be mad?” Saffron asked.

  “She won’t be,” I said, glaring at Violet over Saffy’s head. “She’ll be happy to see you.”

  Saffron put her hands on her hips. “Then why did Violet say she’d be mad?”

  I could see Whisper listening carefully to every word. The last thing we needed was for her to be in full meltdown mode when her grandmother drove up. Time for a distraction. “Hey,” I said loudly, “let’s all guess what color her car will be. I say white…”

  Ty caught on. “Black.”

  “Pink,” Saffron decided.

  “How about you, Whisper? Blue? Green?” I paused. “Brown?”

  “Red,” Whisper said.

  It was so quiet—and so unexpected—that I almost missed it. I swallowed and tried to stay calm. I didn’t want to freak her out or make a huge deal of it. “Red, huh? You’re guessing red? Okay.”

  Saffron didn’t seem to notice anything unusual, but Violet was staring at Whisper like she had suddenly grown a second head or something. I shook my head at her warningly. “How about you, Vi? What color is her car going to be?”

  “Um, right. Blue. Did someone already say blue?”

  “Nope. Okay, so…” I broke off. “Is that her?”

  A dark-red suv was slowing down and pulling over to the curb in front of us. I squinted but couldn’t really see through the tinted windows.

  Violet blew out a long breath. “Red,” she said. “You win, Whisper.”

  Whisper grinned.

  “Pink would look much nicer,” Saffron said.

  We all stared as the driver got out and walked around the front of the car. “Violet?” she said. “I wouldn’t have recognized you.”

  I wouldn’t have recognized her either, not from the grandmother image in my head. She looked more like a Diane Brooks than a grandmother. She didn’t seem very old, for one thing. Her brown hair was glossy and kind of stylish, with frosty-blond highlights, and she was wearing a purple skirt with a black jacket. She had lots of bracelets on both arms, and they jangled when she moved her hands.

  “Hi,” Violet said. I’d never heard her sound so shy before. “Um, this is Ty. My boyfriend. And—”

  “And Saffron and Juniper.” She turned to the twins. “Well, you’ve certainly grown.”

  She said it kind of disapprovingly, like she’d rather they hadn’t. I exchanged looks with Violet.

  “Yes?” Saffron said, her voice rising as if it was a question. Whisper looked down at the ground.

  “Thanks for coming to pick us up, Mrs. Brooks,” I said. “Um, I’m Wolf.”

  “Of course. You wouldn’t remember me, but I did meet you a few times on Lasqueti Island, when Curtis started spending time with Jade. Your mother. Before I left.” She looked me up and down with that same critical frown. “You used to be a tiny little thing.”

  I nodded politely. “Violet told me you lived there for a while.”

  “A year, yes. But I’ve been here in Nelson for a long time. I’m in real estate now.” She turned back to Violet. “What are you all doing here? I had no idea you were coming. I haven’t spoken to Curtis for a couple of years. Not since th
at time he came out here when the twins were toddlers.”

  Violet stuck out her lower lip and blew a long noisy breath that lifted her bangs off her forehead. “It’s a super-long story.”

  “Hmm.” Mrs. Brooks gave her a skeptical look and then gestured to the car. “Well, get in. You can tell me about it on the way.”

  Violet did most of the talking. She started with my bee project, explaining how I’d done all this research on why bees were dying and all that stuff. She didn’t make it sound like the trip was all my fault this time. She explained how Jade had latched on to the subject and started her own website about it, and how things had kind of spiraled from there—the trip and George the van and leaving school early and Ty not being allowed to come.

  Mrs. Brooks interrupted her a couple of times to clarify some point, but mostly she just drove and listened, even though Violet didn’t seem to be getting anywhere close to explaining why we had all appeared, without warning and without our parents, at the Walmart in Nelson.

  Violet had just gotten to the part where we did our first presentation in Vancouver when Mrs. Brooks held up a hand to indicate she should stop. “This is my place,” she said, pulling into the driveway beside a meticulously landscaped front yard. “So Violet, just pause the story there and let’s get you all settled in with a drink and something to eat—I bet you haven’t had dinner, have you? And then you can tell me the rest.”

  Violet nodded, looking relieved. I wondered if she’d been planning to leave out the part where she took off with Ty. It wasn’t really relevant, but so far she’d included every last detail, right down to which exams she was missing and the specific design of the twins’ costumes. As we got out of the car, she grabbed my shoulder. “Do you think it’s going well?” she whispered.

  “It’s hard to tell. Did you know she hadn’t talked to Curtis in years?”

  “Sort of. I knew they had a big fight and that was why she left Lasqueti. And I knew it didn’t go well when he visited with the twins. I think he was hoping to fix things, but it didn’t work out.” She made a face. “I can’t stop babbling—I’m so nervous.”

  I leaned close, my mouth inches from her ear. “You’re going to tell her about Whisper, right? About her not talking and everything?”

  “Of course. That’s mostly why we’re here, right?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. But don’t explain that part in front of the twins.”

  She pulled back and gave me a scornful look. “Give me some credit. I’m not a complete idiot, Wolf.”

  Twenty-Nine

  WE ALL TROOPED into the house after Mrs. Brooks. It was nice, but in a super-tidy way that made it look like no one actually lived there. Polished wood floors, mostly covered by beige carpeting. A glass coffee table with a vase of flowers on it. An enormous L-shaped couch—white leather, with a few brown polka-dot cushions placed at strategic intervals. A big television but no books, no magazines, no games, no empty coffee mugs.

  I stood there awkwardly while Violet followed her grandmother into the kitchen to help get drinks and food for everyone. Ty plunked himself down on the living room couch, shoving a polka-dot cushion aside, and after a moment’s hesitation I flopped down beside him. The twins trailed into the room behind us. They looked tired and pale, and Saffy had awful dark circles under her eyes.

  “You guys hungry?” Ty asked them.

  Whisper nodded and snuggled up beside me, her head on my shoulder. She felt warm, and her hair was sticking damply to her forehead.

  Saffron climbed onto Ty’s lap. “Tell us a story about Buzzy.”

  Ty’s eyes met mine. “I’m all storied out, kiddo.”

  “Please?”

  “Got no more in me right now, Saffy. Seriously. Maybe at bedtime, okay? After we have something to eat.” Ty leaned his head back on the couch cushions, eyes closed.

  “I’ll tell you a story,” I said.

  Both girls turned to look at me, Whisper smiling, Saffron unconvinced.

  “Um, so there was once a little monkey—” I began.

  “A bee,” Saffy said.

  “No, Buzzy is Ty’s story,” I said.

  “Tell a story about George then.”

  “George the van?”

  She nodded.

  I sighed. “Fine. Once upon a time there was a van called George. George was black and yellow, and he had stripes like a bee. And more than anything, George wanted to…” I hesitated, trying to think of something a van might want.

  “To fly,” Whisper breathed.

  “Okay.” My breath caught in my throat. She was speaking. That was twice she’d spoken today. Did that mean I hadn’t made things worse, at least? “More than anything,” I said, “George wanted to fly.”

  Saffron giggled. “A flying van!”

  “That’s right. Because the thing about George…” I paused, thinking, looking down at Whisper. A hint of a smile flickered at the corners of her mouth. “The thing about George,” I went on, “was that he didn’t know he was a van. He thought he was a bee. But all the other bees he saw were so much smaller and fuzzier than him, and they all knew how to fly…”

  Whisper’s eyes closed. Saffron leaned her head on Ty’s chest, listening.

  “George watched the bees flying around. He watched them landing on the bright flowers and gathering pollen, and he wondered why he was stuck on the ground. He wondered where his wings were and when he would be able to fly.” I had a lump in my throat all of a sudden, and I found myself blinking back tears. What the hell was wrong with me? Practically crying over a stupid imaginary van. “Um, so one day he met a…um, he met a…”

  “A skateboard,” Ty said.

  I rolled my eyes. “Fine, a skateboard. And the skateboard couldn’t fly either.”

  Violet walked in, carrying a tray. She put it down carefully on the coffee table in front of us: a plate of cheese and crackers, some cut-up apples, a package of chocolate-covered cookies.

  “You want some food?” I asked.

  Saffron shook her head drowsily. “More story.”

  Whisper didn’t answer. She was already fast asleep.

  I sighed. Time to come up with a happy ending. “Okay. So George and the skateboard started to talk…”

  Violet gave me a funny look, but I shrugged and plowed on. “And the skateboard said, ‘Hey, you have wheels like I do. So maybe you’re not a bee. Maybe you’re a skateboard.’ But George was pretty sure he wasn’t a skateboard.” I waited, watching Saffron. Her eyes were closed and her mouth slightly open. “Saffy?” No answer.

  “Out cold,” Ty said. He shifted Saffron off his lap. “Here, there’s room for them both if we move.”

  We eased the girls down so that they were lying with their heads together in the middle of the couch and their bare feet—very dirty bare feet—at the ends. I sat down on the carpet and grabbed a cracker and a thick slice of pale yellow cheese. “So where’s your grandmother?” I asked in a low voice. “What did she say?”

  “Take a wild guess,” she said flatly. “Take a wild guess what she’s doing right now.”

  I shook my head. “What?” I stared at her, too tired to play games. “Isn’t she going to help us? To help Whisper?”

  “She’s on the phone to Curtis,” Violet said wearily.

  “Oh.” I chewed, swallowed. “You explained about Whisper not talking and needing help? And Mom not getting it and just making things worse?”

  “I explained everything.” Violet shrugged. “I don’t know what I expected. I should have known she wouldn’t do anything.”

  “Maybe she’ll e
xplain,” I said. “Maybe Mom and Curtis will listen to her.”

  “Maybe,” Violet said. “But I wouldn’t count on it.”

  We all sat there in silence for a long moment. I watched the twins asleep on the couch, their hair tangled and their faces flushed.

  “What do you want to do, Violet?” Ty asked softly. “Your dad and Jade…I know the van’s not going, but they’ll probably catch a bus and come, right? You want to take off before they get here?”

  Violet burst into tears and ran from the room. I heard the front door open and then bang closed. Ty sighed, stood up and followed her. I just sat there, waiting. Eating cheese and crackers. Thinking. Was Ty right that our parents would come? Or would Mom insist on sticking to their schedule? She had rescheduled all that stuff in Hope and Kamloops and Kelowna. And she’d been prepared to leave Vancouver without Violet if necessary.

  “Well, it looks like we should get those two to bed.”

  I looked up. Mrs. Brooks was standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips. I hastily swallowed a mouthful of too-dry cracker. “Um. Yeah. They kind of crashed.”

  “No doubt,” she said. “Where’s Violet?”

  “She’s with Ty,” I said. “Outside, I think.”

  “Is she?” She studied me for a long moment. “Well. You certainly look like your mother.”

  “I guess,” I said. Something about her tone of voice made me think this was not a compliment.

  “Follow me,” she ordered. “I’ll show you where you’ll be sleeping.”

  I cleared my throat. “Did you talk to our parents?”

  “I talked to Curtis,” she said.

  “What did he say?”

  “He said they’ll catch the next bus, which isn’t until the morning. They’ll be here tomorrow night.”

  “Both of them?” I held my breath.

  “I assume so,” she said.

  I was trying very hard not to assume anything at all.

  Mrs. Brooks had a spare room with a queen bed for the twins, and she’d put a thin foam mattress on the floor for me. White sheets and a navy-blue comforter were neatly folded at the end of it.