The Summer We Saved the Bees Read online

  “Just stay together, okay?” I told them. “And don’t go anywhere—Whisper, quit crumpling the papers—just stay right here. Probably no one is even going to come and watch anyway.” Curtis was supposed to come back for us at two o’clock—he was going to drive around to a bunch of Chinese restaurants and collect used cooking oil to fuel the van—and I wondered what we’d do for two hours if no one showed up. Would Mom do her whole show anyway, juggling routine and all? Or would we just stand around, getting cold and looking dumb in our bee costumes?

  “Hey, hey,” a low voice said behind me.

  I turned. Ty was standing there, hands in his pockets, grinning at me. Violet spotted him, squealed and threw herself into his arms. “Ty! You made it!”

  “’Course I did,” he said. “I told you I’d be here.” He looked at me over Violet’s shoulder. “Whoa, Wolf, buddy. That’s quite the look.”

  I felt a rush of heat to my face and quickly folded my arms across my chest. “Yeah, well.”

  “Wolf! Violet!” Mom called. “Get over here.”

  I shrugged, glad of an excuse to take my goofy-looking striped self away from Ty. I beckoned for the twins to come with me and walked over to where Mom was standing with a small group of people. Students, maybe. They looked like students, anyway, in jeans and with bags slung over their shoulders.

  “This is my son, Wolf,” Mom said. “And my girls, Saffron and Whisper. And over there…my stepdaughter, Violet. Apparently she’s busy.”

  The students all looked where she was pointing. Violet was still standing with her arms wrapped around Ty. Everyone laughed.

  “It’s cool that you’re doing this,” one of them told me. She was tall, and her blond hair was tied up in a huge mass of dreadlocks. “Like, as a family? It’s awesome.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I just nodded.

  “Well,” Mom said. “This is our first show, so you’re our guinea pigs.” She grinned. “Might as well get started, I guess, though it feels funny performing for six people.”

  “Go for it.” A fat guy with a bushy ginger beard gestured toward the steps. “More people will stop and watch once you get going.”

  Mom took a deep breath and nodded. I could tell she was nervous. “All right,” she said, and she moved away from the group to stand on the bottom step. “We’re here because we care,” she began. “We’re here because time is running out…”

  I nudged Saffron. “You and Whisper give out the flyers now, okay? Just hand one to each person who’s watching. And if you see someone walking by but kind of looking at us, run over and give them a flyer too.”

  “Can you do it?”

  “I thought you wanted to,” I said. “You were all excited about this part, remember? You can pretend you’re flying.”

  “I’m cold,” she said.

  I sighed. “Fine.” I handed out flyers to the group of students. Mom was starting the juggling part of her show, holding the blue-and-green Earth ball in her hands. A couple of young Asian men walked by, eyes on their phones, not even glancing our way. A woman with a stroller slowed down and looked, but when I started moving toward her she avoided my eyes and quickened her pace. Like I was going to try to sell her something.

  I didn’t want to push the twins, especially if they were feeling shy, but they’d be better at this part. No one would turn their back on two five-year-olds dressed in bee costumes.

  On the bottom step, Mom was juggling three balls and talking nonstop. The students were listening, and every once in a while, when she said something they agreed with or did a cool trick, like throwing a ball behind her back and catching it, they’d break into applause.

  A large group of people—a dozen or so of them—was approaching. I nudged Saffron. “Come with me, okay?”

  She shook her head. To my surprise, Whisper slipped her hand into mine. “You’ll come?” I asked her.

  She nodded.

  “Me too,” Saffron said immediately.

  “Great.” The three of us walked toward the group, flyers in hand, and a couple of young women stopped. “Awww, look at you. How cute is that?” one of them cooed. The rest of the group slowed down and looked at us.

  “Go on, kids,” I said under my breath. “Give them flyers.”

  Saffron went one better. “That’s my mom,” she told them, pointing. “She’s a good juggler.”

  “She sure is,” the girl said. She had long dark hair and didn’t look much older than Violet. “So how come you’re all dressed up?”

  “We’re bees,” Saffron said. “Because we don’t want all the bees to die.”

  “Awww,” the girl said again. The whole group had stopped walking now and turned toward the steps, watching my mom juggle. “Are you handing out information then? About bees?”

  Saffron nodded and held out her flyers. “You can have one.”

  More people were stopping now, as if the very fact that the crowd had reached a certain size was enough to make it grow all by itself. Whisper buzzed around the group, weaving in and out of legs, silently handing out flyers. Saffron was still chatting with the dark-haired teenager.

  I looked over to where Violet and Ty had been, but they weren’t there anymore. On the steps, Mom was shouting out alarming statistics about bees and pollination and our food supply, juggling four balls higher and higher. I spun around, searching the crowd, scanning up and down the street.

  Violet and Ty were gone.

  Eleven

  I FIGURED I should wait until Mom’s show was done before I told her. Maybe Violet had just gone with Ty to grab a coffee or something, and she’d be back any minute. I just had to make sure I didn’t lose the twins. It wasn’t easy, trying to keep an eye on them in this mass of people twice their height.

  It was clouding over and a few drops of rain were starting to fall, but even when Mom was finished the show, people didn’t leave. They crowded around her, asking questions, arguing about stuff. I tried to catch her eye.

  “Where’s Curtis?” Saffron asked. “Will he be here soon? I’m cold.”

  I rubbed her bare arms. She had goose bumps. “Whisper, are you cold too?”

  Whisper nodded.

  Saffron was right, I thought. Whisper wasn’t talking at all.

  “Mom!” I called out, pushing through the crowd. “The twins are freezing. And…” I leaned in close and lowered my voice, not wanting to make a public announcement. “Violet’s taken off with Ty.”

  “Oh, Wolf.” She looked at me, exasperated, as if these things were somehow my fault. “Look, just keep the girls happy for a few minutes, can’t you?” She gestured across the street. “Find a coffee shop or something—get them a drink.”

  “I’ll need some money.”

  She put her hands on her hips in search of a pocket. “Curtis has my wallet.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Fine.” I walked away from her and her fans, took the twins by their hands and tried to think up a game to keep them entertained. I didn’t want to risk hide- and-seek: we’d already lost Violet. “You guys want to play scavenger hunt?”

  Saffron eyed me critically. “Like how?”

  “Like…” I thought fast. “Like, okay. You two have to touch something green, something brown, something red and something blue. Go!”

  They stared at me for about a second, and then they were running. “Grass!” Saffron yelled, bending down and uprooting a handful of it. Whisper followed her, touching the grass and darting across the sidewalk to a parking sign to touch the blue letters. “I can’t find red,” Saffron protested. “There’s no red, Wolf!”

 
“Sure there is.” I looked pointedly down at Whisper’s feet in their red Crocs. “Keep looking.”

  She followed my eyes and squealed, pouncing on Whisper and grabbing her foot. “That’s it! I win!”

  Startled, Whisper gasped, and tears came to her eyes. I rushed over, hoping to head off a meltdown. “Hey, nice teamwork!” I said. “You guys got all four colors so fast!”

  They both stared at me for a second, and then Saffron opened her mouth. “But I won!”

  I shook my head at her warningly. “Great teamwork,” I said again.

  Too late. Whisper sank to the ground, curled up with her arms around her knees and started to wail. “Nice,” I said to Saffron.

  She started to cry too. “What did I do?”

  I couldn’t deal with this. Could. Not. Deal. I turned back toward where Mom was standing at the steps, her juggling balls on the ground at her feet. The crowd had moved on; there were just a couple of student types and a bearded older man still talking to her. “Mom!” I yelled.

  She looked over. I pointed at the twins. “We need to go,” I said. I knew she couldn’t hear me, but I just stood there, waiting, until she excused herself, picked up her stuff and headed our way. Deep inside me, I felt something boiling up, like bubbling hot magma trapped under the Earth’s shifting plates, pressure building, ready to blow.

  Twelve

  MOM MANAGED TO calm the twins down. She called Curtis, who came back to pick us up, and we all headed to Eva’s house.

  All of us except Violet.

  “What are we going to do?” I asked Mom in a low voice. The twins were on the couch, watching cartoons, and I was helping Mom make a late lunch for everyone: peanut butter on toast and sliced bananas. Curtis had driven back downtown to look for Violet.

  Mom stuck more bread in the toaster. “Hopefully, Curtis will be back with her soon. And we’ll head toward Hope. Stop overnight in Chilliwack, do a presentation there tomorrow afternoon…”

  “And what if Curtis doesn’t find her? What if she’s taken off with Ty?”

  She shook her head. “We can’t stay here with Eva indefinitely. If she’s not back by tonight…”

  “We can’t just leave without her,” I said. “Can we?”

  “I don’t see what choice we have.” She pulled a stack of plates out of the cupboard and started placing the banana slices on them, arranging them like two eyes, a nose and a smiling mouth.

  “Well, maybe we should wait a few days?” I liked the thought of staying longer—spending the evenings with Tess and Hazel, playing Monopoly, eating Eva’s good cooked dinners and the kind of junky breakfast cereal my mom never bought.

  “We’ll see.” She spread peanut butter on a slice of bread, cut it into thin strips and arranged them like sticking-up hair above the banana faces.

  “Mom.” I hesitated. “Um, do you think Whisper is okay?”

  She looked across at the twins on the couch. “She’s fine. Can you take these two plates to them? I’ll make you a sandwich, okay? D’you want banana in yours?”

  “Sure.” I picked up the plates and stood there for a second longer. “You know, she isn’t really talking.”

  “She’s always been a shy one,” Mom said. “Don’t worry so much.”

  “Yeah. But I haven’t heard her say anything for days. I mean, not a word.”

  Mom laughed. “Her sister talks enough for both of them.”

  I looked over at the two of them, snuggled together on the couch. “She gets really upset sometimes though. Whisper, I mean. Like, those meltdowns she has…Saffy doesn’t do that.”

  “Kids are all different,” Mom said. “Besides, you had your share of meltdowns when you were little. Lots of kids do.”

  “At least I talked,” I said.

  Mom shook her head. “She’s only five, Wolf. Let her be who she is. She’ll be okay.”

  “What if she’s not okay though? I mean, don’t kids sometimes need help?”

  “Kids need love,” she said. “And time and space to grow in their own way. At their own pace. Whisper doesn’t have to follow anyone else’s schedule.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I guess.”

  “And you don’t either,” she said, ruffling my hair.

  I didn’t say anything, but it seemed to me that I had to follow my mom’s schedule. Otherwise I’d be back at school, drawing comics and writing reports about animals and watching Duncan make computer games.

  Though, of course, we were following Mom’s plan for good reasons. Watching Duncan muck about on the school computer wasn’t going to stop the bees from dying.

  Mom gave me a little push. “Now, go take those plates to your sisters, okay?”

  At three o’clock, Eva came home with Tess and Hazel and a carload of groceries. I closed my notebook—I was drawing a monster, but its wings were kind of lopsided and I couldn’t get the mouth right—and got up to help.

  “How did it go?” Eva asked me as we unpacked groceries on the kitchen counter.

  “Fine,” I said. “But cold. Mom’s upstairs having a bath to warm up. And Violet’s taken off.”

  She stared at me. “Taken off?”

  “With her boyfriend. Ty.”

  Hazel was wide-eyed, clutching a bag of dog food to her chest. “Your sister took off with her boyfriend? Do you know where she is?”

  “Nope.” I took can after can of chickpeas out of a shopping bag. “Curtis went back downtown to look for her.”

  “What’s her boyfriend like?” Tess asked. “Is he cute?”

  I made a face. “No. I don’t know. He’s older. Seventeen.”

  Eva’s forehead creased. “Jade must be beside herself.”

  “Uh, I think she’s worried about getting to Hope. We’re supposed to be leaving tomorrow, right?”

  “You can stay here. Is she worried about overstaying her welcome? Because you’re welcome to stay with us as long as you need to.” Eva squeezed my shoulder. “You can’t leave without Violet, obviously.”

  “Right. Obviously.”

  But I wasn’t sure that Mom felt the same way.

  Thirteen

  MARY GOT HOME from work around five o’clock, and Curtis showed up shortly after—without Violet. We all had dinner together: veggie burgers and these totally awesome yam fries with some kind of creamy garlic dip, and berry-apple crumble for dessert. The food was great, and Whisper actually ate a few of the yam fries along with her usual bread and peanut butter, but there was a weird tension because of Violet not being there. No one talked about it until the twins and Hazel had gone to play upstairs in Hazel’s room. I was still at the table, having seconds of dessert, and Tess was doing homework in the living room.

  “What are you going to do?” Mary asked.

  “We have to be in Hope in two days,” Mom said. “And we’d planned to do a show in Chilliwack tomorrow.”

  Curtis paused, his spoon halfway to his mouth. “Well, we can’t leave without Violet.”

  Mom frowned. “I’m not letting her sabotage this trip, Curtis. She knows what the plan is. She knows we’re not staying in Vancouver.”

  “She has a phone, right?” Eva said. “Is she not answering?”

  “I’ve left a dozen messages,” Curtis said. He put his spoon back in his bowl and ran his hands through his hair, pushing it away from his face. There were dark circles under his eyes, and he looked kind of gaunt, like he’d lost weight or aged ten years since lunchtime. “Maybe she’ll call.”

  “You don’t know where her boyfriend stayed last night, I supp
ose? Does he have friends here?” Mary asked. She stood up, unwound a green-and-orange silk scarf from around her neck and folded it neatly. “Maybe his parents could tell us. Do you have a phone number for them?”

  Mom shook her head, and I tried to remember what Ty had said on the ferry. Had he told us anything about where he was going? He seemed like someone who didn’t worry about details like where to stay. Ty says we should live in the moment, Violet had told me once. He says nine-to-five jobs are for losers. He’s not planning on getting old if it means getting boring like his parents.

  “I think we should move on in the morning, like we’d planned,” Mom said.

  “Without Violet?” Curtis shook his head. “We can’t do that.”

  “She has to learn that she can’t just derail everything like this,” Mom said. “She can’t hold us all hostage.”

  “Why do you think she’s doing this?” Eva asked. “I mean, is it just that she wants to be with Ty, or do you think there’s more going on?”

  “What do you mean?” Mom asked. “More like what?”

  Eva looked at Mary, who shrugged. I could tell the two of them had talked about this before. “Well,” Eva said carefully, “I just wonder how Violet feels about this trip. About being away from her friends and missing school…I know Tess is younger, but I can’t imagine she’d want to do something like this. And Violet’s fifteen, right? That’s not an easy age.”

  “Violet understands why we’re doing this,” Mom said. Her voice sounded stiff. “She knows how important it is.”

  “She didn’t want to come though,” Curtis admitted. “She thinks we’re, uh, overreacting. About the bees and everything.”

  There was a very long silence. Eva and Mary exchanged glances. Finally, Mom stood up. “I’m going out to the van,” she said. And just like that, she walked out.

  Eva looked at Curtis. “Sorry. I guess I shouldn’t have said anything.”