The Summer We Saved the Bees (10 page)

“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 suppose? 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.”

He shook his head. “Jade’s just sensitive. I think she worries that you two share Violet’s views. That you think we’re over the top, with this trip and everything.”

“I admire you for doing what you believe is right,” Eva said. “For walking your talk. It’s rare, isn’t it?”

Curtis nodded. “Jade’s done a lot of research,” he said. “She knows what she’s talking about. There’s plenty of science behind what she believes.”

I looked at him. “You believe it too, right?”

“What?” He frowned. “Of course.”

“You said
plenty of science behind what
she
believes
.”

He looked annoyed. “What
we
believe. Obviously.” He leaned toward me. “I was an environmentalist long before I met your mother, Wolf. You know that.”

“Yeah. I know.” I’d heard all about his off-the-grid solar-powered house and his permaculture garden on Lasqueti. I just hadn’t heard him say much about the bees.

“I’m sure you wouldn’t uproot your family if you didn’t feel it was necessary,” Mary said.

I couldn’t help noticing that neither she nor Eva had actually said that they
didn’t
think we were overreacting. They were being very tactful and polite about it all—but for all I knew, they thought we were nuts. I remembered how Katie had reacted when she’d seen my mom’s website, and how Duncan had asked me, “You really believe all that?” I thought about how Violet’s mom had called my mom wacky.

A big part of me wanted to jump into the conversation and defend my mom—to tell Mary and Eva how much the bees mattered, and how no one was doing enough, and how they’d all be sorry when everything started to fall apart and disaster followed disaster like a runaway train that no one could stop.

But I didn’t say a word. I just sat there and helped myself to more of the berry-apple crumble. Because I couldn’t help wondering if maybe my mom might not be right about everything after all.

After dinner I borrowed Tess’s computer to check my email. I had a message from Duncan, who was probably the only person who actually knew my email address.

Hey, dude
, he wrote.
How’s it going out there? School’s boring without you. I got paired up with Caitlin for this project we’re doing, which sucks big-time. Hey—I read something that made me think of you. These dudes at Harvard have made some kind of robotic bees to pollinate stuff. Google it. It’s pretty rad. Anyway, hope you are okay. —Duncan

PS
. I figured out this new way to make the health bar in my game, so now it shows the kill-to-death ratio for each player. I’ll show you when you get back. Plus you can slow down time or speed it up. What do you think of
Temporal Anomaly
as a name?

PPS
. I’m reading the third book in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy. It’s called
Life, the Universe and Everything
. Did I tell you that there are FIVE books in the “trilogy”? Isn’t that 100 percent awesome? I’d tell you to read them, but I know you don’t like reading much, so I won’t bother. I’ll tell you the good bits when you get back.

Robotic bees.
Temporal Anomaly
.
Hitchhiker’s Guide
… I realized I was grinning and nodding at the computer like Duncan was actually in there. I hit
Reply
and typed a quick message back.

Hi, Duncan. We’re in Vancouver. Violet’s taken off with her boyfriend, so I don’t know how long we’ll be here. We’re staying with people Mom knows. They’re okay, but I’d rather be at home. Thanks for telling me about the robotic bees. That’s cool. And
Temporal Anomaly
is a cool name, but people might not know what it means. What about
Time Shift
? Or
Time Warp
? I don’t know. I’ll think about it. Say hi to everyone for me.

I wanted to ask him what he thought—what he
really
thought—about what we were doing. I hesitated, trying to think of the right words. Then I wrote,
Duncan, do you think it’s crazy what my mom says? Like about the world economy collapsing and everyone starving and all that stuff on her website?
I stared at my own words for a minute. Then I put my finger on the backspace key and held it down until the last part of the message was gone.

Fourteen

THE NEXT MORNING,
Mom and Curtis came in from the van while the rest of us were eating breakfast. They looked tired and kind of tense, and I wondered if they’d been fighting.

“Well, Violet texted last night,” Mom said.

Eva put down her mug of coffee. “Is she okay?”

“She’s fine,” Curtis said. “She and Ty are going to meet us downtown today. We’ll pick them up on our way to Chilliwack.”

I stared. “Them? Pick
them
up?”

They exchanged glances. “Violet really wants Ty to come with us,” Curtis said.

Tess leaned forward, eyes wide, elbows on the table. “I bet she said she wouldn’t come without him. Did she? Did she say that?”

Mom sighed.

“That is
so
romantic,” Hazel said, smoothing her long thick braid with her fingers. “Isn’t it, Tess? Like she just can’t live without him.”

“Right.” Mary snorted, put down her coffee mug and stood up. “I better get going. Bye, my loves. See you tonight.”

Eva looked at Mom. “This
romantic
thing? You have to know they don’t get that from me, Jade.”

Mom laughed.

“I blame those Disney Princess movies,” Eva said darkly.