The Summer We Saved the Bees (11 page)

After breakfast we packed up our stuff, plus two My Little Ponies that Tess had given the twins and a plastic container filled with cookies that Eva had baked especially for us, and we headed out to the van. I took one last look at the house as I did up my seat belt. It seemed like the last refuge before we hit the road and headed into the great unknown, and I felt sad to leave it.

As we drove, I listened to the silence between Curtis and Mom and ate one cookie after another. They were crumbly and buttery rich and studded with cranberries and hazelnuts and chunks of white chocolate.

Saffron was the only one talking, and she wouldn’t shut up. “Where’s Ty going to sit?” she asked. We were stopped at a downtown traffic light, and I was scanning the sidewalks for Vi. “There’s no extra seat for him.”

“Yes, well, maybe Violet should have thought about that before she invited him along,” Mom snapped back.

“He can sit here and I can sit on his lap.” Saffron giggled. “Or he can go in the back with our stuff. Or…” She started to lose it, laughing harder and sputtering cookie crumbs everywhere. “We could get a roof rack and he could lie on top. Like a canoe.”

I heard a giggle from Whisper.

“Very funny,” Mom said. “Oh—Curtis, there they are.”

I looked out the window. Violet was standing arm in arm with Ty, leaning against the wall of a building near the art gallery.

Curtis pulled over to the curb. “Hop in,” he snapped.

Violet got in, taking her usual seat. Ty followed, squeezing past us all and sitting in the far back, seat beltless, on a pile of bags beside Whisper’s bucket seat.

Curtis drove off, accelerating with a jerk and squealing the tires. I took another cookie out of the container and hoped Ty would have the sense not to comment on Curtis’s driving.

We drove east, past Langley and Abbotsford, and by lunchtime we were in Chilliwack. There were snow-tipped mountains in the distance, and a weirdly large number of mini-golf places along the highway. I wondered if we were really going to have to do a show this afternoon. I didn’t want to ask—if Mom had forgotten, I wasn’t going to remind her. I snuck a glance over my shoulder at Ty. His hair used to be spiky and bleached blond, but now it was buzzed to a dark stubble.
He saw me looking at him and raised a pierced eyebrow, and I looked away quickly.

No way was I wearing that bee costume with him around.

“So where are we going to park this thing?” Violet asked.

“There’s a campground,” Mom said. “But it’s not cheap. We’d rather find somewhere we can park for free.”

“Any side street is free,” Curtis said. “But we need somewhere we can set up the tent, so…”

“I’m hoping that when we do the show, someone will offer to let us park in their driveway,” Mom said. “And set up the tent on their lawn. That’d be ideal.”

“You’re going to do a show this afternoon?” Ty asked.

“We are,” Curtis said. “You can help.”

“Sure,” Ty said. “Cool.”

“Oh yeah, really
cool.
” Violet rolled her eyes. “I can’t wait.”

Fifteen

CURTIS PARKED THE
van on a downtown street and pointed across the road at a low brick building. “See that? That’s the office of the mp for the Chilliwack–Fraser Canyon region. Politicians, that’s who we need to be talking to. They’re just sitting around getting rich and doing whatever big business wants when they oughtta be thinking of the future generations.” He nodded at the twins. “Oughtta be thinking about the kind of world we’re leaving our young ones.”

“What’s an em-pee?” Saffron asked.

“Member of parliament,” Ty told her. “They’re part of the government.”

“They work with the president?”

He shook his head. “Canada has a prime minister, not a president. But yeah, kind of like that.”

“And a queen,” Saffron said. “Canada has a queen, right?”

“Just, like, on coins and stuff,” Violet said.

I eyed the empty sidewalk in front of the office building. “We’re going to do our show there?”

“Yup. Right in their faces,” Curtis said. “Taking our message to those who can actually influence policy. Our government needs to ban pesticides like they did in Europe.” He shut off the engine and undid his seat belt. “Let’s go.”

“Can we have lunch first?” I asked.

“You’ve been eating cookies all morning,” Mom said. “You can’t be hungry.”

“I am though.”

“Me too,” Saffron said. “I’m starving.”

Mom blew out an exaggerated sigh. “Fine. There are crackers and apples and stuff in here. Grab something quick, okay?” She passed a bag back to us, got out of the van and started unloading gear with Curtis: the poster boards, her juggling stuff, the bag of flyers. I handed a box of crackers to Saffy and Whisper and took a granola bar for myself. Violet and Ty got out of the van, Ty stretching his long legs, Violet bending to fix her hair in the van’s side mirror.

“Are we going to put on our bee costumes?” Saffron asked.

“I don’t know.” I didn’t want to put mine on at all. And even if Mom made me wear it, I wasn’t changing in the van, that was for sure.

Mom stuck her head in the open driver’s-side door. “There’s a McDonald’s over there. Curtis is going to get the poster boards set up and stay with the gear while we all get changed.”

“At
McDonald’s
?”

She looked at me. “In the washroom. Yes.”

I clenched my jaw. “Can’t I just wear my regular clothes like Violet is?”

“Wolf, just stop arguing about every little thing, will you? One Violet in the family is more than enough.” She handed me a duffel bag. “That’s your stuff. Let’s go.”

I trudged across the street behind her and the twins. I knew Mom thought I was being a pain, but she didn’t understand at all. The costume looked terrible. It really did. It was too small, and I was too big—and it was all very well to talk about being a warrior, but since when did warriors have to wear humiliating outfits?

“Are we getting fries?” Saffron asked as we walked into the restaurant.

Mom gave her a look. “Saffron. Really? Do we
ever
eat at McDonald’s?”

“I know, but…”

“No,” Mom said shortly. “We are not getting fries.” She took the girls by their hands and headed down the hall to the women’s washroom, shooing them in ahead of her. “Wolf, you’ll be quicker than us, so just meet us back in front of the mp’s office.” And the door closed behind her, leaving me standing there with the duffel bag in my hand and the smell of fries and burgers all around me.

Mom didn’t know it, but I’d eaten at McDonald’s a few times, with Duncan. French fries, hot fudge sundaes, McFlurries, baked apple pies. My mouth watered at the thought. I checked my pockets. I had no money at all.

I looked down at the duffel bag. I looked down the hall at the door to the men’s washroom and imagined walking back out through it dressed in my ridiculous, too-tight, striped outfit.

I couldn’t do it. I
wouldn’t
do it.

I turned and walked out of the McDonald’s into the cool spring air, almost crashing right into Ty and Violet.

“Hey,” Ty said. “What are you doing?”

I looked at Violet as I answered. “I’m not wearing it,” I said, my voice low. “I’m not.”

She lifted a hand. “High five, buddy. Good for you.”

I high-fived her, surprised and slightly giddy. “What are you guys doing here?”

“I’m getting a couple of cheeseburgers,” Ty said. “You want something?”

I gulped. “Would you…are you buying? Because I don’t have any money.”

“Yeah, yeah. What d’you want?”

I swallowed, imagining the sweet flaky pastry and the hot almost-liquid filling of an apple pie. “Are you getting something, Vi?”

“Nah. Not hungry.” She looked at me, considering. “You know Jade would flip out, right?”

“I know.” I looked at Ty. “I’m good. But, you know, thanks.”

“No probs.” He winked at me. “Some other time, dude.”

Violet gave a long exaggerated sigh. “You are such a wimp, Wolf. Just get something if you want something. Who cares what Jade says?”

Ty poked her in the ribs. “Hey. Chill. So the kid cares what his mom thinks. Nothing wrong with that. Kids should care what their parents think.”

Kids.
Like I was closer to the twins’ age than Vi’s. Like I was too young to think for myself. “It’s not about that anyway,” I said. “I’m just not hungry.”

In front of the mp’s office, Curtis had set up our poster-board display. It was a three-part thing that stood up on its own, like a kid’s science project only way more professional. It basically covered the same stuff as Mom’s talk, but in more detail and with lots of scientific references and links to websites and stuff. There was a graph that showed the declining bee population in various parts of the world, and another that showed the dramatic increase in the number of North American bee colonies that were lost every year. There was a long list of possible causes and an even longer list of crops that are pollinated by bees. Scattered throughout, in large bold letters, were quotes predicting our doom:
“I’m concerned more about the death of a bee than I am about terrorism. Because we’re losing hives and bees by the millions because of such strong pesticides. We can live with terrorism. We can’t live without the bee.”—Patti Smith

Right in the middle, in the biggest font, was this quote: “
If the bee disappeared off the face of the Earth, Man would only have four years left to live.” —Albert Einstein

I felt mad all over again every time I read that quote, because it was wrong and Mom knew it. It gets quoted a lot on the Internet, but Einstein never actually said it. I knew that from when I did my project. I’d told Mom, and I’d even found another quote she could have used instead that basically said the same thing and fit perfectly into that space on the poster board:
“So important are insects…that if all were to disappear, humanity probably could not last more than a few months…” —Edward O. Wilson, biologist

She didn’t change it, though, because she said no one would know who Edward Wilson was but everyone had heard of Einstein. Like that made it okay to lie about what he said.

Her voice startled me. “Wolf, how come you’re not dressed?”

I spun around. “Um…” Saffron and Whisper were in their costumes, and Mom too. I felt a sudden rush of relief that I wasn’t. “I look stupid in it,” I said flatly. “I’ll still help, but I’m not wearing it.” I couldn’t quite believe I’d said it—but the instant the words were out of my mouth, I felt lighter and almost giddy.

She rolled her eyes. “Fine.”

I stared at her.
Fine?
That was all she was going to say about it?

“You and the twins can hand out flyers,” she said. “Remember that we need a place to stay tonight, right? So if you get a chance to strike up a conversation with someone, keep that in mind.”

“You want me to ask people if we can park in their driveway?”

“If you think they might be receptive, yes.”

I wrinkled my nose.
Hi, nice to meet you, would you mind if me and my parents and my twin sisters and Violet and her boyfriend used your driveway? And set up a tent on your front lawn? Oh, and can all seven of us borrow your bathroom?
I couldn’t imagine.

Then again, five minutes ago I couldn’t imagine refusing to wear the bee costume.

Mom’s voice was sharp. “If we have to pay forty bucks a night for camping, we’re going to be out of money before we get halfway across the prairies.”

I swallowed. “Really? I mean, really out of money? What would we do?”

She shrugged. “We’ll be fine, Wolf. We can always park at a Walmart or something. I’m just saying we can’t afford not to ask, that’s all. So if someone seems friendly and interested…well, it doesn’t hurt to try, right? They can always say no.”

Sixteen

THERE WASN’T MUCH
of an audience for the show in Chilliwack. No one came out of the mp’s office to watch, even though Saffy and Whisper and I went inside with our flyers. There were two older women sitting behind desks, and a man using a photocopier, and we invited them all to come and learn more about the bees. They were friendly enough and took our flyers, but they said they were busy.
Too busy to care about everyone starving to death?
That was what I wanted to say. It’s what Mom would have said. But all I actually said was, “Oh, okay. Um, thanks anyway.”