The Summer We Saved the Bees (12 page)

I didn’t bother asking them if we could park in their driveways.

Back out on the sidewalk, Mom did her show for an audience of four: an older woman with one of those wheeled shopping bags, a young dad jiggling a stroller back and forth, and a couple of kids a bit younger than me, who rode off on their bikes as soon as she stopped juggling. Violet and Ty sat
on a brick wall a short distance away, drinking out of giant McDonald’s cups. The twins went and joined them, Saffron climbing onto Ty’s lap. Curtis was across the street, the hood of the van propped open, fussing over the engine, which was, he said, overheating.

Even Mom seemed a bit disheartened as she packed up. The young father, whose baby had finally fallen asleep, helped her fold up the poster-board display and carry it to the van.

“Thanks so much,” she told him.

“No problem.” He turned to leave.

“Oh! I was wondering…” Mom touched his arm. “I don’t suppose you have a driveway we could park in tonight?”

He looked a bit taken aback. “Uh, no. No, I live in an apartment building. No driveway.”

I could feel my cheeks getting hot. Did he think we were homeless? I guess we kind of were, unless you counted the storage locker, but I wanted to explain that it was just temporary.

Mom shrugged it off. “Right, right,” she said. “No worries. Thanks anyway.”

He nodded and headed off down the sidewalk, pushing the stroller at a brisk pace. Like he wanted to get away from us before we asked for anything else. Mom didn’t seem to notice. She was busy packing everything away in the back of the van.

The woman with the wheeled bag smiled at me. “This must be an interesting experience for you,” she said. “Traveling about like this.”

“We’ve just started,” I said. “This is only our second show.”

She nodded. “A long way to go then?”

“Right across the country,” I said, my throat tightening.

“My goodness! That
is
a long way.”

“Yeah.”

“I have a grandson about your age,” she said. “Thomas, his name is. He’s twelve.”

“Me too. I mean, I’m twelve.” I wondered if she had a driveway, and what she’d say if I asked whether we could park our van in it.

“You remind me of him, a little,” she said. “Of course, I don’t see him often. His parents—my daughter and her husband—they live in Alberta.”

I nodded politely. “We’re from Victoria.”

“And will you be staying in Chilliwack for a few days? Or are you moving on?”

“Depends.” I took a deep breath. “We need somewhere to park our van and set up a tent for some of us to sleep in. So, um, we’re hoping someone might let us use their driveway. I mean, not that you have to. I didn’t mean that. Um. Though, you know, if you wanted…”

She didn’t even hesitate. “Oh, you can park in my driveway.”

My cheeks felt hot. “Really? There’s a lot of us. I mean, Mom and Curtis and me, plus I have three sisters…” And Ty, I thought but didn’t say. It was already too much.

“It’s not a problem,” she said. “I had to give up driving last year. My eyesight, you see? So I don’t even use the driveway myself. ”

“Wow. That’s…I mean, thank you so much. That’d be wonderful. Because, you know, we don’t have much money, I mean, we have enough, we’re fine, but…”

“It’s no problem at all,” she said. “My name is Anna, by the way.”

She had an accent—not strong, just a hint of some other language around the edges of her words. Maybe German or something. Her hair was dark, but you could tell it was dyed, because the roots were showing pale where it was parted.

“Wolf.” I held out a hand. “I’m Wolf.”

I introduced Anna to my mom and Curtis, and she gave us directions to her house, which was just a few blocks away. It was a small bungalow, with an even smaller front yard.

“We’re just going to set up the tent there?” Violet asked. “Is that even legal?”

“Of course it’s legal,” Curtis said. “Canada’s not a police state. We still have a few basic rights.”

“Unless you’re a skateboarder,” Ty said.

I got out of the car. Anna must be on her way, walking. It had felt rude not to offer her a ride, but we couldn’t fit anyone else in the van. Plus we had to stop on the way to buy milk and stuff. I looked down the sidewalk and spotted her, a small figure walking toward us, pushing her floral-print grocery bag on wheels.

“I have to pee,” Saffron said.

“I asked you at the gas station,” Mom said. “You said you didn’t have to go.”

“I didn’t have to
then
.”

“Saffron, that was two minutes ago! If you didn’t have to then, you don’t have to now.”

“Yes, I do.” She got out of the van and squirmed about in that have-to-pee dance little kids do.

“Well, you’ll have to use the bucket,” Mom said. There was a special one in the van, with a tightly fitting lid, that we were supposed to use in emergencies. So far we’d all avoided using it.

“I want to use a proper toilet,” Saffron said. “Not a bucket. I can’t go in a bucket.” She looked like she might cry.

“Hold it then,” I told her. “Anna’s coming, see? I bet she’ll let you use the one in her house.”

Curtis had popped open the hood of the van again and was poking about with grease-stained hands. Violet and Ty were standing on the driveway, arms snaked around each other, and Mom was leaning into the back of the van, hauling out the tent while Whisper clung to her legs, wrapping around them like ivy.

“I see you found my house,” Anna said, walking up the driveway.

Curtis closed the hood of the van with a bang and turned to greet her. “Thank you so much,” he said. “Can’t tell you how much we appreciate this.”

Anna nodded. “You’re very welcome.”

I cleared my throat. “Um, Mrs….”

“Anna. Call me Anna.”

“Anna. Do you think my little sister could use your toilet? She really has to go.” I gestured toward Saffron, who was standing nearby with her legs crossed.

“Of course she can,” she said.

I turned to Mom. “I’ll take her, okay?”

Mom nodded. “Anna, is it all right if we set up a tent for the kids to sleep in?”

Anna hesitated. “I wish I had room in the house, but…”

“No, no. We wouldn’t dream of imposing on you.” Mom dropped the tent back on the lawn. “And the kids love the tent. Really, they do.”

Anna beckoned to me. “Come on, Wolf. And…”

“Saffron.” I pushed my sister forward. “Say hi, Saffy.”

“Hi.” Saffron looked up at Anna. “I like your necklace.”

I hadn’t noticed it before, but Anna was wearing a heavy cross, silver, studded with gems. She must be religious. Maybe that was why she was being so nice to us. “It was my mother’s,” she said.

Saffron and I followed her into the house. “You talk funny,” Saffron said.

“Saffron! That’s rude.” I gave her a shove.

Anna just laughed. “I have an accent, yes? I am from Croatia, but I have lived in Canada for more than twenty years.” She opened a door in the hallway and patted Saffron’s head. “My daughter wasn’t much older than you when we came here. There you go—there’s the bathroom. Go ahead, dear.”

Seventeen

ANNA LED ME
into the living room. “Sit, sit.”

I perched on the edge of the couch, waiting and feeling awkward. Anna and I stared at each other. It was weird, being in a stranger’s house.

“Um, it’s really nice of you,” I said. “I mean, letting us park here and letting my sister use your toilet and everything.”

“Beautiful little girls, your sisters. How old? Five and six?”

“Five. They’re twins.”

“The little one…Whisper, is it?” Anna tilted her head.

“Yeah. Well, Juniper, really. Whisper’s just a nickname.”

She nodded. “It suits her. Quiet little thing.”

I swallowed. “She’s never been a big talker.”

“Well, we’re all different, aren’t we?”

“Um. I’m kind of worried about her. Actually…” My heart was racing. I knew Mom wouldn’t like me talking about this with a stranger.

“Are you?”

“She just gets upset a lot. Tantrums, you know?”

Anna laughed softly. “My daughter—Thomas’s mom—she used to have terrible tantrums. When she was three, four…she’d throw herself down on the ground and kick and scream like a crazy thing. One time, she must have been three because we were living in that third-floor apartment in Dubrovnik, she got so angry. She wanted something… I think it was water that had spilled, but she wanted that exact same water back. Not a refill. Not different water.”

I laughed. “That’s totally something the twins would do.”

“She was lying on the ground and kicking her legs and shouting…And I had just had enough, so I walked away. And you know what she did? She just shut off the tantrum, toddled after me and threw herself back down and picked right up again. She looked out of control, but she could just shut it right off. The little monkey.”

I laughed, but I was thinking about Whisper. “My sister…I don’t think she’s like that. I think she gets really scared or something. Overwhelmed. And she doesn’t shout.” I looked down at my socks. They were stained and grubby. I curled my toes under to hide a hole in one of them. “She doesn’t even talk.”

Anna frowned. “Not at all?”

I studied the pale-blue carpet under my feet. “Yeah. I mean, no. Not at all.”

She shook her head. “Tch, tch. Your poor mother. She must be worried.”

“I guess,” I said. “But she’s so busy with this project, you know? Her shows and everything…”

“Well, you talk to her,” Anna said. “All right, Wolf? You let her know you’re worried. It’s not good to hide your worries.”

“I think we’re leaving in the morning,” I said. “Driving to Hope.”

“To do another show?”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s right.”

“Well, maybe you could take a little break,” she said. “Stay an extra day. I bet the little girls could use some fun and exercise. There’s a swimming pool a few blocks away.”

“I’ll ask my mom,” I said.

But I already knew what the answer would be. Fun and exercise and swimming pools didn’t rank too high when you weighed them against saving the world.

And I could see in my mind a map of Canada, the highway stretching from coast to coast, and along the way a thousand stops, a thousand stupid shows, a thousand black- and-yellow bee-shaped dots.

From down the hall, I heard the toilet flush and the door open and slam shut. Saffron never did anything quietly. “Wolf?” she called out.

“Right here,” I called back. “In the living room.”

Saffron skipped into the living room, humming, and stopped abruptly when she saw Anna. “Oh. Hi.”

Anna smiled at her. “I like your bee costume,” she said.

Saffron gave a twirl. “Yup. Me too.”

“And so you are traveling around, talking to people about bees? I bet you’re learning a lot of interesting things.”

I wondered what Anna really thought. Probably figured we were all crazy. Maybe she felt sorry for us. That was probably why she let us use her driveway.

“Ty’s telling me a story about a bee called Buzzy,” Saffron announced proudly. “He’s making it up just for me, but Whisper listens too. Buzzy likes to—”

I interrupted before she could start relaying the Buzzy story in every last boring detail. “Thanks so much, Anna. For letting Saffron use the bathroom and everything.” I took Saffy’s hand. “Come on,” I said, tugging her toward the front door.

“Bye, Anna!” Saffron said, like they were old friends. “See you later!”

Eighteen

THAT EVENING, AFTER
Mom had tucked the twins into bed in the back of the van, I asked her about swimming the next day.

Mom shook her head. “I’d like to be on the road by nine. It’s a short drive to Hope, less than an hour. We can do a morning show there and be in Kamloops in time for a late-afternoon show.”

“Two shows?” I made a face.

“We’re going to be doing two shows most days, if possible. The whole point of this trip is to reach as many people as possible.”

“I get that, Mom. I just think the twins could use a break.”

“A break, already? We’ve only just started.” She tilted her head to one side, studying me. “Are you sure this is about the girls, Wolf? Because you're the only one I hear complaining.”

“Yeah, actually I don’t even like swimming. But in case you haven’t noticed, Whisper hasn’t even spoken since we left home. Not. One. Word.”

“She’s fine,” Mom said dismissively.

“She’s not,” I said. “And I think these shows are really hard on her. Seriously, Mom. All the pressure? It’s killing her.” I had a mental image of the health bars Duncan had been making in his computer game—a little row of hearts hovering above Whisper’s head, slowly disappearing one show at a time.

“She’s always been quiet,” Mom said. “You can’t compare her to Saffron. They’re two different people.”

“I know,” I said. “You always say that. But it’s not normal for a kid to go for days without speaking at all.”

Mom stood up and put her hands on her hips. “Well, Wolf, if we don’t save the bees, her speech will be the least of her concerns.”

I just stood there for a few seconds, staring at her. It was like there was this thick glass wall between us, and everything I was saying was bouncing right off it.