The Summer We Saved the Bees (18 page)

It seemed to me that Violet had a lot more freedom than most kids her age. “You’re only fifteen,” I said.

“Whatever,” she said. “That’s not the point. Ty and I can look after ourselves.”

I swallowed. “Promise me you’ll still go to school.”

She rolled her eyes. “Not much point, is there? Not if the world is ending.”

“You don’t believe that, do you? Not really?” Violet had always been the skeptic in the family. I counted on her for it.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Do you?”

I didn’t answer immediately. I looked away from her, out the window, at the green trees and the clearing sky, and the sun ahead of us in the east, a golden glow you couldn’t look at, not even through the tinted windows. I thought of Anna, and her words came back to me as clearly as if she were sitting right there on the bus with us. “You know Anna was in a war?” I said. “And she escaped?”

Violet’s eyebrows lifted. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. She told me that she thought the world was ending, but it didn’t. And she said that there’s always been people who’ve thought the world was coming to an end. And it never has. And she said that she thinks things get better, not worse.”

“Deep,” Violet said.

“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t make fun of her.”

“Sorry.” She chewed on her bottom lip, and neither of us spoke for a minute.

Then Violet cleared her throat. “It’s just…It’s hard, you know? Like, I don’t really agree with Jade or anything, and I think the whole
world-is-ending
”—she made air quotes around it—“thing is stupid, but still. How do you plan for the future when…”

“When your own parents don’t believe you have one?”

“Yeah.” Violet’s eyes were shining, and her voice wobbled. “I don’t actually want to run away, you know. But I think maybe I have to.”

My throat ached from holding back my own tears. “Yeah,” I managed. “I know. I know.”

Taking a ten-hour bus ride with two five-year-olds is not something I would ever recommend to anyone. We switched seats so often it was like playing musical chairs. Ty told Buzzy Bee stories until his voice gave out: Buzzy Bee Quits School, Buzzy Bee Rides a Roller Coaster, Buzzy Bee Gets a Skateboard, Buzzy Bee Plays the Drums. Every time he finished one, Saffron loudly demanded another.

The stories weren’t bad, actually. I had a whole new respect for Ty.

But despite stories and snacks and snuggles, after a few hours the twins were losing it. By midafternoon, Whisper had had a meltdown that I thought might actually get us kicked off the bus; Saffron, who never got car sick,
had thrown up all over Violet’s lap; and a nosy middle-aged woman had asked us too many questions about where our parents were. The time passed so slowly it was like we were caught in Duncan’s
Temporal Anomaly
computer game.

The only good thing about that bus was that it finally arrived in Nelson, and we got to get off.

And that was a whole new kind of awful.

Twenty-Seven

VIOLET’S PHONE WAS
dead, so we had to walk around searching for a pay phone. We eventually found one at the Walmart, but of course there was no phone book—just the little curly cord that was supposed to stop people stealing it but that obviously hadn’t worked.

Violet swore loudly and kicked the wall, and Saffron started repeating what Violet had just said, over and over.

“Nice going, Vi,” I said. “I’m sure her grandmother will be just thrilled with her new vocabulary.”

“Shut up,” Violet snapped. She kicked the wall again. “Can’t one thing just be EASY? Just for once, could everything not go wrong? And Saffron? CUT IT OUT!”

Saffron giggled and kept right on repeating her precious new word.

Ty shifted Whisper’s weight on his back—she was looking really tired and resting her head on his shoulder—and
touched Vi’s arm. “Hey. Let’s all just chill out, okay? Saffron… enough.”

She cast him a mutinous look. She didn’t stop, but she lowered her voice to a whisper, which was better than nothing.

“Okay. I’m going to go over to the customer-service desk and borrow a phone book,” Ty said. “Violet, what’s your grandmother’s last name? Same as you, I guess?”

She nodded. “Yeah, Brooks. Diane Brooks.”

I held on to Saffron’s hand and watched Ty head off, Whisper clinging to his back like a little monkey. She and Saffron were called Brooks too. Mom and I were the only Everetts. Diane Brooks sounded like an old-fashioned movie-star name.

“I’m tired,” Saffron said. “I’m hungry.”

I looked at Violet. “Any snacks left?”

“Want an apple, Saffy?” Violet rummaged in the bag. “Or…um, a carrot?”

“I want ice cream.”

“Yeah, right. Would you like a pony too?” Violet held the apple out toward her.

Saffron whacked Violet’s arm angrily, and the apple fell to the floor.

“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 that 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.”