The Summer We Saved the Bees (6 page)

“I
mean
,” she said, “that Jade thinks she can break us up. But she can’t.”

“This trip’s not all about you,” I said. Then I regretted it, because what it was about—the bees vanishing and all that stuff—wasn’t something I wanted the twins thinking about. I stood up, stepped away from the table and beckoned to Violet to come closer.

“What?” She looked annoyed, but she let go of Ty’s arm and followed me. “What is it?”

I lowered my voice. “Saffy says Whisper doesn’t talk anymore. At all.”

“Sure she does.”

“Are you sure? Because I can’t remember her saying anything for a couple of days.”

“So ask her something.”

“Like what?”

Violet rolled her eyes. “It doesn’t matter, doofus. Just see if she answers.”

“You ask her.” I thought back to Whisper’s meltdown on the ferry deck, and my stomach twisted. Sometimes I felt like some little creature was alive in there, squirming around, poking at me from inside, demanding…I didn’t know what. Definitely demanding something though. I wrapped my arms around my middle and squeezed.

Violet walked back over to the table. “Hey, Whisper, can I have a Smartie?”

Whisper nodded and pushed the pack toward her.

Violet gave me a sideways look. I raised my eyebrows, like
see
?

“Can I have red? Or do you like those best?”

Whisper slid a red Smartie toward Violet’s outstretched hand.

“Thanks, kiddo.” Violet popped it into her mouth. “So, you two ready for tomorrow?”

“What’s tomorrow?” Saffy asked.

“Our first opportunity to make big fools of ourselves in public.”

I shook my head at her. “Violet. Don’t.” The creature in my stomach gave another twist, and I crammed a handful of Doritos into my mouth to pacify it.

“What do you mean?” Saffy asked.

“Uh, downtown? At the art gallery? Right out front somewhere, like on the steps or something?” Violet looked at Ty, who she was totally showing off for. “Jade’s first presentation?”

“It’s not exactly a presentation,” I said. “It’s, like, guerrilla theater.”

Ty laughed. “Gorillas? I thought you were gonna be bees.”

Saffron frowned, her lower lip sticking out. “I
am
going to be a bee.”

Ty made an
ooo-ooo
monkey noise and pretended to scratch his armpit.

“Shut up, Ty,” I said. “Guerrilla, like
G-U-E
. Not gorilla like the monkey. Guerrilla theater’s, like, performance art. But, you know, political.”

“He knows,” Violet said. “I’ve told him.”

Ty was still making monkey noises. Whisper was looking down at the table, sliding her Smarties into same-color groups: red, pink, orange, yellow, green, purple, blue, brown. I’ve always wondered why they make brown Smarties when no one really likes them. Duncan told me once that there used to be two shades of brown. He always knows weird things like that because he reads Wikipedia all the time.

“Ty! Stop it,” Saffron ordered. “You look stupid.”

Ty stopped
ooo-ooo
ing and turned to Vi. “You told me about this guerilla thing?”

“Yeah. Don’t you remember?” Violet stole a Dorito from my bag and crunched it loudly. “Like some of the protests back during the Vietnam war. Or in the nineties, when people were trying to get the government to do more to fight aids? They pretended they were dying right there on the streets. They even carried coffins and stuff.”

We’d watched a documentary about it with Mom. Some of the stuff the protesters had done was pretty awesome. And it had worked too—they’d made people pay attention.

“What do bees have to do with aids?” Ty asked.

I rolled my eyes. “Nothing, Ty. That was just an example.”

Violet glared at me. “It can be about anything, Ty. It’s, like, a way to make people listen.”

“There’s this group, Circus something,” I said. “Mom spent a couple years in New York before I was born, and she did some stuff with them. Theater stuff, about poverty and gay rights. But then she got more into the environment.” I shrugged. “And, you know, bees.”

“Right. Bees.” Ty grinned at me. “I guess I’ll see you all in action tomorrow then.” He lifted his arms like he was flying. “Buzz, buzz, buzz.”

I poured the last of the Dorito crumbs into the palm of my hand and stuffed them into my mouth. Mom had made bee costumes for me and the twins, and she was expecting us to wear them. Violet had gotten out of it, partly because she was older and partly because Jade wasn’t really her mom, but mostly because she was better at saying no than I was.

“Let’s go,” Violet said, tugging on Ty’s arm. She looked at me. “You’ve got orange cheese crud all over your face.”

I wiped my mouth with my sleeve and watched them walk away. Then I sat back down at the table with the twins, folded my arms on the newspaper and laid my head on them.

I didn’t want to be here.

“What’s wrong, Wolf?” Saffron asked.

“Nothing.”

“You look sad.”

I straightened up. “I’m okay.” I tried to smile at her. “Are you excited about our trip, Saffy?”

“I guess so,” she said.

Whisper had put her fingertip on top of a green Smartie and was driving it around the table like it was a car. “How about you?” I asked her. “Are you excited?”

She nodded, but she didn’t look up at me.

I bent my head, trying to catch her eye. “Hey. Are you worried about something? You can talk to me, you know.”

Saffron gave a loud, dramatic sigh. “I
told
you. She
can’t
talk.”

Seven

AN ANNOUNCEMENT CAME
over the loudspeakers—“We are nearing the Tsawwassen terminal. It is now time for all passengers to return to the vehicle decks”—and the twins and I trudged back down the stairs. I couldn’t remember exactly where we had parked, but our bee-striped van wasn’t too hard to find. Mom and Curtis were already there, sitting in the front seats, studying a map.

“Where’s Violet?” Mom asked.

I shrugged and helped Whisper buckle up her seat belt. I wasn’t going to be the one to bring up the subject of Ty.

Saffron was less cautious. “She’s with her boyfriend,” she announced.

Mom twisted around to face us. “What?”

“Ty’s on the ferry,” I said, slipping back into my own seat. “We saw them up in the coffee shop.”

Mom turned and looked at Curtis. “You deal with this. I’m so done with her right now.”

Curtis drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Maybe she just ran into him. Maybe he’s going to Vancouver for some other reason.”

Mom didn’t say anything.

“Where are we staying tonight?” I asked. “I mean, are we camping? Or…”

“In Vancouver? No. We’ll stay with Eva and Mary.” She put her hand on Curtis’s arm. “I should call and let them know we’re on our way. They were probably expecting us to be on the earlier ferry.”

“Who’s Eva and Mary?” Saffron asked.

“Who
are
. Not who is,” I corrected her.

“Old friends of mine,” Mom said. “You remember them, Wolf?”

“Um…”

“They visited us once on Lasqueti? Two daughters, a little younger than you?”

I nodded. “Sort of. Is one of them black? And has really big hair?”

“That’s Mary.” Mom laughed. “I’d forgotten about her afro. Do you remember their girls? You would only have been, hmm, maybe six or seven? I was pregnant with the twins. So their kids would have been maybe four and six, something like that.”

I had a vague memory of two women and two little girls sitting in our tiny kitchen. Mostly what I remembered was the hair, because I’d never seen anything like it before.

“Damn,” Curtis said, and I looked up to see Violet and Ty heading toward us.

“Yours,” Mom said under her breath. “All yours. If I say anything, she’ll bite my head off.”

Curtis rolled down his window, and Violet stalked over, still holding on to Ty’s arm. She glared at her father, bristling and ready for a fight.

“Can we give Ty a ride?”

“We’ve discussed this already. The van is full. We can’t take him, even if we wanted to.” Curtis looked at Ty. “Sorry.”

“He could sit in the back,” Violet said. “On the bed.”

“Without a seat belt?” Curtis shook his head. “That’s not even legal.”

“Or safe,” Mom put in.

“It’s okay, Vi.” Ty rubbed his head with both hands. His hair was buzzed so short it was more like stubble. “I’ll hitch a lift. No problem.”

“You’re hitchhiking?” Mom leaned toward the open window. “Where are you going, Ty?”

“Same as you guys,” Ty said lightly, like it was no big deal.

“You’re
following
us? Across the country?” Mom’s voice rose.

“You don’t own the road,” Violet said.

Curtis put one hand on Mom’s shoulder in a calming gesture. “Violet, of course Ty is free to go wherever he wants. But we are doing this trip as a family.”

“Fine. He’ll probably get picked up by some psycho,” Violet snapped. “Not like you care.”

“That’s
enough
, Violet.”

“You care more about a bunch of stupid bees.”

“Get in the car,” Curtis said.

Violet gave Ty a long kiss on the lips.

“Blecchhhh,” Saffron said. “Gross.” Behind her, Whisper giggled softly.

All around us, people were starting up their engines. “Violet. In the car.
Now
,” Curtis said.

Violet slowly detached herself from the lip-lock and got into the van beside me. Ty stepped back, out of the way of our row of cars, and held out a hand, thumb up like a hitchhiker. The cars in front of us began driving slowly forward, and Curtis followed.

Violet waved frantically out the window until Ty was out of sight. “If he gets murdered by some nutcase, it’ll be your fault,” she said.

“That’s a horrible thing to say.” Mom shook her head. “I can’t believe you put us in this position.”

“Yeah, well, I can’t believe you put him in this position,” Violet snapped back.

Here we go again, I thought, and put my headphones back on.

Eva and Mary lived in a small house not too far from downtown Vancouver, but it was rush hour and it took us almost an hour to get there. I didn’t take off my headphones until we were pulling into their driveway. My stomach grumbled. I hoped they were going to give us dinner.

“Well, here we are,” Mom said brightly. She unbuckled her seat belt, got out of the car and stretched. “Come on.”

We all followed—the twins squirmy from sitting still, Violet withdrawn and gloomy, Curtis bringing up the rear. The house had wooden front steps and a wide porch and was painted in shades of bright yellow and blue. The front door flew open before Mom even knocked.

“Jade! Oh! So good to see you!” A small woman burst out and threw her arms around my mother. She had short blond hair tucked behind her ears and wore a long white cardigan over a short pink-and-green sundress. “You look just the same,” she said, laughing.

“Eva!” Mom hugged her back. “So do you.” She turned to us. “You remember Curtis? And his daughter Violet? And you’ve met Wolf, of course, and these are the twins. Saffron and Whisper.”

Eva opened her arms in a welcoming gesture and gave us a wide smile. “Come in, come in! Dinner’s cooking, Mary will be home any time now, and the girls can’t wait to meet you all.”

A few minutes later, we were all sitting around in an enormous open space that seemed to be their kitchen, dining room and living room combined. The walls were lined with built-in shelves that overflowed with books and games; a well-worn couch and a handful of comfy chairs were arranged in front of a large window, and a gray-around-the-muzzle sheepdog lay in front of an unlit woodstove.

“Tess! Hazel!” Eva called up the stairs. “Come on down.”

I could hear their feet on the wooden steps:
thumpety thumpety thump
. The dog lifted his head, made a funny wuffling noise and flopped back down when he saw the two girls appear. Hazel and Tess were small and blond like Eva, and both had long straight hair. Tess was taller and wore glasses, but otherwise it was hard to tell them apart.

“Look at you two!” Mom said. She shook her head. “Last time I saw you, you were about the age my twins are now.”

They both smiled politely and looked as uncomfortable as I felt. Adults always make such a big deal over the fact that kids grow. It’s weird: what do they
expect
us to do?