The Summer We Saved the Bees

by Robin Stevenson

  “And then, just by luck, we started chatting to a woman at the library—we were putting up posters—and she turned out to be an elementary schoolteacher!” Mom clapped her hands together. “She invited us to talk to her fourth-grade class about the bees and what we’re doing to help them. She was thrilled when I told her about you guys—so inspiring for kids to see other kids taking action!”

  “Cool,” I said. “So, uh, when’s that?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon,” she said.

  I looked at Violet. She met my eyes for a second and then looked away, biting her lip.

  If everything went according to plan—if Anna didn’t tell on us, if we didn’t lose our nerve—by tomorrow afternoon we would be halfway to Nelson.

  It wasn’t until later that night, when Mom was reading a bedtime story to Saffron and Whisper, that we realized we had a problem. The bus to Nelson left early in the morning—and the twins would still be asleep in the van with Mom and Curtis.

  Violet and I were hand-washing the twins’ underwear and T-shirts in a bucket. Ty was helping Curtis with some engine thing. “Maybe we could ask the twins if they want to have a sleepover party with us,” I suggested, wringing out a small pink top with butterflies on it. It was Whisper’s favorite. “If we all sleep in the tent, we could be up and gone before Curtis and Mom get up.”

  Violet looked doubtful. “What if they say no? Whisper’s so stubborn…”

  “I don’t think they’ll say no,” I said. “Especially if you ask them. Or Ty. Get Ty to ask them. They really like him.”

  She smiled, pulling a pair of tiny underpants from the soapy water. “They do, don’t they?”

  “He’s good with them,” I admitted. “Violet?”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Wolf!” She smacked my arm with the wet undies. “What?”

  I made a face. “Just…before this trip? I didn’t like Ty that much.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “And your point is?”

  “He’s okay.” I shrugged. “And, um, you know. I’m glad he came with us.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  Violet gave a long sigh. “I know Jade and my dad think I’m too young to get serious, but Ty and I are totally in love. I mean, we’re always going to be together. I just know it.”

  “Yeah, okay.” I didn’t want to get into that. “Anyway, it’s nice of him to help us with the money and everything.”

  “Dad’s really going to hate him after this,” Violet said darkly. “And when they catch up to us, you and me are going to be grounded for life.”

  “Mom doesn’t do grounding. Or any kind of punishment,” I said.

  Violet snorted. “Yeah, right.”

  “Seriously,” I said. “You know that. She says kids do the best they can. She doesn’t believe in punishment.”

  “Well, my dad definitely does. And I’ll bet you anything he wins that argument.”

  I puffed my cheeks out and exhaled the air slowly. “Their grandmother—your grandmother—what’s she like?”

  “She used to bake cookies with Smarties in them, and she showed me how to make those paper snowflakes, you know? And she knits a lot…” Violet’s gaze met mine. She’d reapplied her eyeliner, a thick black line that lifted up at the outer corners and made her eyes look like a cat’s. “I haven’t seen her since I was eight,” she said.

  “You think she’ll be okay with us showing up like this?”

  She shrugged. “She’ll have to be, won’t she?”

  At midnight I was still wide awake and jittery. The moon was full, and its light shone through the thin fabric of our tent, making everything look weird and blue and spooky. I sat up and looked around. Apparently, I was the only one who couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t make out anyone’s face, but all around me, their motionless bodies made long lumpy shapes under the shiny fabric of our sleeping bags. It looked like some kind of alien landscape.

  I flopped back down heavily. Everything was going according to plan. Anna hadn’t told on us, the twins had leaped at the idea of a sleepover party in the tent, Mom and Curtis had gone to bed, and our bags were packed and ready to go. Violet had set the alarm on her phone. Ty had the money in his wallet. On one side of me, Violet lay curled up against Ty, who was snoring softly. On my other side, Saffron and Whisper were pushed up against me. Trying to roll over, I bumped the mound of their bodies with my knee. “Mmm, mmm,” Whisper murmured in her sleep. “Uh. Fffff.”

  It was the first time I’d heard her voice since we left home. I couldn’t believe that was only a few days ago. It felt like forever.

  My heart felt fluttery, and I couldn’t imagine that I was ever going to sleep. I looked at my watch again. Ten minutes past midnight. In less than seven hours, we’d be sneaking out of the tent. In eight hours, we’d be boarding a bus. And by dinnertime, we’d be in Nelson.

  I guess I must have gone to sleep, because the next thing I knew, the alarm on Violet’s phone was playing the theme song from Portal. I sat up in my sleeping bag and looked around the crowded tent. The twins weren’t even stirring; they slept as soundly as puppies.

  Violet groaned, turned off the alarm and pulled the pillow over her head. Beside her, Ty sat up and yawned. He looked at me, raised his eyebrows and gave me a crooked grin. “So.”

  I nodded. “So. I guess this is it, huh?”

  “Not too late to change your mind,” he said.

  I looked down at the twins. “What do you think?” I asked him. “Do you think I’m crazy to do this?”

  “Nah.” He hesitated. “Well, maybe a bit. But I get it.”

  “You do?” I wasn’t that clear on it myself.

  “Make your mom pay attention, right? Make her listen to you?”

  “I guess so. And maybe Violet’s grandmother can get help for Whisper.”

  “So you’re still in?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I’m in.”

  We managed to get the twins out of the tent without too much noise. Saffron wasn’t even properly awake—Ty had to carry her—and Whisper, who was my biggest worry, seemed to accept without any fuss the explanation that we had a surprise for her. We tiptoed past the van and headed off down the street. The sky was a pale gray, and the air felt damp and clammy. Whisper clutched my hand, shivering.

  “Don’t worry,” I told her. “Everything’s fine.” I think I was mostly reassuring myself, but she nodded as if she understood.

  The walk to the bus station took forever. Violet and Ty walked hand in hand, Saffron rode piggyback on Ty, and Whisper and I trudged along behind. With every step, I realized all over again that I was actually doing this.

  Running away, I guess you’d call it.

  Twenty-Six

  ARRIVING AT THE bus station was a bit hard to explain to the twins. Whisper had accepted the It’s a surprise line, but when Saffron woke up, she had a million questions. Finally, Violet just opted for partial truth—we were going to visit their grandmother. Saffron practically squealed with delight, but Whisper had a big meltdown, crying and holding her breath till her lips turned blue and she collapsed in noisy, gulping, hiccupping sobs. I wondered what she’d been imagining. Some other, more exciting kind of surprise, I guess. Probably one involving fairies or ice-cream sundaes or water slides. Being Whisper, she wasn’t telling.

  But finally, we were off. The Greyhound smelled different from city buses in Victoria—sort of nice but in a chemical way, like air freshener maybe—and there were actual fabric-covered seats instead of plastic benches. Ty sat across the aisle, eating pretzels
from the snack bag on his lap and playing a game on Violet’s phone. Violet and Saffron sat together behind me, and Whisper sat with me and almost immediately dozed off. I guessed the meltdown had worn her out. I stroked her head. Her hair was matted, and I could smell the chlorine from her swim the day before.

  I stared out the window and watched trees flash past in a blur of green. Nothing felt real: not this road, not our destination, not the weight of Whisper’s head on my lap. But for the first time in weeks, worry wasn’t sharp and jangling in my belly. I felt weirdly calm. At least I am doing something, I thought. At least I am taking action.

  It was almost exactly what Mom had said about this whole stupid family trip—At least we’re taking action, Wolf. I shivered. Did Mom have that jangle in her belly too? Was that why she was dragging us across the country?

  I looked down at Whisper, fast asleep, her eyelashes spiky and dark against her pale cheeks, and wished I could know for sure if I was doing the right thing.

  Sometimes I envied bees. Not the way they were dying off, obviously, but the way their roles were all neatly laid out for them. Like, if you were a worker bee, you flew around and visited flowers and drank nectar and collected pollen to bring back to the hive, and that was it. You even generated static electricity when you flew so that when you landed on a flower, the pollen pretty much leaped onto you. You didn’t have to make decisions or think about what you wanted to do when you grew up or wonder whether you were doing the right thing by basically kidnapping your little sisters.

  When I was working on my bee project, I’d watched a documentary about how bees used to be practically worshipped in ancient times—there are all kinds of old carvings and paintings and stuff with bee images in them. People thought they were prophetic. If they settled on your roof or whatever, it meant good things would happen.

  I’ve never been a superstitious kind of person at all, but still, I couldn’t shake off the question, What did it mean if the bees started flying away from their hives, abandoning their young, dying—or, more often, just disappearing?

  I didn’t know the answer, but it couldn’t be anything good. And I wasn’t against what my mom was doing. Not really. I understood why she felt she had to do it.

  I just hoped she would understand why I had to do this.

  After a couple of hours, Saffron and Whisper were both squirmy and restless. From the seat behind me, I could hear Saffron asking why Mom wasn’t with us.

  “She’s meeting us there,” Violet said.

  “I want to sit with Whisper.”

  “Yeah, okay.” Violet got out of her seat and stood in the aisle.

  I nudged Whisper. “Sit with Saffy for a bit, okay?”

  Whisper switched seats, snuggling up to Saffron. I expected Violet to join Ty—he had an empty seat beside him—but she dropped down beside me instead.

  “Wolf, we have to talk.”

  “About what?” It seemed to me that the decisions were all behind us, back in Chilliwack. All there was to do now was sit on the bus until we arrived in Nelson…and then it was out of our hands, really. Maybe Vi’s grandmother would help us and maybe she wouldn’t, but there wasn’t much we could do about it.

  “Me and Ty?” She lowered her voice so it was just a fraction above a whisper. “We’re not gonna stay in Nelson.”

  “What do you mean?” I stared at her. “What are you going to do?”

  She shrugged. “Ty’s got friends in Calgary. We might head out there.”

  “Calgary,” I repeated. All I knew about Calgary was that it had a Stampede and lots of snow in the winter.

  “Yeah. His friends have a band, and Ty’s pretty good with a guitar, right? And they have a place we can stay until we figure out a way to make some money.”

  “What about high school?” I said, like that was the most important thing.

  Vi rolled her eyes. “I’d have more luck finishing high school in Calgary than I do with Jade and my dad.”

  “But what about—what about me?” My voice came out too loud, and I had to swallow back the wail that almost slipped out with the last word. “I mean…you’re just going to leave us? Me and the twins?”

  “We’ll make sure you get to my grandmother’s place and everything,” Vi said. She was staring down at her hands, picking at a hangnail, not looking at me.

  “But why? Why can’t we just stay together?”

  “Because I want to live my own life,” she said. “I want to be with Ty, and I know my dad and Jade don’t like him. And I’m tired of being told what to do all the time.”

  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<
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  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.