I peek past the oleander hedge out in front of the duplex when I get there. There’s the yard, same as usual, with Dr. Flossdrop’s cactuses and succulents and other spiny, drought-tolerant plants. And then there’s Birch.
He looks normal in that he’s wearing plaid, but not normal in that he’s doing this strange dance routine around the yard. It takes me a minute to realize it’s not actually a dance routine; it’s the sidestep Lou always assigns his clients. The one I sometimes hear him chanting about from our side of the duplex: “Longer step, tummy tight, don’t forget to pump that knee!”
But Birch’s long-legged sidesteps are exaggerated, which makes it look like he’s dancing. Plus he’s trying to avoid getting stuck by a spiny plant as he does the routine, which makes it extra entertaining. He stops sidestepping when he hears me laugh.
“What are you up to?” asks Birch. “Besides laughing at me.”
“Going to Scoops. I just rescued Milkshake from a breathing attack, and I want to celebrate. Wanna come?”
Birch, of course, accepts.
“I’m going to run inside for a minute first,” I say. Saving a dog makes a person thirsty, and I need some water. “Do you want to come in and wait?”
Birch has never been inside our half of the duplex. But he accepts this invitation as well.
When I come out of the kitchen with two glasses of water, Birch is in the doorway of my bedroom. His mouth is open a little bit like it was when I showed him the bees.
“Whoa,” he says.
It’s been two and a half weeks, and I’ve managed to cover almost my entire room in yarn, either knit or just wrapped: the wooden parts of my bed; my nightstand, lamp, and alarm clock; everything on my dresser, including the cactus, the piggy bank, a couple of wooden boxes, a mug of pens, and some books. I’ve even wrapped the light fixture hanging from the ceiling above my bed with yarn and dangled a garland with pompoms from it.
“What is this?” asks Birch, taking the glass from me. “It’s like, like… your whole room molted a multicolored sweater.”
“It’s called yarn bombing. And that’s exactly how I think of it!”
“It’s amazing,” says Birch.
“Thank you.” I take a sip from my own glass since it feels like my mouth is as filled with wool as my room. Pretty weird, but it’s nice to share my yarn bombing with someone else, even if that someone isn’t Adam.
And if I’m perfectly honest with myself, I’m glad that someone is Birch.
Birch orders durian when we get to Scoops.
“What’s durian?” I ask.
“It’s a Southeast Asian fruit that supposedly smells really bad.”
“And you want to eat it as an ice-cream flavor?”
“I don’t think the fruit inside smells bad. Plus I’ve never tasted it.” Birch smiles like he’s on the greatest adventure of his life.
I order lavender lemon zinger because I’m now accustomed to eating flowery ice cream thanks to Mildred. There’s no way I’m willing to risk ordering mint chocolate chip again. Not after what happened last time I was here. It feels like forever ago that the bees landed, even though it’s only been eighteen days — but who’s counting?
I push the thought from my mind and focus on the ice cream I’m ordering. It’s swirls of purple and yellow and cream. I love how the spoon is more like a paddle than a spoon. I also love that they have a TV here. Since Dr. Flossdrop will never let us have one, it makes enjoying ice cream here all the more decadent.
Birch and I each pay and are walking away from the cash register when a teenage girl comes in with her friend. But it’s not just any teenage girl.
It’s Adam’s girlfriend.
I’d recognize her anywhere now. Her straight dark ponytail, the M.C. Escher birds drawn on the back of her neck that continue down her shoulder.
I immediately throw my cone and cup and spoon in the trash and march right over to her. I vaguely hear Birch asking me why I just did that, but I keep walking rather than answer.
Adam’s girlfriend is talking to a friend, but when a random twelve-year-old comes over, she gives me her full attention. “Zinnia?” she says.
OK, so maybe I’m not a random twelve-year-old to her. Maybe Adam actually mentioned me after all. Maybe she remembers me from the five-dollar-bill trick last summer, or Adam showed her a picture of me on his phone before he left.
I’m a little thrown that she recognized me, but I waste no time on pleasantries. “Do you know where Adam is?”
Girlfriend nods.
“Where then?”
“I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone,” she says, not meeting my eyes. She starts twirling her super-long ponytail in her hand.
“Not even me?” I ask.
There’s no answer, but she winces a little and shakes her head.
I look from the girl’s ponytail to her T-shirt-covered shoulder, down her arm to where her tattoo changes from birds to triangles. I feel myself transforming into a triangle. A gray, wavy triangle balancing on one point. Because this stranger knows where Adam is, and I don’t. He told her and not me.
Suddenly the whole world seems even shakier and more uncertain and upside down. And not in an inversion-table, best-ever kind of way. Not that way at all.
As if things couldn’t get any worse, when Birch and I are walking home, I see NML heading toward us on the sidewalk. It’s near the spot where the bees took up residence in my hair, and I can’t help but think that maybe this stretch of Sunrise Boulevard is cursed.
But then, maybe it’s just anywhere I go that’s cursed.
I’m run-walking, and Birch is slightly behind me, trying to keep up, yelling ahead about how good durian tastes despite the rumors about how pungent it smells. I can hear him hypothesizing that Scoops probably added a lot of sugar to the ice cream version, but I’m too busy fuming to respond. I can’t stop thinking about Adam’s girlfriend refusing to tell me where he is and, even worse, knowing that she knows and I don’t and that’s how Adam wants it.
So when I see NML, everything in my body speeds up even more. My lungs are inhaling and exhaling in this frantic turbo pattern that’s impossible to ignore but out of my control. I feel like Milkshake having his breathing attack earlier today. Maybe breathing attacks are contagious from dogs to humans.
“Durian ice cream is hard to pin down,” Birch is saying, still concentrating on his culinary commentary and the spoon heading toward his mouth. “Maybe it tastes a tiny bit like butterscotch.”
“Hurry,” I say, grabbing Birch mid-bite and dragging him along with me between the sneaker and art supply stores. There’s the tiniest cutout here, barely the size of an elevator. I pull us both inside, wishing desperately it had a front door so I could shut it. Or that it was like the elevator in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory so we could blast off somewhere before NML walk by.
“No, it tastes like caramel maybe,” Birch is saying. “Or mango. But oddly kind of like cooked onions, too.” He’s apparently in an entirely different story than I am right now.
I place Birch in front of me and crouch down behind him and try to get my breathing to slow. Birch takes another bite and then finally seems to realize what’s happening.
“Are you hiding?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say. “And so are you. Shhhh.”
“Who are we hiding from?”
“NML.”
“But why? I thought you said you were wrong about NML.”
“Shhhh,” I say again. “I was wrong. But… I don’t know. I’m not ready, OK? I’m not ready to see them, and today is not the right day after everything that’s happened, and I’m tired and…”
“Shhhh,” says Birch.
“Why are you shushing me?” I ask, not whispering anymore.
“Because NML are about to walk by, and I assumed you didn’t want them to
hear you. Isn’t that why you’re hiding?”
“Yes. Thank you. Shhhh,” I say one final time.
I can see NML out there, passing by. I pull Birch’s elbow so he turns around to face me, and he acts like he’s inspecting the paint job on the wall. I hide behind his plaidness, making myself as small as I possibly can.
It’s stifling hiding back here with the bees under my hood, but in another few seconds NML have passed by and are gone. I know because Birch says, “They’re gone” way too loud.
We step out, and Birch heads over to a trash can to throw out his ice cream cup and spoon. When he comes back to join me, my lungs are finally breathing at a somewhat normal speed, taking in regular amounts of oxygen.
“Maybe I should’ve said hello,” I say. “I panicked.”
“I’m sure you’ll have another chance to see them again,” says Birch. “You’ve seen them twice now this summer, right?”
“I guess so,” I say, relief and regret dueling to take the lead on how I should feel right now.
“Chin up,” says Birch, another phrase I’m not familiar with. It sounds like something Lou would say. It’s nice.
I try to hold my chin up the tiniest bit. But it feels pretty hard when there’s so much to weigh me down.
Bees
RECREATION
One of the bees called a meeting. Remarkably, it wasn’t to grumble about Bee 641 or anything else. It was about a new way for us to combat despair and pass the time. The bee called it breakdancing.
We formed a circle as instructed. One bee took her place in the middle while the rest watched, swaying our abdomens rhythmically behind us. She showed us each move, so we could get the hang of it.
The six-legged moonwalk.
The head spin.
The robot. (Bees are especially well-suited for this move, as we love doing things with precision.)
Everyone laughed at the worm. We’d met a few worms in our day, and imitating them was quite satisfying.
We breakdanced with fervor. With four thousand bees, it took a long time for everyone to get their turn in the circle. Oh, but we had fun. We celebrated a couple of weddings this way. We imagined the possibility of celebrating a birth, too, if things were to change. We felt alive with culture and togetherness. The queen looked on, beaming at the unity of her hive in the midst of hardship.
The problem was we were desperately hungry again after all that breakdancing, which only served to reignite the crankiness of our melancholy.
20
STITCH
Birch and I are at the meadow to bird-watch. He says it will help get my mind off Adam and his girlfriend and the zing of betrayal. Also, the embarrassing way I hid from NML — again.
A lot of people are at the meadow today, picnicking and whatnot. I knit while Birch bird-watches. The bees scurry around under my hood, like thunder in a cloud.
When I’m done knitting, I ask Birch if I can borrow his binoculars.
“Close your eyes,” I tell him.
He does, without question, because he’s Birch.
I slip the white knit sleeve I brought with me around one of the lens tubes. The sleeve I’ve been working on, which is black, I bind off, wrap around the other tube, and then close its seam as quickly as I can.
I used my arm as a measurement for how big around to make these when I planned this last night, and I’m relieved to see I was close. It now looks like Birch’s binoculars are wearing loosely knit wristbands. I made one black and one white to represent a soccer ball, a good luck charm to help him make the team.
“OK, you can open your eyes now,” I say, holding out the binocular strap.
Birch takes the binoculars and turns them over and around, examining them in all directions. “No way! Yarn bomb? For me?”
“Yarn bomb for you. Well, kind of like binocular socks for you in this case.”
“Lens warmers.”
I smile. “Yeah, something like that.”
“Everyone in my bird-watching club is going to love these,” he says. “They’re going to be so jealous.”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“I would,” says Birch, who immediately puts the binoculars back on and stares through them.
After that we wait for something bird-watch-y to happen while Birch tells me more than I could ever have wanted to know about feathers, eggs, and wings. I get a whiff of sweat and grass and something else like peppermint sitting this close to him.
We wait some more.
I thread my shoelaces through my fingers and count picnicking people. When I get to 22 something finally happens.
Birch drops his cozied lenses to hang around his neck, his eyes, with faint circles around them, stretched out in wonder. “Look, look!” he says.
“What?”
He puts the binoculars up to my face.
“Look!” he says again.
“Where?” I point them around in all directions. There’s tall grass, there are people, there’s sky, and there are houses over there, farther away.
And then there it is. This beautiful bird. Huge but slender. It’s sleek and tall and graceful. Light gray with flecks of dark on its wings. It’s got one long feather jutting out from the back of its head. It flies above the meadow and then farther away and out of sight.
“What was that?” I ask Birch.
“A great blue heron.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah,” he says.
“I’ve never seen one before. Where do they live?”
“They need to be near water, so that one’s probably headed to the river.”
“Wow,” I say. “I get it.”
“Get what?” asks Birch.
“Bird-watching. I get it.”
“Yeah,” says Birch. “And I get yarn bombing.”
And that’s when I get something else. Blue herons need to be near water, so they fly over the city to get to the trickle of a river a few miles away. What about bees? What might bees need to be near to make them fly away? I feel pretty silly for not figuring this out already. I’m just not sure exactly what to do about it. Yet.
Bees
REPORTS
We couldn’t sustain the breakdancing. Our elbows got sore, and our legs ached, not to mention the lack of nutrition to support such a physically demanding activity.
We had nothing to eat. We had nothing to do. And nothing ever happened.
Once in a while a report was given to the queen, but they were always pointless and one of the following:
Complaints about the living conditions.
Complaints about hunger.
Accusations against another bee of something petty, such as having looked at you funny.
Needless to say, the queen stopped listening to reports.
21
CLICK
The day after Birch and I go bird-watching, I arrive at Lou’s to find the TV blaring. That way he can still hear it while he does push-ups that include very heavy breaths on each up. He’s right there on the kitchen floor, not even worried about how he looks or sounds.
“I came to ask for your help with something,” I tell Birch, who’s watching TV from his seat at the kitchen table. “I think I have an idea for how to get rid of —”
“What did you say?” he interrupts. “I can’t hear you.”
“I have an idea —”
“Hold on. This is it!” says Birch.
“What?” I’m officially full-on yelling above the TV now.
“This is that show I was telling you and Mildred about,” says Birch. He’s yelling now too.
“What show?”
“The one I watch when Uncle Lou’s busy with his clients. Or doing push-ups.” Birch points to Lou, still pushing-up and grunting, on the floor. “Crowd Pleasers.”
“So
unds gross,” I yell-say.
“It’s not gross,” says Birch. “It’s engrossing.” He slides a chair out from Lou’s kitchen table and gestures for me to sit down next to him.
I do because, well, I’m here.
The Crowd Pleasers opener is still going. Now that it’s in front of me, this show’s not what I thought it would be — food or fashion or something else boring. The camera keeps flashing to all these street performers. There are some celebrity judges, but I think the scoring is based mostly on how crowds on the street react to each performance. Whether they clap and stick around and throw tips or just keep moving down the sidewalk.
After the opening, the first real bit comes on. It’s a few shots of a musician playing the cello. Then there’s a puppeteer, but it’s just a second on the screen, like a recap. Her puppet is a strange creature riding a horse.
The next performer’s clip starts, and it’s not just a recap. He’s actually performing for people on the street. He’s got clown face paint on, along with a hat and mime outfit, and the banner at the bottom of the screen says this competitor’s name is Ace.
Face-paint guy is in front of a subway station somewhere. He’s holding a helium balloon by a long string. Only it’s not a regular helium balloon. This one is super big, red, and perfectly round. It reminds me of Mildred’s French movie, The Red Balloon, only much, much larger than that one.
Ace paces the street with the balloon floating above him. He looks like a mime crossed with a clown crossed with a modern dancer. He lets the balloon lead him along, eventually dancing with it like it’s his partner. Sometimes he eases up on the balloon string and pretends to be dragged along by the big red orb. Sometimes he twirls and leaps and then falls to the ground, taking the string down with him so the balloon softly bounces on the pavement.
I’m mesmerized. I forget where I am. It’s like by watching this balloon-toting performer, I’m taking flight with him and his helium balloon. I forget everything else, just like when I’m knitting. My hands are sweaty on the kitchen table, but I can’t move them. On TV, a couple of onlookers appear to be wiping their eyes at Ace’s performance.
Zinnia and the Bees Page 9