by Paul Tobin
“Like the way some geniuses never detect sarcasm from others, or perfectly justified panic from their friends?”
“Sure,” Nate said. “Those could be examples, I guess.” He clearly wasn’t putting two and two together and coming up with “Delphine is talking about me.”
He said, “The thing is, we’re safe in here. And we’re hidden from Luria and her minions, but I had us swallow the other pills so that we can talk.”
“We’re not talking, we’re only thinking about talking. How can this possibly be working?”
“I was explaining that. Also, quit worrying about all this being a hallucination caused by having been stung sixty million times by the bees.”
“How did you know I was thinking about that?”
“Again. I’m explaining.” He took me by my hand and we began walking toward . . . somewhere. Being encased inside a blimp-size swarm of bees was really messing with my sense of direction.
Nate said, “The second pill we took made some temporary minor changes in the arcuate fasciculus, which is a nerve tract connecting various language centers in our brains, and it . . . OUCH.”
“Ouch?”
“You were just thinking about punching me, about telling me that Day One of Delphine’s Life in the Bee Tribe is not the proper time for in-depth explanations of why we can hear and understand each other’s thoughts.”
“True. But . . . it hurt you?”
“I could feel the punch. It triggered the proper pain sensors that . . . OUCH.”
“This is awesome,” I said. “So I just think about punching you and . . . ?”
“OUCH,” Nate said.
“What I meant by that last mental punch,” I said, “is that all I needed you to say is that we can hear and understand each other’s thoughts, not some complicated explanation of exactly why that is, because I’m not going to understand it anyway. Now, why are we inside these bees in the first place?”
“Because if we can move closer to Luria and the others, we can overhear what they’re planning to do.”
“Oh. Okay then, I have a question.”
“I love that you have questions. Most people just accept things the way they are, never questioning what’s happening to them.”
“In defense of other people, they’re rarely encased in giant swarms of bees, which does tend to bring up a few questions, like this one . . . We’ve turned invisible before, so I know you have the technology to be entirely undetectable, you know, without bees.”
“True,” Nate agreed. But that was all he said. I would’ve thought a genius could detect where my question was going, but I was apparently going to have to explain.
I said, “Well, then . . . why didn’t we just do that? Wouldn’t that have been easier than becoming a part of a bee tribe?”
“Easier isn’t always better.”
“But it is always better to be not encased in a giant swarm of bees,” I argued. I was well aware that I was debating with a genius, but I felt like my reasoning was unshakable.
“Adventures are always better than not-adventures,” Nate countered.
Urrgh.
My weakness.
Nate knows that I’m generally considered adventurous. Well, I’m more commonly considered “troublesome,” sometimes “problematic,” and occasionally “red-haired and dangerous,” but for now let’s just define it as adventurous.
“Okay then,” I said. “Bees. I love them. More bees in my hair, please. I want them crawling on my arms and face. It’s so awesome.” I didn’t really have anything personal against the bees, so I was hoping that none of them would drown in my sarcasm.
“It is awesome!” Nate said, as he has never been in any danger of drowning in my sarcasm. “Seeing life through someone else’s eyes is an amazing perspective. I mean, since we took the pills, these bees think that you and I are exactly the same. We’re just other bees to them. They can’t tell us apart. They don’t notice that your hair is red or that you’re so pretty; they just think you’re a bee. Same as me.”
Hmmpf.
Pretty?
I was silent.
“Huhh?” Nate said. “Your thoughts are blank. Did I say something wrong?”
I was silent.
“Hmmm,” Nate said. “This is odd. The pill’s duration should still be in effect, but I can’t hear you. Are you okay, Delphine?”
I was saved from having to say anything (I was holding back a mental blush, which is uncomfortable) by Luria suddenly speaking, not more than ten feet from us, outside the swirling mass of bees.
“Nathan has to be around here,” she said. We could barely hear her, since she wasn’t speaking directly into our minds, meaning her voice was nearly drowned out by the tremendous buzzing roar of the swarm.
“Do we truly need him?” a man’s voice asked. “Why can’t we just steal the Infinite Engine from his house?”
“It’s too well guarded. Between the defenses he’s constructed and that dog of his, any direct assault will fail.”
“A jar of peanut butter is enough to distract the dog, and as to the house’s defenses, we can infiltrate with Project A.”
“Untested,” Luria said. “But, yes . . . it could be of value.” Nate and I, safely hidden in the bee swarm, were trying to edge even closer to Luria. The bees weren’t bothering any of the assassins of the Red Death Tea Society. In fact, two of the women in the spandex suits walked right through the swarm, which parted around them, forcing Nate and me to step quickly out of their way when we understood what was happening. It wasn’t all that difficult once we noticed the different flow of the bees, a change in their flight patterns. There was a current to being in the swarm, and the longer we stayed inside, the more we understood it. Maybe we really were becoming part of the tribe? Understanding their ways? I’d probably end up as the head of the Bee Student Council, and I’d make a bunch of bee friends, and we’d all go to the movies together, and I could have them over for my Cake vs. Pie parties, and we’d all laugh about the time they crashed the party and stung me again and again, turning my face into a melon.
“What’s Project A?” I asked Nate.
“No idea.”
“Any guesses?”
“Science never guesses.”
“I guess that’s true, but you’re not science . . . you’re Nate. So, any guesses?”
“Not really. But the arrival of this bee swarm means we’re clearly going to have to speed up the process of disabling the bee-summoning transmitters, though at the same time we should probably go back to my house and protect the Infinite Engine. I’d like to switch on all the extreme defenses.”
“Extreme defenses?”
“Sure. The rugs. The doorknobs. Our mailbox.”
“Doorknobs don’t sound particularly awe inspiring, Nate.”
“Wrong. I invented doorknobs that—”
But the topic of doorknobs would have to wait, because it was at that moment that Luria said, “Well, if we’re going to break into Nathan’s house, we have to keep him busy elsewhere. It’s time to implement the full scale of Project B.”
Almost immediately, an intense odor washed across the parking lot, slamming into my nose despite the wind from the millions of tiny wings surrounding me. It smelled like a flower . . . but a vast field of flowers, or possibly one super-huge monster flower, a fifty-foot flower that had neglected to wear deodorant. The smell was overpowering.
“Uh-oh,” Nate said.
“Uh-oh?” I asked.
“Luria is ordering the bumblebees into action,” Nate said, grabbing my hand and hurrying us across the parking lot. But we’d only gone a few steps when the entire swarm of bees whooshed up into the air, leaving Nate and me entirely exposed.
Nate and I could see normally again, so for one moment we could see Luria talking with the other assassins, explaining how a tactical squad would deal with the danger of the doorknobs at Nate’s house, and then suddenly the bees were gone and Nate and I were standing there completely
in the open and Luria turned to me and met my eyes with a quizzical expression. Her gaze narrowed. She began to frown. Even sneer.
“Hey there,” I said. I gave her a little wave and asked, “What’s all this about doorknobs?”
Let me tell you about our escape.
So it turns out that there were other swarms of bumblebees. There were, in fact, swarms of swarms. There was a swarm in Polt’s industrial district, and one menacing Polt Middle School, and another at Polt University (“Where Polt Pride Patrols”) and the tech school and all the other schools, as well as at our city parks, the swimming pool (where several unfortunate swimmers had already felt the cruel sting of fate . . . in this case meaning the cruel sting of Melville), and there were other swarms at the police station, the fire station, the post office, the mall, the entire shopping district, and so on and so forth.
There was even a swarm above my house, where Mom and Dad were sitting down for a late lunch, and Mom was just in the act of texting me when the swarm began trying to get in through the windows, so that Mom sent me a text of, Delphine, it’s time for lunch. Where are . . . OH NO! BEES! SO MANY BEES!
“Why did you type out that thing about the bees?” I asked my phone, but it didn’t answer and then I dropped it anyway, because I was being violently bounced around. Nate and I had managed to make it to Betsy, our car, and she was trying to whoosh through the lobby of Polt Paramount, our city’s largest movie theater. We couldn’t be blamed for driving a car inside a movie theater, as we were trying to lose a herd of bees. Also, the sign at the front door had said, “No pets,” but hadn’t specifically said anything about cars. If they didn’t want people driving cars through the lobby, they should have posted a sign.
I do admit we hadn’t bought Betsy a ticket.
I reached over and punched Nate in the arm.
He said, “Oww,” and then nodded at me in the way that people do when they understand what you meant to say, rather than what you did say. Or, in this case, what you punched.
He said, “I’m calculating a nearly one hundred percent chance that you’re worried about your family.”
“I am,” I said. “Even Steve.” My brother Steve was probably why Nate hadn’t calculated an entirely one hundred percent chance that I was worried about my family.
“I’ll send Sir William to your house,” Nate said. “He can emit a subaudible shriek that will disturb the bees, confuse them, make them flee the area, at least for a surrounding block.”
“Yes, do that,” I said. “Make the bees flee.” With that said, I crawled back over into the front seat, as I’d bounced into the back during a particularly tight corner Betsy had taken while trying to avoid running into a wall. I’d been in the theater lobby before, lots of times, and I’d always thought it had about four walls, but now they suddenly seemed to be everywhere, popping out at the most inconvenient times.
“Friend Delphine,” Betsy said. “Please sit closer to Nate.” I scooted a bit closer to Nate, wondering what Betsy was talking about. Why would she want me to move closer to Nate? After all, she gets a bit jealous over him. Okay, more than a bit. In fact, she has a complete crush. It’s embarrassing. I myself would never act like that.
“I am monitoring reluctance on your part,” Betsy said. “That is not wise, friend Delphine. Please do not be so shy. Time is of the essence.”
“You want me even closer?” I asked Betsy. I was already sitting almost right up against Nate. We were zooming around in the lobby, with people jumping out of our way, and with bees swarming us, and with spilled popcorn likewise swarming us, and with the theater manager (Harold Freymeyer) having crawled up onto the candy display case, from where he was ordering an usher to throw us out.
“We will be taking the stairs,” Betsy said.
“The stairs?” Nate said, then, “Oh!” He put his arm around me and hugged me tight, pulling me as close as possible.
“Whuu?” I said. My brother Steve often talks about taking his various girlfriends to the movies. He always tries to kiss them. I couldn’t help but wonder if Nate was trying the same thing. But . . . Nate certainly knew that he and I are only friends, and that kisses were entirely out of the question, even though my brother Steve claims that horror movies are the best times to kiss girls, and while it’s true that Nate and I weren’t at a horror movie, we definitely were at a horror reality, being attacked by precisely 27,562 bees (Nate had counted them, somehow), which I suppose could make people even more likely to kiss?
“I’m not kissing you!” I told Nate.
“We’re shrinking!” he said.
“I’m confused!” I said.
“Me too,” Nate said, staring at me.
“Get ready!” Betsy yelled.
“For what?” I asked. I was still confused. Very confused, even. “Are you talking about kissing?”
“Nate is not kissing you!” Betsy said. There was a touch of something extra in her voice, and I was wondering about that, and very much wondering if anybody could explain to me what was going on, and then I yelped because Betsy was . . .
. . . Betsy was . . .
. . . getting smaller.
“Is Betsy getting smaller?” I asked.
“Yes,” Nate said. “Didn’t I say we were shrinking? And why did you think I was going to kiss you?”
“Why are you holding my hand?” I countered. He was holding my hand.
“I didn’t know I was!” Nate said. He dropped my hand. Then he blushed and glanced out the window, which was covered in bees. While he was distracted, I reached out and took his hand again. I have an excuse for this. I wanted any comfort I could grab. Let me again mention the 27,562 bees.
“Don’t hold hands!” Betsy yelled, and then she puffed out a cloud of smoke from her butt (I suppose it was her muffler, but mufflers are on regular cars, and butts are for talking cars), and the bees started choking and coughing and cursing (I may have imagined this), and then Betsy was aiming for the stairs up to the balcony seating, stairs that were way too narrow for a car. We were doing about thirty miles per hour. If you don’t think that’s fast, trying going that speed in a movie theater lobby, in a shrinking car.
Thump thump thump.
Those were the sounds we made going up the stairs. Betsy (she’s made of unstable molecules that she can manipulate at will) had shrunk just enough for us to make our way up the stairs, which came as a shock to Denis Medri (one of my brother’s best friends) and Abby Shaw (one of my brother’s girlfriends, so . . . hmmm) as they came down the stairs together.
“What what what?” Denis said as he noticed a car driving up the stairs toward him at high speed.
“Eeek eeek EEEK!” Abby screamed as Betsy shrank even more (I ended up half in Nate’s lap) and we squeezed past them, gouging the wall as we passed and tearing down an old movie poster for The Heartbroken Wolf Man, shredding it entirely. A large piece of the poster stuck to our now-tiny windshield, with the forlorn wolf man staring in at us.
“Bees!” Abby screeched, when the bees reached her.
“Bees! Bees!” That was Denis.
If they said anything else, I didn’t hear them, because we were back to the thump thump thump of the stairs and then we reached the balcony area and Betsy triggered a grappling hook that attached to the chandelier hanging over the main seating area and we were suddenly swinging out into the void.
“Gahh!” I said. An appropriate response.
“Hold tight!” Nate said, hugging me.
“Let go of him, Delphine!” Betsy said. “You promised me you weren’t dating!”
I said, “This isn’t dating! This is being terrified! And he’s hugging me!”
“I’m monitoring an excess in your body temperature!” Betsy said. “According to the dating manuals Nate has given me to read, that means you’re thrilled to be in his arms!”
I looked to Nate.
“You’ve been giving her dating manuals?”
“Yeah. I thought maybe she could teach me about
dating, if . . . if she knew more about it.”
“So, you thought it would be smart to learn about dating from a car?”
Nate decided to stay silent, which was the one true genius thing he’d done in recent memory. Betsy released her grappling hook from the chandelier, and we went sailing out over the crowd, and by “sailing out over the crowd” I mean “falling toward the crowd,” who began running around in panic, like chickens terrified by a fox, if the chickens happened to be a couple of hundred people enjoying a movie, and the fox happened to be a car falling from the ceiling.
I rolled down the window, leaned out, and yelled, “Excuse us.”
A bee flew in the window.
“Oh, right,” I said. “Bees.” I rolled the window back up as quickly as possible. But now we had a bee in the car. It was making a buzzing sound. It didn’t sound angry or menacing. It sounded . . . happy?
“Melville?” I asked.
She buzzed again.
“There you are!” I said. “I missed you!” She’d been lost in the frantic escape from Popples. I thought about hugging her but it’s really hard to hug a bee, so when she landed on my shoulder I reached out a finger and petted her, very gently. She made a buzz that sounded like a sigh. I could sympathize. It had been a long day, and I could only hope that things would calm down and get better. Then I looked up to see that we were headed right for the theater screen, which was just then showing a squadron of fighter jets engaging an alien spaceship. There were all sorts of explosions, and I wondered if we would make a similar explosion when we hit the screen at a speed of Way Too Fast.
“Look out!” I told Betsy.
She swerved, and we drove partway up the wall, sending me bouncing over my seat into the back, where I landed gracefully on my face. Melville was buzzing in irritation, and I was doing much the same thing. By the time I managed to get back into the front seat Nate was scribbling a series of calculations on the windshield (Betsy was giggling, because it apparently tickled) and we were roaring up the theater aisle toward the lobby, with an usher waving at us with his flashlight, ordering us to leave while nimbly leaping into the seats, on top of my brother Steve.