The Summer We Saved the Bees

Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Acknowledgments

One

MOM WAS SEWING
when the twins and I left for school in the morning, and she was still sewing when we got home that afternoon. The floor around her was strewn with scraps of yellow lace and black velvet. The electric hum of her sewing machine sounded like the buzz of bees.

Saffron dropped her schoolbag on the hardwood floor with a heavy
thunk
. “Are they done, Mama? Can we see them? Can I try mine on?”

Whisper clutched my hand tightly and said nothing.

“Almost done, kittens.” Mom scooped up Saffron and pulled her onto her lap. “Whisper, my love, come give Mama a hug.”

Whisper let go of my hand, crept up beside Saffron and leaned her head against Mom’s shoulder.

“After dinner you can try them on,” Mom said. “I just have to finish the wings.”

“And then we can fly!” Saffron shouted.

“And then you can fly,” Mom agreed.

Whisper looked at me, and a tiny smile lifted one corner of her mouth.

“I’m hungry,” Saffron said, wriggling free.

“Me too,” I told her.

Since I’d turned twelve a couple of months ago, I’d been hungry all the time. Like some switch had turned on and no matter how much I ate, it wouldn’t turn off. I could eat nonstop and still feel hungry. My stomach was getting pudgy and my jeans were too tight, but I had this gnawing emptiness in my belly that wouldn’t go away.

“Violet’s making dinner,” Mom said, nodding toward the kitchen. “Wolf, why don’t you give her a hand? Saffron, you and Whisper can help me sew your wings.”

In the kitchen, Violet was chopping huge quantities of tomatoes and onions.

“What are you making?” I asked.

“Chili.” She nodded toward a jumbo can of kidney beans. “Open that and rinse them.”

I looked at her more closely. Her black eyeliner was smudged, and her eyes were glittering. “Violet? Are you crying?”

She scowled at me. “It’s the onions.”

I didn’t believe her, but I opened the can of beans and said nothing. Probably she’d had another fight with Tyler. Violet thought about nothing but her boyfriend, even
though they argued and broke up all the time. When she wasn’t fighting
with
Tyler, she was fighting with Mom and Curtis
about
Tyler. I was tired of hearing about him.

Violet sniffed, wiped her nose on her sleeve and swept the chopped onions into the saucepan on the stove. They sizzled in the hot oil. I dumped the beans into a colander and ran cold tap water over them.

“Use a bowl,” she said. “You’re wasting water.”

“Not much.” I turned the tap off. “There you go.”

She poked the beans with her finger. “Still slimy.”

“They’re fine.” I hooked my thumbs into my pockets. “What’s the matter, Vi?”

“It’s Jade,” she said. “Stupid Jade. I hate her.”

Jade is my mom. Her boyfriend, Curtis, is Vi’s dad, so Vi is technically my stepsister, or she would be if Curtis and Mom were married. The twins were born after Mom and Curtis met, so they’re like the glue that sticks us all together and makes us one family. At least,
I
think of us as a family. It’s hard to know what Violet thinks because pretty much everything makes her mad.

“What happened?” I said. “Did you guys have a fight or something?”

She stirred the onions and turned down the burner. “She says Ty can’t come with us.”

“Where?”

“On the trip, stupid. This summer.”

“Oh.” I hadn’t known Violet wanted Tyler to come, but maybe I should have guessed. “Would his parents let him anyway?”

“He doesn’t have to ask them, Wolf. He’s seventeen. He can do what he likes.”

I nodded. Secretly, I was glad Mom had said no. I didn’t really want Ty around when I was dressed as a bee. It was going to be bad enough with strangers staring at us, but at least I’d never have to see them again. We’d just be passing through.

“I bet he’ll find some other girl,” Violet said. “If we’re gone for months and months.”

“Maybe you’ll find some other guy,” I said.

“As if. I’ll still be Ty’s girlfriend, doofus.”

I wondered if she was right. Loving someone doesn’t mean you own them, Mom says. She figures that’s where most people go wrong—getting loving and owning all mixed up. She says you have to hold love as gently as a baby bird or you’ll crush it.
What if it flies away?
Saffron asked once. Mom sighed.
It happens
, she said, and I wondered if she was thinking about my father. He left when I was a baby, and he never came back.

There was a shriek from the living room, and I could hear Mom shouting at the twins to “cut it out right now!” Mom didn’t yell much, but when she did, it made you feel like you had to do something right away. Like you had to fix things. “Maybe I should take Whisper and Saffron outside,” I said. “Get them out of Mom’s hair. She really wants to get the costumes done tonight.”

“I don’t see what the big rush is,” Violet said. She poured the beans into the saucepan with the onions, added the tomatoes and dumped half a jar of chili powder on top of it all. “There’s still six weeks left before school finishes.”

I shrugged.

“This whole trip is the lamest idea ever.” She grabbed a wooden spoon and stirred the chili so violently that a few beans went flying. “And there’s no way I’m getting dressed up as a bee or taking part in any kind of presentation or guerrilla theater or whatever kind of hell Jade’s planning.”

She sounded fierce. Time to leave. I backed out of the kitchen and joined the others. Whatever the problem had been with the twins, they seemed to have figured it out. And it looked like the costumes were pretty much finished. Whisper and Saffron were fluttering around the living room, a blur of yellow and black, wire-and-lace wings dangling limply from their skinny shoulders. Mom clapped and laughed. “Don’t they look sweet? My little honeybees.”

I watched them for a minute, buzzing this way and that, Saffron climbing up on the back of the couch—“Watch me fly!”—and jumping off, Whisper hugging herself, lost in gales of helpless giggles.

“Wolf,” Mom said, and her tone was suddenly serious, “the girls don’t know yet, but we’re going to leave a little earlier than we’d planned.”

“What do you mean?”

“The website’s getting lots of traffic. The costumes and signs are done. Curtis has finished converting the van, and it’s running great.” She lowered her voice. “I think we could be ready to go in a few days. Maybe even by Monday.”

Monday was only three days away. I stared at her. “What about school?”

“It won’t matter if you miss a few weeks. Besides, traveling’s very educational, Wolf. You’ll learn more on the road than you ever could in a classroom.”

“Mom. School’s important.”

“So you can homeschool. You’ve done it before.”

I didn’t go to school at all until fourth grade, because before that we were living on this tiny island called Lasqueti. It wasn’t like I really
homeschooled
though. I just helped Mom with the cabin and the garden and the chickens. I didn’t do lessons or anything. Still, when I finally started school, I wasn’t behind at all. I could read and write and do everything the other kids could do. I liked to think that meant I was smart, but Mom said it just showed that school was overrated and that counting chicken eggs taught you how to add and subtract just as well as worksheets did. “How can I homeschool?” I asked. “We won’t even be at home.”

“Roadschool then.” She laughed. “Lighten up, Wolf.”

I tried to smile, like it was no big deal, but I didn’t want to leave early. I loved my school, even though Violet, who went to the regular high school, said it was for losers. There were only about twenty students, including the twins and me. We had a garden, and we got to learn what we wanted, and all the kids did stuff together, not like ordinary schools where you are split up by age. Well, we sort of were—but just into two classes, one for little kids and one for age ten and up. The little kids mostly played, and my group did passion projects, which meant we picked a topic we were interested in, learned about it however we wanted and then presented it to the rest of the group. It didn’t have to be a speech or
an essay or anything. One older boy was making Haida art, carving orcas and eagles from red cedar. And Caitlin, who was my age and mean to everyone, made dioramas, which sounds dorky but they were actually cool.