The Summer We Saved the Bees (20 page)

Half an hour later, Ty was playing with Saffron and Whisper in the backyard, and Vi and I were sitting in the living room with Mrs. Brooks.

“Thanks for doing the dishes,” she said. She was sitting on a straight-backed wooden chair, her ankles crossed. Even though we weren’t going anywhere, just sitting in her own house, she was wearing dark-beige tights and pointy-toed shoes with high heels.

Vi and I were side by side on the couch. It was low and squishy, which meant we had to look up to meet her eyes. “Sure,” I said. I cleared my throat. “Um, thanks for breakfast.”

Mrs. Brooks ignored me and looked straight at Violet. “Your father will be here this evening,” she said.

Violet nodded. “I know,” she said. “You told me last night.”

“Me too,” I said, feeling left out. “You told me too.”

“I assume they’ll want to continue this trip,” she said.

“Well, we can’t just go back,” Violet said. “It’s not that easy. We moved out of our place. Our stuff’s all in storage…”

“What about Whisper?” I interrupted. “That’s the main reason we came here. To get someone to help Whisper.”

Mrs. Brooks shook her head. “You need to talk about this with them,” she said. “Not with me. Really, it has absolutely nothing to do with me.”

“I’ve tried,” I said hopelessly. “You don’t understand. My mom…She’s really, really,
really
single-minded about the bees.”

“Oh, I’ve met your mother, Wolf,” she said. “Believe me, I understand more than you think.”

Her voice was so dry and so bitter that I actually flinched. “Well…but if you understand…then can’t you…” I trailed off. Because I didn’t think she understood anything at all. She just didn’t
like
my mother.

Mrs. Brooks leaned toward me. “Whether or not I agree with her choices, Jade is still Whisper’s mother,” she said. “And Curtis is her father. And what they do is none of my business. As, I might add, they have made quite clear in the past.”

“But don’t you think Whisper needs help?”

She sighed. “I think it’s quite possible that she does. But I’m afraid that what I think is irrelevant.”

“But they’ll listen to you.” Violet inched forward, perching on the edge of the couch with her elbows on her knees, hands
pressed together under her chin like she was praying. “If you tell them—”

Mrs. Brooks gave a harsh laugh. “Like you listen to your parents, Violet?” She shook her head, uncrossed her ankles and leaned back. “Curtis hasn’t listened to me since he was, oh, about eight years old. And I’m not part of his life anymore. He’s made that clear.”

“Won’t you even
try
?” I said.

She shook her head. “Whisper seems perfectly healthy,” she said. “They’re not hitting her or starving her or neglecting her, are they?”

I couldn’t believe she had to ask. “They’re not hurting her,” I said. “Not physically. Of course they aren’t. I mean, they love her. But she isn’t talking, and dragging her off on this trip is just making her worse.”

“That’s right,” Violet said. “She hasn’t spoken—well, hardly at all—since we left.”

“But it’s not a new problem, her being anxious,” Mrs. Brooks pointed out. “I remember when Curtis brought them to meet me before, they were just three, and Jade had taken them out of preschool because Whisper wasn’t talking and seemed like she just wasn’t ready.” She looked from Violet to me and back to Violet. “I think you both need to think really hard about this.”

“We have been thinking about it,” I burst out. “I’ve been thinking about it all the time.”

She nodded. “Because it’s easier to worry about Whisper than about the things Jade is saying.”

“What?” I stared at her. “No. That’s not—”

She kept going. “It’s easier to worry about Whisper than admit you don’t want to dress up as a bee and be paraded around in front of strangers.”

I turned to Violet. “You told her I didn’t want to dress up?”

“Well, so what? It’s true. You didn’t want to,” Violet said defensively.

“But it’s not the point,” I said. “It’s—”

Mrs. Brooks interrupted me. “And Violet. You were upset about missing school—”

“I never said I wasn’t,” Violet said. “The whole trip was a stupid idea. So what?”

I folded my arms across my stomach, which was starting to hurt. “All that stuff—that’s not why we came here. That’s got nothing to do with it.”

Mrs. Brooks looked at me, her eyebrows raised. “Are you sure about that, Wolf? And you, Violet? Are you sure you aren’t both using Whisper as an excuse to run away?”

We both stared back at her. I couldn’t believe how much she was missing the point.

“I suggest you think about it,” she said. “And think about what it is you’re running away from. Think about what it is you really need to say to your parents.” She stood up and walked out of the room.

Violet and I sat there in silence, staring after her as she disappeared into the kitchen and banged the door closed behind her.

There was a buzzing in my ears that sounded like a million bees.

Violet looked at me. “She totally doesn’t get it. I should’ve known she wouldn’t.”

“She just doesn’t like Mom,” I said. “It’s obvious.”

“I don’t think she likes Curtis much either,” Violet said. “He always said she was super controlling and interfering.”

“You’re just bringing this up now?” I stared at her. “It was your idea to come here. Anyway, that doesn’t even make sense. We
want
her to interfere, and she won’t.”

Violet shrugged. “Didn’t have anywhere else to go, did we? And she
is
Whisper’s grandmother. You’d think she’d care a bit.”

“Yeah.” I scowled. “Instead, she’s acting like Whisper’s fine and we’re just using her as an excuse to complain about stuff.”

“Maybe she’s right,” Violet said. “I mean, it’s not
just
about Whisper, is it?”

“So it sucks for all of us. What difference does it make?” I clenched my hands into fists and pressed them against my thighs.

“None, I guess. If she won’t help, there’s nothing else we can do.”

“We can try to talk to them,” I said. “Mom and Curtis, when they get here. We have to make them
listen
, right? Not let Mom brush it off or change the subject…”

“You can try.”

“
We
can try,” I said. “Both of us.”

“Not me,” Violet said. “I told you. Ty and I are going to take off before they get here.”

“You can’t. I need you to help.”

“I’m sorry.” She looked like she might cry. “I’m really sorry, Wolf.”

She wasn’t going to change her mind. I could see it in her eyes and the way she was clenching her jaw so tightly. I closed my eyes for a minute and let out a long shaky breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. “I’ll miss you,” I said.

“You’ll be okay.”

“I guess.” I didn’t even know what
okay
meant. Everything beyond right now was a great big blank. “Are you going to Calgary? How will you get there? You don’t have any money.”

“This friend, this guy Ty knows…He’s driving from Vancouver to Calgary. Like, right now. Ty talked to him last night.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket and checked her messages. “So, yeah. He’s two hours away from Nelson. He’s going to pick us up this afternoon.”

“And that’s that. You’re just going to leave.” I met her eyes. “Aren’t you scared at all?”

“Don’t worry about me,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”

And I knew she would. Violet might technically be only fifteen, but she was a very grown-up fifteen. Plus she was the kind of person who always took care of herself. You could call it selfish, I guess, but it wasn’t totally a bad thing.

Anyway, she’d be with Ty.

I was more worried about myself.

Thirty-One

THE TWINS WERE
playing in the yard. Ty had made some soapy liquid from water and dish soap, and twisted bits of wire into loops, and the three of them were blowing bubbles. I lay back on the grass and watched the bubbles shimmer and float away, climbing high into the blue sky and disappearing out of sight.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t spend the next few weeks—months, maybe—crammed in that stinky van, looking after the twins, watching Mom do presentation after presentation and thinking about the bees dying and disappearing and what it would mean for the world. For the future.

I didn’t agree with Violet that Mom was nuts. Single-minded, maybe, but she was right about the bees needing to be saved, and, like Eva said, it took people with passion to make real change. Lots of people just ignored problems, or else they worried and complained instead of actually doing anything. Mom wasn’t like that. I thought it was cool that
she was putting all her energy into the one thing she felt mattered the most.

But I wished what mattered the most to her was us. Her family. Me.

Of course, I knew she’d say that we
were
what mattered most. That we were the reason she was doing all this—she loved us and wanted us to have a future.

I heard Duncan’s voice in my head:
That blog of your mom’s? That’s some pretty crazy stuff.

Was he right? Or was Mom right, and everyone else was in denial? I didn’t know what to think about that or how I was supposed to feel. But back on the bus, when Violet had said that thing about
needing
to run away, it hit me like a punch to the guts.

I felt the same way. I sat up and watched Saffron and Whisper giggling and running, chasing after bubbles that reflected every color of the rainbow. I couldn’t imagine leaving them, even if I had somewhere to go.

Which I didn’t.

Unless…I stood up and headed back inside. Violet was lying on the couch, watching tv, and didn’t even look up when I walked past. I went into the kitchen, closed the door behind me and picked up the black cordless phone.

I dialed the only number I knew by heart: Duncan’s.

Duncan and I had been friends for three years. He lived with his mom, Alexa. It was just the two of them, so their place had always seemed really small and quiet compared to mine. Alexa was nice. She’d gone back to school to do social work a year ago, so she studied a lot, and they didn’t have
much money, but I knew she liked me. They always invited me over, and one time Alexa said to me, in this very serious voice, “
Wolf, if you ever need—well, anything, really—you know you can talk to me, right?
”

I’d just said,
Yeah, sure, of course
. I’d been kind of embarrassed and couldn’t imagine what I’d want to talk to her about. But now I wondered…what if I needed a place to stay?

The phone rang and rang, and my hands were suddenly sweaty on the receiver.

No one answered. Finally, after about eight rings, there was a click and a recorded voice—Duncan’s mom’s: “Hi, you’ve reached Alexa and Duncan. Leave a message if you want to, and we’ll call you back.”

“Hi,” I said. I hated leaving messages, but Duncan really hated it when people hung up.
Dude, I have enough hang-ups already,
he’d told me once. “It’s me,” I said. “Wolf. Um, I was—”

There was another click, and then a voice cut me off midsentence. “Wolf! It’s me, I’m here. I was just in the middle of something on my computer, and I figured it’d be for my mom so I didn’t bother…Anyway. So.”

“Hi,” I said again.

“Where the photon are you?”

“Nelson,” I said. “We’re in Nelson.”

“That’s, like, a hippie town, right?”

“I dunno,” I said. “All I’ve seen is the Walmart. Anyway, we’re at Vi’s grandmother’s place now. And…uh, things have been kind of complicated.” It was hard to know where to begin. “Listen, Dunc. Uh, you think there’s any chance I could stay with you guys for a bit?”

“Totally,” he said. “Awesome.”

“Ask your mom, okay?”

“She’s out. But she’ll say yes. For sure. She likes you.” He laughed. “She’d trade me in for you, dude. She totally would. She thinks you’re
sweet
.”

“Sweet?”

“Yeah. That’s what she always says.
That Wolf just seems like such a
sweet
boy
…”

I cut him off. “Yeah, all right. Jeez.”

He laughed again. “I miss you, dude. It’d be one hundred percent awesome to have you stay with us.”

“Thanks.”

There was a pause, and then Duncan said, “So…what’s up? Trip not working out for you?”

My throat got all tight again, and I had to clear my throat so my voice wouldn’t come out in a squeak. “Not so well,” I said. “Uh, you know Whisper?”

“Your sister.”

“Yeah. She’s, like, not really talking. And…” Mrs. Brooks was right, I thought. It wasn’t just about Whisper. “This whole thing, you know, about the bees. It’s…I dunno. It’s just kind of…” I trailed off.

“Dude, tell me about it. Waaayyy out there.”

“I dunno,” I said again. “I mean, it really is serious, what’s happening to the bees. It really is a big problem. I get that.”

“Sure, yeah. I mean, that’s why you did that project, right? I remember it, dude. It was awesome. All that stuff about pesticides and commercial beekeeping. Like how they artificially inseminate the queen bees. Freaky stuff.”

Duncan had helped me figure out how to make the website for my bee project. I’d even credited him on the site:
Tech Support—Duncan Collins
. “Yeah,” I said. “So I’m not, like, dismissing it or anything.” I cleared my throat again and gripped the phone tighter in my hand. I felt sort of disloyal, saying what was in my mind. “But this trip…It’s just…It’s kind of…”

“It’s pretty whack,” Duncan said. “Like, extreme. Katie was really worried. She kept asking me if I thought you were all right with all that stuff on your mom’s website.”

“Did she?” I missed Katie. “I mean, it’s okay if my mom wants to do this. Maybe it’ll even make a difference. I dunno. But—”

“But you don’t want to do it,” Duncan finished for me.

“That’s right,” I said. “I don’t.”

Saying it out loud felt like taking off a heavy sweater on a hot day. Or opening the window in the stinky van and letting cool, fresh air blow in.

“Well, no kidding,” Duncan said. “’Course you don’t.”

“So you’ll talk to your mom?”

“Yeah. But I can tell you with one hundred percent certainty that the answer will be yes.”