The Summer We Saved the Bees (9 page)

“Jade…” Eva put the camera down on the coffee table.

“Or no, wait. I’ll put my costume on and we’ll do one of the four of us.” She headed for the back door. “It’s in the van. I’ll be right back.”

“What about Curtis?” Eva asked. “No costume for him?”

Mom paused in the doorway, looked back over her shoulder and made a face. “He’s more of a behind-the-scenes kind of guy.”

“Me too,” I said, but Mom was already gone.

Eva looked at me. “You okay, kiddo?”

“Yeah.” I couldn’t look at her. “Fine.”

“When I was your age, there was no way I could have done what you’re doing,” she said. “Seriously. I was way too self-conscious. So kudos to you, Wolf.”

“Not like I have much choice,” I muttered.

“Sure you do. Jade’s not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do.” She tilted her head. “Right?”

I shrugged. “Yeah. I guess.”

Eva looked like she was about to say something else, but Saffron tugged on her arm and she turned away. I sat down on the couch, holding a cushion against my stomach. The shirt was so snug that you could see the indentation where my belly button was.

A minute later Mom came flying back in. She was wearing black-and-yellow-striped tights, a short black skirt and a black top with long dangly sleeves. Wire-stiff wings fanned out behind her, and two long black antennae stuck up from the top of her head.

“Yowza,” Violet said. “That’s quite the outfit, Jade.”

Mom spun around, showing off. “What do you think, Eva?”

“Gorgeous. And you’ll certainly attract attention,” Eva said.

“That’s the idea,” Mom said. She held her arms out. “Come on, kids. Photo time.”

The twins were at her side in a heartbeat. I stood up, crossed the room and positioned myself behind them, so that I’d only be visible from the chest up. Mom smiled at me. I gave her a halfhearted smile back.

At least she hadn’t noticed that I wasn’t wearing the antennae headband.

Ten

SHORTLY AFTER NOON,
Curtis dropped us all off in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery. I was carrying a canvas bag full of flyers to hand out. We’d printed them out three to a page and cut them apart. You could tell which ones the twins had cut because they were a little wonky. There was a picture of a bee in flight at the top, and our website link at the bottom. In between was a long list of facts about what was happening to the bees.

“Over here, I think,” Mom said. She had a bag of props with her juggling stuff in it and a couple of big poster boards. “Let’s set up right here.” She gestured at the large paved area where we were standing, at the base of a flight of wide stone steps.

I looked up at the two huge stone lions that seemed to guard the gallery and at the big pillars by the gallery doors. “Are we allowed to?”

“Wolf, really?” She laughed. “Such a rule follower.”

She made it sound like a bad thing. “I just wondered,” I said.

“Yeah, it’ll be fine,” she said. “There are lots of protests here—the steps are famous for it.”

“Okay.” I handed a bunch of flyers to Saffron and a bunch to Whisper. Saffron promptly dropped hers, and the wind caught them and started blowing them down the sidewalk. I muttered a rude word under my breath and took off after the flying papers. By the time I’d managed to chase them down, Mom and Violet had the poster-board display all set up, and a couple of curious pedestrians had stopped to see what we were up to.

“Here,” I told Saffron, returning her flyers to her. “Hold on tight, okay?”

She nodded, pink cheeked from the chilly breeze. Beside her, twisting the flyers in her hand, Whisper looked wide-eyed and frightened.

“Just stay together, okay?” I told them. “And don’t go anywhere—Whisper, quit crumpling the papers—just stay right here. Probably no one is even going to come and watch anyway.” Curtis was supposed to come back for us at two o’clock—he was going to drive around to a bunch of Chinese restaurants and collect used cooking oil to fuel the van—and I wondered what we’d do for two hours if no one showed up. Would Mom do her whole show anyway, juggling routine and all? Or would we just stand around, getting cold and looking dumb in our bee costumes?

“Hey, hey,” a low voice said behind me.

I turned. Ty was standing there, hands in his pockets, grinning at me. Violet spotted him, squealed and threw herself into his arms. “Ty! You made it!”

“’Course I did,” he said. “I told you I’d be here.” He looked at me over Violet’s shoulder. “Whoa, Wolf, buddy. That’s quite the look.”

I felt a rush of heat to my face and quickly folded my arms across my chest. “Yeah, well.”

“Wolf! Violet!” Mom called. “Get over here.”

I shrugged, glad of an excuse to take my goofy-looking striped self away from Ty. I beckoned for the twins to come with me and walked over to where Mom was standing with a small group of people. Students, maybe. They looked like students, anyway, in jeans and with bags slung over their shoulders.

“This is my son, Wolf,” Mom said. “And my girls, Saffron and Whisper. And over there…my stepdaughter, Violet. Apparently she’s busy.”

The students all looked where she was pointing. Violet was still standing with her arms wrapped around Ty. Everyone laughed.

“It’s cool that you’re doing this,” one of them told me. She was tall, and her blond hair was tied up in a huge mass of dreadlocks. “Like, as a family? It’s awesome.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I just nodded.

“Well,” Mom said. “This is our first show, so you’re our guinea pigs.” She grinned. “Might as well get started, I guess, though it feels funny performing for six people.”

“Go for it.” A fat guy with a bushy ginger beard gestured toward the steps. “More people will stop and watch once you get going.”

Mom took a deep breath and nodded. I could tell she was nervous. “All right,” she said, and she moved away from the group to stand on the bottom step. “We’re here because we care,” she began. “We’re here because time is running out…”

I nudged Saffron. “You and Whisper give out the flyers now, okay? Just hand one to each person who’s watching. And if you see someone walking by but kind of looking at us, run over and give them a flyer too.”

“Can you do it?”

“I thought you wanted to,” I said. “You were all excited about this part, remember? You can pretend you’re flying.”

“I’m cold,” she said.

I sighed. “Fine.” I handed out flyers to the group of students. Mom was starting the juggling part of her show, holding the blue-and-green Earth ball in her hands. A couple of young Asian men walked by, eyes on their phones, not even glancing our way. A woman with a stroller slowed down and looked, but when I started moving toward her she avoided my eyes and quickened her pace. Like I was going to try to sell her something.

I didn’t want to push the twins, especially if they were feeling shy, but they’d be better at this part. No one would turn their back on two five-year-olds dressed in bee costumes.

On the bottom step, Mom was juggling three balls and talking nonstop. The students were listening, and every once
in a while, when she said something they agreed with or did a cool trick, like throwing a ball behind her back and catching it, they’d break into applause.

A large group of people—a dozen or so of them—was approaching. I nudged Saffron. “Come with me, okay?”

She shook her head. To my surprise, Whisper slipped her hand into mine. “You’ll come?” I asked her.

She nodded.

“Me too,” Saffron said immediately.

“Great.” The three of us walked toward the group, flyers in hand, and a couple of young women stopped. “Awww, look at you. How cute is that?” one of them cooed. The rest of the group slowed down and looked at us.

“Go on, kids,” I said under my breath. “Give them flyers.”

Saffron went one better. “That’s my mom,” she told them, pointing. “She’s a good juggler.”

“She sure is,” the girl said. She had long dark hair and didn’t look much older than Violet. “So how come you’re all dressed up?”

“We’re bees,” Saffron said. “Because we don’t want all the bees to die.”

“Awww,” the girl said again. The whole group had stopped walking now and turned toward the steps, watching my mom juggle. “Are you handing out information then? About bees?”

Saffron nodded and held out her flyers. “You can have one.”

More people were stopping now, as if the very fact that the crowd had reached a certain size was enough to make it
grow all by itself. Whisper buzzed around the group, weaving in and out of legs, silently handing out flyers. Saffron was still chatting with the dark-haired teenager.

I looked over to where Violet and Ty had been, but they weren’t there anymore. On the steps, Mom was shouting out alarming statistics about bees and pollination and our food supply, juggling four balls higher and higher. I spun around, searching the crowd, scanning up and down the street.

Violet and Ty were gone.

Eleven

I FIGURED I
should wait until Mom’s show was done before I told her. Maybe Violet had just gone with Ty to grab a coffee or something, and she’d be back any minute. I just had to make sure I didn’t lose the twins. It wasn’t easy, trying to keep an eye on them in this mass of people twice their height.

It was clouding over and a few drops of rain were starting to fall, but even when Mom was finished the show, people didn’t leave. They crowded around her, asking questions, arguing about stuff. I tried to catch her eye.

“Where’s Curtis?” Saffron asked. “Will he be here soon? I’m cold.”

I rubbed her bare arms. She had goose bumps. “Whisper, are you cold too?”

Whisper nodded.

Saffron was right, I thought. Whisper wasn’t talking at all.

“Mom!” I called out, pushing through the crowd. “The twins are freezing. And…” I leaned in close and lowered my voice, not wanting to make a public announcement. “Violet’s taken off with Ty.”

“Oh, Wolf.” She looked at me, exasperated, as if these things were somehow my fault. “Look, just keep the girls happy for a few minutes, can’t you?” She gestured across the street. “Find a coffee shop or something—get them a drink.”

“I’ll need some money.”

She put her hands on her hips in search of a pocket. “Curtis has my wallet.”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine.” I walked away from her and her fans, took the twins by their hands and tried to think up a game to keep them entertained. I didn’t want to risk hide- and-seek: we’d already lost Violet. “You guys want to play scavenger hunt?”

Saffron eyed me critically. “Like how?”

“Like…” I thought fast. “Like, okay. You two have to touch something green, something brown, something red and something blue. Go!”

They stared at me for about a second, and then they were running. “Grass!” Saffron yelled, bending down and uprooting a handful of it. Whisper followed her, touching the grass and darting across the sidewalk to a parking sign to touch the blue letters. “I can’t find red,” Saffron protested. “There’s no red, Wolf!”

“Sure there is.” I looked pointedly down at Whisper’s feet in their red Crocs. “Keep looking.”

She followed my eyes and squealed, pouncing on Whisper and grabbing her foot. “That’s it! I win!”

Startled, Whisper gasped, and tears came to her eyes. I rushed over, hoping to head off a meltdown. “Hey, nice teamwork!” I said. “You guys got all four colors so fast!”

They both stared at me for a second, and then Saffron opened her mouth. “But I won!”

I shook my head at her warningly. “Great teamwork,” I said again.

Too late. Whisper sank to the ground, curled up with her arms around her knees and started to wail. “Nice,” I said to Saffron.

She started to cry too. “What did I do?”

I couldn’t deal with this. Could. Not. Deal. I turned back toward where Mom was standing at the steps, her juggling balls on the ground at her feet. The crowd had moved on; there were just a couple of student types and a bearded older man still talking to her. “Mom!” I yelled.

She looked over. I pointed at the twins. “We need to go,” I said. I knew she couldn’t hear me, but I just stood there, waiting, until she excused herself, picked up her stuff and headed our way. Deep inside me, I felt something boiling up, like bubbling hot magma trapped under the Earth’s shifting plates, pressure building, ready to blow.

Twelve

MOM MANAGED TO
calm the twins down. She called Curtis, who came back to pick us up, and we all headed to Eva’s house.

All of us except Violet.

“What are we going to do?” I asked Mom in a low voice. The twins were on the couch, watching cartoons, and I was helping Mom make a late lunch for everyone: peanut butter on toast and sliced bananas. Curtis had driven back downtown to look for Violet.

Mom stuck more bread in the toaster. “Hopefully, Curtis will be back with her soon. And we’ll head toward Hope. Stop overnight in Chilliwack, do a presentation there tomorrow afternoon…”

“And what if Curtis doesn’t find her? What if she’s taken off with Ty?”

She shook her head. “We can’t stay here with Eva indefinitely. If she’s not back by tonight…”

“We can’t just leave without her,” I said. “Can we?”

“I don’t see what choice we have.” She pulled a stack of plates out of the cupboard and started placing the banana slices on them, arranging them like two eyes, a nose and a smiling mouth.

“Well, maybe we should wait a few days?” I liked the thought of staying longer—spending the evenings with Tess and Hazel, playing Monopoly, eating Eva’s good cooked dinners and the kind of junky breakfast cereal my mom never bought.

“We’ll see.” She spread peanut butter on a slice of bread, cut it into thin strips and arranged them like sticking-up hair above the banana faces.

“Mom.” I hesitated. “Um, do you think Whisper is okay?”

She looked across at the twins on the couch. “She’s fine. Can you take these two plates to them? I’ll make you a sandwich, okay? D’you want banana in yours?”

“Sure.” I picked up the plates and stood there for a second longer. “You know, she isn’t really talking.”