The Summer We Saved the Bees

by Robin Stevenson

  It was white and a little banged up, and it looked like something a plumber would drive, with doors at the back instead of the sides.

  Curtis got out and stood there with his arms spread wide. His dark hair hung almost to his shoulders, his jeans were streaked with blackish grease, and he hadn’t shaved in a few days. His chin was right on the line between stubble and beard, hundreds of short hairs glinting in the bright sunlight. “Well, gang? What do you think?”

  “Can I paint it?” Saffron asked.

  “Sure you can. You all can.”

  Whisper looked at me, her bottom lip sticking out. Violet raised her eyebrows. “A Ford? Seriously? You bought a Ford?”

  “Wait till you see inside,” Curtis said, beckoning to us. He was grinning, his dark eyes crinkled into shiny crescents and his teeth gleaming white. We all headed over to the van and waited as he threw open the back doors. A foam mattress took up most of the cargo area. Curtis lifted one corner and rapped his knuckles on the plywood beneath it. “Plenty of storage under there,” he said.

  “Whose bed is it?” Saffron asked him.

  “Me and your mom’s.”

  Jade stroked Saffron’s hair. “You girls can sleep with us if you want to, or in the tent with Violet and Wolf. You might like to be with the big kids.”

  Whisper climbed onto the mattress and curled up like a kitten in the sun. I looked past her at the two rows of seats, the propane stove and the icebox, and tried to imagine this being our home.

  “What about all our stuff?” Violet asked.

  “We’ll get rid of most of it,” Mom said. “And we’ve rented a storage locker for the things we decide to keep.”

  Violet curled her lip. “It smells like French fries.”

  Curtis grinned. “We’re running on 100 percent vegetable oil, baby.”

  Mom flung her arms around him, and he lifted her and swung her around so her long red hair flew out behind her like flames. Then he put her down and kissed her.

  “Gross,” Violet said. It wasn’t clear whether she meant the French-fry smell or the kissing.

  “Can we paint it now?” Saffron asked.

  Curtis released my mom. “Have to get you some paint first.”

  “Today?”

  “This weekend, yeah. If we’re gonna head out next week, we’ve got to get busy.”

  Violet stared at him. “Excuse me? Excuse me? If we’re going to do what?”

  Mom looked at Curtis. “I haven’t talked to her about our change in plans. I thought perhaps you should do that.”

  Curtis ran his hands through his hair and turned to Violet, who was glaring at him through eyes narrowed to slits. “So Violet,” he began, “the thing is, we’re ready to go, right? And so why bother paying rent for June if we could just move out?”

  “Um, maybe because you promised I could finish the year, Dad. And school goes until the end of June.”

  Curtis shrugged. “I’m sure your teachers will understand.”

  “Yeah? Well, I’m pretty sure they won’t, Dad.” Violet’s eyebrows were drawn together, and as she waited for him to reply, she pressed her lips together so hard they turned almost white. Curtis gestured helplessly, lifting his hands and letting them drop back to his sides, and Violet shot him a look of pure loathing. “Anyway, I don’t care when you’re leaving,” she said. “I’m not going unless Ty can come.”

  “I want Ty to come too,” Saffron said.

  “There aren’t enough seat belts,” Mom said.

  Violet swung around and turned on her, letting loose a whole stream of words she wasn’t allowed to say in front of the twins. I put my hands over Saffron’s ears.

  Mom looked at me. “Take the girls in the house, would you, Wolf?”

  I nodded. “Come on, Whisper. Let’s plan how to paint the van, okay?”

  Whisper hopped down and took my hand. I tried to listen to what Curtis was saying to Violet, but his voice was so low I couldn’t quite make it out. Something about money and rent and him getting flak from someone.

  “Yellow,” Saffron said, skipping toward the house. “With black stripes, like a bee.”

  “No way,” I said. “No way am I driving around in—”

  Whisper’s grip on my hand tightened. “Like a bee,” she breathed, so quietly I barely heard her.

  I looked down at her wide brown eyes and sighed. “Really? You guys want to drive across the country in a van that looks like a giant bee?”

  They nodded in unison. “With wings,” Saffron said.

  In the house, I found paper and markers, and the girls started drawing pictures of bee-colored vans.

  A few minutes later, Violet stomped in, her eyes red-rimmed. “What?” she demanded.

  I held up my hands, like whoa. “Nothing. I didn’t say anything.”

  “You were staring at me.”

  “I was not.” I leaned back in my chair. “I just looked up because I heard you come in. Sheesh. Excuse me for breathing.”

  She snorted. “Right. Mr. Perfect. Look at you, taking care of the little ones. Always kissing up, aren’t you?”

  My face felt warm. “I’m not kissing up,” I said. “It just looks like that because you never help with anything.” It was true—Violet just did what she wanted. She was pretty much the most selfish person I’d ever met. And someone had to look after the twins. Not that Mom didn’t—she adored them—but a lot of the time she had other things she needed to do. I’d always helped take care of them, ever since they were babies.

  “Whatever,” Violet said, dismissing me. “So, what, you’re playing school?”

  “We’re designing,” Saffron said. “For painting the van.”

  Violet moved closer and studied the papers spread across the table. “Seriously? Don’t tell me this is the plan.”

  “Do you like it?” Saffron asked eagerly.

  “Sure. It’s all just freaking fabulous, Saffy. Bee costumes and a striped Ford van.”

  “What’s wrong with Fords?” Saffron asked, putting down her yellow marker.

  “Nothing,” I told her.

  “You know what Ford stands for?” Violet said.

  Saffron shook her head.

  Violet gave her an evil smile. “Found On Road Dead.” Then she spelled it out slowly, as if we were all idiots: “F-O-R-D. Get it?”

  Whisper’s eyes widened.

  “Or Fix Often, Repair Daily.”

  “Not our van,” Saffron said. “Dad’s already fixed it all up. We’re going to call it George.”

  “We are?” This was the first I’d heard of it.

  “Yes.”

  “Ford Owners R Dumb,” Violet said. “Fast Only Rolling Downhill.”

  “Okay, Vile. Enough already.”

  “Don’t call me that.” Violet raised a hand like she was going to hit me, then slowly lowered it and turned back to Saffron, smiling meanly.

  “You know what Ford spelled backward stands for?” she asked.

  Saffron shrugged. “I don’t care.”

  “Driver Returns on Foot.”

  Saffron put her hands on her hips and gave Violet the evil eye right back. “And Whisper and Wolf don’t care either.”

  Violet rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

  “And George doesn’t care EITHER!” And with that, Saffron turned away from Violet and back to her drawing.

  So there, Vile, I thought.

  Three

  WHISPER ISN
’T MY sister’s real name. Her birth certificate says Juniper Sage Brooks. We’ve never called her Juniper though. When she was a baby we called her Bean, because she was so tiny.

  She and Saffy aren’t identical twins: Saffron’s always been way bigger, right from when they were born. Plus Saffy has red hair and pale skin with tons of freckles, like Mom and me. Mom’s family was from Scotland, a couple of generations back, and my friend Duncan says Scotland has more redheads than anywhere else. Curtis’s dad was from Guyana—he was part black and part Indian and part white, Curtis says. So Curtis and Violet and Whisper all have light brown skin and dark eyes and super-long eyelashes. They’re all skinny and athletic-looking too. None of them actually does any sports, but they’re naturally good at that kind of thing, just like I’m naturally terrible. Curtis calls Violet and Whisper his mini-me’s, even though they’re girls, which I think is dumb. Mini-me’s. It’d be dumb even if they were boys.

  We all left Lasqueti Island and moved to Victoria when I was nine. By that time, Saffron was talking up a storm and Whisper wasn’t saying much at all, and when she did, it was in a tiny whisper so you had to bend your head close to hear her. Mom used to get mad at people for comparing the two of them. She said it wasn’t fair, especially since Saffron was such a chatterbox.

  It was around that time that we started calling her Whisper instead of Bean. Then she and Saffy started going to preschool, and their teacher was worried because Whisper wouldn’t talk. She still whispered to us at home, but she wouldn’t say a word to the teachers or the other kids. Mom said that preschool was unnatural anyway. She said little kids belonged at home with their families and pulled the twins out of the program.

  But now Whisper was five and in kindergarten, and she still didn’t speak to anyone outside our family. She’d been going to school all year and hadn’t said one word there, except maybe to Saffron if no one else was around. Curtis tried to push her to talk sometimes, to say hi to the neighbors or whatever, but she never would. She’d just stare down at the ground or hide behind her dad’s legs. Mom said she’d talk when she was ready, and that this trip would be good for her.

  I wasn’t so sure. Whisper didn’t like change. She only ate six things—macaroni, Ritz crackers, apples, bread with peanut butter, bananas and orange cheddar cheese. Plus chocolate, which didn’t count because Mom wouldn’t buy it. Whisper hated loud noises, like car horns and people shouting. She had wicked meltdowns. A lot of them. And not to be mean, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to share a tent with someone who still wet the bed on a regular basis.

  That weekend we painted the van—all of us except Violet, who had taken off somewhere with Ty, saying that if she was going to have to be away for God knew how long, she should at least be able to spend the weekend with him.

  On Saturday Mom and I took the sketches the twins had made and used them to come up with a design, while Curtis sanded old paint and rust off the van. The design part was easy—solid black on the front and back, yellow stripes on a black background for the sides—but the sanding took forever. Mom and I helped. We put on dust masks and scoured and polished until our arms and shoulders ached.

  It was warm for May, the sun high in the sky, and Curtis had stripped off his T-shirt. I could see the ropy muscles in his back and shoulders shifting under his skin. I wished I had muscles like that. You couldn’t see my muscles at all. Sometimes I took my shirt off and looked in the bathroom mirror, hoping to see something other than pale, freckly pudginess, but things in that department seemed to be getting worse rather than better.

  “You’re burning,” Mom said, touching the back of my neck lightly. “You should put on some coconut oil.”

  She didn’t like sunscreen, because of all the chemicals in it, but I wasn’t crazy about smelling like a coconut. “It doesn’t work,” I said. “I burn anyway.”

  “Go get a shirt with a collar then.”

  “Fine,” I said. I was glad of an excuse to take a break. I headed into the house and poured myself a glass of cold water.

  “Is it time to paint George?” Saffron called from the living room. “Whisper wants to know.”

  “No,” I said. “Maybe this evening.”

  “Want to watch this with us?”

  I drained my glass, left it in the sink and wandered into the living room, where the twins were curled up on the couch. “Whatcha watching?”

  “Ice Age Three.”

  I watched the screen for a minute. They had the volume turned down so low I could barely hear it. “Want me to turn that up for you?”

  Whisper shook her head.

  “We know all the words anyway,” Saffron told me.

  I probably did too. They must have seen it a hundred times, since it was the only dvd they owned that wasn’t an educational nature documentary. Mom wasn’t a fan of television, but she wasn’t a fan of rules either, so the twins mostly did whatever they wanted.

  “I should get back to work,” I said. I grabbed a long-sleeved shirt from a pile of clean laundry, slipped it on over my T-shirt and was about to head back outside when I heard the phone ring close by. The twins didn’t lift their eyes from the screen. I looked around, following the sound, and finally found the phone under a pile of blankets on the couch. “Move your butt, Whisper,” I said, grabbing it. “Hello?”

  “Hello. Is that Jade?”

  I tried to lower my voice. “No. It’s Wolf.”

  “Oh, sorry, Wolf. You sound so much like your mom.”

  “Uh-huh.” I hate when people say that.

  “It’s Susan.”

  Violet’s mom. “Hi,” I said. “Did you want to talk to Violet? She’s not here right now.”

  “I know,” she said. “She showed up here.”

  “She did?” I tried to hide my surprise. Susan lives a good forty-minute drive away, in Sooke. More important, Violet and Susan do not get along. I mean, Violet doesn’t exactly get along with anyone, but she really doesn’t get along with her mom.

  “With a boy.”

  “Oh. Ty.”

  “Apparently. She says you’re all going off on some crazy trip.”

  “Just for the summer,” I said. “A family holiday.” That’s what Mom told me to say if people at school got too nosy. Susan wasn’t a teacher, but she was closer to that category than the family category. I’d only met her a few times. She seemed a lot older than my mom, and she wore a lot of makeup and had long painted fingernails that Mom said were fake. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t understand our plans.

  “It’s hardly a secret,” she said. “I’ve just read your mother’s website. Every wacky word.”

  “Oh,” I said, feeling stupid. I could picture Susan’s narrow face, her small mouth pursed in annoyance. “Right.”

  “Can I talk to Jade, please?”

  Susan and Curtis couldn’t talk without fighting, so it was always my mom Susan talked to about Violet-related stuff. “I’ll get her,” I said. Then I covered the phone with one hand and yelled, “Mom!”

  “Come out here if you want to talk to me!” she shouted back.

  “Phone!”

  She came in, dust mask dangling around her neck and a rusty line running across her cheeks and over her nose. “Who is it?”

  “Susan.” I handed her the phone.

  She wrinkled her nose, wiped her hands on her jeans and took the phone from me. “Susan?” A long pause. I could hear the angry buzz of Susan’s voice but couldn’t make out what she was saying. “Uh-huh. Well, that’s up to you…No, of course Curtis and I want her to come with us…”

  Mom dropped to the couch beside the twins, holding the phone a couple of in
ches from her ear. “I know she doesn’t want to…” Buzz. “Well, I think not wanting to leave her boyfriend is a big part of it…She does? Did she say that to you?” Buzz buzz buzz. “Let me talk to her.” Buzz. “I don’t care if she doesn’t want to.”

  At that point Mom noticed me listening and shooed me away. I didn’t move. She put her hand over the phone. “Wolf. Go help Curtis.”

  I headed back outside, sat down on a wooden block near the van and watched Curtis. He was using a finer grit sandpaper now, polishing the surface smooth. “That was Susan,” I told him. “On the phone.”

  He grunted. “What’s she want?”

  “Violet’s over there.”

  He stopped sanding and turned to look at me. “She is?”

  “Uh-huh. With Ty.”

  “What’s that about?”

  I shrugged. “I dunno. She really doesn’t want to go on this trip.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Susan called it a crazy trip. And she called Mom wacky.”

  “Crazy? She said that?”

  I nodded. Waited. I could see a muscle twitching in his jaw.

  “What’s crazy is staying here,” he said. “What’s crazy is sticking to this whole system of jobs and buying stuff and worrying about what people think.” His voice was getting louder. “What’s crazy is buying a new house and paying someone to lay down turf for a lawn, like Susan just did. A bloody lawn! The bees are dying, the world economy is on the edge of total collapse, and she’s thinking about her lawn. That’s what’s crazy.”

  “I know,” I said. “I know.”

  He snorted and pulled his dust mask back down over his nose and mouth. “You can’t eat a lawn,” he said, turning his attention back to the van. “Someone oughtta tell her that.”

  I picked up a new sheet of sandpaper and watched Mom walk out of the house and toward us. Her hair was in a long braid to keep it out of the way, and she was twisting it between her fingers.

  “Wolf tells me Susan’s got her panties in a knot,” Curtis said, looking up at her without pausing in his sanding. Scritch scritch, scritch scritch.