The Summer We Saved the Bees

by Robin Stevenson

  “Oh, Wolf,” she said again. “My poor, brave Wolf.”

  She looked like she might start to cry. I dropped my gaze to the floor and felt like a turtle pulling its head inside its shell. “I spoke to Duncan,” I said stiffly. “I can stay with him and his mom for the summer. While you guys do this trip.”

  She hesitated. “Let us talk about it, okay? I have to think about the twins too. Without Violet and you to help out… I don’t know how this is going to work.”

  Not my problem, I told myself. I imagined the shell around me, hard and tough. Imagined her words bouncing off it, not touching me. “Is the van fixed?” I asked.

  Curtis shook his head. “Piece of crap, that van.”

  Found On Road Dead, Violet had said. Seemed like she hadn’t been so far off. Though maybe it was the vegetable-oil conversion that had messed things up. Curtis was pretty handy, but he wasn’t actually a mechanic. Plus he got most of the vegetable oil from fast-food places and Chinese restaurants. Maybe the engine was gummed up with stray pieces of egg roll. That’d explain the rancid smell.

  Curtis stood up. “Wolf, how about you take the girls outside? Your mom and I need to talk. And I need to talk to my mother.” He shook his head. “Still can’t believe you all just turned up on her doorstep. Must have given her quite a shock.”

  “Uh-huh.” I hesitated. “Um, she said she hadn’t talked to you for a couple of years.”

  He met my eyes. “Yeah. Well, she and your mom never got along.”

  “So now it’s all my mom’s fault that you guys don’t talk?” I said. “That’s not very fair.”

  Mom didn’t look mad though. She just rolled her eyes. “It sure wasn’t easy, when she was on Lasqueti. Didn’t matter what I did, it wasn’t good enough. According to Diane, I’m the reason her son dropped out of college. Never mind that I didn’t even meet him until two years after that.”

  Curtis shook his head but said nothing.

  Mom snorted. “She’s impossible.”

  Curtis put a hand on my mom’s knee. “Wolf, I’m not blaming your mom. My mother and I had problems way before I met Jade. Since I was your age. She’s the kind of person who wants everything to be a certain way. Like, it’s her way or the highway, you know? So she wasn’t ever an easy person to get along with. Let alone live with.”

  Mom leaned toward him, and when she spoke her voice was wobbly. “I suspect Wolf might say the same about me.”

  I looked at her, startled. “Yeah. But, uh, it’s okay. Mom. You know.”

  She put her arms around me and gave me a quick, hard hug. “I know. And I love you.” Then she let me go, leaned back and studied my face like she’d never seen it before. “Growing up so fast.”

  I felt heat flare in my cheeks and looked away. My face was probably bright red. “Um, I’ll go get the girls then. So you guys can talk.” I got up, walked into the kitchen and pressed my cool hands to my cheeks. Saffron and Whisper were eating chocolate chips while Mrs. Brooks beat eggs in a blue pottery bowl.

  “Saffy? Whisper? You guys want to come outside and play?”

  “Is Mom still here?” Saffron asked. She looked apprehensive, her speech too quick, her eyes a little too wide.

  “Yeah, don’t worry. She and Curtis want to talk to your grandmother.” I stole a chocolate chip from the mound on the counter in front of her. “Come on.”

  Saffy batted my hand away. “Hey!”

  I laughed.

  Whisper slid a chocolate chip from her pile toward me. “Here,” she said, ever so softly.

  “Thanks, kiddo.” I ruffled her hair. “You two really need a bath, you know that?”

  “You said we could play,” Saffron said, dashing for the door to the yard.

  I started to follow her, then turned back. “Thanks, Mrs. Brooks.” I thought about what Curtis had said, about how it must have been a shock for her to have five kids suddenly show up on her doorstep. “Um, for everything. For taking care of us and everything.”

  “You’re a good big brother, Wolf.” She washed her hands at the sink and dried them on a dish towel. “Go play with your sisters. And try not to worry. Things have a way of working themselves out.”

  Whisper’s hand found mine and squeezed. I looked down at her. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go play.”

  Thirty-Four

  MOM AND CURTIS and Mrs. Brooks talked for a really long time. I played with the twins until the sun was low in the sky and our shadows stretched long across the lawn, and then I took them inside and up to bed.

  “Are Mom and Dad staying here too?” Saffron asked.

  I tucked the covers up to her chin and tight around her shoulders, the way she liked. “Tonight, yeah. You’ll see them in the morning.”

  “What about George?”

  “Well, George still needs a bit of fixing,” I told her.

  “Not the real George,” she said. “A George story. Tell us a George story.”

  I sighed. “Really?”

  “Yeah. Please?”

  I looked sideways at Whisper, snuggled up on the other side of the bed. “You want a George story too?”

  She nodded.

  I brushed her hair off her forehead. “Let me think a minute. And make some room. Push over.” I lay down between them, wriggling exaggeratedly to make space for myself while they giggled. “Okay,” I began. “Once there was a van called George. He wasn’t a very big van, and sometimes he got scared of things.”

  “What kind of things?” Saffron asked.

  “Well, he was scared of loud horns. He was scared of driving over something sharp and getting a flat tire. He was scared of big trucks and noisy highways. He was scared of squirrels and cats. And, most of all, he was scared of…” I paused and poked them both in the ribs. “…little girls.”

  Whisper giggled.

  “Why little girls?” Saffron asked.

  I shook my head. “He didn’t know why. He just was. Sometimes being scared is like that.” I looked at them. “Right?”

  They both nodded solemnly.

  “So one day, George was sitting in the driveway and two little girls came running toward him. He was so scared his wheels trembled, and his exhaust pipe shook. But guess what?”

  “What?”

  “Well, those two little girls painted him new and shiny. They told him that they were his friends. And George realized that they weren’t so scary after all…And, uh, that’s the end.”

  “That’s it?” Saffron made a disgusted face. “That was a terrible story.”

  “Sorry. I’m tired. Best I could do.”

  “Humph.” She scowled. “You can’t just end a story like that, before it’s properly over.”

  “It’s just over for right now,” I told her. “There’ll be lots more George stories.” I kissed the top of her head and then the top of Whisper’s head. “I’ll see you two in the morning. Night.”

  “Night,” Saffron said.

  “Night,” Whisper breathed, ever so quietly.

  Down in the living room, the three grown-ups were still deep in conversation. When I walked into the room, there was a sudden hush.

  “Um, I guess you’re still talking,” I said.

  “It’s okay.” Mom shifted to one side and patted an empty spot on the couch, between her and Curtis. “Come sit.”

  I did. “I told the girls you’d still be here in the morning.”

  “Of course we will.” She looked at me. “I probably don’t tell you this often enough, but Curtis and I really do appr
eciate everything you do for the twins.”

  “He’s a good big brother,” Mrs. Brooks said approvingly.

  For some reason, it rubbed me the wrong way. Like they were all leading me somewhere I might not want to go. I shrugged and looked down at the floor. “Um. Yeah, okay.”

  Curtis shifted to face me. “We need to make some decisions.”

  “Uh-huh.” I waited.

  “First, about Whisper,” Mom said. “We weren’t ignoring her needs, you know. We honestly thought being out of school, being with family all day…we thought that would be good for her.”

  “Yeah. Not so much,” I said.

  “Maybe,” Mom said. “Though I do wonder if she might just be adjusting to a big transition. Perhaps, if we kept going, she would settle into this new routine and things would improve.”

  I nodded. “She said good night to me just now. Out loud. Well, not loud, but you know what I mean.”

  “Did she?”

  “Yeah. But Mom, she shouldn’t have to wear a costume if she doesn’t want to, and I don’t think she should have to help with the presentations either. It’s not fair to make her. She’s five.”

  “She just looks so darn cute in it.”

  Mrs. Brooks sighed audibly. She didn’t quite roll her eyes, but you could tell she wanted to.

  “Not if she’s screaming until she’s blue in the face,” I said. “That’s less cute. Anyway, the bees are your thing. I think if you want to do it, that’s cool, but I don’t think you should make us do it.”

  “I thought you cared about the bees,” she said. “I thought you understood how important this is.”

  I hesitated. “I do care about what happens to the bees. Of course I do.”

  “But?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to wear a costume. But I could…maybe Duncan and I could develop my website or something. You know?” I pictured Duncan’s fingers flying over the keys, working his magic. “Like, we could use my research and stuff, but make it interactive. Facts and quizzes and links to videos…I bet Duncan could even make a game with bees as a theme. Like a Save the Bees game. And we could link it to your website. That’d help, right?”

  Curtis gave an appreciative nod. “Good thinking.”

  “Have you talked about me staying with him?” I asked.

  “Yes.” Mom squeezed my knee. “You know I’m very fond of Duncan.”

  My heart sank. “But?”

  “We don’t want to just abandon the trip.” She saw me open my mouth, about to protest, and held up a hand, palm out toward me. “Wait. Let me finish.”

  I nodded.

  “You know how much work it has been, planning this. And maybe we were too ambitious. Maybe we need to scale it back.” She looked at Curtis and then back at me. “We can’t do it without you. Not look after the girls and do the presentations.”

  “Yeah.” I’d already figured that out.

  “So here’s what we’re thinking. The van—we’ll get it running again, but I don’t think it’ll make it across Canada, to be honest. So we’re thinking…just British Columbia. Two months, max. We’d be back in Victoria for school in September.”

  Curtis leaned forward. “My mother’s offered to look after you and the twins, if you want. Or you could go stay with Duncan, and the twins could stay here with their grandmother. But”—he held up a finger—“if the girls aren’t comfortable with that…if they want to stay with your mom and me…”

  I finished his sentence. “Then you’ll need me to come with you.”

  “Yes. We will,” he said.

  “Fine.” It wasn’t though. My heart was beating really hard, and that crazy rage feeling was building up inside me again. They were acting like this was some big compromise when this whole trip was only supposed to be for the summer anyway. What difference did it make if we drove to Quebec or just drove around bc? It would still be a nightmare. The girls shouldn’t get dumped for a whole summer with a grandmother they barely knew. And I wasn’t going to spend two months looking after them, listening to my mom predict the end of the world as we knew it.

  I turned back to my mother. “No,” I said. “It’s not fine. It’s not even a little bit fine.”

  She and Curtis exchanged glances. “Wolf. Be reasonable,” she said.

  “I’m tired of being reasonable,” I said. “I can’t believe you’d even consider just leaving the twins here. You just said Whisper’s anxious, and now you’re talking about abandoning her. Just leaving them with someone they don’t even know.”

  “No one is abandoning anyone,” Mom snapped.

  I didn’t say anything. Mrs. Brooks stood up and smoothed her skirt, her bracelets jangling. “I think I’m going to excuse myself,” she said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  We all watched her leave. You could tell from the way she held her shoulders, all tight and twitchy, that I had offended her.

  Curtis sighed. “Well. What are you suggesting, Wolf?” He leaned toward me. “You think we should just go home and go back to our regular lives? Forget about the bees? Is that what you want? Huh? You want us to pretend that the world isn’t heading into a major catastrophe?”

  He was jabbing at me with his words, like a kid poking a turtle with a stick. I shrugged, keeping my head in my imaginary shell, trying not to react to his goading. Trying to think. “A week,” I said finally. “I’ll look after the twins for one week. Not all of bc. Just the Okanagan. Short drives, a few presentations.” I folded my arms across my chest. “And I’m not dressing up. And I don’t think the twins should have to either.”

  “A week,” she repeated. “And then what?”

  “Then we all go home,” I said. “Or I go to stay with Duncan, and you figure out how to manage.” I looked at Curtis. “I don’t see why you can’t look after the twins anyway. It’s not like you even do anything in the presentation.”

  There was a long, long silence. Curtis pulled his eyebrows so low they practically met in the middle, and two deep creases bracketed his mouth. Mom was twisting the end of her braid between her fingers and blinking back tears. None of this had turned out how she’d imagined it, I thought. I remembered how hard she’d worked, getting everything ready for the trip—the website, the costumes, the juggling show, the flyers, the van—and for a moment I felt so bad, so selfish, I could hardly stand it.

  But I couldn’t back down.

  “If we go home, I can finish school,” I said. “And…well, maybe Violet and Ty would come back. If they had somewhere to come back to.”

  “A week,” Mom said again. She brushed the back of her hand across her eyes. Then, surprising me, she started to laugh. “My little bees are more like little rosebushes. You all just want to put down roots.”

  I didn’t say anything, but I didn’t think I had much in common with bees or rosebushes. “Does that mean we can go home?” I said. “Just one week and then we can go home?”

  She looked at Curtis and then back at me. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, okay. One week, and we’ll go home.”

  “We’ll figure out some other way to do this,” I said. “Save the bees, I mean. Going home doesn’t mean we have to give up. We can write letters; we can organize all kinds of stuff. Duncan and I, we’ll do stuff online. And I can do more, later on, when I finish school.” Maybe I’d even become a scientist, I thought. Maybe I’d find out what was killing the bees and save them for real. Or maybe I’d do something entirely different, like studying distant galaxies.

  I couldn’t make my mom trust in the future, but she couldn’t stop me believing I had one. I knew I did.

 
“I spent my whole life in one ghastly suburb,” Mom said. “Until I was almost twenty. And all I wanted was to pull up my roots and get away. To be free to travel and explore and not be tied down and stuck in a place full of mindless consumers. I wanted to make a difference in the world, you know?”

  I nodded. “I want to make a difference too, Mom. I just want to do it in my own way.”

  “You will,” she said. She put an arm around me and pulled me in for a hug. “You already do, Wolf. You make the world better just by being here.”

  Upstairs, the twins were fast asleep. Whisper had pulled the blankets right over her head, and when I folded them back, her face was flushed and her hair sweaty. Bath tomorrow, for sure.

  I switched off the light, stripped down to my undies and T-shirt and snuggled into my own bed on the floor. There was pale moonlight streaming in through a gap in the thin curtains, and my sheets smelled fresh and clean, like fabric softener. I stretched my legs out, enjoying the coolness of the sheets, and wondered where Violet was sleeping tonight. I wished I could talk to her. And I wondered what Saffron and Whisper would say about all our plans when we told them in the morning. If they’d be happy to stay with their grandmother or if they’d want to go with Mom and Curtis. And George the Van, of course…

  I really hoped I could go to Duncan’s, but either way, I thought, it’d be okay.

  I’d be okay.

  Last fall there was this weird thing that happened not too far from where we lived. This family—tourists from the States, I think, with a couple of little kids—got lost in a corn maze and couldn’t find the exit. It was pretty huge, and they ended up going around in circles, getting more and more desperate, getting hungry and scared and practically freezing in the maze all night long, until the farmer saw their car sitting in the parking lot the next morning and realized they were still in there.

  Anyway, when I looked back at the last few months—since I did my bee project and Mom started planning the trip—it sort of felt like that. Like we were lost in our own crazy maze. I think I’d almost forgotten there was a whole big world outside the maze—a world where most people weren’t obsessed with this one thing. A world full of people who believed that there was a future, who didn’t think bees dying meant the world was ending, who didn’t talk about these last doomed years.