Meanwhile, I’m looking at my mother like she’s just sprouted wings. Of course, I’m no stranger to peculiar afflictions.
“Looks like your brother isn’t the only talent in the family,” says Viviana.
Clearly word about Adam’s whereabouts has gotten out.
“Thank you,” I say before looking at my mom.
Dr. Flossdrop hands Milkshake, who whimpers, over to Mildred, and I give him a friendly scratch behind his ears. Then she comes closer to me. She strokes my hair almost the way Mildred was doing before. Well, more awkwardly, but almost. Maybe she actually notices I’m not covered with a hood anymore too.
“I love you, Zin,” she says, so close to my ear that no one else can hear. “Whether you’re useful or artistic or totally out of my control. No matter what.”
I can’t help but beam. These are the most passionate words Dr. Flossdrop has ever uttered that aren’t about oral care or neighborhood action. And they’re just for me.
Bees
Feast
We awoke, groggy from bored naps. And to our disbelief, here was our chance. Right in front of us.
While no one had forgotten about the disastrous job Bee 641 had done the first time around, the queen immediately made an executive decision.
“Bee 641 is the only one here with any experience,” she said — at which we all scoffed about how dismal said experience was. But the queen continued. “And every bee deserves a chance to redeem herself.”
Honestly, we didn’t have time to argue. We didn’t care about Bee 641 or about our future or about finding a home. There were flowers before us. The kind that actually grow in the ground! We could see the bright circles of their landing pads from the top of the human’s head. Landing pads that would lead us to the very things we craved most, despite having resigned ourselves to never tasting them again.
All we could think of was sweet, sweet, nectar.
Our tongues tingled in anticipation.
Meanwhile, if Bee 641 could sweat, her forelegs would’ve been doing just that. Every filament of her exoskeleton stood on end. Off she went to find a home near this new, miraculous food source. And then, more importantly, off we went to plunder, barely able to wait our turn.
But poor Bee 641. After all that concrete, all that gray, she couldn’t help herself. Those beautiful bright colors called to her. Purple especially! Delicious violet! Bee 641 could feel the electricity the flowers sent her way, faintly at first, and then stronger and stronger until she could no longer resist.
Bee 641 thought she could take one tiny slurp of nectar on her way to search for a home, but she couldn’t stop after the first slurp. Or the next. Or the next.
It wouldn’t have been apian of her to pass up such bounty. She nuzzled shiny petals and cavorted with butterflies. She filled her pollen baskets and dreamed of bee bread. She was so overtaken that none of her five eyes could see straight for hours. Until the moment she finally looked up, giddy, only to see the human packing things up in a way that indicated she was going to leave the area.
Bee 641’s giddiness disappeared upon realizing the whole mission was another failure. From her spot on a cosmos petal, she could see nothing nearby resembling a proper abode. Her second chance was shot. She’d squandered it.
Round ’em up, round ’em up! she heard herself yelling at the foragers. The human is leaving!
We all came to, euphoric from stuffing our proboscises and pollen-packs. Leaving? We’re not staying here with the flowers? Smiles slowly slipped from our fuzzy faces.
We have no hive except for her! Bee 641 implored.
So we followed, reluctantly, taking sidelong glances at the poppies as we made our way back to the human’s head for a heavy-hearted landing.
We had one thing to say to Bee 641: That’s it. This time we mean it. You are never, ever scouting for us again.
26
REPEAT
While everyone else is drinking lemonade and looking at flowers, Birch and I clean up, gathering trowels and empty bags of soil and fertilizer.
And then I feel something on my head.
Something foreign, yet familiar.
Let it be bird poop, I think. Please, please let it be bird poop.
But I have a feeling it’s not bird poop. I feel another something, and it’s unmistakable. I swear I can feel each bee’s miniscule set of feet drop anchor.
Nooooooooo!
Birch sees what’s happening and grabs an empty fertilizer bag to hold up so no one else can see.
It doesn’t take long before all trillion of the bees are back in place. My head squirms and purrs and itches. I put my hood up and head down.
I was so close to this all being over. So close.
Birch pats my shoulder, I’m sure thinking this whole entire thing was a fail.
But maybe it wasn’t.
I have another idea. I’ve learned something today. And it’s that everybody needs to feel at home. Even if it’s not exactly, perfectly the kind of home you always thought you wanted.
27
HIVE
It’s sunrise at the meadow, and I’m all alone.
The bundle in my arms is pretty unwieldy. I guess I should have expected that from a never-ending scarf. It’s more like a skinny blanket for the world’s biggest baby.
I unfurl it and lay it down on the grass. It’s a colorful snake, a rainbow dragon.
Then I remove my hood and wait to see what happens.
The bees leave again. They bound among the flowers, just like yesterday. If this works, I’ll never feel their weight again. But I still have to find out if this will work.
Beginning at one end, I wrangle the scarf, coiling and tucking, pushing and pulling. I feel like a magician with one of those super-long chains of handkerchiefs. I wrap and wrap, and eventually it resembles an ombré, egg-shaped object with a hole in the bottom — like a beehive, only brightly colored and made of yarn.
I pull loose some bits of thread from the top and tie them around a skinny water pipe over by the flora bomb. The fuzzy oval now dangles there over the flowers.
Then I wait. Again.
Soon, enough time has passed that the sun is right over the poppies we planted yesterday. The sky is as orange as they are. Slowly, gradually, it fades to pale pink.
The bees are fixated on the flowers. Maybe they’ll never notice or care about that thing hanging nearby.
But then, one of the bees leaves a flower and zooms toward my scarf pod.
Other bees begin to follow, first a sparse line of them and then more and more until they’ve formed a long, thick, wiggly streak. The bees are a gray stripe through the cotton candy sky. They’re headed, it seems, in the direction of the yarn hive!
And then their streak stops.
They hover together in a cloud. It’s like they’ve convened a meeting in midair.
It’s possible they’re going to change direction.
But they don’t.
As though linked in a chain, the bees gather together by the fuzzy globe. Then they fly inside, disappearing from sight.
I’m free.
Something like joy bubbles up through my chest to the top of my head. I imagine the bees rooting around the yarn and wonder what the new hive is like for them — not that I plan on ever getting close enough to find out.
I remove my hoodie completely. I’m wearing a charcoal-gray tank top underneath, and the sky is now light blue with a huge yellow sun. I can abandon the hoodie until fall. I feel like throwing it on the ground and asking Dr. Flossdrop to buy me a new one, maybe an actual color this time, but I tie it around my middle so as not to be wasteful.
I spin in a circle, twirling and fist-pumping the air.
I’m not the only one here, though, and I’m not the only one fist-pumping the air.
Birch stands in
the meadow over by the crosswalk, binoculars around his neck. He walks closer, and I can see faint circles around his ocean green eyes. He’s still fist pumping and spinning around. We both are as we meet dizzily in the middle of the meadow.
“That appears to be a knit beehive,” says Birch. “And the bees appear to like it. Quite an ingenious idea, Zinnia Flossdrop.” He bumps my arm with his plaid elbow.
“How did you know I was here?”
“I was up already, listening for the dawn chorus of birdsong, and I heard you leave. Your front door makes kind of a whoosh sound.”
“Yes, it does.”
“I take back everything I’ve said before. What just happened is actually the coolest thing I’ve ever seen,” says Birch.
“Me too. It’s our secret,” I say, which makes Birch smile like a great blue heron just landed on his head.
I’m going to miss Birch when he leaves to go back to Redwood City for school. But maybe he’ll come back next summer. And we could keep in touch. Maybe we can do a yarn bomb together before summer is over since the flora bomb was so successful. Lou’s TV. Or one of Dr. Flossdrop’s dental chairs. I think she would be open to that now.
And since my never-ending scarf is finally finished and is a beehive, put to good use, I’ll make Birch a scarf. I’ll stop when it’s regular-sized. He can wear it when he gets cold after soccer practice in the fall. I’ll have to find just the right color, green-blue and shimmery like the ocean.
Bees
HOME
Just at the moment when we’d given up hope again, when even regurgitating nectar to one another couldn’t lift our mood, we got another go at the feasting site.
Nobody said anything about electing a scout or any such nonsense. We knew that would come to nothing. We just went about our business, filling our pollen sacks, and slurping nectar as quickly as creaturely possible. It was the only thing we could do. Take some small pleasure in flying and in the iridescence of rarely seen petals. Prepare for the rest of our days before us, trapped on the human’s head and headed for nothingness, by stockpiling supplies.
But then, a tiny wind fluttered Bee 641’s antennae. She focused. She took in air through all her breathing holes. She heard a small voice inside her. And she listened.
Bee 641 was lured up and away to a far corner of the garden. There before her was something soft that smelled… familiar.
Infused with some kind of supernatural confidence — despite her track record — Bee 641 got the others’ attention. She tread the air before them. She turned around. And then she began to dance. It wasn’t the moonwalk or the robot or the worm. Oh no, it was a dance of our very own invention. The waggle dance.
Bee 641 wiggled and waggled like no bee has ever wiggle-waggled before. She’d never done it, and yet, right then, she was doing it. Figure-eighting her heart out with waggle panache.
First we ignored her. Oh, there’s 641 again, we said. She never lets up.
But then something stirred inside our midguts. We believed once more in Bee 641 and in the order of things. Against all logic, we followed.
And Bee 641 brought our colony home.
An assembly was called. A verdict reached. A decree issued. We were to stay put.
Who needs bears and forests when we can have a full day’s work, the life for which we’re destined, right here in this garden? said the queen.
And we, of course, concurred.
It was a new era. We could finally make honeycomb. The queen could begin laying eggs again. We immediately detected that her perfume had returned. It smelled sublime. And it meant that all was going to be well.
A retirement ceremony was held for Bee 641. A formal apology was issued from the colony. She was given an honorary title — Bee 641, Extraordinary Hive Scouter Emeritus. Plus, she would receive her very own supply of royal jelly to enjoy every day at teatime, in the queen’s royal chambers, newly established in our exceedingly cozy hive.
It was a glorious occasion. I should know. Bee 641 was me.
28
DISPATCH
Birch and I are at Scoops. Where else would we be? It’s going to be the hottest afternoon of summer so far.
It’s been two days since the yarn hive, and I’m still bee-free! Plus, it’s just about time for Crowd Pleasers to come on. As much as Dr. Flossdrop and I have come to a new understanding — and even though she’s excited that Adam is on the show — she’s still not about to get a TV herself. She says she’ll watch clips of Ace’s performances online.
I’m hoping today I actually get to eat my ice cream at Scoops. Finish the whole thing this time. But after my third bite of lime-kiwi sherbet swirl, Adam’s girlfriend walks up to the table where we’re sitting. Her dark hair is up in a ponytail, and she’s wearing cut-offs and the Starving Artists Movers T-shirt with the collar all big and hanging off one shoulder to reveal the bird part of her tattoo.
She seems just like the kind of girl my brother belongs with.
“I have something for you,” she says. She hands me an envelope filled with doodles, which I immediately recognize as Adam’s, and walks away.
I shovel in one more bite of sherbet, fully tasting its sweetness and zing, before I open it.
Zin,
I know how hard it must’ve been that I left. I had to try something big to see if I could make it as an artist without Dr. Flossdrop stopping me. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. That was the worst, but I had to do this on my own. I hope you’ll understand someday.
You inspired me. Your rattlesnake yarn bomb was really amazing. I have so much to tell you, and I’m sure you have a story or two for me.
Say hi to Mom. Bonjour to Aunt Mildred. And tell them both I’m making time to floss.
I miss you,
Adam
A story or two — ha! I think, running my hands through my hair. If he only knew the story of my summer.
But oddly enough, I feel more at home with Dr. Flossdrop and NML and even myself than I did when Adam first disappeared, despite the fact that he left me. Maybe even because he did.
People at Scoops start shushing each other. The show is about to start, and I tuck Adam’s letter in my sock. Birch and I adjust our chairs to face squarely toward the screen.
“Hey, Birch?” I whisper.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks.”
“For what?”
“For not giving up on trying to be my friend.”
“Well, bird-watchers have to be patient and determined,” he says, holding out his yarn-bombed binoculars. “And interested in strange birds.”
I laugh and so does Birch, his green eyes twinkling.
Just then the show’s opening rolls, and Ace parades on camera in face paint and a mime outfit. He’s wearing silver boxing gloves this time, and I can’t wait to see what he’s going to do with them.
My heart goes fluttery, and I have the urge to cheer for my brother. Birch and I lean forward so we won’t miss anything.
Because this is going to be good.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A writer’s dream is to have someone like your work and take a chance on it. Thank you to my agent, Rick Margolis at Rising Bear Literary, for doing that and more.
Thank you to my super talented editor, Alison Deering, for turning this manuscript into a book, and for making it so much better in the process. And thanks to everyone at Capstone: Tracy McCabe, Kay Fraser, Shannon Hoffman, and Beth Brezenoff, as well as to Lauren Forte for her copyediting and to Laura K. Horton for so beautifully illustrating the cover. Many thanks also to Courtnay Walsh, April Roberts, and Geogia Lawe.
And much appreciation to the following people for their help and kindness along the way:
Edan Lepucki, for guidance years ago on a version of this manuscript when it was something else entirely. Susan Hawk, for thoughtful insight into m
y first tries of this story as middle grade. Martha Alderson, The Plot Whisperer, who is an invaluable resource for any writer and a wonderful human being. Margaret Wappler, for her Writing Workshops Los Angeles class and feedback on key parts of this story. Dee Romito, Jennifer Maschari, and Casey Lyall, mentors extraordinaire, as well as my debut buddies in our Facebook group. Alethea Allarey, for generous knitting expertise. Anything I got wrong in that department is on me. Emily Arrow, for camaraderie. I’d write you a song if I could. Katherin Patsch, for tea, walks, wise advice, and so many celebrations. Bonnie Eng, for friendship, enthusiasm, and collaboration. Gabrielle, for listening and understanding, and for being someone I continue to learn from and admire. My fourth-grade teacher, who read novels aloud to our class at Singapore American School. I think I contracted lice from the bean bag chair I sat in, but it was worth it. My English teacher senior year of high school, who believed in me in a way I felt no one ever had before. The students I taught middle school to years ago. Reading alongside you better acquainted me with a body of literature that now feels like home.
And finally, Todd, to whom this book is dedicated. Support isn’t a strong enough word. Thank you for your confidence in Zinnia and me all these years. Having a partner who is understanding, accepting, and also wildly creative is no small treasure.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Danielle Davis grew up in Singapore and Hong Kong and currently lives in Los Angeles. She has an M.A. in literature and creative writing and has had the privilege of teaching English to middle school and community college students. Now, she reads and writes and enjoys volunteering with literacy organizations. Zinnia and the Bees is her first novel. You can visit her online at www.danielledavisreadsandwrites.com
Zinnia and the Bees is published by Capstone Young Readers
1710 Roe Crest Drive North Mankato, Minnesota 56003
Zinnia and the Bees Page 12