Zinnia and the Bees Read online

  Adam was the magician at my ninth birthday party. When I turned ten, he made me a giant cardboard hat. When I turned eleven, he took me to an art museum and made me wear a sandwich board that said it was my birthday. When I turned twelve, he planned a scavenger hunt, and I had to solve clues to find out where we were going. It ended at the fountain downtown, which we swam in until security kicked us out.

  Adam told me once that he was named Adam and I was named Zinnia because our dad wanted his kids to experience everything in the world from A to Z. That’s how I used to feel with Adam, like we had all the letters of the alphabet connecting us.

  But now he’s left me here, a dangling Z.

  I’ll turn thirteen next year. Will Adam even be here?

  I take all my confusion and sadness and shape it into something else. Something stronger, with sharper edges. I point it at Dr. Flossdrop, fast and fiery and full of thorns.

  She’s the one who drove Adam away. All their conversations this past year have been variations on the same theme: Dr. Flossdrop wanting Adam to go to college and medical school and Adam not wanting to.

  It’s all her fault. Adam would’ve stayed with us forever if Dr. Flossdrop hadn’t pushed him to be more like her, if she’d just let him be a performer or a magician or something — himself. The true artist he is. She’s the reason he’s been getting distant, and now he’s gone.

  Even my never-ending scarf feels scratchy rather than soft when I remember how their fights had gotten worse and worse lately. Dr. Flossdrop was always warning Adam not to be useless. Uselessness is Dr. Flossdrop’s archenemy, right after sugar. She’s probably the most useful person on the planet. If someone finds a lost cat, she’ll find it a home. If there’s a pothole, she’ll report it. If you have a petition, she’ll sign it.

  That’s what she thought Adam was doing — acting useless. Working at Starving Artists Movers and doing the five-dollar-bill trick and hanging out with me would never qualify as useful to her. I remember the sound of yelling. The sound of the front door slamming on Adam’s way out of the duplex. The small sound of yarn and wood in my damp hands once the house was silent again.

  My mom may not have literally pushed Adam out the door, but she might as well have.

  I make a vow. I’ll look for Adam even if he doesn’t want to be found. Even if he let me down in the worst possible way. Because he is Adam, and I need him, and that’s the only thing I can do.

  4

  NEIGHBORHOOD ACTION

  The closer I get to Dr. Flossdrop’s office, the harder it is to breathe. Suddenly the warm air feels so gritty and stale, I don’t want to take a breath at all. I usually love summer, even with my immense, curly hair weighing me down and my charcoal-gray clothes soaking up the heat, but right now rain and fog would be a better match for my mood.

  Dr. Flossdrop and Adam and I have lived in a duplex down the street from her dental office my whole life. This lets my mom walk to work. That’s convenient, especially because she’s always there, even after regular hours when she sees patients who can’t afford to pay. Her philosophy is summed up in the poster that hangs in her waiting room: HEALTH CARE IS FOR PEOPLE, NOT PROFIT.

  I guess I can’t disagree with that, even though there are no posters with mottoes about children or family in her office or our home.

  The closeness of Dr. Flossdrop’s office to the duplex is also convenient because she’s perpetually holding neighborhood action meetings there on topics like raising money for the library, fixing potholes, and holding pet adoptions. Useful stuff like that.

  I wish Dr. Flossdrop was more like Aunt Mildred. Honestly, it’s hard to believe they’re sisters considering how opposite they are.

  Dr. Flossdrop lectures me about brushing and flossing; Mildred brushes my wild, tangly hair away from my forehead in order to kiss it.

  Dr. Flossdrop doesn’t watch TV or even own one; Mildred hosts movie screenings for Adam and me.

  Dr. Flossdrop always wears her hair in a high, neat bun. Whether it’s six in the morning or nine at night, I’ve only ever seen her hair in that bun. Mildred changes her hair every few months — she even dyed it pink once.

  Dr. Flossdrop has a tiny, angular frame. She’s as slim and metallic as a robot made of steel. And she doesn’t allow sweets in our home, no exceptions. She would outlaw them from the world if she had the power. Mildred, on the other hand, bakes and advocates for oatmeal cookies. Her hips are spongy and wide. Despite that, she has the most miniscule fingers, able to nimbly scrape the hardest-to-reach back molars.

  That’s right, Aunt Mildred is Dr. Flossdrop’s dental assistant.

  Up ahead I spot the white building. Then the sign: DR. PHILOMENA FLOSSDROP, D.D.S.

  I want to see chaos. Police officers, big LOST SON signs like the ones Dr. Flossdrop prints when pets go missing.

  But when I walk inside everything is the same. Pink carpet. Pink walls. Pink sofas. (Mildred did the decorating.) The large sign that proclaims HEALTH CARE IS FOR PEOPLE, NOT PROFIT. Brochures for various causes. Classical music piped in. Pink saloon doors leading past the reception desk to the exam rooms — to Dr. Flossdrop herself.

  The waiting room is fairly full. Even with the music playing I hear Mildred somewhere in the back. I follow her voice. She’s humming a French song about the ocean. When I find her, she’s got on scrubs with rainbow polka dots all over them. She immediately wraps her arms around me in one of those hugs that I’m sure makes us look kind of like the spirally layers of a cinnamon roll. I smell her cinnamony scent. Even when she’s not baking in her kitchen, that’s what Aunt Mildred smells like. Even here in Dr. Flossdrop’s sterile office.

  I melt, but only a little. I’m on a mission to find out about Adam.

  “Bonjour, mon pous,” says Mildred.

  “Adam is gone,” I tell her.

  “My poor cat,” she says, tussling my curly hair around with her tiny hands. “I’m sorry.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Oh, macaroon, I haven’t a clue.”

  Just then, Dr. Flossdrop approaches. She’s dressed in her usual all-black outfit with a white lab coat and black clogs. Her hair is in its tightest, highest bun. Her left hand is clenched in a fist, which is pretty weird.

  I glare at her, trying to muster the courage to yell and scream and throw patient files in the air so they can rain down around the three of us. But instead, I stand there. Silent.

  Dr. Flossdrop proceeds to say three things:

  “We’ll talk tonight about what happened at school.”

  “I’ll be home late.”

  “Please put these flyers in the waiting room on your way out.”

  There’s a stack of flyers in her right hand. As soon as I take it, that hand also clenches into a fist. She looks like she’s getting ready for some kind of fight, but she’s a pacifist so that’s impossible.

  She says nothing about Adam.

  I stare at her like she is a robot and not a person.

  And then she’s marching back down the hall in her clogs again, fists clenched.

  “Mom,” I call after her.

  But she doesn’t hear me. Or she does, but it doesn’t matter. She doesn’t turn around.

  “Ugh,” I say to Mildred, who rubs my back in wide circles. I turn to her. “You knew Adam was gone?”

  Mildred nods. “There was an ace of hearts on my welcome mat this morning. I knew there was no one else it could be from. Then I talked to your mom, and we figured it out.”

  “Wait. So she knows?”

  “As she put it, she ‘saw this coming.’ He left her an envelope with rent for the past three months.”

  “But she didn’t say anything about him just now!”

  “Honeydew, your mom’s pretty worked up.”

  “Worked up?” I look at Mildred the way any self-respecting twelve-year-old loo
ks at an adult when they’re talking nonsense. “She doesn’t seem too worked up.”

  “On the inside she is,” says Mildred.

  “Yeah, right,” I mutter. “The only thing she cares about is the inside of people’s mouths.”

  Mildred’s quiet for a second. “What about potholes?” she asks with a smile.

  I can’t help but smile a little too. “Yeah, she does care a lot about potholes. Potholes and vacant lots and anything else she can fix in the neighborhood.” I pause. “So he really didn’t tell you where he went?” I ask quietly.

  Mildred shakes her head and gives me a sad face. A really sad face. Like she understands. But no sad face could be sad enough to mimic how I feel. My sadness is a giant, gaping, betrayed sadness beyond description.

  “One thing I do know,” says Mildred, “is that Adam wouldn’t have left without a good reason. That boy has something he needs to do.”

  I growl. I can’t be mad at her because she’s Mildred, and I know she’s trying to cheer me up, but the thing is, I can’t imagine one single good reason why Adam would’ve left. Especially without telling me first. There is no possible reason for this deception. It’s the kind of thing Dr. Flossdrop is normally signing Internet petitions about, but when her own son does it, she says nothing.

  “I have to get to work, so you’d better yank outta here like a rotten tooth,” says Mildred.

  I give her a hug goodbye and head out, dropping Mom’s stack of flyers on a side table in the waiting room on my way. Then I make the mistake of reading one. It’s a petition.

  The exclamation points at the end are what really get me. Dr. Flossdrop never uses exclamation points unless she’s talking about a neighborhood action project. She definitely never uses exclamation points that way about me.

  I want to dump those tree petition flyers in the trash. But then I remember I should recycle them, and the recycling bin is back in the office. I settle for turning the stack upside down before I leave.

  I know exactly where to go next. It’s one of Adam’s favorite hangouts and the only place I can think of that he might be. He used to play ukulele there sometimes and put out a hat for tips. Plus, the place I’m thinking of is also Dr. Flossdrop’s arch nemesis… right behind uselessness, that is.

  It sells ice cream.

  Bees

  WE ARE THE BEES

  We are a colony. We are, by definition, a group.

  We — worker females, drone males, the queen — operate collectively. One for all, and all for one.

  Most of the time anyway.

  The story we’re about to tell you is about a colony of honeybees. Our colony. Our story.

  We were commercial, migratory bees. In other words, we were not out there on our own, free. We were rentals. We were tended by beekeepers who employed us to pollinate food for humans. Food like apples, pears, almonds, cherries, cucumbers, cabbages, blueberries, celery, papaya, pumpkins, and for certain humans, Brussels sprouts.

  We were jet-setters. Well, truck-sitters. We traveled across the country to all kinds of places to carry out our industrial duties of pollinating flowers so the trees and shrubs of the field would produce fruit.

  It wasn’t a bad job once we were at an orchard, and the getting of pollen and nectar was good. But the tang of pesticide in our proboscises and the long days of rumbling highways in between were exhausting. Not to mention the sickeningly sweet syrup they fed us on the truck to tide us over until the next stop. And let’s not get started on pollen patties. They are not an adequate substitute for the real thing.

  But we were workers for hire who did our jobs buzzingly. The beekeepers were kind to us; we had no gripes with them. But still, deep inside our exoskeletons, we were unhappy. We felt trapped — literally.

  We wondered if there might be another way.

  We were on that truck a lot of the time, squashed between other wooden box hives. So we spent those long rides scheming ways to get out. We wanted to find a place to settle down in nature the way our ancestors would’ve done. Not the ancestors who traveled across the Atlantic in 1622 in the straw hives of English colonists to become the first Americans of their kind, but the many who came after them. The ones who roamed free and found wild places to nest and go about their honey-making, queen-protecting business.

  We’d heard rumors of other bees who’d managed to escape. In fact, some of the hives that pollinated with us at orchards had recently up and disappeared. Just like that.

  The problem was, we had no idea where they’d disappeared to. Or if they’d survived.

  Despite the risk of great danger, there came a point when we decided, together, that we’d had enough. Better to risk failure than to never try. There was only one thing to do.

  Make a break for it at our very first chance. And hope, with each and every one of us crossing all six hairy legs, that we’d get one.

  5

  OPERATION ICE CREAM

  Customers are scattered at metal tables outside Scoops. Seven tables and Adam is not at any of them. He’s not at any of the five tables inside either. And he’s not one of the four people in line for ice cream.

  I wait to see if he’ll come out of the bathroom, which is locked, but when the door opens it’s a woman with a crying baby. Not Adam.

  I really hoped that he would be here. That he’d explain everything. That he’d just forgotten to leave me a note. But instead, my second place to scout for Adam is a total failure too.

  I decide to console myself with ice cream and take revenge on Dr. Flossdrop at the same time. My mother may not believe in sweets, but one of Aunt Mildred’s mottoes is, “Everyone deserves dessert.” (That includes people who teach dental hygiene for a living too.) And I definitely deserve dessert today.

  I order a cone of mint chocolate chip served in a cup — the best of both worlds — and take it outside. I choose a table far away from the others. Even though a scoop at Scoops is always amazing, right now it looks and tastes like slime. I set my cup down; I don’t feel like eating after all.

  Soon the ice cream gets melty, which is my favorite, but I still can’t bring myself to take another bite. It trickles from the tip of the cone, down and over the cup, across the shiny silver tabletop. The cone finally topples over, and ice cream spills everywhere. I watch as my frozen treat morphs into a sad green stream, then slowly drips off the table onto the ground.

  Drip.

  Adam is not here.

  Drip.

  Adam is gone.

  Drip.

  Adam taught me how to swim. How to sneak sweets behind Dr. Flossdrop’s back. Mildred taught me to knit, but Adam taught me how to yarn bomb.

  For every time I haven’t had a dad around — or a mom, for that matter — Adam’s been there. For as long as I can remember.

  My body feels like a sandbag. I lay my heavy head on the table and hope no one worries that I’ve collapsed from ice-cream poisoning. That’s when I start crying. The table rocks, the cone rolls, and ice cream dribbles into my hair. I can feel its coldness drizzle through tendrils the same way I can feel tears drizzle down my face. I don’t care, though. I don’t wipe my face or my hair. I don’t move. I could stay hunched over this table forever, drenched in salty tears and mint-green glop.

  I’m there for five long, miserable minutes. Then a loud crash from the street jolts me back. It reminds me I can’t really stay slung over this table forever.

  As soon as I get up, I see a few adult-types looking at me with concern. Then I see the thing responsible for that loud crash. Right there on Sunrise Boulevard, a big truck loaded with wooden boxes has skidded onto the sidewalk and collided with a nearby streetlight. The driver’s out of the truck and seems to be OK, but there’s smoke and a crowd of people are gathering to see what happened.

  I feel bad thinking it, but at least someone else is having a horrible day besides me.


  I stand up, and ice cream dribbles from my hair onto my collar, turning my charcoal gray T-shirt slightly wet and minty green. I throw out the ice cream cone and cup, leaving the drippy goop all over the table, and silently ask Dr. Flossdrop and anyone who works at Scoops for forgiveness for not cleaning up.

  Heading in the general direction of home, I pass the sneaker store and art supply store, but the smoke from the accident gets my attention. Some of it is definitely smoke, poofing up and dissipating into the air. But some of it’s moving more like a cloud — a rippling, blurry cloud. It looks like a cloud of bees. A cloud of bees rising up from one of the boxes on the truck.

  I stand there, staring, wondering what bees are doing in a box on a truck in the first place. Then I feel a small gust of air as something flies past my face. It’s a bee. I don’t know if it’s a regular bee or an escapee from the smoky truck, but either way, I’m out of here. I’m not allergic to or super afraid of bees, but the fact is, they’re no one’s favorite animal for a reason.

  I shake out my ice-creamy hair and keep going. There are plenty of people around to help with that accident. Adult people. And I am definitely not my come-to-the-rescue mom.

  But as I glance back, there’s that bee again. It’s making its way toward me like it’s delirious — mostly going in a straight line but veering around a little too, like maybe the wind is blowing it. Lollygagging the way bees do. But still, lollygagging in my direction.

  I keep walking — faster now — but when I glance back again, just to see what’s going on, that bee is closer behind me. Or maybe it’s a different bee. They all look the same.

  Wait a minute.