Zinnia and the Bees Read online

  All of a sudden it’s not just one bee anymore. It’s a few bees. Then a handful. Then a whole bunch. Before I know it, it’s a whole swarm of bees! My eyeballs are overwhelmed with too many bees to even count. What was an undulating gray cloud over the truck is now an undulating gray cloud above the sidewalk — and it’s headed straight for me.

  I walk as fast as I possibly can — trying not to bring attention to myself — but the bees speed up too.

  This. Is. Pretty. Weird.

  As I hurry down the street, I think of stingers and welts. I could really use one of those full-body suits with a mask. Because that clump of bees is most definitely on the move.

  Suddenly one bee breaks away from the others and zips toward me. It circles a foot or two away. It darts toward me for a second, then goes back to circling again. Then it darts closer. This time it keeps coming, a slow-motion swoop in my direction. All I can do is stop right where I am and helplessly shield my face, hoping the bee will abandon whatever mission it’s on.

  For a moment, I feel nothing. I peek between my face-shielding hands and see nothing.

  But then there’s a tingle on the crown of my head.

  Not a sting, just a tingle.

  I wave my hand around. Nothing happens.

  And then there’s another bee aiming straight for me.

  Nonononono!

  I shield my face again, but like its predecessor, this bee isn’t going for my face. It’s not going past me either. Instead, I feel a second arrival in my wild, curly, ice-creamy mop of hair. Another tiny little weight.

  More bees are coming toward me now. They’re close enough that I can see the way their spindly little legs dangle below them as they fly. Their papery, translucent wings. The soft sound of an old-timey phone ringing.

  Bbrriinnnnnnngg. Bbrriinnnnnnngg.

  I take off down the sidewalk in a panic, tripping over people and shoes and strollers. It’s like a terrible, ridiculous attack-of-the-bees sci-fi movie is being filmed — except no one else knows about it, and I am, unfortunately, the star.

  People turn and look at me, but my legs and mind are moving too fast to care or hear them if they’re trying to talk to me.

  I keep running. I don’t look back.

  I run for blocks and blocks. Past sneakers hanging from telephone wires. Past kids on skateboards. Past the lady who sweeps up trash. Past the neon-bandana bike-riding guy. Past a food truck.

  I’m getting closer to the duplex.

  And then I do look back. Just to check.

  There’s no use running anymore. The whole swarm is circling, closer, closer, closer. A remote-controlled airplane engine in my ear. Hundreds of bees uncomfortably near my bonnet.

  And then they’re landing.

  All of them.

  On my head!

  Bees

  GETAWAY

  Finally the chance came.

  We felt ourselves tumbling this way and that, our wood hive cracking and splintering. If we wanted to be, we were free.

  We looked from fuzzy face to fuzzy face and nodded, terrified but sure. We zoomed away from the broken boxes and the truck. All four thousand of us, the heart chambers of our abdomens thrumming.

  The best temporary landing pad was a telephone wire on the street. Shaking from shock and woozy from exertion, we quickly composed ourselves and festooned. We hooked our tiny toes together and created a U-shape from one part of the wire to another, clinging to each other for dear life. We must’ve looked not unlike a long, thick, wiggly beard. It must’ve been a very fine-looking beard.

  But we weren’t finished. We had to act fast. We immediately elected a scout — a female worker bee who could go out and search for a suitable new home. We desperately needed a new one now that ours had been shattered and abandoned. But we had no idea where to find a hive or even what it should be. All we could see around us were buildings and streets and people and signs. No more almond orchards.

  We chose Bee 641 to be the scout.

  Bee 641 had never done any home-finding before, but of course none of the rest of us had either. We’d all been born and raised by benevolent beekeepers who gave us premade wood homes.

  But everyone believed mightily in the choice. Because we had to.

  Bee 641 stuck out her antennae, legs dangling limply beneath her, all four of her wings alighting from our bee beard. The shops and traffic signs glistened in the thousands of black lenses of her eyes.

  She wandered, hoping to find the hollow of a tree, but she had no such good fortune. For our colony of bees, home meant either a box on a truck or the hollow of a tree. That’s all we’d ever known — the first from experience, and the second from stories the queen told at bedtime.

  Our family — all four thousand of us — was depending on Bee 641.

  So off she flew. When she smelled something sweet, she followed. She saw a glint of green on top of a nestlike mass.

  Maybe those are leaves, she thought, a kind of leaves I’ve not seen before. Leaves and twigs and silt. It’s not a tree, and it appears to be moving, but it’s something.

  OK, it was a stretch. But these were stretching times.

  Bee 641 immediately returned to the telephone wire. Our colony took no time querying about the location of the new digs. We unlinked our toes, giving them a kick to unfurl, and we were off.

  Bee 641 led the way, and we followed.

  There, there! she signaled to our gang behind her.

  We flew toward what resembled a shrub atop a torso and legs. We landed, one by one, and quickly configured into the shape of a proper hive. The opposite of a long, thick, wiggly beard. More like a high, wiggly clump.

  But as soon as we’d caught our little breaths and assessed our surroundings, we set about accusing Bee 641 of being completely and utterly unreliable.

  Leaves? Twigs? we raged. We beg to differ.

  Poor Bee 641’s mandible quivered.

  How do you expect us to live here? Where will we put the honeycomb? The young? How will we survive?

  But we already had our answer. We were stuck. Again. This time on top of a human’s head with copious amounts of hair thinly coated with sugar.

  We may have been naive — OK, we were naive — but we truly thought we had nowhere else to go and no other options. We looked around, considering our situation. All we could do was shake our heads at Bee 641.

  6

  WORST EVER

  I grab a free newspaper from a stack on the street. I open and drape it over my head to hide the fact that my hair is a buzzing, swarming mass of bees.

  I keep moving toward the duplex, trying to distract myself with other things, one hand on my newspaper hat at all times.

  Blue mailbox. Bees.

  Big truck. Bees.

  Billboard. Bees.

  Black hat. Bees, bees, bees!

  Finally, I spot the oleander hedge on the sidewalk, and beyond it Dr. Flossdrop’s yard of drought-tolerant plants. Lou, who lives next door to us in the other half of the duplex, is using the pull-up bar in his door frame. Wiry gray hairs peek out of his V-neck T-shirt, which is wet with sweat. He’s squinting from the effort of his pull-up.

  Lou is an ergonomic coach. I’ve seen countless clients slump up the steps and into his hallway only to march their way back down. The sign on Lou’s door, which is only visible when it’s actually closed because he’s not using the pull-up bar, reads ERGONOMICALLY CORRECT.

  But now is not the time to watch Lou do a pull-up. I take advantage of his squint by slithering up the steps to the front stoop, hoping he won’t see me or my newspaper hat or the bees underneath it.

  “Hey, Zinny! How are ya?”

  I stop. Lou sees me.

  “Fine, Lou,” I reply, hoping the conversation will end there.

  His eyes are fully open now, even though his
feet are still off the ground, the rest of him suspended in midair. His biceps are twitching, but he keeps talking to me.

  “How many times do we have to go over this, kiddo? Call me Coach.” Lou winks and laughs, and in doing so, lets his elbows release. His athletic-shoed feet fall to his welcome mat.

  “OK, Lou. I mean — sorry.”

  “You sure you’re fine?” he asks. “Because you’ve got an Eastside Weekly on your head, and it’s not raining. It is solid sun protection, though.”

  “Yup! All fine here. Have a good workout!”

  Whoosh!

  I’m through the door before Lou can say anything else. I run to the bathroom, wishing desperately that Adam were here so he could tell me if this is really happening. I’m sure he’d know just what to do. He’d have some idea that would be part performance art, part solution. Adam can do anything.

  But Adam’s not here.

  I shut my eyes in front of the bathroom mirror and release the newspaper down to my side. I stand there like I’m at a sleepover back in the day when Nikki, Margot, Lupita, and I used to play those Bloody Mary games way back when we were still NMLZ. I spin around slowly three times and prepare for what I may or may not see when I pop open my eyes.

  There I am reflected in the mirror.

  My hair looks like it’s in an old-timey beehive hairdo. Except this hairdo is a real beehive composed of real, live bees that are constantly moving and shifting and scurrying.

  I can’t see my hair at all except for the slight dip of the widow’s peak on my forehead and the curly strands that hang below my ears. Everything else is a moving, itchy, disgusting, insectian mess.

  I open the bathroom window and stand next to it, hoping the fresh air will convince the bees to flee.

  Nothing happens.

  I flutter my hands around above me.

  Still nothing.

  I shake my head in a way that hurts my brain. I dance around. I scream.

  Nothing, nothing, nothing.

  I try to coax a bee onto a Q-tip, the way you would if you were rescuing one from a pool or something.

  It will not be coaxed.

  I thought my summer was doomed with Adam’s departure, but now this… this is truly the worst ever.

  I picture growing old with a zillion bees as my only companions. Knitting alone, rocking-chair shoulders hunched from my helmet of creepy crawly creatures, their small dental drill drone buzzing in my ears.

  It’s not a soothing image.

  Since I don’t think bees can swim, I decide to take a bath and count the tiles on the ceiling. There’s nothing else I can do but wait and see what happens next.

  7

  MEET MILKSHAKE

  The whoosh of the front door brings me out of my daze in the now cool, soapy bathwater. Someone is home. It’s either Adam or Dr. Flossdrop, and I hope against hope for the first.

  I close my eyes, submerging all but my mouth and nose underwater, wishing this whole long, terrible day was a dream. But when I resurface, it’s not a dream. The bees hover in a cloud over me, but they refuse to fly out the still-open bathroom window.

  I gradually lift my head from the water, hoping they’ll stay in their formation near the ceiling. But as soon as I’m upright they come back to roost on the roots of my wet hair.

  This is beyond pretty weird. It’s a plague. And apparently it’s my plague, so I’m going to have to figure out how to keep it a secret without wearing an Eastside Weekly everywhere.

  I grab a towel to dry off and decide my hoodie — charcoal gray, just like everything else I own — will work. I put the hood up to hide the bees. It’s a little like wearing socks when you have sand all over your feet — only it’s wiggly sand.

  When I emerge from the bathroom, Dr. Flossdrop is crouched on the hardwood floor. Next to her is something small, furry, and slightly wet.

  My mother looks up at me briefly and then back at the creature. “What are you wearing that hood for?” she asks.

  I can’t contain myself. “You got a dog?” I demand. When her son disappears, Dr. Flossdrop adopts an animal. The very same day. It’s like she really can’t be alone with me.

  “He’s a terrier,” she replies. “But let’s talk about what happened at school.”

  “What about Adam?”

  “What about dressing up the school mascot in a demeaning outfit?”

  “It wasn’t a demeaning outfit. It was a yarn bomb.”

  “A yarn bomb? That sounds violent.”

  “It’s not. You just unravel it. Nobody gets hurt. Not even Ronny.”

  “Who’s Ronny?” asks Dr. Flossdrop.

  I ignore her question. “What if Adam is in trouble? Or a runaway?” I ask.

  “Adam is eighteen years old. He had a full-time job at that Starving Artists place and paid rent. He can’t be a runaway,” she says. “And the only trouble he’s in is with me.”

  Yeah, I think, even though she’s the one who drove him away with her constant Starving-Artist nagging, urging him to do something useful with his life.

  Dr. Flossdrop takes a dog treat from her purse. It looks super disgusting. The trembling, sweating, wheezing dog gathers the strength to gnaw it.

  “Your punishment for the yarn-bomb incident is to walk Milkshake once a day while I’m at work.”

  “Milkshake?” I repeat. And I thought water was the only Dr. Flossdrop-approved beverage.

  “That was already his name. He’s from animal services. He seems to have asthma, and nobody wanted him. He might’ve been killed.” Dr. Flossdrop stares at me, laser-beaming guilt into my eyes. “Now, like I said, you’ll need to walk him once a day. You can retrieve him at the office.”

  “You’re taking a dog to your office?”

  “It’s not the first time I’ve sheltered a pet there.”

  I barely resist the urge to roll my eyes. For someone so concerned with oral hygiene, you’d think Dr. Flossdrop would be a little more hesitant about bringing a stringy, damp dog to work. I just hope she washes her hands before putting them in people’s mouths after petting it the way she is right now. Because it’s gross.

  “That dog is too small to even be considered a dog,” I say. She has no idea how many creatures have entered my life today — all of them small and annoying.

  “He’s a perfect dog. Aren’t you the perfect dog?” It’s then that my mother’s voice turns into something I’ve never heard before. It’s gooey and caramelly and all the things she never cooks or eats or acts like. It’s sweet as sugar. She even makes baby-gurgle noises at the dog before moving in for a repulsive, horrifically slobbery kiss.

  I’d rather see myself in the mirror with bees on my head again than be watching this, but somehow I can’t look away.

  “Milkshake and I are going to sleep. Good night,” says Dr. Flossdrop, ignoring the fact that we’re in the middle of a conversation. She does look tired, but also kind of happy. Some tendrils of hair have escaped from her usually impeccable bun, probably from petting the dog, and this gives her face a softness Dr. Flossdrop doesn’t normally possess.

  Yup, she looks sort of happy with this dog named Milkshake.

  And that is just too much for a brotherless person with bees on her head to handle.

  8

  MEET BIRCH

  The Internet isn’t any help. I look up Adam Flossdrop to see if he has any social media accounts I don’t know about or has been mentioned somewhere, but I find nothing. Not that I was really expecting to. My brother isn’t a big computer guy and has never been into posting stuff online — he’s old-fashioned that way. But the past few months, Adam hung out at the meadow a lot with his newly secret notebook, so I’m going to look there for him next, in real life.

  The meadow is this big expanse of grass on one end of our neighborhood, some of it pretty tall and meadowlike. Ou
r duplex is on the opposite side of Sunrise Boulevard, basically halfway between the meadow and Scoops. Anyway, lots of people go to the meadow to read or fly kites or hang out on blankets in the sun. Some people are doing those things right now. And luckily, with my hood on, no one seems to notice that I’m secretly Bee Girl. The perfect disguise.

  But unluckily, none of the people at the meadow right now are Adam. So much for my plan.

  I remember when we used to come here together every summer. We’d lie on our backs watching the sky. Doing nothing. It was like the ultimate rebellion in uselessness. One time, Adam showed me how to whistle with a blade of grass. He plucked one, lined it up between his thumbs, and blew, his cheeks puffed.

  “That sounds like a kazoo,” I said. “Or a goose.”

  “Yeah, a goose in a lot of pain,” said Adam. It took a few tries, then he did it again. “That one sounded like a fart.”

  “That’s gross,” I said.

  “But it’s true.”

  “Yeah, it’s kinda true.” I paused. “Do you think Dr. Flossdrop has ever farted?” I asked.

  “Yes, but I’ve never heard it. Or smelled it. A Dr. Flossdrop fart is like a rare mushroom that only thrives in very particular conditions, too rare for most humans to sense or smell.”

  I plucked my own blade of grass and put it between my thumbs. Pulled it taut. Puffed my cheeks and exhaled.

  Nothing happened. Adam told me to cup my hands more.

  Finally, it worked. My whistle was higher pitched than his.

  “Yours sounds like Aunt Mildred on helium. Bonjooooooouuuuuuuur!”

  I whistled. Adam whistled. We whistled at the same time in a hilarious clash of sounds like party horns. People looked at us, but we were laughing so hard we didn’t care. We were our own little meadow orchestra. We were everything.

  But now I’m all alone. Except for you-know-what on my head. And with no idea how to make them go away.

  Last night, I stayed up knitting in bed as long as I possibly could. When I eventually got so tired that I had no choice but to lay my head on the pillow, I did so carefully, thinking only of being stung on the delicate ridges of my ears. But the bees didn’t sting me. They also didn’t leave, even to hover like when I was in the bath. It took me hours to relax, especially since I didn’t want to toss or turn.