The Summer We Saved the Bees by Robin Stevenson Page B

people might not know what it means. What about Time Shift ? Or Time Warp ? I don’t know. I’ll think about it. Say hi to everyone for me.
    I wanted to ask him what he thought—what he really thought—about what we were doing. I hesitated, trying to think of the right words. Then I wrote, Duncan, do you think it’s crazy what my mom says? Like about the world economy collapsing and everyone starving and all that stuff on her website? I stared at my own words for a minute. Then I put my finger on the backspace key and held it down until the last part of the message was gone.

Fourteen
    THE NEXT MORNING, Mom and Curtis came in from the van while the rest of us were eating breakfast. They looked tired and kind of tense, and I wondered if they’d been fighting.
    “Well, Violet texted last night,” Mom said.
    Eva put down her mug of coffee. “Is she okay?”
    “She’s fine,” Curtis said. “She and Ty are going to meet us downtown today. We’ll pick them up on our way to Chilliwack.”
    I stared. “Them? Pick them up?”
    They exchanged glances. “Violet really wants Ty to come with us,” Curtis said.
    Tess leaned forward, eyes wide, elbows on the table. “I bet she said she wouldn’t come without him. Did she? Did she say that?”
    Mom sighed.
    “That is so romantic,” Hazel said, smoothing her long thick braid with her fingers. “Isn’t it, Tess? Like she just can’t live without him.”
    “Right.” Mary snorted, put down her coffee mug and stood up. “I better get going. Bye, my loves. See you tonight.”
    Eva looked at Mom. “This romantic thing? You have to know they don’t get that from me, Jade.”
    Mom laughed.
    “I blame those Disney Princess movies,” Eva said darkly.

    After breakfast we packed up our stuff, plus two My Little Ponies that Tess had given the twins and a plastic container filled with cookies that Eva had baked especially for us, and we headed out to the van. I took one last look at the house as I did up my seat belt. It seemed like the last refuge before we hit the road and headed into the great unknown, and I felt sad to leave it.
    As we drove, I listened to the silence between Curtis and Mom and ate one cookie after another. They were crumbly and buttery rich and studded with cranberries and hazelnuts and chunks of white chocolate.
    Saffron was the only one talking, and she wouldn’t shut up. “Where’s Ty going to sit?” she asked. We were stopped at a downtown traffic light, and I was scanning the sidewalks for Vi. “There’s no extra seat for him.”
    “Yes, well, maybe Violet should have thought about that before she invited him along,” Mom snapped back.
    “He can sit here and I can sit on his lap.” Saffron giggled. “Or he can go in the back with our stuff. Or…” She started to lose it, laughing harder and sputtering cookie crumbs everywhere. “We could get a roof rack and he could lie on top. Like a canoe.”
    I heard a giggle from Whisper.
    “Very funny,” Mom said. “Oh—Curtis, there they are.”
    I looked out the window. Violet was standing arm in arm with Ty, leaning against the wall of a building near the art gallery.
    Curtis pulled over to the curb. “Hop in,” he snapped.
    Violet got in, taking her usual seat. Ty followed, squeezing past us all and sitting in the far back, seat beltless, on a pile of bags beside Whisper’s bucket seat.
    Curtis drove off, accelerating with a jerk and squealing the tires. I took another cookie out of the container and hoped Ty would have the sense not to comment on Curtis’s driving.

    We drove east, past Langley and Abbotsford, and by lunchtime we were in Chilliwack. There were snow-tipped mountains in the distance, and a weirdly large number of mini-golf places along the highway. I wondered if we were really going to have to do a show this afternoon. I didn’t want to ask—if Mom had forgotten, I wasn’t going to remind her. I snuck a glance over my shoulder at Ty. His hair used to be spiky and