Before I can whip up more fake charm to stop this runaway bus, it’s done. Decided. The situation is officially immune to my charms.

I sit there, stunned, as the adults work out the details around me. When it’s all wrapped up, Dr. Grayling escorts us out—and then pushes my chair halfway down the hall. “Don’t worry, Emelyn!” he says as he trundles me along like a shopping cart. “Sometimes we just need a little help to accept a little help.”

Shake it off—don’t tell him off.

Shake it off—don’t tell him off.

I really want to tell him off.

9

Traitors Don’t Get Sympathy

The first half of the ride home, I’m too shocked to say anything.

The second half, I’m too mad.

Dad’s silence is so thick I can almost taste it. But his fingers fidget on the steering wheel, so hard he even beeps the horn by mistake.

I study the patchwork of soybean and cotton fields and the pine trees as they pass by my window. If he’s waiting for me to say something, tough.

“Emmie—” he finally tries as we turn onto our road.

“I’m fine.”

I’m obviously not fine, but Dad doesn’t push it. The second I’m out of the truck, I roll straight for the paved path that winds through the scrubby woods from our place to the edge of Ale’s driveway. I get all the way there before I remember it’s Friday and almost crash into Ale when she walks out of the shed, geared up in her bee suit and veil and carrying a lit hive smoker thingy. Ale always does her hive checks on Fridays.

“Emmie, hey!” She shifts the smoker so it won’t blow in my face. “How was the…?” she starts to ask, then trails off. “That bad, huh?”

“Worse.”

“I’m doing hive checks, but how about we talk when I get them closed back up?”

I wish she’d leave the silly bees and come talk, but Ale always says you shouldn’t open and close a hive too many times. “How about we talk while I help check hives?”

That gets Ale’s attention. “Wow, that must have been some meeting.”

I’m scared enough of Ale’s bees that hive-check day usually makes me avoid her place like toxic waste. It’s bad enough that her hives are in a small clearing right behind the Ches’ shed (instead of buried someplace far, far in the woods). But today I’m so steamed, I swallow my fear and put on Ale’s spare bee suit and veil. Then I hold wax-filled frames for her while she inspects bees on them with a big magnifying glass like a bug-loving Nancy Drew. Holding a million buzzing bees on my lap is terrifying enough to water down my anger a bit—their noise is even oddly soothing today. Still, I pray they won’t all decide I’m an enemy while I tell Ale about the disastrous meeting.

“Dang,” she says, looking up from the honeycombs where she’s been searching for the queen bee. “Your dad didn’t say anything?”