Hour of the Bees (23 page)

We rotate once more, thud, and land. I look out the window.

“Oh,” I murmur.

The car is in a lake.

A green-glass lake.

“Are you okay?” I gasp.

“Did you bring . . . my oxygen?” Grandpa says.

I crumple. That’s why he looks so vulnerable to me: his face is missing its oxygen tubes. “No.”

Alta’s car is half driven into the water, the lake’s surface washing over the hood. I put it in reverse and try to back out onto the dirt road, but the car growls at me and doesn’t budge.

“Okay, let’s stay calm,” I say, more for myself than for Grandpa.

I turn the car off, and the clunking sound in the engine dies. Alta’s going to hang me, if we ever get out of here. I’ll be babysitting and lifeguarding the rest of my life to pay her back.

I wish she were here, and the thought takes me by surprise.

I undo both our seat belts, Grandpa wheezing beside me. The doors won’t open, no matter how hard I try — the lake’s water pushes against them.

“Hold on,” I say. “I’m going to open the top, then we’ll climb out.” I flip the switch to unleash the convertible top. Instantly, we’re soaked by the rain, which falls in drops as fat as pebbles. I scramble onto the back end of the car. “Come on, Grandpa!” I cry over the noise of the downpour. “Grab my hand!”

He reaches out a shaky hand, and, slick as it is, I grip it and yank with everything I’ve got. Slowly, clumsily, he wriggles out of the car and collapses next to me on top of the trunk. We turn and stare at the impossible.

A lake. A pale-green lake, clear as glass, where the ridge dips down, filling the pasture and kissing the driveway, the water rolling in the windy storm. Across the water, a few sheep are bunched on the porch, terrified. I wonder where the rest of them got to and hope they’re okay.

“Grandpa, what’s going on?” I say as we slide off the back of the car. “How’d this lake get here? It’s only been raining for a day.” Goose pimples the size of speed bumps break out all over my skin as I pull him to the shore.

He points to the bracelet tight on my wrist. “Aren’t you glad I made you put it on this morning, Rosa?”

“I’m not Rosa — I’m Carol,” I say, my gut twisting.
Don’t zone out on me now, Grandpa!

“You should never be without it, Rosa.”

“I’m Carol — Carol, your granddaughter,” I say, but my voice melts in the noise of the storm.

This is too much, too much, too much. Grandpa needs help, and I can’t do it. I shouldn’t have brought him here.

I reach in my pocket for my phone, but it’s gone. “Crap!” I cry, patting myself down head to toe. It must have fallen out when we waded to the shore.

“Grandpa, stay right here!” I say, grabbing his hands and making him look right at me. “I’ll be right back. Just don’t go anywhere, okay?” He nods, seeming to understand, so I run through the rain and mud into the ranch house and find Grandpa’s old phone, the one with the curlicue wire, on the base attached to the wall. I cross my fingers that it hasn’t been shut off yet and lift the phone to my ear.

A weird buzz comes out of the speaker — is that normal for old phones? I dial 911 and hold my breath, staring at the place on the linoleum where Inés died . . .

“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” The response is tinny and far away, but I do a happy dance at the sound of another human.

“I’m in the rainstorm, and we need help! The car crashed . . . and the lake, and —” I realize, as I’m speaking, how much word salad is pouring from my mouth.

“I’m losing you, sweetie.” I can’t tell if it’s a man or a woman speaking to me; the connection is too weak. “Are — there — tell — name —” The person’s words flutter in and out, and then there is a click and the phone goes silent.

“Hello? Hello?” I dial 911 a few more times, but nothing happens. Finally, I run back outside. I’ve got to get Grandpa to safety somehow. He’s got to come out of his dementia slip; I need his help. I have no idea what to do.

Grandpa stands on the shoreline, his bare feet sunk in the mud. What happened to his snake-stomping boots?

“Stay out of the water,” I direct him, rushing closer. I squint — what’s he pushing into the water?

A boat. A hand-carved wooden boat.

“Grandpa, what is this? Where did this come from?”

He pats the boat’s side. “It’s Father Alejandro’s boat. Remember? It’s still seaworthy. Come, Rosa. Hop in.”

Now I’m the one who needs oxygen. I’m woozy, raindrops spiraling. “I’m Carol!” I say, my voice cracking. “Carol, your granddaughter! Grandpa, we need to get inside, out of the rain.”

But he clambers into the boat and shoves off with a paddle.

“No, no, no!” I shout, splashing into the lake after him. I grab the side of the boat and haul myself in.

“Where are you taking us?” I ask.

“To the tree!”

The tree. Grandpa thinks the story is real, that it’s really happening.

But it can’t be real, can it? It’s too impossible.

But what about the lake?
my brain asks.
What about the boat?

Grandpa rows us out into the phantom lake. I’m going to call it that, because it doesn’t actually exist. I’m hallucinating — I must be. I hit my head when I crashed Alta’s car, and now I’m imagining this huge green lake. My hand isn’t really in cool water; it’s dipping into the sand in the basin. This isn’t a boat; it’s a rock.

“The bees, Rosa! See?” he cries, pointing up at the rain clouds. “They came back! They brought our lake back to us!”

I was in bed just a few hours ago, wasn’t I? Maybe I still am. Maybe this is all just some crazy dream.

The lake’s choppy in the storm, and we’re halfway across it. Lightning flashes.

In the burst of light, I see a tree. A tall, fat, black tree that’s big enough to block out the sun, its outstretched branches crisscrossing like a spider’s web.

The lake churns, and I grip the edges of the boat, my stomach carving itself out. “A tree,” I whisper. “How . . . ?” I remember the little seed I planted. But it couldn’t be that.

Could it?

Is dementia contagious? Maybe Grandpa coughed out a spore of his dementia and I breathed it in. His story of the lake, the bees, the magic tree that isn’t magic . . . it sprouted and grew in my own brain.

Grandpa laughs. “That tree’s been there for thousands of years. Since this world was patched and sewn together. And we will never let the tree die again, will we, Rosa? We’ve come home, and the bees have come home with us!”

“Grandpa, it’s Carol! And I think we should head back to —”

To where? To the cold, dark house? To the highway?

I was wrong. So wrong. I should have kept Grandpa at the Seville, where he’d be safe.

I want to laugh at the bitter irony. Grandpa’s always been afraid to leave the ranch, but now it’s the most dangerous place on earth for him.

As though proving my point, a wave hits.

The boat capsizes, and we plunge into the water — so cold, I ache. All I see is green, and my arms and legs flail until they’re senseless. Somehow my head breaks the surface, and I find the boat, clinging to it like a drowning rat. I gulp water, choke, sputter.

“Grandpa?” I scream, but then I spot him. He’s on the other side of the boat, trying to hold on to it with slipping hands.

“Hang on!” I swim around and shove him as hard as I can up and into the boat. He flops inside like a fish. I’m still overboard, one arm draped over the boat, trying to catch my breath.

“Rosa,” he sputters.

“I’m not Rosa!” I cry. Suddenly I miss my name, my stupid, Spanish name. I want to hear my grandpa call me
Caro-leeen-a
, just like that. I want to wear that name every day. “Grandma Rosa’s gone,” I say desperately. “She died twelve years ago. Remember?”

His expression doesn’t change. “The bees,” he says. “The bees.”

My frustration rages, despite the icy water. “Caro-leeen-a, Caro-leeen-a!” I say until my throat is raw. Then I say it some more. I’ll keep saying it until I break through, until he looks up and sees Carolina, not Rosa.

“We’re going to die, Rosa,” Grandpa says, and I feel like I’ve slipped underwater. “But I’m not afraid, because I’m not afraid to live. Not anymore.”

“Don’t say that!” I choke, my throat slimy with lake water and snot. “I don’t want to die, not here, not like this!”

Another wave scrambles the water, tossing me against the boat. My legs struggle to find the bottom of the lake, but it’s too deep.

“I shouldn’t have brought us here.” I grip the side of the boat and feel a splinter in my palm, one I missed last week when I held on to the porch railing and refused to leave.

The lightning flashes again, and a silhouette of the tree burns into my sight. When I squeeze my eyes shut, I see it still, white tree on black sky.

A wave picks up the boat, and this time it slams against my head. I’m knocked to stars, my brain prickling. I float back in the water, Grandpa and the boat slipping out of my reach.

I drift on waves, lightning flashing, rain still pouring. I could swear I hear buzzing . . .

My back hits something underwater, something hard and scratchy. A tree branch, jutting into the lake. I let it hold me, lie on it like an open palm, and I pray for sleep. I’m so exhausted, so cold.

Beneath me the branch moves. The tree drinks in the lake water and grows, lifting me, like a hand raising me to the skies. I stay flat on my back, the branch my bed. The only place to look is the sky, and it swirls black and gray.

And gold.

“Bees,” I whisper. “Bees.”

As the lightning flashes, I see them in the millions. Each bee holds a drop of water, and as they fly, they toss the water into the lake. Drop by drop.
Bzzz, bzzz
, I hear, as I float in the tree.

The bees brought back the rain, just like Grandpa said they would.

They watered the seed, and the tree grew, and then they brought back the rain.

Impossible.

Then it’s black.

I wake with a mouth full of water.

My eyes won’t open. It’s too bright. I slept with my blinds open by accident.

“Caro-leeen-a,” someone says. Time for school.
One more minute, Mom
.

It’s too hot. My bed’s lumpy. This mattress is awful; I don’t remember it being this bad.

I grab my pillow, but grainy wood meets my fingers.

I pry my eyelids open, one at a time. The sun is heavy and round and white on the horizon, the sky a watery blue, and I smell my own dried sweat. It’s dawn in the desert, and I’m in a tree, flat on my back.

The tree.

Like a flood, it crashes back: Alta’s car, the jailbreak at the Seville, the lake. Sometime in the night, the bees stopped dropping water, then faded to stars. Stars became sunrise.

My hair is crispy when I sit up, dried out like beached seaweed. I can feel my pulse in my head.

With my eyes still half closed, I turn and peek behind me, down beyond the pasture. If I’d been imagining the events of last night — our boat ride in an imaginary lake — then I should see the golden desert stretching into the horizon. No bees, no rain, no lake.

But I’m in a tree, above a green-glass lake.

I stand on shaky legs and look down. Beneath me, the trunk stretches thirty feet down, black and twisted. Next to the trunk is the scabby stump of the old tree. I gawk at the green leaves springing from the branches of the tree I’m standing in, white blossoms surrounding me like a snowstorm. Bees dart about, buzzing in and out of the blossoms. . . .

I spot the boat on the ridge, tippy-top, meatball on spaghetti. That must have been one crazy storm, to toss the boat up so high.

But where is Grandpa?

The fastest way down is to leap into the lake. I tighten my bracelet. It’s time for courage, just like Rosa. I hang my toes over the edge of the branch and put my hands up. I don’t wait to feel afraid. I just close my eyes and jump.

The nose of the boat juts into the sand, like it’s been buried there since the dinosaurs. The top of the ridge is dry earth, so hot it’s crackling beneath me. I follow the pattern of shingled ground around the boat.

“Caro-leeen-a.” I hear him before I see him, his voice nails on a chalkboard, a dust-choked muffler.

“Grandpa?” I whisper as I creep around the prow, afraid of what I’ll see.