At the far side of the waterfront, just past the boathouse, there’s a path through the willows. It’s lined with fallen logs and sprays of goldenrod, and sometimes it dissolves into the water’s reedy banks. Sometimes it vanishes completely under nets of ivy. And yet it still manages its way all around the southern corner of the lake, to the bottleneck, where it’s swallowed by a narrow covered bridge. Thereafter, nestled deep in the woods, Cabin H lies.

I peer at the start of the path.

Mars, what on earth are you doing? Caroline’s voice asks me this for the sixth time this morning. As of yet, I have no answer for her.

“Lost already?”

I spin around. Wyatt waves down at me from the boathouse deck. A blink later he’s down on the ground, clapping me on the shoulder and guiding me through the willows.

“You’re following me?”

Wyatt navigates the path with ease. He seems … tired. Irritable?

“Actually, I’m going to my new major, thanks to you.”

He produces a piece of paper, the same as mine. There it is. Apiculture, in place of Eco-Lab.

“Orders from the mountaintop,” Wyatt says. “I guess you scared Wendy bad enough that she decided I should tag along.”

“I’ll be fine. You don’t need to come.”

“Ah. So stalwart, young Mars. But I’m not here for your protection. I’m here to watch you.”

Despite the heat, a chill zips down my spine. We’ve reached the bridge quicker than I thought. I see it’s not really a bridge. It’s a covered walkway over a dam, and it’s ancient. The lake slides through the sunbaked concrete in ribbons of jet black. The interior of the bridge is black, too, but the other side glows with a sweet warmth, like glimpsing a candlelit room through a keyhole.

Wyatt is silenced by the sight of it, too. I pick up the discarded thread of our conversation.

“I thought the whole private chaperone thing was until I was settled.”

“I think you gave the adults the distinct impression that you’re unsettled. Wendy wasn’t having it when I told her you wouldn’t like this.”

I sigh. I figured Aspen would make sure I had eyes on me, but I didn’t think they’d re-up Wyatt’s bodyguard contract. I feel bad for Wyatt, but on a more selfish note I’m a little excited. I didn’t realize I missed hanging out with him in the woods until he hailed me from the boathouse deck. And here we are. Hanging out. In the woods.

Wyatt swats at a cloud of gnats.

“It’s simpler than you think, actually,” he says. “Remember I told you I grew up here? My grandfather showed me how to work with the bees when I was little, and I help out Leena sometimes. Like right now, when suddenly she’s got one more wannabe beekeeper to keep track of. That’s the reason Wendy gave anyway.”

It makes me smile to see Wyatt flustered like this. He’s actually a little mad, instead of that usual unrelenting cheer. My laugh must surprise him because he looks confused before, begrudgingly, he cracks a smile, too. I start through the bridge and he trails after.

“I’m sorry that you’re now being instructed to escort me places. But really, if you just want to go back to Eco-Lab, I won’t tell. Oh, wait, I’m sorry, that would require you to think for yourself. Can’t have you using your own brain! That’s not very Aspen, now, is it?”

Wyatt slips in front of me, jogging backward on the dusty path. “Mock me all you want, but adaptability is an Aspen value. So I’m adapting. And besides, I actually like the hives.”

“Maybe I do, too? Not that you’d believe me.”

“Oh, please,” he laughs. “I saw you getting along with the H girls last night. Don’t tell me this isn’t part of your big, master Mars plan.”

I narrow my eyes in playful offense. “They’re nicer than you think. Definitely better than the boys.”

Wyatt spins back around when we hit the woods so that he can focus on not tripping over any roots.

“I get that things haven’t been easy for you,” he says. “Before or even now. But are you sure about this? Maybe you got off to a bad start with the boys, but if they got to know you, I think they’d really like you. Instead, you’re trying to join up with Bria and her gang.”

“Get to know me? What do you want me to do, set up a slide show about myself and present it to Hunter Village for Embers? The more they know, the less they like me, Wyatt.”

Wyatt scratches at a bug bite on his neck.

“No, it’s like …” He reaches up to the trees, as if he can pull down an answer. “I don’t know, participate in their stuff. Sports and poker night. Show them you’re, like, chill.”

“Wyatt, that’s not being chill. That’s performative heterosexuality.”

The forest path cuts away from the lake to become a slanting uppercut through rocks, roots, and a maze of mountain laurel.

“Don’t take this the wrong way.” Wyatt is breathy as we climb. “But you could learn a thing or two about compromise.”

“And I would learn this valuable life lesson by, what, playing Ultimate Frisbee and objectifying women?”

“Would you do that? Play Ultimate Frisbee, I mean.”

“If it got you off my back, absolutely.”

Wyatt stops, so I have to stop. He thrusts a hand at me. He grins. I take his hand and we shake, our dumb deal made.

“I’m glad you went with Frisbee,” Wyatt says. “Because I actually am terrible at poker. I don’t have the face for it.”

We walk the rest of the way, avoiding the subject of compromise, talking instead about Wyatt’s childhood of beekeeping, honey harvests, and woodsy loveliness. It’s nearly a mile until we spot Cabin H’s clearing. No wonder the girls don’t always come into camp. Treacherous during the day, the hike here would be deadly at night.

They’re outside when we arrive. The girls, stretching and yawning like they just woke up. They see us and wave lazily, the rings on their hands flashing in the white sun. Already I can see the bees floating over their hives. As we near, I feel that lurking doubt again, the sense of fear that used to reign over my idea of this place. But there’s nothing scary here. Just sleepy girls holding up ceramic mugs of coffee and tea as they introduce themselves. I catch a few names—Kyle, Juliette, a pair of twins named PJ and CJ—and I miss the rest. There are many more girls than I thought would fit inside that house, and still more drift down the porch. Bria waves from a hammock.

Leena gathers us and assigns tasks. She’s short and compact and so are her instructions. I catch little of it, but Wyatt leads me off toward a hive at the bottom of the hill. Mimi is there and she pulls me into a great hug.

“You made it!” she screams into my ear.

She looks at me, looks at Wyatt. Her smile is so big it somehow shows up on my face.

“Where’s Sierra?” I ask.

Or I think I ask. Mimi proceeds without responding, instead bubbling on about safety.

“You didn’t eat bananas today, did you?” she asks gravely.

We shake our heads.

“Good. They don’t like that. Bananas smell like death to bees. Remember that.”

I make a note. I make many notes as Mimi tours us through the apiary. All around us the girls work diligently while they talk and laugh. Their industriousness doesn’t clash with their usual hyper-femininity; it simply combines with it. Reveals that both can exist in the same body. I make gloating eye contact with Wyatt. Not so bored and useless, are they?

“Each of these is a separate hive with its own queen,” Mimi explains. “The hive bodies are made of individual supers”—she taps one floor of the wooden tower we’re next to—“and in each super, we place a bunch of frames, which the bees fill with comb. Some of the cells have brood, some have honey.”

“What’s brood?”

“Babies, basically. Larvae,” Mimi says. From nowhere she produces her own hive tool and starts to pry the top from one of the towers. I spring back as several bees dart out, and she and Wyatt both laugh.

“Don’t we need, like, beekeeping suits?” I ask.

Mimi shakes her head. “Do you want a suit? I can grab you one. But you won’t need it. The bees are very gentle.”

“They don’t care if we take their honey?”

“They hardly know,” Mimi says. “We only take the excess, and we let them keep just the right amount to maintain the colony’s numbers. Too many bees, they outgrow the hive and swarm. Too few, and they can’t function.”

“Symbiosis,” Wyatt adds.

I don’t care about any of that. I just need one question answered: “So they won’t sting us?”

Mimi giggles. “Bees only sting if they find a cause worth dying for. Don’t flatter yourself. You’ll be fine—just don’t move too quickly.”

Wyatt nods, assuring me, but I can tell that even he feels beyond his usual spunky confidence. It occurs to me that the last time he managed these hives, he would have been a kid with his grandfather. I don’t know how long bees live, but it must not be long. The bees within this box are generations beyond the ones Wyatt knew and trusted. Maybe that’s what he’s thinking as Mimi proceeds to pry their home apart with efficient zeal.

Mimi lifts the top an inch, peeks inside, then removes it completely.

I’m not prepared for the warmth, nor the sound, nor how they feel like the same thing. Before us is a maze of frames, like Mimi said, but carpeting everything are minute, furry bodies, an innumerable chaos that looks more like one alien entity rather than a thousand individuals. They don’t buzz like I thought they would. Instead they hum, low and thick. Calm. There’s no anger as Mimi waves good morning at them.

“Mars, you hold this,” she says, and she hands me a strange tin can with a smoking spout. Dried leaves smolder inside it. I smell hickory and molten sap.

“Like this,” Mimi says, moving me into position so the smoke wafts over the hive. Some of the bees have floated up from their depths, curious or angry, but the smoke calms them. The drone goes lower. I feel it in the bottom of my skull.

“Smoke makes them easier to handle,” Wyatt says.

I hold the smoker while Mimi works her tool into the orange wax built up over the frames. She calls it propolis. Then she has us stand back as she works the frame up and out of the hive.

“You can get closer,” she urges. I clutch the smoker, my eyes full of tears but wide open with alertness, and follow her painted nail as she points.

“This is brood. See? Do you see how the cells are capped? Don’t they look funny? Soft, right? They’re not. Larvae grow in there and make their own little cocoons, then bite their way out.”

I maybe see what she means. Mostly I’m overwhelmed by the density of the living thing crawling upon the frame, the twitching static of bodies flowing over one another in perplexing, frantic paths. It’s disordered and choreographed, and nearly silent. There is always the humming, but I can’t figure out where it’s coming from. It feels like it’s coming from everywhere.

“These frames have honey. See it? Here, let me move them.”

Mimi brushes the bees away with her knuckles. They tumble away and disperse, like nothing. “Here, look. Move a bit, it’s clearer in the sun.”

Mimi shifts and the light slides into a thousand hexagonal wells. It’s unnerving, like a wall of eyes opening up, wet and unblinking, but so precise. There’s a warp in the pattern, though, a moment where the interlocked cells pinch together, casting a ripple into the mosaic.

I ask what it is. Mimi stares at it for a long time before asking Wyatt to close up the hive. Then she carries the frame away, toward the shed. Wyatt and I wait awhile, watching the bees land on their little porch, their legs packed with orange-yellow pollen. Mimi doesn’t come back.

Eventually I decide to go look for her.

“We can’t go in the shed,” Wyatt calls after me.

“Why not?” I call back, still walking.

“Equipment,” he says, which is a lame reason, so I leave him behind.

Up the hill, around the house and pushed back into the forest, the shed is a long, low building. Away from the din of the hives and the house, the air feels clear and light, like I can hear so much more. In the calm I catch the frayed edge of a whisper. Hushed voices slip from a barn door left ajar.

“A disruption,” someone says.

“Local, national, or global?”

“It’s hard to say. Local, with wide ripples. See?”

This last voice is Mimi. I peer through the gap in the doorway and see her sitting in a pool of lamplight with three other girls, the honeycomb frame on a contraption between them. It’s held up like a book on a pulpit, and they look upon it like it’s made of letters.

“An interloper,” Mimi says definitively.

“So what’s the impact?” one girl asks.

Mimi’s easy smile is nowhere to be seen as she says, “Disruption. Not political or financial. Here, at Aspen.”

“Do we … do we need to tell them?”

“No.” Mimi shakes her head, hair bouncing vigorously. “Per the codes, we have to handle it ourselves, our way.”

“What about that?” one girl—Lya, I think—asks, pointing at a section of the comb. “Doesn’t that mean death?”

“Violent death,” another girl clarifies.

Mimi doesn’t say yes, but she doesn’t say no. The silence the girls share is a consenting one, though, like the truth is so obvious it’s not worth stating aloud.

I drift too close to the door, and suddenly my shadow passes over the narrow beam of light. Lya jumps, swinging the door open, but I get around the corner of the shed a split second before. The door closes, fully this time, and locks.

I make a wide circle back to the meadow, through the woods, so that anyone looking out the shed’s windows won’t see me. At the top of the meadow, I halt. Wyatt sits where I left him, staring off over the lake like he’s lost in a reverie, but standing around him are five of the Cabin H girls. Just standing. They quiver in the heat rising off the meadow, their faces blurring for just a moment, and then Wyatt stands, too. They walk over to me, all together.

“Ready?” Wyatt asks.

“Ready for what?”

“Lunch? The bugle sounded. I missed it, too, but the girls just told me it’s time to head back.”

I glance at the girls. Despite the morning’s work, they all appear uniformly cool and unbothered. The sound of the shed opening pulls my eyes that way. Mimi and the others step out, no sign of concern in their faces as they join us. I take that moment to look back at the shed and memorize it. The roof is corrugated metal, the walls cheap plywood painted white. The grass leading to it is worn down, and another path juts from its side, out into the woods in the opposite direction of Aspen, toward the mountains.

We walk back in one loud, laughing parade. The girls commit to a barrage of senseless, flattering questions about my life—What will you major in? What’s your workout routine? What percentile were your math scores? How many other kids do you know who can repair antique calculators?—and I realize they’re acting as one huge wingman in my developing crush on Wyatt. When they finally turn to teasing Wyatt, I think about what I overheard in the shed. It sounded like the girls were inspecting the comb. Deriving some meaning from the warp I pointed out. Death. Violent death. And an interloper.

I look up suddenly when the incessant chatter halts. Wyatt and I are alone beneath a willow tree. And then, sliding through the shade in brisk confrontation, is the boathouse. I jump in surprise. The sudden sight of it, the discord of people playing games on the deck and strumming guitars and turning up the radio, is jarring. So at odds with the soft eeriness of the meadow.

“You zone out a lot,” Wyatt observes.

I didn’t even notice we’d crossed the covered bridge. I look around for the Honeys, but they’ve flitted away, into Aspen. I blink, wondering where the last half mile of my life went.

“Sorry. I was thinking,” I say.

“Thinking? Even more thoughts?”

“Yes, one of the major setbacks of having a brain.”

“Anyway,” Wyatt laughs, steering us toward the dining pavilion, “I was asking you who Sierra is. You mentioned her to Mimi.”

“Oh, she’s nice. She was one of Caroline’s friends.”

“From home?”

I tilt my head. “From Aspen. She’s in Cabin H.”

Wyatt mimics my confusion. “You mean Bria?”

“I mean Sierra.”

Wyatt looks off across the lake, not toward the meadow but toward the mountains beyond. He says, “But Mars, there’s no Sierra at Summer Academy.”