SHORTLY AFTER NOON, Curtis dropped us all off in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery. I was carrying a canvas bag full of flyers to hand out. We’d printed them out three to a page and cut them apart. You could tell which ones the twins had cut because they were a little wonky. There was a picture of a bee in flight at the top, and our website link at the bottom. In between was a long list of facts about what was happening to the bees.
“Over here, I think,” Mom said. She had a bag of props with her juggling stuff in it and a couple of big poster boards. “Let’s set up right here.” She gestured at the large paved area where we were standing, at the base of a flight of wide stone steps.
I looked up at the two huge stone lions that seemed to guard the gallery and at the big pillars by the gallery doors. “Are we allowed to?”
“Wolf, really?” She laughed. “Such a rule follower.”
She made it sound like a bad thing. “I just wondered,” I said.
“Yeah, it’ll be fine,” she said. “There are lots of protests here—the steps are famous for it.”
“Okay.” I handed a bunch of flyers to Saffron and a bunch to Whisper. Saffron promptly dropped hers, and the wind caught them and started blowing them down the sidewalk. I muttered a rude word under my breath and took off after the flying papers. By the time I’d managed to chase them down, Mom and Violet had the poster-board display all set up, and a couple of curious pedestrians had stopped to see what we were up to.
“Here,” I told Saffron, returning her flyers to her. “Hold on tight, okay?”
She nodded, pink cheeked from the chilly breeze. Beside her, twisting the flyers in her hand, Whisper looked wide-eyed and frightened.
“Just stay together, okay?” I told them. “And don’t go anywhere—Whisper, quit crumpling the papers—just stay right here. Probably no one is even going to come and watch anyway.” Curtis was supposed to come back for us at two o’clock—he was going to drive around to a bunch of Chinese restaurants and collect used cooking oil to fuel the van—and I wondered what we’d do for two hours if no one showed up. Would Mom do her whole show anyway, juggling routine and all? Or would we just stand around, getting cold and looking dumb in our bee costumes?
“Hey, hey,” a low voice said behind me.
I turned. Ty was standing there, hands in his pockets, grinning at me. Violet spotted him, squealed and threw herself into his arms. “Ty! You made it!”
“’Course I did,” he said. “I told you I’d be here.” He looked at me over Violet’s shoulder. “Whoa, Wolf, buddy. That’s quite the look.”
I felt a rush of heat to my face and quickly folded my arms across my chest. “Yeah, well.”
“Wolf! Violet!” Mom called. “Get over here.”
I shrugged, glad of an excuse to take my goofy-looking striped self away from Ty. I beckoned for the twins to come with me and walked over to where Mom was standing with a small group of people. Students, maybe. They looked like students, anyway, in jeans and with bags slung over their shoulders.
“This is my son, Wolf,” Mom said. “And my girls, Saffron and Whisper. And over there…my stepdaughter, Violet. Apparently she’s busy.”
The students all looked where she was pointing. Violet was still standing with her arms wrapped around Ty. Everyone laughed.
“It’s cool that you’re doing this,” one of them told me. She was tall, and her blond hair was tied up in a huge mass of dreadlocks. “Like, as a family? It’s awesome.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I just nodded.
“Well,” Mom said. “This is our first show, so you’re our guinea pigs.” She grinned. “Might as well get started, I guess, though it feels funny performing for six people.”
“Go for it.” A fat guy with a bushy ginger beard gestured toward the steps. “More people will stop and watch once you get going.”
Mom took a deep breath and nodded. I could tell she was nervous. “All right,” she said, and she moved away from the group to stand on the bottom step. “We’re here because we care,” she began. “We’re here because time is running out…”
I nudged Saffron. “You and Whisper give out the flyers now, okay? Just hand one to each person who’s watching. And if you see someone walking by but kind of looking at us, run over and give them a flyer too.”
“Can you do it?”
“I thought you wanted to,” I said. “You were all excited about this part, remember? You can pretend you’re flying.”
“I’m cold,” she said.
I sighed. “Fine.” I handed out flyers to the group of students. Mom was starting the juggling part of her show, holding the blue-and-green Earth ball in her hands. A couple of young Asian men walked by, eyes on their phones, not even glancing our way. A woman with a stroller slowed down and looked, but when I started moving toward her she avoided my eyes and quickened her pace. Like I was going to try to sell her something.
I didn’t want to push the twins, especially if they were feeling shy, but they’d be better at this part. No one would turn their back on two five-year-olds dressed in bee costumes.
On the bottom step, Mom was juggling three balls and talking nonstop. The students were listening, and every once in a while, when she said something they agreed with or did a cool trick, like throwing a ball behind her back and catching it, they’d break into applause.
A large group of people—a dozen or so of them—was approaching. I nudged Saffron. “Come with me, okay?”
She shook her head. To my surprise, Whisper slipped her hand into mine. “You’ll come?” I asked her.
She nodded.
“Me too,” Saffron said immediately.
“Great.” The three of us walked toward the group, flyers in hand, and a couple of young women stopped. “Awww, look at you. How cute is that?” one of them cooed. The rest of the group slowed down and looked at us.
“Go on, kids,” I said under my breath. “Give them flyers.”
Saffron went one better. “That’s my mom,” she told them, pointing. “She’s a good juggler.”
“She sure is,” the girl said. She had long dark hair and didn’t look much older than Violet. “So how come you’re all dressed up?”
“We’re bees,” Saffron said. “Because we don’t want all the bees to die.”
“Awww,” the girl said again. The whole group had stopped walking now and turned toward the steps, watching my mom juggle. “Are you handing out information then? About bees?”
Saffron nodded and held out her flyers. “You can have one.”
More people were stopping now, as if the very fact that the crowd had reached a certain size was enough to make it grow all by itself. Whisper buzzed around the group, weaving in and out of legs, silently handing out flyers. Saffron was still chatting with the dark-haired teenager.
I looked over to where Violet and Ty had been, but they weren’t there anymore. On the steps, Mom was shouting out alarming statistics about bees and pollination and our food supply, juggling four balls higher and higher. I spun around, searching the crowd, scanning up and down the street.
Violet and Ty were gone.