Blue World Read Free

fifteen and Mase would whip my tail if I had a wreck. If you like, you can leave the van here. Cafe to get sandwiches and stuff is just around the bend, walkin‘ distance. That suit you?”
    “Yes, that’d be fine.” Carla wanted to stretch her legs, and something cold to drink would be wonderful. But what had happened to Joe? She honked the horn a couple of times and rolled up her window. “Probably fell in,” she told Trish.
    The yellowjacket had decided not to enter Joe’s nostril. Still, there were thirty or more of them on his T-shirt, and he could feel the damned things all in his hair. His teeth were clenched, his face pale and sweating, and yellowjackets were crawling over his hands. Chills ran up and down his spine; he’d read somewhere about a farmer who had disturbed a yellowjacket nest, and by the time they got through with him he was a writhing mass of stung flesh and he’d died on the way to the hospital. At any second he expected a dozen stingers to rip through the skin at the back of his neck. His breathing was harsh and forced, and he was afraid that his knees would buckle and his face would fall into that filthy toilet and then the yellowjackets would go to w--
    “Don’t move,” the red-haired boy said, standing in the bathroom’s doorway. “They’re all over you. Don’t move, now.”
    Joe didn’t have to be told twice. He stood frozen and sweating, and then he heard a low, trilling whistle that went on for maybe twenty seconds. It was a soothing, calming sound, and the yellowjackets started leaving Joe’s shirt and flying out of his hair. As soon as they were off his hands, he zipped himself up and he got out of the bathroom with yellowjackets buzzing curiously over his head. He ducked and batted at them, and they flew away.
    “Yellowjackets!” he gasped. “Must’ve been a million in there!”
    “Not that many,” Toby told him. “It’s yellowjacket summer. But don’t worry about ‘em now. You’re safe.” He was smiling, and he lifted his right hand.
    The boy’s hand was covered with them, layer upon layer of them, until it looked as if the hand had grown to grotesque proportions, the huge fingers striped with yellow and black.
    Joe stood staring, open-mouthed and terrified. The other boy whistled again--this time a short, sharp whistle--and the yellowjackets stirred lazily, humming and buzzing and finally lifting off from his hand in a dark cloud that rose up and flew away into the woods.
    “See?” Toby slid his hand into his jeans pocket. “I said you were safe, didn’t I?”
    “How… how… did you do--”
    “Joe!” It was his mother, calling him. “Come on!”
    He wanted to run, wanted to leave tornadoes whirling under his sneakers, but he forced himself to walk at a steady pace around the gas station to where his mother and Trish were out of the Voyager and waiting for him. He could hear the crunch of the other boy’s shoes on the gravel, following right behind him. “Hey!” Joe said, his face tightening as he tried to smile. “What’s goin‘ on?”
    “We thought we’d lost you! What took you so long?”
    Before Joe could answer, a hand was placed firmly on his shoulder. “Got hisself stuck in the bathroom,” Toby told her. “Old door oughta be fixed. Ain’t that right?” The pressure of his hand increased.
    Joe heard a thin buzzing. He looked down, saw that the hand clamped to his shoulder had a yellowjacket lodged between the first and second fingers.
    “Mom?” Joe said softly. “I was--” He stopped, because beyond his mother and sister he could see a dark banner-- maybe two or three hundred yellowjackets--slowly undulating in the bright sunshine over the road.
    “You okay?” Carla asked. Joe looked like he was about to upchuck.
    “I think he’ll live, ma’am,” Toby said, and he laughed. “Just scared him a little, I guess.”
    “Oh. Well… we’re going to get a bite to eat and something cold to drink, Joe. He says there’s a cafe