The Honeys by Ryan La Sala

Author:Ryan La Sala
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.

I ask.

I ask again.

It doesn’t matter who answers. The answer is always the same.

“Who is Sierra?”

Maybe a head tilt, maybe a squint, but always that distance in the voice, that emptiness behind the eyes. It’s so consistent that by the end of the day I nearly believe I did get Sierra’s name wrong. Or worse, that I made her up. But that night I’m washing my face and I glimpse the brilliant blue of my nails and I remember the way she held my hands and cried with me, and I know. I know I’m not wrong.

What is it? Another prank? Another demented tradition? Or was it like this when I suddenly left Aspen four years ago? Just the same sinister erasure that Aspen likes to treat all unsightly truths with.

It’s when I see the guarded, glazed-over stare of Callum at dinner that I begin to believe something horrible happened to Sierra. When I see him, I still see the whites of his eyes against the blurring black of the woods, blood flowing from his nose. Him, Caroline, Sierra; I can connect them each to the Honeys. But in tandem, my fear of those girls has evolved into wonder. Intrigue.

I stare at Callum until I feel my dread return. Deepen. Solidify.

The next day, things feel too normal once again. I go to breakfast, I walk with Wyatt to the apiary, and Mimi greets us with a big hug. We resume our tour of the hives. Today, the enveloping frequency of the bees feels muted, maybe because the light in the meadow is dampened by an overcast sky. I spend the lesson analyzing Mimi’s face—wide cheeks and pointed chin, like a heart—and I find only sweetness. None of the dire tone I heard in the shed, with her sisters wreathed around her and the warped frame. As a test, I ask if I can use the bathroom in the cabin, and she says duh, of course, why would you even ask that?

I enter the cabin and it’s quiet, like the first time I was here. At the back windows I can see the shed is wide open as a few girls carry crates into it. Even from here I hear the clink of empty jars.

Leena said they were getting ready to harvest honey. She said Wyatt and I would be asked to help.

I sneak upstairs. I find the room Sierra and I hid in, and the bed we sat on. It’s neatly made, the corners tucked. Pictures have been jammed between the slats of the top bunk showing the girls sprawled on towels, or swathed in blankets. I’m not surprised to spot Sierra in a few of them, but I am relieved. I steal one, then slip back outside to finish the morning session without drawing any more attention to myself.

I’m now sure of two things.

First, I cannot trust what I see. In the shining Aspen sun, all colors fade, and all doubt fades, too. But at night the doubts embolden, and without the sun making me squint I feel a clarity I can’t always find during the day.

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