Seven
A pale orange dawn crept across a sky that reflected in her bedroom mirror. Melissa kicked away the blankets, rolled over and sat up. There, camouflaged against the pale green wall, was the cicada that had kept her up half the night with its deafening cheeeerrrrup. It waved an insolent antenna, pointing it at her, accusing. You’re not fooling anyone, you know. Beck has crawled inside you like an earwig. Even I can see it, and I’m a mere bug, hanging out on your wall.
Who was the fool in all of this, and who was being foolish? Beck was insane, and he was fooling himself into believing this bee colony thing. Or Beck was telling the truth, and she was the stubborn fool, the person whose narrow mind couldn’t encompass an idea so grand and implausible as a Beck-to-bees transfiguration.
