I’m Allergic to Bees. Deathly Allergic. So Naturally I Agreed to Spend the Summer Helping the Beekeeper Next Door Save 2 Million of Them

I should have told her right then.

*Clara, I’m allergic. Deathly. I carry two EpiPens. I can’t go within fifty feet of your bees.*

Instead, I said, “I’ve got a tractor with a front loader.”

I don’t know why. Something about her face. She’d been crying, and she wasn’t anymore. She was standing up straight in the middle of a disaster, with her hair full of bits of broken wood, ready to fix it.

I couldn’t walk away from that.

She put me in a beekeeping suit.

The full one. White coveralls, gloves to the elbows, a hat with a mesh veil, zippers everywhere. I looked like a man about to walk on the moon.

“You look ridiculous,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“Why are you sweating already? It’s sixty-five degrees.”

“I sweat a lot.”

For three days, we rebuilt hives. I lifted. She directed. Two million bees buzzed around my head, and every single one of them, I was sure, was looking for a gap in my zipper.

On the fourth day, I made a mistake.

I bent down to pick up a box, and the back of my veil lifted a little.

I felt it.

A tiny little bump against the back of my neck.

I froze.

“Clara,” I said very quietly.

“Hmm?”

“Is there a bee on my neck?”

She looked.

“Yes. Hold still. She’s just walking. She won’t sting unless you swat her.”

I stood perfectly still. I didn’t breathe. My hand was in my pocket, wrapped around an EpiPen.

The bee walked across my neck.

Up into my hair.

And then she flew away.

I sat down in the grass so fast that Clara thought I’d fainted.

She pulled off my veil. She saw my face. Then she saw the EpiPen in my fist.

“Asher,” she said slowly. “What is that?”