The Nest Read online

  “You were upset after our last conversation,” she said. “You were upset all day.”

  “You’re not an angel,” I said. “You’re just a wasp.”

  “Well, I prefer ‘angel,’ but ‘wasp’ is acceptable too. If that’s what makes most sense to you. Names are just names. They don’t really mean anything in the end.”

  I didn’t really understand what she meant by that. It was like something from a textbook I wasn’t smart enough to understand. I looked at her closely. Even in the dimmer light, I could see her face more clearly, and it was unmistakably a wasp’s. What I’d thought was a silvery nose was a diamond of pigment. As for the sideways mouth, I’d been very wrong. It was the vertical gap between a set of mandibles. As I looked, they parted sideways a little, like pincers. They were sharp-edged.

  Amazingly, I didn’t feel scared of her. I was allergic and was in front of a wasp bigger than me. But I sensed instinctively she didn’t mean me any harm. And anyway, wasn’t this just a dream?

  I looked to the top of her fine-whiskered head, at the snaky antenna that bridged the gap between us.

  “That’s how we talk, isn’t it?” I asked. “You touch one to me, and we understand each other.”

  “In part, yes. But also because I stung you.”

  My body had a quick nauseating memory. “That was you?”

  “Indeed it was. I needed a bit of you in me, and a bit of me in you. It was you I wanted to talk to.”

  “Why?”

  “Young people are much more open-minded. Your brains are still so beautifully honest and accepting and supple.”

  “I’m allergic, you know!”

  “I do apologize.”

  “So . . . that’s you up in the nest on our house.”

  “That’s my nest.”

  “You’re the queen!”

  Just a hint of pride in her voice: “That would be me.”

  “And where I am now,” I said, looking around, “this is the nest, isn’t it?”

  “Right again.”

  “It’s a real place. But I thought . . .”

  “What did you think?”

  “That I just dreamt you.”

  “You are dreaming. But it’s also real.”

  I wasn’t sure this made any sense. “But how can I fit inside?”

  “Your dream self can fit into any space,” she said as if it were the simplest notion in the world. “Outside the nest you’re big. Inside you’re small.”

  Relief mingled with my astonishment. I wasn’t crazy. These dreams weren’t just imaginary. They were somehow welded to the real world, just like the nest was welded to our roof.

  “We’re as real as you are,” the queen said. “Including the worker you killed today.”

  I blinked. “What? Oh, no. Our babysitter just caught one in a glass.”

  “And she took my worker somewhere and killed her so she could study her.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I don’t consider it very kind. Do you?”

  “Vanessa said her professor might want to study it.”

  “We have feelings! We have aspirations! We’re not just little bugs.”

  “What exactly are you, then?”

  She ignored me. “My workers live only four weeks. They’re giving their lives for this baby. Your baby! You could be a little more grateful!”

  “I didn’t ask for this!”

  “There’s such a thing as manners. Imagine you’re just going about your business and someone gasses you to death.”

  “Gasses! What do you mean?”

  “That’s what your babysitter did to my worker. Put her in a little chamber and poisoned her with gas.”

  It sounded terrible. “I’m sorry.”

  “I hope you are.”

  “I didn’t know about any of this.”

  “It’s like murder.”

  “Really, I’m sorry—but it wasn’t me!”

  “It’s all right. She wasn’t very important anyway.” The queen chuckled. “Practically interchangeable, they are. Thousands upon thousands of them to do the work. Anyway,” she added cheerily, “let’s not let it happen again, shall we?”

  She made me feel we were still friends, like I was automatically part of her team.

  “It’s bad for morale,” she said. “How’s your morale, by the way?”

  “Okay,” I said warily. I wasn’t sure how much I should be talking to her anymore.

  “Just okay?”

  “I think so.”

  “Well, we’ll change that, won’t we? We’ll get that taken care of.”

  “Look,” I said, “I don’t really understand what you’re planning.”

  “Of course you do. You’re a clever boy.”

  “This whole idea of the baby you’re growing . . .”

  “Exactly! It’s our gift to you. Everyone likes a gift.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And everyone likes to be thanked for a gift.”

  I said nothing.

  “Ah, well, you’ll thank us later.”

  I blurted it out: “I don’t understand any of this, but I don’t want you doing anything to the baby!”

  “You haven’t even seen the baby yet,” she replied. “We just finished the nest properly today.”

  I looked around. This place was nothing like the bits Vanessa had showed us a few days before. “I thought nests were supposed to have rows and rows of cells.”

  “Well, this one is different. It has just one cell for just one egg. This entire nest is devoted to your new baby. That’s all we’ll grow in here. And look, the egg’s just hatched. See up there?”

  I looked and could see, at the very top of the dim cave, a pale blob.

  I squinted. “I can’t really . . .”

  “I’ll fly you up. Just hold on.”

  Before I could object, her antennae wrapped themselves around me and lifted me atop her head. Wings whirring, she darted off the ledge. Instinctively I shut my sleeping eyes tight, expecting that horrible amusement-park plunge, but I wasn’t falling, just rising. My fear dissolved, and I opened my eyes and wanted to shout with exhilaration. After a few seconds we reached the top of the nest. Glued to the ceiling was a pasty slug-like creature.

  “There’s our little darling,” said the queen proudly.

  It was slimy, with two black dots sunk into the front end of its soggy body. Underneath the eyes it had a kind of hole, and it was eating. All around it, stuck to the nest ceiling, were insects—a dead spider, headless bees, and other things that I couldn’t quite recognize, but there was a bit of something red that looked like it had hair on it.

  “It’s disgusting,” I said.

  “No, it’s just a larva. It’s just starting.”

  “I don’t want to look at it.”

  For the first time the queen’s voice was harsh; it came with a kind of clicking sound, like fingernails scratching at one another, which I realized was her mandibles opening and closing. “Shame on you! You shouldn’t judge things by their appearances. I imagine you didn’t look very appetizing when you were just conceived and starting to grow in your mother’s womb.”

  I was still being held by her antennae, floating through the air, circling the larva.

  “I want you to stop,” I said.

  “What on earth are you suggesting?” she said, clicking angrily. “That we harm the baby?”

  “I want all of this to stop!” I repeated.

  “Oh, that’s quite impossible. Now that it’s started.”

  “I’m waking up now.”

  “Only if I say so,” said the queen, and her antennae released me, and she tipped me off her head.

  With a surge of terror I fell, away from the larva baby, down through the nest. I woke with a jerk in my bed. My blanket was on the floor, as if someone had yanked it off me.

  “The wasp you caught yesterday,” I said to Vanessa when she arrived in the morning.

  Her eyes lit up with excitement. “I
was going to tell you guys about that.”

  “Did you kill it?”

  “Oh.” She looked a bit surprised at the question. Her clothes smelled mustier than usual. “Well, yes, in a killing jar. That’s how we get all our specimens, Steven. We just put them in a jar with a little ethyl acetate—it’s like nail polish remover, and it konks them out.”

  “Kills them.”

  She nodded, looking at me uncertainly. “Does that upset you? I thought you—”

  “Hated wasps. Yeah, I do.” It wasn’t the fact that she’d killed it. It was the fact that I already knew, because my dream wasp, the queen, had told me.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Uh-huh. So . . . what kind of wasp was it?”

  Her face got all eager again. “I still don’t know. My prof wasn’t there, but I showed it around to some of the other people in the lab, and no one could identify it. I said maybe it’s just some kind of albino, but no one had ever really heard of an albino wasp, so . . .”

  I felt the familiar prickle of electricity start along my upper back, threatening to radiate out my arms. “Really?”

  She nodded. “And the more I looked at it—I think there’s something strange about its structure.”

  “Its body?”

  “Yeah.” She frowned. “The proportions of the head, thorax, and abdomen, and some of the connective structures, they’re not like other wasps’. . . .”

  For a moment I stopped hearing her, because my heart was beating in my ears, and I felt the day’s heat hard on my face.

  “. . . it might not even be a wasp,” Vanessa was saying.

  “What is it, then?” I asked, and I guess I must’ve sounded a bit panicky, because she looked at me strangely again.

  “Well, we’ll see what my prof says.”

  “The doctor said it was a wasp!” I said. “He said I got a wasp sting.”

  “Well, lots of things sting. I mean, I’m just an undergrad, Steven. I don’t know much about insects at all. It might be a new species, or just a variation that’s not been noted before around here. We’ll see.”

  THE BIG LADDER WAS IN THE GARAGE. DAD used it to clean out the gutters in the fall. It was pretty light, and I didn’t have much trouble carrying it around the side of the house. I unfolded it and notched the safety hinges. I’d climbed up only once before, and that was with Dad standing at the bottom, holding on.

  I bumped it along the wall so it was right underneath the nest. It didn’t reach all the way. There was still a big gap. That was why I had the broom. I figured that from the top of the ladder I’d be able to reach up and knock the nest off. It would fall and smash on the ground. All the wasps would swarm out. But I’d get down the ladder as soon as possible and pelt inside. I had my EpiPen in my pocket, just in case.

  I was home alone. Vanessa had taken Nicole and the baby down the street for ice cream and then to the park. I’d said I was staying at home to read. I’d been home a lot this summer. We hadn’t planned a vacation, because of the baby, and my day camp didn’t start till August. Brendan and Sanjay were both away someplace or other.

  I started up the ladder. After a few rungs I felt the legs shift a little, but it still seemed pretty stable. It was funny. I was afraid of a lot of things, but heights wasn’t one of them. Even though I had scary dreams where I was stranded on top of skinny poles, or razor-thin ledges, I liked climbing trees and going up glass elevators, and standing on the see-through floor of the CN Tower.

  I wore a long-sleeved shirt, with a hoodie over it, the hood pulled tight, leaving only a small circle for my eyes and nose. As I went higher, the ladder clicked and creaked. With my left hand I held tight to the side; with my right I gripped the broom. I was aware of the wasps flying past overhead, to and from the nest.

  With every rung I got angrier. My parents couldn’t even deal with the nest. I was allergic, but they were too busy. They were busy with the baby and would be for the rest of their lives, so I had to do it. I didn’t know if these wasps were really from my dreams, but I wanted them off my house. I wanted them out of my dreams. That nest was coming down.

  I didn’t go all the way to the top. I stayed two rungs down, so I had something to hold on to. With the broom I reached as high as I could, and still it didn’t come anywhere near the nest.

  I mounted another rung. Now I had to reach down to hold on to the very top of the ladder. The broom came closer, the bristles just shy of the nest’s underside. I knew I didn’t have long. More wasps were gyrating around the nest now.

  I was just off to the right of the baby’s window, and there was a stone sill that stuck out a little bit, so I took hold of it in my left hand. I stepped onto the top rung. The ladder swayed and then settled down. My chest leaned against the brick wall, and I felt my jerky heartbeats, but it made me feel safer, something so solid against me. Tilting my face up, I slowly raised the broom, straining for the nest. I didn’t know how strong a swing I could give it without losing my grip—or my balance.

  First swing, and the bristles gently raked the bottom of the nest. The broom kept going. Grunting, I brought it back and tried again. It hit a little harder this time, and I saw some papery bits waft down.

  The wasps came. In a rush they dropped from the bottom of the nest and swarmed around the bristles of the broom. I gripped the very tip of the handle and was preparing to give it a big upward shove, when I was suddenly aware of a single wasp on my left hand, then a second on the knuckles of my right. I froze.

  Another landed on the little exposed circle of my face. I felt its tiny legs, the flex of its solid body. I didn’t yell. I couldn’t. All my instincts—to swat and flail about—had somehow been paralyzed. I was terrified they would sting, but they didn’t. They just stayed put. They were all over the broom now, crawling toward me.

  I let the broom drop. It clattered down the side of the ladder to the ground. The wasps swirled, and more landed on me, my clothing, my hands, my face, just staying very still. I wanted to reach for the EpiPen in my pocket, but I was afraid the wasps on my hand would sting if I moved. The ones on my face were blurry blots in my vision. But I knew they were there, motionless, their antennae pricked attentively, watching me with their compound eyes, smelling me.

  I took a downward step. Some of the wasps left my hands. I took another step. A few launched themselves from my forehead. Step by step more of them left. By the time my feet touched the ground, there wasn’t a single one on me.

  I looked up and saw the last of them disappearing back into the nest.

  A neighbor had seen me up on the ladder and called my parents.

  “Who was it?” I asked when Mom and Dad confronted me after dinner. I’d tried to be really careful and make sure no one was around in their backyards.

  “Their English wasn’t good,” Dad said, shrugging. “I don’t know.”

  “But that’s not important,” said Mom with forced patience. We were down in the kitchen. Nicole was already in bed. “What made you do something so dangerous?”

  I felt myself dig in. “I was careful. I wanted the nest down. What’s the big deal?”

  “For starters, you’re allergic!” Mom said.

  “I had my EpiPen,” I muttered.

  “You get stung enough times, that’s not going to help,” Dad said.

  “Well, maybe if I got some desensitization shots!” I told him.

  “We’re a little busy around here, buddy,” Dad said, and I could tell by the look in his eyes, he was getting angry. Mom put a hand on his arm.

  “Yeah, well, I’m allergic!” I said. “And no one seems to care about that!”

  “We do care—” Mom began.

  “So just stay inside until we take care of it,” Dad said. “You don’t climb a ladder!”

  “What if one gets into the house?” I demanded. “What if I get stung that way? What if the baby gets stung?”

  They didn’t say anything for a few seconds, but Dad’s eyes were still fierce.

>   “You could’ve fallen,” Mom said. “You could’ve really, really hurt yourself. . . .”

  “We’ll take care of the nest,” Dad said.

  Mom came toward me and tried to hug me, but I shrugged her off.

  “What’s going on, Steven?” she asked softly. “Tell us what’s up.”

  I turned away from her because I could feel my throat aching, and I didn’t want to cry. I looked at the wall, at the print with its brushed silver metal frame. I felt all the words welling up inside me, and I didn’t want them inside me anymore.

  I told Mom and Dad about my dreams. All the conversations with the angels who’d turned out to be wasps. I sat on the kitchen chair and stared at the floor, partly so I could concentrate and not forget anything, partly because I was afraid to see my parents’ faces. I told them how the queen had said she was going to replace our baby with a new one growing in the nest, a healthy baby, and how I didn’t think the dream was real, not really, but I was sick of hearing from her, and I just wanted them all gone.

  Neither of them interrupted me, and when I finally looked up, I wished I hadn’t. Dad’s chest was moving in and out slowly and deeply. Mom was crying, tears running down her cheeks, and then her face crumpled and she was sobbing. Dad went and put his arms around her and whispered something into her ear.

  “It’s too much,” she said. “I can’t . . .”

  I sat rigidly, wishing I hadn’t told them at all, wishing I could take it back.

  Mom wiped her eyes and reached for me, and this time I let her hug me, just so I didn’t have to see her face. “I know this has been a really hard time. I’m so sorry if we haven’t been around much for you.”

  “It’s okay. It’s not your fault or anything.”

  “Do you want to talk to Dr. Brown again?” Dad asked.

  I chewed at my lip. Quietly I said, “What if it’s true?”

  “You’ve always had pretty intense dreams,” Dad said.

  “I know, but—Vanessa said those wasps weren’t normal.”

  “Well, that may be,” said Dad, and he sounded like he was getting angry again, “but that doesn’t mean a thing, Steven. I’m going to have a word with her, if she’s encouraged any of this—”