The Honeys

by Ryan La Sala

But now I’m back. And I’m not going to be chased off again by boys being boys. So either you help me, or you watch me get hurt again and deal with the liability of this and the last summer I was here. It’s that simple, Wendy.”

“You’re threatening us, Marshall?” “No, Wendy.” I stand back. “I’m doing mathematics. I checked your Conservancy’s filings. This place is barely profitable as it is. By my calculations, you’re just six campers away from the red.”

Our service to nature is as a net, swollen with the weight of the world, rocking above the maw of a void that will never stop hungering for our sweetness.

“Mimi, you have murdered your sister and forged a splinter swarm, and thus you have imperiled the hive’s unity twice—”

The girls behind me screaming with joy, and the congregation before me screaming in shock as one of the veiled figures drops. Their veil topples off when they hit the ground. It’s Wendy. The hive tool juts from her shoulder. Darn, I think. All the mysterious calculations of nature at my disposal, and my aim still sucks.

The Honeys and I answer as one. WE ARE NOT YOUR GIRLS