it wasn’t a dark or stormy night, though it might as well have been: crime had reared its ugly head. the victims: us, three innocent girls, brand new in a hard, cold town, unsuspecting the turn our fate was about to take. the perpetrator: the bee, a full inch in length, a sturdy stinger in tact, and a death stare in his beady eyes.

the scene unfolded as these things are apt to: a window left open – the hope of fresh air, of life itself – thwarted by an invader.

it was S’s window, actually, and she had left it open as a matter of course. hers is the only one not yet equipped with screens, and despite one, A.C.’s, vehement claims that there are no bugs in this town, a bee found its way in.

When first confronted with the attacker, S shut her door, hoping the bee would find its own way out of the window. After an hour or so, though, it became apparent that the bee was as lost in the bedroom as we were on the Mass. Pike. S’s window is covered by a huge, heavy drape, and the bee had gotten itself entangled.

“Trap it under the cup,” S begged me, holding out an empty glass. “Then put this paper over it, and we can toss it out.”

“You do it. I’m deathly afraid of bees.” I shook my head and backed away, somewhat ashamed at my cowardice, but more afraid of the bee.

“I’ve never been stung, I’m afraid of them, too,” S said.

I took another long look at the bee. He didn’t even bother to look at me, just stood on the drapes, doing whatever it is bees do when they are standing on drapes. I knew what I had to do. It was up to me. To me – I who had been stung before, who could rationalize the complete and utter lack of any real threat ahead, I who had experienced how little a bee sting actually hurts.

“Ok.” I said, taking a slow, deep breath. I nodded at S, and proceeded to administer some self-therapy. “I’ve been stung. It’s not that bad actually. Virtually painless. Slightly inconvenient. It’s like a mosquito bite, but you know, redder. And it goes away fast. I can do this. Give me the cup.” I held out my hands, nobility surely resting on my brow. “And if I get stung, you can nurse me back to health.” I stipulated.

“Anything!” S promised.

“Actually, I think its dead,” J said, entering the room. “I think it will be ok.” She pointed to the bee; she was right: it was motionless, still in the same position it had been for some time.

“Ok, if its dead, no problem, then,” I said, my courage rising at these empowering words.

“Just tap the curtain to be sure,” S suggested.

“I have a stick!” J offered, running back to her room to get a plank of plywood. It was ideal: at least 2 feet long, an inch thick — no bee could survive a whack with this thing.

Gingerly, J reached out and tapped the curtain, hoping the bee would be no more than a lifeless corpse, falling obligingly to the ground.

The bee wasn’t dead. It fluttered up — we flung ourselves backwards, cowering behind each other, shrieking in decibals not often heard by human ears. “Ohno-Ohno-Itsnotdead-itsalive-whatdowedo-wherediditgo.”

Terror hung in the air, though the bee did not. Where was he? Where had he gone?

We found him moments later, struggling against the window. He was able to fly, but seemed also to be slower than the usual bee invader.

“I think he’s dying. Or sick.” S noted.

“If he would go up against a flat surface, I could put the cup over him, and let him outside,” I said, clutching the glass and paper.

S took the stick again - o handy piece of plywood! - and offered to nudge him off the window and onto the floor. We set up our barricades again: the chair, a sweatshirt and the bed. No bee would get the best of us again.

S poked the curtain, trying to move the air around the window. The bee started, flew upwards, and we fell backwards in another bout of frightened cries and (to our credit, i must say) laughter.

Where did the bee go? We never saw. No amount of beating the curtains with the stick, of peeping through the folds in the drapes, or of investigating window sills produced any definite results. Some say the bee might have flown out the window at last. Others claim to have seen its shadow along the drapes’ ridges. Waiting and checking things again have produced no new evidence. What happened to the bee? The world may never know.