The One and Only Zoe Lama

by Tish Cohen

  The One and Only Zoë Lama

  Tish Cohen

  For Lucas and Max

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Babies Are a Pain in the Eardrum

  There’ll Be No Stepping Up in My Absence. None.

  Words Made of Churning Bubbles of Intestinal Gases Are Not Words. They’re Sewage.

  The Missing Link Is Not So Missing Anymore

  There Is No Excuse for Guys Named Thunder Who Stand on Windy Cliffs

  Step Away from the Dinginess

  Rules Were Made to Be Spoken. Out Loud.

  Clear Your Head of Googly-Eyed Puppies

  Amateur Orthodontia Is Not Permitted in the Cafeteria

  Time to Panic

  If You Must Cheat Death, Remember to Tell Your Boyfriend About It Later

  Rule by Humiliation. You Know, in the Name of World Peace.

  Sparkles Are for Good Witches of the North and LameWizard Lovers

  Silence Is Genius

  Backyards Full of Trees Are Poltergeist Movies Waiting to Happen

  Storybook Cottages Belong in Storybooks

  I Icktopia

  Paddling Pools Can Hold a Guinea Pig’s Attention for Only So Long

  Guinea Pigs Should NOT Smell Like Rabbits

  “I’ll Be the Sandbar Beneath Your Feet” Is Not a Song

  Frolicking Puppy Wallpaper Can Protect You from Exactly Nothing

  Bad Jokes Come Before Boston Creams

  Nothing Mops Up Brain Sweat Like a Good Book

  Life Swapping Not Recommended

  You Gotta Know When to Fold ’Em

  Sometimes a Cigar Is Just a Cigar

  If Your Father Loves You Enough to Paint You a Thundering Stallion, It’s Your Duty to Never Look Away

  Don’t Judge a Book by Its Hot-Pink Cover

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Babies Are a Pain in the Eardrum

  I hate going to the doctor. It’s total chaos. The entire waiting room is coated with a thin, gluey glaze of mucus. The walls, the receptionist’s desk, even the Kleenex box—all sticky. And don’t even get me started on the fish tank. The floor is crawling with feverish brats thumping one another with plastic tricycles, and you’re never going to find a place to sit, because all the spare seats have spit-up on them.

  Nothing against Dr. Jensen, other than the way he sings Beatles songs while he looks into your ear, he’s an okay guy for a pediatrician. And if you survive your checkup without wailing, vomiting, or stealing his latex gloves—so you can fill them with water and launch them out your bedroom window later—he gives you an animal cookie on your way out. I don’t mind that they aren’t chocolate chip cookies. I’m twelve years old, plenty old enough to know it’s easier to bribe a blubbering kid with food if it’s shaped like an alligator.

  I do blame Mrs. Chomsky, his angry receptionist. She just sits in her spinny chair, answering the phone and slapping files on the counter for Dr. Jensen.

  Well, it’s her lucky day.

  I’ve been home with chicken pox for eight days, twenty-two hours, and thirteen minutes. Not that I’m counting. Dr. Jenkins said, “No school, no friends, no fun.” He didn’t actually say the no-fun part, but he should have, because I was bored. And major itchy. I knew I had to come for another checkup before I was allowed back in school, so when I wasn’t scratching or dreaming about scratching, I was drawing up a diagram for old Mrs. Chomsky. I colored my diagram, labeled it with instructions, and snuck out of the house to get it laminated. (If you ask me, everything in this entire place should be laminated. To make it snot-proof.)

  My diagram is based on my one and only rule about babies. I may not have any babies in my family—or any brothers or sisters or fathers, for that matter—but here it is anyway, Unwritten Rule #15—Babies are a pain in the eardrum, so you better keep them busy while they’re waiting to see the doctor.

  My system is based on stations. Keep babies and toddlers moving, don’t give them a second to think! Thinking only gets them into trouble, because their heads are still so small. They really only have room for two thoughts: How loud should I scream? and Who can I whack next? Both of these behaviors are hugely annoying and, as I’ve mapped out, can be avoided by moving babies from one station to another in three-minute intervals.

  You start them off in the Bottle and Juice Station for energy. Then, when the bell rings, they move to the Recreation Station (tricycles) for exercise. Then the bell rings and they move to the Nature Station (fish). After three minutes with their faces glued to the dirty glass, it’s over to the Hygiene Station to be scrubbed down with antibacterial wipes. Then three minutes to chew on a book and start all over again.

  Simple, really. The mothers do all the work. All Mrs. Chomsky has to do is ring a tiny bell every three minutes and the place should run like spit.

  The moment Dr. Jensen calls my name, I pull out my bell and my diagram—titled “Babypalooza”—and set it on Chomsky’s desk. There. I’ve done all I can. Like my grandma used to say to me when I was younger, “You can lead a horse to the bathtub, but you can’t make her wash behind her ears.” Which never even made sense, because after she said it, my mom made me wash behind my ears.

  My mother and I follow Dr. Jensen into the examining room. No matter what I’m in for, the drill’s always the same. He dances me into the examining room, tells me to take off my shoes, and makes me hold still to get measured. He never bothers to tell me how tall I am—or am not—he just scratches something in my file and says, “Not to worry. What you lack in the size department, you make up for with your gigantic personality!”

  Afterward, he scoops me up onto the examining table and the crinkly paper pokes me hard in the back of my knee.

  “And how are our spots today, Miss Zoë Monday Costello?”

  Next time I come, I swear, I’m bringing some Wite-Out for that middle name. “Pretty okay.” I roll up my sleeves and show him my arms. “Not nearly so spotty.”

  “I followed all your advice, Dr. Jensen,” says my mother with a tight little smile. “Oatmeal baths, sea-salt baths. Even the tea-tree oil. Just like you said. Dr. Jensen’s advice made an enormous difference, didn’t it, Zoë?”

  “Kind of.”

  My mother is blushing. She doesn’t know I know what I know, but I know it. My mother has a teensy crush on Dr. Jensen. He just thinks she’s friendly, but she’s not fooling me. She’s never this friendly.

  “Good,” he says, pulling out his little flashlight. He looks in my eyes, in my ears, then shoves a Popsicle stick in my mouth. His hair is like an unraveling SOS pad, springing up from his head in every direction. “Say ahhh.”

  “Ahhh.”

  “Good.” Then he shines his light up my nose and makes a happy grunt. “I see the pustules in your right nostril have dried up nicely.”

  I don’t answer on the grounds that having anything as vile and horrid as “pustules” up my nostril is so embarrassing it takes my words away. I mean, I’m a good person. Sort of. I take care of my mother, my classmates, my teachers, even my grandma, and she doesn’t even live with us anymore. I take care of her every Sunday at the Shady Gardens Home for Seniors by making sure the staff doesn’t give her lumpy cocoa. I even take care of the old collie that sleeps under the Shady Gardens nurses’ station by filing his toenails and painting them with Mom’s favorite nail polish—Midnight Mango.

  With all these good works, I consider gruesome boils inside my innocent nose to be an Act of Hostility on the Part of the Universe.

  “Does your nose feel better?” Dr. Jensen asks me. Loudly.

  Trying to ignore him, I sniff and lean down to f
akescratch my ankle, wishing a tornado, a bobcat, or a rashy toddler would burst through the door. Anything to change this sickening subject.

  “Zoë?” he says.

  “What?”

  “Your right nostril. How is it?”

  “Umm…”

  “Zoë, darling, answer Dr. Jensen,” says my mom. I can tell by her voice that I’m going to hear about this in the car.

  Dr. Jensen looks up my nose again. “Are your pustules causing less discomfort now?”

  My pustules? Ugh. I look away, toward a square tin decorated with blue swirls. On the lid, it says BOVINE BALM. “What’s that?” I ask.

  It works. He looks toward the tin and laughs. “That, Miss Zoë, is a trade secret. My hands get dry and cracked from washing them between patients. I’d heard that this stuff was a miracle moisturizer, so I hunted around for it and what do you think happened?”

  I shrug. I really don’t know.

  “I found it at the drugstore in the lobby downstairs. Only $4.99.”

  “Four ninety-nine?” squeaks my mother.

  “Well, it sounds like you’re a man with good economic sense.”

  Dr. Jensen opens the lid and shows the clear goo to my mother, who pretends she’s impressed. I’m thinking it smells like Vaseline, when my mom asks, “Doesn’t bovine mean for cows?”

  Dr. Jensen laughs. “That’s why I was surprised to find it at the drugstore. It’s made to moisturize the tired, cracked teats of milking cows.”

  He bends over to write my back-to-school note while my mother rubs the Bovine Balm into her hands. “It does feel marvelous,” she says.

  He scoops some out. “I bet this stuff is even strong enough to keep my hair in place. Now that would be a miracle.” Which gives me an idea.

  I have a lot of clients at school. Which is why I have the nickname Zoë Lama. Kids, teachers—even principals—come to me to solve their every problem. And I care about them all, I truly do. But some are just…special. Like Sylvia Smye. She’s been with me ever since the day in first grade that kids still refer to as “The Great Barrette Disaster.” Sylvia’s mother tried to tame some of her daughter’s cowlicks using yellow ducky barrettes, but by the end of the day, her hair stuck straight up like a horn in the front and Smartin Granitstein started calling her “Unicorn.” No matter what I did, I couldn’t flatten her hair, so I dug around at the back of my desk for some dusty rubber bands and built myself a horn of my own and then convinced the other girls to do the same.

  I’ve since tried nearly everything to fight Sylvia’s cowlicks. Braids, pretty hairbands, scrunchies, clips, and training them by having her wearing a bathing cap to bed for a whole week.

  There’s really only one thing I haven’t tried. My eyes drift over to the little jar of Bovine Balm.

  It sure would be good for business, heading back to school with the answer to my very best client’s very worst problem. I can just see the kids’ faces as Sylvia comes out of the girls’ bathroom with smooth, silky hair blowing in the wind and romantic music playing in the background. Everyone would congratulate me for doing the impossible. Everyone would want to know my secret. Even Riley, the Most Unbelievably Cute Guy in School, or MUC-GIS, would stop doubting my meddling. He’d see that my Unwritten Rules can change people’s lives. For the better.

  Oh, and Sylvia would be happy, too.

  Suddenly I can’t wait to get back to school.

  “Mom?” I smile sweetly, sliding off the end of the exam table. “Can I borrow five dollars?”

  She agrees to meet me in the drugstore downstairs, so I head out into the waiting room, which is strangely silent. Sure enough, there’s Mrs. Chomsky standing in front of her desk with my bell in her hands.

  She rings it and everyone in the room stands up and shifts stations. Mothers are laughing. Babies are gurgling. Toddlers are quiet. Not one single kid is moaning, sniveling, whimpering, or wailing. Mrs. Chomsky notices me in the doorway and mouths, “Thank you.”

  Another satisfied customer.

  It’s snowing hard by the time we get back home. Mr. Kingsley, the superintendent, is out front shoveling off the sidewalk so no one falls and sues the building. If you didn’t know Mr. Kingsley, you’d think his lumberjack shirt, jeans and work boots, and furry hat with earflaps was a good shoveling uniform. If you did know him, you’d just be thankful a day finally came around that matches his outfit—because that’s what he wears every day.

  “Good evening, Mr. Kingsley,” says my mother. Her arms are full of grocery bags and she can barely see where she’s stepping.

  He looks up at her and nods, then scowls at me. Grandma caused a little flood a while back and he still suspects me of covering it up. Which I did—who wouldn’t cover for their very own grandma? I step over a little mound of snow and give him a smile. “I like your technique, Mr. Kingsley,” I say. “Much smarter to shovel lengthways instead of side to side.”

  I mean it, too. This way he only has to swoop from the front door to the curb and back twice, rather than twenty-five trips from side to side. Saves a lot of energy.

  Mom’s already swearing at the front door because her key’s stuck again. “Mr. Kingsley, are we ever going to get this door fixed?”

  “You gotta jiggle it to the right,” Mr. Kingsley says. “Like I showed you last time.”

  “I am.”

  She isn’t. “Mom, let me help…”

  “Shimmy it up and down as you push to the right,” he says. “Push hard.”

  One of her grocery bags slides through her arm and I catch it just before it falls. “Mom, I’ll open it.”

  She jams it harder. “You’d think when rents go up that a person could expect a few repairs.” Her face is red as she jiggles her key again.

  “Take it up at the next tenants’ meeting,” Mr. Kingsley says.

  She scowls at him and bashes the door with her body.

  “Mom…”

  Finally the door swings open. My mom charges through the lobby and starts stabbing the elevator button. By the time I catch up, she’s already stepped inside the car, which smells the exact same as the whole eighth-floor hallway is going to smell. Like Mrs. Grungen’s Tuesday-night Golabki. Hamburger meat, mushrooms, and buckwheat wrapped up in soggy cabbage to look like a dead pigeon wrapped in a greasy napkin. Which is pretty much how it smells.

  Mr. Jeffries gets off as I get on.

  He calls back, “Best of luck to you ladies. Elevator’s groaning again.”

  “Terrific,” Mom grumbles. She presses 8. Nothing happens. She presses it again. Just as she opens her mouth to swear, sigh, or cluck like Mrs. Chomsky, I whack it hard, right in the center. The doors close and up we go.

  She shakes her head. “How do you know these things?”

  I shrug. “It’s what I do.”

  We stare at the numbers above the doors while the elevator shudders and moans.

  “Mom?”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “You know how you told Dr. Jensen you were so proud of me for barely scratching my pox at all?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you know how he said your daughter won’t have one single solitary scar because of her outrageously good behavior?”

  Mom smiles. “I don’t recall the words outrageously good…”

  “Before I left school, Mrs. Patinkin said it was my turn to take home the class guinea pig. It would only be for one weekend and I’d keep him in my room—”

  She thinks about it. “There’s not a lot of space in the apartment.”

  “Mom, please!”

  “Does he smell?”

  “Like sugar cookies! Please, Mom!”

  “You promise he’d go back on Monday? No excuses?”

  I crossed my heart. “Cross my heart.”

  “Okay.”

  I squeal and hug her. “Thanks so much. You’re going to love Boris.”

  “Boris?” Mom makes a face. Then she makes her voice all bright and shiny. “So it’s back to school with y
ou tomorrow. Back to the old grind.”

  “I guess.”

  “You’ll have a lot of catching up to do, according to Mrs. Patinkin.”

  “I know. Annika Pruitt’s boyfriend will have forgotten to meet her after school and she’ll be ‘tragically wounded.’ And Stewie Buckenheimer will have lost his third retainer of the year and his parents’ dental coverage won’t pay for a fourth. And Avery’s lips will be cracked right down the middle, because he’ll have put his Chap Stick in his front pocket again and it’ll have rolled out and gotten lost.” I smile.

  My mother peers closer at me and squints. “And all this misfortune is a good thing?”

  “It’s like a rainstorm to an umbrella store,” I say with a shrug. “It’s good for business. I have a reputation to think of. If things go well when I’m away, my peoples will figure out they don’t need me or my rules. The Zoë Lama could be Ousted. Overthrown. Usurped.”

  I never asked to be the maker of all rules. I started out life as a regular sort of human with an irregular love for chocolate. It wasn’t until I neutralized the school bully back when I was about the size of a toenail that kids began to look to me for guidance.

  Suddenly requests poured in for advice. Teachers wanted to know how to keep kindergartners from stuffing carrots up their noses during snack time (play Itsy-Bitsy Spider). Girls wanted to know how to get stains out of party dresses (candle wax and a hot iron) or what to use if they were allergic to sunscreen (diaper-rash cream). Boys wanted to know how to get girls to stop running away from them (throw a scented dryer sheet in with your jeans and tees for long-lasting freshness) and how to get rid of the warts on their thumbs (wrap them in duct tape for ten days).

  I became known as the Zoë Lama because people thought of me as a teacher of sorts. And what kind of teacher would I be without a pocketful of Unwritten Rules?