The One and Only Zoe Lama

by Tish Cohen

  “It won’t. Justin and I love each other. Besides, Devon Sweeney said prenups turn relationships sour. She’s seen it happen.”

  This Devon is taking things too far. It’s one thing advising people on sheepskin boot colors and guinea-pig care. But now she’s endangering people’s housing rights! “Annika, let’s remember that Justin does have a history of being less than gentlemanly with you. Remember the incident last month involving the bottom of your soiled shoe and your soiled heart?”

  With this, Annika bursts into tears. “Ooh, this is so confusing! Devon said as long as I anticipate his bad behavior, I can change it! That all I have to do is praise him lavishly when he gets it right and he’ll turn out just fine.”

  I squint, tumbling Devon’s words around and around in my head. Something’s twisted up and wonky here, but I’m too clammy under the arms to tell what, exactly.

  Amateur Orthodontia Is Not Permitted in the Cafeteria

  Laurel, Sylvia, and I watch in horror as Smartin plops down onto the bench beside Susannah. On his lunch tray are four things: an apple, a squashed milk carton, a plastic fork, and a stapler. Susannah slides her lunch tray away from his and says, “There are rules at this table, Smartin. If you sit here, you obey them.”

  “Lay them on me, cover girl.” He opens the stapler and shakes all the staples onto his tray, where they land in a puddle of milk.

  “No licking of body parts, yours or anyone else’s,” Susannah says.

  “Ouch, that hurts me where I work.” He holds up his hand to Susannah. “High five.”

  She ignores his hand and continues. “No shoes on the table and no chewing of any table legs.”

  “I was kind of thinking your leg…”

  “Ugh.” She swats him off and inspects her shoulder for rubble.

  “So anyway,” says Sylvia as she bites into another dusty rice cake, “right after I finished my homework, I asked my mother—”All of a sudden she starts coughing and reaches for her milk container, only it’s empty.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  She nods and croaks, “I just need a—cough, cough—drink.”

  I grab my milk, then Laurel’s. Both are empty. I start to reach for Susannah’s but she sets her hand on it. “I’m sorry, but I can’t. It’s January and my skin needs the vitamin D.”

  Sylvia stands up and points toward the far end of the cafeteria table, where Brandon and the other LameWizards are shoveling chili into their mouths and shouting while they battle dragons or goblin commanders or jack-o’-lopes. She says with a gravelly voice, “Brandon usually shares his leftover milk with me.”

  After she leaves, we glance back at Smartin, who is cramming staples between his teeth. Every time he jams in another one, he looks up and gives us a big metal freakshow grin. “You never said anything about do-it-yourself retainers,” he says with a lisp.

  “Ugh,” I say. Who would have thought I’d need a rule for this? “Unwritten Rule #14. Amateur orthodontia is not permitted in the cafeteria.”

  He looks at me and whispers, “Your face is not permitted in the cafeteria.”

  A lunch lady stops beside our table and looks around. “Who said that?”

  Laurel, who never eats cafeteria food on account of the scarcity of blue-food options, is staring into the porthole of wickedness itself, Smartin’s foul mouth. She crinkles her nose. “I think you have one stuck in your lip…”

  Susannah stands up and climbs off of the bench. “I’m going to get another drink.”

  Just then Sylvia returns from LameWizardland, still sputtering. Uh-oh. There’s a clientzilla look in her eyes that makes me grab my sandwich and start chewing. I’ve seen this look before in disgruntled clients. From my early Lama days, I’ve tried hard to keep looks like this to a minimum. I swallow, then offer a shaky smile. “Hey, Sylvia. Feeling better?”

  The look goes from howling mad to boiling fury. Her nostrils flare into tiny sharp triangles. “No!” She coughs again. “And do you want to know why?”

  I’m petrified to hear the answer. Like a brave little soldier, I ask, “Why?”

  I can see now that her wings are trembling. “Because Brandon said no. Actually, he said, ‘No chance!’ Brandon has always shared his milk with me—every single time I choked on my mother’s rice cakes. And not just because he’s lactose intolerant either. I could always sense there was something more between us. Something that goes way deeper than one percent with Omega Three Essential Oils. But not this time. This time he looked at me like he hoped I would just go away.” She squints down at me. “Do you know what it feels like to be looked at like that—by someone you care about?”

  I swallow. “Sort of.”

  “Your whole plan backfired! And now I’ll never know where my love for him might have gone, what possibilities might have lain ahead for two innocent…”

  Okay. I don’t yet have a rule about this, but, even in my horror, I feel one brewing. It’ll need some tweaking, but it’ll have an awful lot to do with banning gingerbreadwith-icing language that would make a unicorn want to hack off his own horn with a plastic spoon.

  “Sylvia, everything is unfolding exactly as planned. First he gets hurt, then he brews for a while, then he thinks he should make a bigger effort with you. It’s how Brandon operates. Believe me, it’s the only way to get a guy like that into an airless auditorium to watch girls in tartan skirts kicking their overdeveloped calves to bagpipe music. You have to trust me.”

  She doesn’t say anything at first. Just blinks. “I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right.”

  I pat her wing. “Believe in the system. Did I or did I not get Mr. Renzetti’s wife to come back from the hunting cabin after he got those hair plugs?”

  She thinks about this. “You did, I guess. The bell’s going to ring soon. I better get in line for the water fountain.”

  “Atta girl,” I call after her. I turn around and smile at Laurel. “She’s going to be all right, that kid.” I sigh. Laurel pats my hand in true #2 BFIS support.

  “Uh-oh,” says Smartin, chewing on an apple core.

  “What?” we ask.

  “I think I swallowed my braces.”

  The end-of-lunch bell rings, signaling us all to get out of the cafeteria and get outside or else we’ll get detention. Smartin tears out, leaving the evidence of his Frankenstein dental surgery all over the table. I sweep the staples onto my tray and wipe up his puddle of milk.

  Susannah rushes back into the cafeteria. She’s out of breath by the time she reaches us. “Zoë. Red alert!”

  “I thought we agreed to make all red alerts blue alerts,” wails Laurel.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  “I just came back from the water fountain. Guess who was getting a drink?”

  “Sylvia. She needed to clear her throat…”

  Susannah shakes her head. “She was drinking all right. Devon was holding the water fountain on for her and she told Sylvia to take an ‘extra long drink.’ Even though there was a hu-uge lineup waiting.”

  I squeeze my mouth into an angry little ball.

  “It gets worse. When Sylvia had nowhere to wipe her dripping mouth…” Susannah looks around before leaning in real close, “Devon offered up the pretty green scarf her father made.”

  We look at each other as the horribleness of the situation settles over us like really ugly, really moldy confetti.

  Devon Sweeney is trying to poach my very best client!

  Time to Panic

  “Listen to this,” says Laurel, stepping onto my elevator Monday after school. Her nose is deep inside a very shiny, very pink, lousy excuse for a rule book. “Grooming someone to be your Major Best Friend spells LOVE!” she reads. “L is for Learner. If you tell your MBF what you want from her, she’ll be a quick Learner!”

  “A quick learner?” I snort. I pound on the button for the eighth floor. Nothing happens.

  Susannah peers over Laurel’s shoulder. “O is for Open,” she reads. “Open yourself up t
o your MBF’s fears and concerns and you’ll spend many happy years together. V is for Voice. Always speak to a new MBF in a calm, soothing voice so she learns she can trust you.” In a calm, soothing voice, Susannah says to me, “Hit that stupid button harder or we’ll miss The Garage Girls.”

  I blow on the heel of my hand—for luck—and hit it hard. Still nothing.

  I have something of a love-hate thing going with elevators. On the one hand, with an elevator, I don’t have to walk eight flights of stairs several times each day.

  On the other hand, there’s the creepy, panicky feeling I get when I’m stuck in small spaces and can’t get out. I once Googled scared of small places and learned it’s called claustrophobia and probably comes from a “traumatic childhood event.” Well, I know exactly what childhood event caused it. It was when I was five and my gorilla-size and gorillashaped cousins, Liza and Lance, came to visit from Oregon. I stashed myself in Liza’s pink suitcase during hide-and-seek and Lance found me and zipped the suitcase shut. He carried me around the apartment until his mother heard my muffled screams and made him open up. I fell out onto the floor.

  Lance got half a day without video games. I got a lifetime fear of being packed.

  “I shouldn’t even be here,” says Susannah, checking her watch. “My audition is in an hour and a half and I should probably go home and get ready.”

  Laurel looks up. “Is this for the fresh-face commercial? Just you, a bathroom mirror, and a sinkful of icy-cold water?”

  “Yes. This is the job of a lifetime.”

  “I thought the TV show and major motion picture are going to be the jobs of a lifetime,” Laurel says.

  “This one’s a stepping-stone!” Susannah snaps.

  Just as I’m getting ready to whack the stuffing out of the button, I see my mother waving to me from the lobby.

  “Zoë, honey! I need your help with some groceries,” she sings before disappearing into the parking garage.

  I look at Laurel and Susannah, who are looking at Susannah’s watch and bugging their eyes. “We have to go upstairs or we’ll miss the entire beginning,” says Susannah.

  “We’ll do it all in one trip,” I say, hurrying down the hall toward the garage stairwell. The girls don’t move. “Come on!”

  Susannah pokes her perfect nose in the air. “That doesn’t sound like a calm, soothing MBF voice to me…”

  “If we don’t hurry, my mom will make us unpack the groceries, too!”

  Laurel and Susannah chase after me.

  Down in the garage, Mom is complaining to Mr. Kingsley that the garage door takes too long to open, so we grab the bags out of the trunk.

  Halfway to the elevator—which still hasn’t budged—we start to run. Dropping onto the elevator floor, groaning from the cruelty of child labor, we pull the bags off our arms and Susannah and I lie back on them, exhausted.

  Laurel goes for total button control. She hits all the top-floor buttons and drums her fists against the other knobs. The elevator isn’t impressed with Laurel’s sudden burst of energy. When she finally does her big solo finale on the “door close” button, the elevator walls shiver, then close, and the elevator car starts to climb up, up, up.

  “That was brutal grocery-bag abuse,” says Laurel, reaching for Devon’s folder in her backpack. “We never found out what the E in LOVE stands for.”

  “I think I can live without knowing,” I say, shifting my position so a bag of apples can act as my pillow. I close my eyes and pretend I’m on a sunny beach. “What about you, Susannah?”

  “Totally. Put it away.”

  Laurel ignores us. “E is for Emotion,” she reads. “Keep your emotions steady. Emotional highs and lows can be unnerving for your MBF. Nothing will enrich your life experience like a good MBF.” She drops the book. “Major Best Friend. It sounds so…G.I. Joe or something.”

  “Being Devon’s best friend probably isn’t much different from being in the military,” says Susannah. “Drab.”

  Just after we pass the third floor, the elevator jerks to a screechy stop. We look at one another. I crawl over to the control panel and whack the eight button. Nothing happens. I whack again, this time blowing on my fist first. Still, nothing.

  My heart starts to pound.

  “What’s wrong?” says Susannah in a tinny voice. “Are we stuck? We can’t be stuck! My agent and my mother are picking me up out front soon. In his Hummer.”

  Laurel rolls her eyes. “Stupid Hummer.”

  “Shut up, Laurel! You’re just jealous!”

  “Am not!” She reaches up to rub her throat as she swallows hard. Her voice changes. “But I am getting thirsty…”

  “Everybody stop talking!” I shout. “I need to…to think. And breathe.” I pull open the steel door to the emergency phone and peer inside. I decide that phoning for help is ridiculous, so I press the alarm button. It buzzes like a metal pipe full of mad beetles. I use the Morse code for SOS—three short buzzes, three long, three short—which means Save Our Souls.

  “I don’t believe it,” says Susannah. “I’m going to miss the audition. My entire career is over.” Then Susannah does something unprecedented. She takes her sunglasses and hurls them against the back wall of the elevator. It’s such a shock to see her entire face, I can’t speak right away.

  “We need to distract ourselves,” says Laurel, pulling my mother’s shea-butter lotion from a bag. She squirts some on her hand and rubs it all over her face like a mud mask. “We’ll pretend it’s a day at the spa.” Laurel lies back like she’s poolside and passes the lotion to Susannah. “I’m not sure if dehydration is blurring my vision, Susannah, but I think I’m seeing a…”

  “What?” Susannah’s hands fly up to her face. “I need a mirror. Someone get me a mirror!”

  Laurel closes her eyes like she’s getting a massage. “Maybe we can call your agent in his Hummer.”

  “This is no time for jokes!” Susannah screeches like a crazy lady. “Here!” she says, pulling out the aluminum foil and tearing into the box. She pulls a corner sheet from the roll and peers at her reflection. She gasps in horror, then looks at us with bugged-out eyes. “I don’t believe it…it’s my first pimple.”

  Laurel jumps up and knocks a few bags over onto the dirty floor.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “I’m rationing,” she says. “Splitting up the food into thirds. Everyone needs protein, grains and cereals, fruits and vegetables, and dairy.” She stops. “Except…”

  “What?” Susannah and I say together.

  “We have absolutely no liquids. So even if we eat tiny amounts and huddle together for warmth, we’ll be dead in two days. Three if we drink our own urine.”

  “That’s disgusting!” says Susannah. “Anyway, I can’t die. When they find my body, it’ll be scarred by acne!”

  “Nobody’s dying!” I say. “Let’s not panic. We haven’t even tried the phone.” Opening the tiny metal door again, I reach for the red phone and pick it up. Right away, I hear it ringing, then a miniature voice says, “Nine-one-one operator. Police, fire, or ambulance?”

  Before I can explain that what we actually need is an elevator repairman, Laurel and Susannah grab the phone, both wailing at once—Susannah about her mother waiting in a black Hummer, and Laurel about dehydration setting in. By the time I grab the receiver, the line’s dead. I hang up slowly.

  “This,” I say, “would be the perfect time to panic.” As I suck in a deep breath I can practically hear the sound of a pink suitcase being zipped up tight.

  The second the firefighters open the elevator doors, three things happen. Susannah scrambles over them like the stepping-stones to stardom they’ve become, I shoot under their legs and kiss the filthy ground they walk on, and Laurel returns to her poolside position and demands that someone massage her shoulders, all thoughts of dehydration forgotten.

  In all the commotion, my mother’s voice is the only thing I hear. She’s lecturing Mr. Kingsley as she scoops up g
rocery bags. “Honestly, it’s no longer safe to live in this building!”

  “Safe?” I snort, guiding my mother toward the stairwell. “Where’s the adventure in that?”

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

  I guess Mom figures almost getting swallowed whole by the elevator is enough torture for one day, so instead of forcing me to put away the groceries and set the table for dinner, she tells me to go take some much-needed “me” time in my room. Armed with a handful of chocolate chip cookies, I plop myself in front of my computer and send an instant message to Riley. (The Number One Unwritten Rule when it comes to cheating death-by-elevator-suffocation is to make sure to tell your boyfriend how lucky he is that you survived.)

  zoelama: riley? u there?

  riledup: zozyrgrrl!

  zoelama: u know it

  riledup: Bad timing z. g2g to class

  zoelama: sumo wrestling?

  Riley isn’t your average guy. For as long as I’ve known him, he’s disappeared every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday after school. When I asked if I could come and where he went, he always said no and to sumo wrestling class. Which I wasn’t nearly dumb enough to fall for.

  Then last month when I refused to go into the school dance because of my utterly humiliating fear of balloons, Riley tried to make me feel better by telling me something equally embarrassing about himself—that he was not, in fact, training to be a sumo wrestler. But that he was training to be a ballet dancer. Which I think is cuter than cute and braver than brave. Then he made me swear not to tell a single solitary soul.

  To his adoring public—and mine—Riley Sinclair is knee-deep in ancient Japanese martial arts.