The Invisible Rules of Zoe Lama

by Tish Cohen

  She looks up and smiles. “Zoë, honey. Are you all set to go? Do you have all your homework?”

  “Not yet. But it’s time we get you home. Aren’t you cold?”

  “A bit, now that you mention it. If I’d known it would be so windy, I’d have brought my green jacket.”

  I’m going to have to take better care of her now. Maybe plan out her days so she doesn’t have time to think about coming to get me from school. I don’t know why I haven’t thought of this before. Grandma needs a busier schedule.

  I walk her all the way to the corner of Allencroft and Beecher, where I stand facing traffic and waving my hands in the air, hoping to flag down a taxicab. Cars and trucks whiz by and after a couple of minutes a yellow cab pulls up right in front of us. I walk Grandma to the door and help her inside. “This nice lady is going to take you home, Gram. Do you have your key?”

  She opens her purse and fishes around in it. Then she holds up a gold key. “This is it. See? It says Key-master right there on the side. That’s the one.”

  “Good.”

  “But why don’t you come back with me, sweetheart? School’s over, isn’t it?”

  Pretty tempting. Just jump in the cab with Gram and pretend the whole thing never happened. But I can’t. I need to show my face so no one knows what happened. Susannah’s right. They can never know what I did and that’s that.

  “It’s over soon. I’ll be home in a couple of hours. Get yourself into a hot bath, okay, Grandma? You need to get warm.” I give the driver, a nice-looking lady almost as old as Grandma, our address and some cash I had in my pocket for the used-book sale in the library today. And, for an extra three bucks, convince the driver to walk Grandma all the way up to our apartment. Then I race back to school, barely daring to breathe.

  Never Trust a Snake

  Talk about a good Monday morning. Grandma is having an old friend over to play cards, so I’m pretty sure she won’t be doing any sightseeing on Allencroft today. What’s more, thanks to Susannah calling all the jackals away from the fence so she could explain just how difficult it is to land a national commercial, my social status is safe. Nobody saw a thing.

  To make things even better, this morning when I chased Mom to the car with her forgotten purse, she informed me that Get-me-this-Get-me-that Jason—who was supposed to come for dinner tonight to explain more about Shady Gardens’ exciting menu—is, in actual fact, not coming! This makes me very happy because yesterday I made a fresh batch of butterscotch squares and now there’s more for me and Grandma, who remembered my name all weekend long. And what makes me even happier is maybe Get-me-this-Get-me-that Jason is getting bored with us and is going to find someone else’s grandmother to steal and leave mine alone.

  I’m starting to think maybe Monday doesn’t have a voodoo hex on it after all. Maybe it’s all just been a big, ugly coincidence.

  Then I walk into the classroom and see Maisie.

  It’s never a good thing when you find your newest client slumped in a puddle of her own tears. Usually the only one puddle-slumping on a Monday morning is me. But here’s Maisie, drooped facedown over the desk that once was mine. Not that I resent being forced to move to the moron colony at the back.

  Much.

  “Maisie, what’s wrong?”

  She looks up at me with a face puffed up with tears and no small amount of phlegm. Her bottom lip quivers

  as she says, “My dream, my Olympic dream, is finished.” And, with that, she starts sobbing into her crossed arms.

  “But you’re only twelve. You can’t have been rejected by the Olympic committee. Yet,” I say.

  She shakes her head. “No. I didn’t make the Allencroft track team!”

  I, myself, would have been thrilled not to make the track team, not to be forced to run in endless circles every day after school, but it seems insensitive to point this out. “Oh no. Was it a vinyl shoe problem?”

  “No. It was that snake, Brianna,” says Maisie. She clenches her fists. “I hate her! She lied to me. She told me that in the hundred-yard dash I should hold back until the last fifty yards, and then run like crazy. But you know what happened? Everyone else, including Brianna the Snake, ran like thunder from the very first yard. But still I believed her. I thought they’d all get tired around the forty-yard mark and I’d pass them. But they didn’t! And I never got the chance to catch up. Lying is just about the worst thing someone can do. Especially lying a lie that takes someone down.”

  Aha. So Maisie doesn’t lie. She couldn’t have written that note to Susannah at Lake Labrador. In all my years as the Zoë Lama, I’ve learned that puddle slumpers are far, far too sensitive to lie about something as important as lying. In other words, Susannah really did get dumped.

  “Didn’t you tell Miss Dromedary?” I ask. “Shouldn’t your coach know about this kind of cruel sabotage?”

  Maisie pauses to wipe her nose on her sleeve. “I told her and she said, ‘No reruns. Your time is your time.’ See? You can never trust a snake.”

  “Actually that’s Unwritten Rule Number Eight. Never trust a snake.”

  Maisie doesn’t seem to appreciate the coincidence. “Bri-anna is just about the worst number one BFIS a girl could ask for. She destroyed my future. But what can you expect from a girl with a middle name like that?”

  This pricks my radar. I lean forward. “Like what?”

  “Brinderella.”

  “Brinderella? Brianna Brinderella Simpson? Are you kidding me?”

  She shakes her head.

  “What were her parents thinking? It was bad enough that her initials were B.S. But they liked Cinderella so much they thought they’d Brianna-ize it? Brianna Brin-derella? Are you sure?”

  Maisie doesn’t look pleased. “Can we get back to me, please?”

  “Of course. Sorry. You know what I think?”

  “No.”

  “Remember how Brianna nearly burst into flames the other day, when you assumed her shoes were vinyl?”

  Maisie nodded.

  “She was feeling guilty over her evil plot to rule the world. Or at least to overthrow you and rule the hundred-yard dash. She knew she’d lose to you and no amount of leather was going to help. The shame must have made her edgy.”

  “I don’t know what I was thinking, trusting her. What made me think she’d make a good best friend?”

  Anxious to steer this conversation far, far away from the person who actually recommended Brianna Brinderella, I smile and smack my hand against her desk. “It’s time to forget about best friendships. Completely. What is it that Oprah says? When life spits pumpkin seeds at you, it’s time to grow sweet potatoes…?”

  Maisie scrunches up her face and shakes her head. “I don’t think Oprah would say a thing like that. Maybe Dr. Phil?”

  “Whatever. Who said it isn’t important. What is important is you and your yams.”

  The other kids start filing into the classroom and Mrs. Patinkin is already writing something on the blackboard.

  “My yams?” Maisie asks.

  “It’s time for your next assignment,” I say. “But this time we’re going to focus on something healthier. Forget best friends. Let’s focus on…boys.”

  Maisie sits up tall and stops sniffling. “What about boys?”

  “The usual stuff. But it doesn’t have to be as long this

  time.” I’d like to give the kid a break after all she’s just been

  through. “Who’s your favorite boy and why. Fifty words.”

  Just then, Mrs. Patinkin claps her hands and says, “People, take your seats and prepare to reap the knowledge of the day.” Then she turns around and says, “Stewie Alan Buckenheimer, get your hands out of that trash can! Your retainer is in your mouth, I can see the metal from here!”

  Stewie’s dirty fingers fly up to his mouth and start feeling his teeth. “Wicked!” he says, and grins.

  As I turn to go back to my desk, I remember something and turn back to face Maisie. “I’ve got a new r
ed pen to mark your next essay!” But before I can tell her it smells like raspberry Kool-Aid and let her sniff it for motivation, I realize she can’t hear me because she’s reaching into her backpack for her binder.

  “Maisie?”

  She still doesn’t look back. She’s writing down something Mrs. Patinkin is scribbling on the blackboard as if I’m not staring into the back of her head.

  Now, I’m all for higher learning—it’s something I encourage for all my customers—but I need a rule to prevent new clients from getting their priorities mixed up. School might be a necessary evil, but when you’re working with the Lama, the Unwritten Rules rule. Period.

  Don’t Build Your Nest on a Flagpole

  Sadly, Monday went downhill immediately following puddle-slumping Maisie and is now shaping up to be the second worst Monday of my life. The first worst Monday of my life was, three years ago, the day Smartin pulled up my skirt at the school assembly and cruelly exposed my Sleeping Beauty underwear, which just happened to be the only underwear that came in my size that didn’t have ruffles.

  This Monday no one bared my underwear, but they bared my soul.

  Avery suspects me of stealing his raspberry marker (which is so mine), Maisie suspects me of setting her up with a Sabotage Queen, Laurel suspects Susannah of rigging the Snow Ball King and Queen nominations, and Brianna suspects me of blurting out her middle name over the school PA system. Which I so didn’t mean to do.

  I was only telling Laurel, who had just finished announcing Snow Ball tickets are for sale at Rick’s stupid Sorcerer’s Stand.

  How was I to know Laurel hadn’t turned off the mike?

  Not only all of that, but I haven’t decided how to tell Susannah that her Never-Been-Dumped reputation is, in actual fact, a sham.

  I’m lying on my bed, chewing over the bleakness of my existence, when I hear Grandma in the living room, having trouble opening a bottle of pills. I hurry to help her before she spills the whole bottle onto the floor and I have to spend the next half hour hunting for little pills that rolled under the couch. The TV in the living room is on, showing some kind of disaster with rain-slicker-wearing reporters toughing it out in the drizzle.

  “Hey, Gram,” I say, crossing the room and sitting beside her on the couch. “I’ll help you with that.” I pop off the lid and hand her two Tylenols. “Is it your hip again?”

  “This body gives me no rest,” she says as she washes the pills down with what’s probably cold tea. “If it’s not my hip, it’s my back. Getting old is a rough business. I don’t recommend it to anyone.”

  She points at the TV. “Look at those clowns.” I turn to see houses being washed down a hill by a giant rainy mudslide while the house’s owners watch with the reporter from far away. “Damn fools,” she says.

  “Grandma, that’s a disaster. It’s not the people’s fault their homes are being washed away. It’s pretty sad.”

  She snorts and laughs. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s don’t build your nest on a flagpole. It’s slippery in summer and you’ll catch your tongue on it in winter.”

  The messed-up thing about what’s happening to Gram is that it comes out of nowhere. You’re talking away with her, then—bam!—she’s not there anymore. I can sort of see how she could get all tied up in her memories, but now she’s laughing about families losing their homes. Maybe even their pets. I can’t imagine how I’d feel if my home got washed away, but I sure can imagine I wouldn’t like people laughing at me.

  “Grandma, do you want me to run you a warm bath?”

  “There’ll be no more hot water. I just gave Lawrence a bath.”

  See? Now we’re back to Dad stories. But I won’t complain. Even blurry Dad stories are better than fun-with-disaster-and-ruin. I snuggle up closer. “Did he splash water all over the floor?”

  She laughs. “He knows better than to do that. We just got back from Auntie Jean’s house and he caused quite enough trouble over there!”

  Cool. I love the trouble stories—the more trouble the better. “What did he do?”

  She looks at me for a moment, then leans closer and whispers, “He had a little run-in with one of Jean’s Siamese cats.”

  My eyes are bugging out of my head. I’ve never heard this one.

  “I left him alone in the front room with the cat, and before too long, we heard the animal shooting around the room, knocking over Jean’s figurines and yowling. We both rushed in to find Lawrence throwing things at the poor beast.” She sits back and shakes her head. “At first we didn’t know what he was throwing. Then we saw Lawrence tug on his diaper, shake one leg, and scoop up the little pebbles that fell on the rug. Can you imagine?”

  I’m laughing so hard I can barely see. “Poop balls? He was throwing his poop balls at the cat?”

  “Very distressing.” Grandma tsk-tsks. “And up until this morning, I thought he was right-handed.” Her eyes close and she sways side to side, smiling to herself.

  At that moment the phone beside me rings. I stop laughing when I see from the display it’s Mom on her cell phone.

  “Hi,” I say.

  “Hi, honey, I’m on my way home and need to ask Grandma a question. Can you put her on?”

  Not while she’s still stuck thirty-five years in the past. “Um, no. She’s sleeping,” I lie.

  “Then wake her up. If she sleeps now, she’ll be up half the night,” Mom says. “Wake her up. I’ll wait.”

  “But I’m right in the middle of my homework…”

  “Zoë, please.”

  Just as I’m dreaming up a way for Grandma to have woken up and gotten into the shower before I could stop her, the doorbell rings and I’m so saved!

  “Sorry, Mom. Gotta go, someone’s at the door.”

  Click.

  I yank open the door to see a tall skinny lady with curly blond hair. She’s holding a clipboard and smiling at me like she’s a long-lost relative.

  “Good afternoon,” she says. “Is there a grownup I can speak to?”

  There is, only she thinks she’s a bird. “You’re gonna have to talk to me.”

  “Okeydokey, then,” she says. “Have you ever thought about spending a whole day just focusing on yourself?”

  Thought about it? She doesn’t know who she’s talking to. I dream about it. “Sorta.”

  This seems to please her, because she smiles pretty wide and checks something off on her clipboard. “Do you like neck massages, manicures, and calming Scandinavian mud baths?”

  “Sure.” Other than the mud part, what’s not to like?

  “What about scalp massage, fresh-squeezed orange juice, and a complete makeover?”

  I stand there quietly, wondering what to say. When she just blinks at me and keeps smiling, I say, “What about them?”

  “Do you like them?” Her hand grips her pencil so hard, I’m worried she’s going to crack it in half.

  “Sure.”

  Another check mark. From the looks of it, I must be doing pretty good on this test.

  “Then we’re sure you’ll enjoy a full day of complete rejuvenation at the Calm’n’Cozy Spa. It can be yours for the ultralow low price of nineteen ninety-nine.” She holds up a card saying GIFT CERTIFICATE. Which gives me an idea.

  “Can this day of rejuvenation be given to somebody else, as a gift?” I ask.

  This makes her even happier and she starts nodding like mad. “Abso-dabso-lutely. We take cash or card. No checks, please. Not unless you’re Donald Trump, I always say.” Then she leans closer and winks. “You’re not Donald Trump, are ya?”

  “No.”

  “Cash or card, then.” She smiles.

  I don’t have a credit card, but I’m pretty sure I’ve got enough cash. “Hold on a sec. Don’t go away!” I tear into my room and stick my hand into my top secret wallpaper pocket. There’s a twenty-dollar bill in here I’ve been saving since my birthday.

  Crumpled twenty in hand, I race back to the front door. “Here you go,” I say, sh
oving it onto her clipboard. “One spa day, please.”

  “Okeydokey,” she says. And she fills out my name and address and phone number, then hands me the gift-certificate card. “Just give us a shout the week you want your spa day and we’ll get you all set up. Sound good?”

  I nod and close the door.

  It’s exactly what Mom needs to trap Handsome Mr. Lindsay. A full day of complete rejuvenation.

  After I get Grandma her afternoon pills, I arrange my homework on the dining-room table. Mom says it isn’t a homework spot, because it has a good view of the TV. She thinks it’s impossible to watch TV and divide 396 by 42. She’s wrong and I’ve proven it to her many times, but she still says TV and homework don’t mix.

  Luckily, Mom’s not home.

  Grandma’s fallen asleep on the couch, so I turn the channel to The Garage Girls and sit down to start my math. Only, Devon is in the middle of getting her hair accidentally dyed orange on the day of her school prom, so I don’t start my math too quickly.

  Just as Devon’s trying on cool hats to cover the dye job, the phone rings. Our phone, not Devon’s.

  I grab the receiver while I’m watching to see if Devon chooses the punky black hat or the lumberjack hat with the earflaps. Then I realize the phone’s in my hand and I say, “Hello?”

  It’s Get-me-this-Get-me-that Jason. “Hello there, Chloe. How are you on this lovely afternoon?”

  “It’s Zoë. And I’m okay.” Devon picked the lumberjack hat, which I think is a good choice since it’ll go great with her black boots and party skirt.

  “Have you saved me any butterscotch squares?”

  Now Devon’s taking off the hat and looking at a pair of scissors. She can’t! She’s got the longest hair of all the Garage Girls, she can’t cut it off, even if it’s hideous orange!

  “I asked if you saved me any squares?”

  Jason laughs like he said something funny. Which he didn’t.

  “No,” I say.

  “Well, now. That’s a shame. Chloe, can you get your mother on the phone for me? I’d like to bring some papers by this evening. So she can get your grandma all signed in.”