The Invisible Rules of Zoe Lama

by Tish Cohen

  Get Grandma signed in? I don’t think so! “My mother’s not here. You’ll have to try back some other day.” I start to hang up.

  “Wait—do you know what time she’ll be home? Because today’s the last day your grandma’s room is available. After this, I can’t guarantee she’ll have a view of the beautifully landscaped butterfly gardens.”

  “That’s okay. Grandma’s really more of a bird person. Bye—”

  “Wait now! Don’t forget to tell your mother I’ll be coming by around seven with the papers. And tell her I’ll be bringing my appetite, so if she’s got anything tasty on the stove…”

  He can’t come at seven. He can’t take away my grandma and make her stare at butterflies for the rest of her life. I have to think of something. “No. Seven won’t work,” I say. “Don’t come at seven.”

  He pauses for a minute. “All right. I suppose I could make it around seven-thirty—”

  “I’ll tell her. But I feel it’s only fair to warn you—she’s making liver and creamed onions.”

  Jason is completely silent. Not that I blame him. But then he says, “Sounds great. My mother used to make me liver and creamed onions. I’ll give your mother a call at work to arrange it.”

  My head droops to one side. Of all the billions of people on this planet, we have to find the one moron who actually likes creamed onions.

  It’s 10:15 and I can’t sleep. I was so happy Get-me-this-Get-me-that Jason’s car had transmission trouble—preventing him from coming—that I offered to clear the table after dinner and secretly finished what was left of Mom’s coffee. Now I can’t get my knees to stop bouncing up and down on my mattress, either from caffeine or relief. Maybe both.

  I jump out of bed and pull the spa-day gift certificate from my secret spot. I was planning to give it to Mom in the morning, but since my legs are running around anyway…

  “Mom?” I push open the door to find her sitting up in bed reading a book. Her room’s all dark except for the one lamp on her nightstand. There’s just enough light to see her book’s cover. It has this long-haired muscle guy staring into some babe’s eyes. She looks like the sort of girl they call a maiden. But no matter what you call her, she seems pretty excited about all the muscles.

  Mom puts her book down and yawns. Then she checks the clock. “Shouldn’t you be asleep already?”

  “I just remembered I got you a present.” Climbing up onto her bed, I slide under the covers on Dad’s side of the bed and lie back on the big pillows. This I am sure of—there isn’t a more comfy spot anywhere in the world.

  “A present?” Mom sits up taller and smiles. “But it’s not my birthday.” Then she looks at me and squints. “Wait a minute, did you spill pickle juice in the silverware drawer again?”

  “No! It’s just a gift. For almost no reason at all.” I’m holding the Calm’n’Cozy Spa gift certificate behind me on Dad’s pillow.

  Mom groans. “Almost? Uh-oh…”

  But then a thought pops into my head. “Mom? Do you ever miss Dad?”

  She’s quiet for a moment, then she nods. “I sure do, sweetheart.”

  “Yeah. Me, too,” I say. Then I smile and pull out the gift certificate. “This should make you as beautiful as the lady on your book cover.” Then I see the maiden again and add, “Almost.”

  Mom looks confused, then picks up her book and looks at the cover. She laughs and ruffles my hair. “I’m not sure that’s possible without extreme measures.” Then she takes the certificate from me. “A day at the Calm’n’Cozy Spa! How wonderful.” Pressing the certificate against her chest, she squeals and then mashes me against the certificate, which, now that I’m up close and intimate with it, smells like porridge. Mom says, “You did this for me?”

  I nod and pick up her book. “So you can be ready when my new father comes into your life. Just

  don’t go thinking all the good ones look like this one.” Mom glances at muscle guy and grins. “Too bad.”

  “Some of the good ones might have shorter hair and maybe even squeaky shoes that don’t scuff the gym floor,” I say, inching my way out of the bed. I need to escape before I say too much. “It might even be better if a guy didn’t have all those bulging muscles, then he might have room to keep things in his shirt pockets…”

  Mom crinkles her nose. “Like what? Pet ferrets?”

  Backing out of the room, I explain. “No. Just regular stuff that’s more useful than a bunch of muscles or ferrets.”

  Muscles and ferrets might help if a burglar was breaking into the apartment or if I had mice under my bed, but this much I know—if I was ever trapped in a roomful of hostile balloons, I’d be reaching for that needle-sharp math tool.

  Innermost Thoughts Should Always Be in Blue

  Drama class is a gift to kids everywhere. It’s payback for all the time we spend sitting at our desks realizing we have absolutely no idea what times 9 equals 117 and we may never remember whether the period should be outside or inside the quotation mark.

  First of all, the drama teacher is Mr. Slobodian, the nicest teacher with a mustache at Allencroft Middle School. He’s got nice brown hair that always needs a haircut, nice floppy-looking clothes, and nice worn-out shoes. He always looks the same. Nice and worn out and comfortable.

  And the drama room is the best room in the whole entire building. It’s a giant circle, with dark brown bricks for walls and deep circle stairs that step down into the center stage like a giant target. And the best part is, all the floor and stairs are covered in red carpeting, so no matter where you are, you can just lie down and rest. If you need to.

  Plus, it’s the quietest room. Probably they insulated it well so Mr. Garson in the gym next door doesn’t have to hear our lousy acting.

  Mr. Slobodian never claps his hands to get our attention. He just talks and we just listen. It’s the weirdest thing.

  “Okay, guys, get yourselves into groups of four, gather some props, and come up with a skit involving these three words: doughnut, ski pole, and skateboard.”

  Just like that, Brianna’s hand goes up into the air. “Mr. Slobodian. Those are four words.”

  Mr. Slobodian nods and scrunches his lips into a little O. Then he blinks real fast and says, “Brianna, would you mind going to the office and pretending you’re having detention? It’s an acting assignment. Come back when the bell rings.”

  We all watch in amazement as she happily gathers her sweater and races out the door with her long brown pony-tail swinging from side to side. Maisie giggles.

  Mr. Slobodian is a genius. Brianna actually thinks she’s being rewarded.

  Riley, Susannah, and Laurel crawl over and flop beside me on my huge middle step, which is so wide we can all lie side by side and stare up at the acoustic-tile ceiling as we hold our props, which Laurel got for us. Susannah, of course, gets the tiara, Riley gets the broomstick, Laurel gets the drum—which is a mistake. She’s never going to stop drumming it, no matter how much we beg. And I get the fuzzy monkey with ripped out eyes and stuffing coming out of his feet. It smells like the liners of my winter boots after I get a soaker.

  “I’ve got a good idea,” Laurel says, drumming away. “Our skit is about a queen who has no legs, so she gets around her kingdom, or queendom, by sitting on a skateboard and pushing herself with a ski pole. And her doughnut is her crown.”

  “No way,” says Susannah. “I’m not having no legs!”

  “Why do you always have to be the queen?”

  “You want to be the queen?” asks Susannah.

  “Maybe,” Laurel says. “Maybe I’ll even get elected Snow Ball Queen.”

  Riley looks at me while they continue squabbling and whispers, “Maybe I should be the queen, just to make them crazy.”

  I laugh. Riley smells like a real boy. Like baseball mitts and grass and puppies, all mixed intoone. Wondering how long the gold necklace is, I squinch myself a bit closer and take a deep breath.

  Susannah sits up and looks at Riley and me. “
This tiara is too jaggedy inside,” she says, smoothing her hair. “We need to find me another one, or these sharp pieces of cheap plastic are going to seriously damage my follicles.”

  Riley, me, and Laurel start to giggle. Follicles? “Why don’t you put the monkey on your head? We’ll pretend it’s your crown,” Riley says.

  “Or the drum,” I say. “If you can get Laurel to stop drumming it.” I look at Laurel. “By the way, please stop drumming it.”

  Laurel laughs and keeps drumming.

  “Not funny,” Susannah says, sort of smiling. “And I prefer the word ‘tiara.’ What are we going to do? I can’t risk a single hair breaking. I’m under contract. Almost.”

  “An actress needs to suffer for her craft,”

  Laurel says as she bangs.

  “Not if she has a good agent,” Susannah says.

  “Then she has people to suffer for her!”

  Riley laughs. “Don’t worry, Susannah. You’ve always got us for that.”

  “No way, I need you guys for my posse.”

  Before Laurel can ask, I tell her a posse is a mob of people who follow the star everywhere and make it impossible for autograph hounds to get near her.

  Just then Maisie crawls over and slaps a piece of paper onto my stomach. “Here you go. I had to write in green, but they’re my innermost thoughts, so I hope it still counts.”

  She starts to crawl away, but I stop her. Making sure Susannah’s close enough to overhear, I ask, “Maisie? We’re playing a game. Who was your first love and how did it end?”

  Susannah’s staring at me with her mouth open and her glasses lifted up. I don’t need to see it, I can feel it.

  Maisie laughs. “Easy. Donny Wiebe, and he moved to another kindergarten class.”

  Everyone laughs except me. “Okay, how about the next one?”

  She smiles and flops onto her stomach with her chin in her hands. “I had a bit of a dry spell, so the next one wasn’t

  until Lake Labrador. Susannah, do you remember a chubby boy named Nicholas?”

  Laurel laughs. “You never said he was chubby!”

  Susannah’s glasses are back in place and her hair covers part of her face. She plucks something hairy from her crown. “I remember him.”

  Maisie squints. “What a liar he was! He took me on a canoe ride one night and I pretty much fell in love…”

  I’m not sure, but I think I hear Susannah growling.

  “And he promised to take me on a hike the very next day. But instead he sent some other girl, Lissy von der Veen, over to my house to deliver a note. It said he had poison ivy, but then later I heard he took Lissy on the hike. For the longest time, I thought Lissy set it up, but when she and I got stuck on a ride at the summer fair, she told me the truth. Nicholas was a real skunk.”

  Then she crawls back toward her group.

  Susannah doesn’t move at first. She just takes a deep breath. “He is a skunk! A fat little canoeing skunk!” Then she glances over toward Maisie, who’s stuck in a group with Smartin, Avery, Alice, and a LameWizard. “Do you guys mind if I, um, invite Maisie to join in our group? We could use a fifth member.”

  Riley just shrugs, but Laurel and I smile. We don’t mind a bit. I watch as Susannah crawls over to Maisie, lowers her glasses (!), and motions toward our group.

  You gotta love Susannah.

  Meanwhile, Riley reaches for Maisie’s essay, but before he can grab it, I pull it away and fold it, stuffing it into my back pocket.

  “What’s that all about?” Riley asks. “Why is Maisie giving you her innermost thoughts in green?”

  “I don’t know.” I laugh and try to distract him by tickling him with my monkey. “I asked for them in blue!”

  Riley squints. “What are you up to this time?”

  “Phase Two of her training. It’s no biggie.” “So Phase Two is writing essays on her innermost thoughts in blue?”

  “Not every thought. Only the ones I assign.”

  “Why?”

  Sometimes boys are so superficial. How can I work on Maisie’s insides if I can only see the outside?

  I have some official business to attend to, so after drama class I beat it over to the office. Luckily, Brianna’s long gone. I definitely don’t want Brianna Brinderella snooping anywhere near my official business.

  Both secretaries are on the phone and the office is unusually empty, so I hurry to the machine and place Maisie’s green essay on the glass and shut the lid, making sure it only makes one copy. It would be very bad if anyone found extra copies of her essay in the recycling bin. The machine whirs and a light shines for a second. Then it spits out a copy that, thankfully, is not green.

  I pick it up to read the title. My Innermost Thoughts on Martin. Wait a minute. I asked her for thoughts about her favorite boy. Smartin’s not a boy. He’s a rat!

  The first sentence reads, From the way he laughs to the way he walks, Martin Granitstein is the most darling boy at Allencroft Middle School.

  The way he laughs? Most times he’s got milk spurting out his nostrils! And he walks like one shoe is filled with syrup, which it usually is! Did I not inform her of Unwritten Rule #3, which clearly states that Smartin is vile? I’m beginning to think I’ve failed Maisie. I’ve let her risk her own reputation by falling for the wrongest of all the wrong boys. I should have seen it coming.

  Because if there’s one single thing that will surely destroy even the most solid reputation at Allencroft Middle School, it’s publicly declaring your love for Smartin Granitstein.

  Libraries. Not So Hazard-Free Anymore

  It’s not even four o’clock and already it’s been a roller-coaster ride of a day. And I hate roller coasters. This morning my mother was heading off to the Calm’n’Cozy Spa. She is probably lying in a Scandinavian mud puddle getting gorgeous this very moment. In other words, by the time she gets home, she’s going to look seriously hot. Which is excellent, because I could use a bit of good news, since my trainee (whose Lake Labrador reputation has been cleared) has suddenly lost her mind and Riley thinks I’ve lost mine.

  Speaking of Riley, I’m wondering if my own wedding is a fantasy. If the groom thinks you’re nuts, there’s a good chance he’s going to be a no-show.

  On my way into the library for our dance-committee wrap-up session—the Snow Ball is in three days—I bump into none other than Ian McPherson of cookiegram fame.

  “Hello, Miss Lama,” he says with a bow worthy of a prince. A nervous prince, but still a prince. “I want you to know, I’ve taken your advice. I haven’t so much as glanced in Cassandra’s direction in days!”

  “Cool,” I say.

  “Just yesterday in math class, she came up to me and asked for a pencil.” He chuckles and hangs his head to admire his bowling shoe. “I almost fell for it, too. Almost gave her my spare Stylo 2000 Mechanical Click. But then I remembered what you said about women sniffing out the foul stench of desperation and I held my ground.”

  Ooh boy. This guy’s taking my advice wa-ay too literally. “You mean you wouldn’t share your pencil? What did you say?”

  He puffs up his sunken chest and grins. “Shook my head and said, ‘Nah.’” He laughs and holds out his hands for me to give him a high five. Which I do, in spite of a lifelong detestation of fives, both high and low. “Just like that,” he says, laughing. “Nah.”

  “Ian, I’m not entirely sure you got my drift,” I say carefully. “If the girl needs a pencil, give her a pencil. I just meant…”

  He waves to me as he trots away backward. “I’ve already bought my tuxedo. Light green!”

  Oy.

  Handsome Mr. Lindsay looks confused. “Laurel, how did we spend nearly three-quarters of our budget on refreshments?”

  She looks at me and fidgets with her hair. “We had pretty tight food restrictions. So everyone would feel included, like Zoë said. Then Zoë said everything needed to be organic and I discovered I could only buy supplies at Le Chef Organique, which is kooky expensive. Whe
n I saw all the fancy choices, I didn’t know whether I should buy local foods or not. Finally I decided not, because the foreign stuff had cooler names.”

  Handsome Mr. Lindsay’s eyebrows are sinking lower and lower as he listens.

  “By the time I found Zoë’s gluten-free ginger cookies and the berry-infused sparkling water, my mother started honking in the car and…well, I went a little over budget. Sorry.” Laurel looks down at her lap.

  Handsome Mr. Lindsay coughs. “Well, it certainly sounds like Zoë took her duties as chairwoman quite serious—”

  “I, um, it’s chairgirl,” I almost whisper.

  “Chairgirl,” he says. “I can only assume our chairgirl won’t mind staying after the meeting to help poor Brianna, Maisie, and Martin get creative with what little remains in their budgets. Can we count on you for that, Miss Chairgirl?”

  “Um, yeah. Okay.”

  “Thanks a lot, chairgirl,” says Brianna under her breath. “There goes the silver glitter.” Really, I think she’s being a little dramatic about this whole Brinderella thing. I didn’t name her, after all. She should direct this hostility at her parents.

  “And another thing,” Handsome Mr. Lindsay says. “Due to unforeseen budgetary constraints”—he pauses to look at me—”the Snow Ball King and Queen, who will be elected tomorrow during morning recess and crowned at the dance, will still have crowns, but no red velvet robes. I’ll have to return them.”

  Uh-oh.

  Susannah sits perfectly still. Then her mouth tightens into an angry little slash and from deep inside her comes a faint, faraway rumble—like a panther ready to pounce on a mouse.

  I‘m not really listening to Handsome Mr. Lindsay talk about dress codes for the dance. Because no matter what, I’m wearing my lavender dress that looks like a slip because it’ll go really well with Riley’s gold necklace. And besides, I have to think about how, exactly, to get Handsome Mr. Lindsay delivered to my apartment tonight to see my fancy shined-up mother.