Zoe is on the Air

by Clare Hutton

  Even when they didn’t directly ask her, Zoe felt like good ideas to fix people’s problems were just popping out of her mouth without her even trying hard. She heard Vivian complaining about her grade on a math test, and suggested asking for a tutor; she heard Alice, who she knew from theater club, saying that she was sick of the dinners her mom cooked, and slipped her a couple of Uncle Brian’s best recipes to share with her mom.

  Wednesday, Zoe watched as Oliver and Charlotte went through the Pledge of Allegiance and the morning announcements—a PTA bake sale, chorus auditions, the school T-shirt contest—and stood still as Ava threaded the microphone through her collar, and exchanged a smile with Emma as they took their seats behind the table, all with a buoyant sense of rightness. This was something she was good at, and something she really liked.

  Charlotte winked at her again as she passed them, and Zoe felt a little glow of pride, deep in her chest. Charlotte and Malcolm had been holding hands in the halls all week: Zoe’s advice had been a stroke of genius.

  “We’ve got two great questions for you today,” she said brightly, after she and Emma had opened the show and introduced themselves. “And they’re both about trouble with friends.”

  Emma read the first one. “Dear Zoe and Emma, I have four really good friends; we’ve known each other since kindergarten and we all hang out together a lot. My parents let me have a slumber party, but they only let me invite three of my friends—they said we just didn’t have room for another girl. I tried to keep the party secret from the friend I couldn’t invite, but she found out, and now she’s mad at me. I still want to be friends! What should I do?”

  “Ugh,” Zoe said, grimacing. “This has definitely happened to me, both having to leave somebody out and being the one who’s left out. A couple years ago, my twin sister got invited to a party a friend of both of ours was having, and I didn’t. That was totally devastating.”

  “I’m sure,” Emma said. “But, like you said, I’ve been on the other side of that, too. I had a birthday party at a craft store last year, and they had a maximum number of people I could invite, so I had to leave out some of my friends. I felt terrible about it.”

  Zoe looked into the camera. “Everybody understands that sometimes there isn’t room for everyone we’d like to invite, and I’m sure your friend gets that you couldn’t invite as many people as you wanted to. But the truth is that, when you had to choose someone to leave out, you chose her.”

  Emma nodded. “And that’s what she’s really upset about. Like, the slumber party would have been fun, but the real issue is that now she feels like she’s not as good a friend of yours as the other girls are.”

  “So how can you fix it?” Zoe asked. “I’m assuming you’ve explained what happened, that your parents made you leave someone out, but I think you need to do something to show her that she’s important to you.”

  “Maybe you could take her somewhere, just the two of you,” Emma suggested. “Like out for cupcakes, or to do something fun, like ice skating. Or have a sleepover that’s only you two.”

  “Those are awesome ideas,” Zoe said. “Another thing you could do is give her a letter or a card where you let her know that you didn’t want to hurt her feelings. Tell her that her friendship is important to you. I think actually writing down, in a thoughtful way, how you feel and that you care, can make a big impression.”

  “Because that’s probably what she wants to know,” Emma agreed. “That you care.”

  “Okay, moving on,” Zoe said. She looked down at the printout of the next question they’d chosen and read, “Dear Zoe and Emma, My BFF is working on something to enter into a contest. She’s really creative and smart, but her project just isn’t that good. She keeps asking me what I think, and I’ve tried to be sort of neutral and not make her feel bad, but she keeps coming back and wanting detailed opinions from me. I don’t want to be mean to her, but I feel like she’s going to get all excited and then be really disappointed—there’s no way she’s going to win the contest with this project. I’d hate to see her get her feelings hurt. Should I tell her the truth?”

  “Huh.” Emma frowned thoughtfully. “Actually, I think this is a situation where telling the truth isn’t going to do any good, unless you have specific suggestions that might help. Like, I wouldn’t tell her that what she’s doing is amazing, but why make your friend feel bad? You’re not one of the judges. They might feel differently about her project.”

  Zoe shook her head. “I totally disagree,” she said. “She’s your friend and she’s asking for your opinion. You owe it to her to be honest with her. She deserves to know the truth. You should be really direct. She’d probably rather hear it from you than from the judges.”

  Emma shrugged. “I don’t think you should crush your friend’s hopes. Let her try without discouraging her.”

  “I guess this is one question where we’re just going to have different opinions,” Zoe said. She looked into the camera again. “Maybe think about our two answers and follow the one that makes sense to you? This has been Zoe and Emma to the Rescue. Thanks for watching.”

  Once the camera was off and the microphones were unclipped, Zoe followed Emma and Ava down the hall toward first period. The show had been fun, just as it had the first two times. But Zoe felt a tiny bit of unease, as if something cold was trickling slowly down her back. Even though they sometimes had different points of view, Emma and Zoe had never completely disagreed on an answer before. What if Emma was right and Zoe was wrong?

  Nah, Zoe reassured herself. Emma is just too cautious sometimes. She worries too much about hurting people’s feelings. Honesty is always the best policy, right?

  After all, Zoe had a natural gift for giving advice. She was sure of it.

  As usual, the cafeteria was loud: a babble of a hundred conversations and bursts of laughter, trays slamming down on tables, chairs squeaking against the floor. Zoe slipped into a seat at their usual table. Emma and Natalia were already there, Emma unpacking tiny individual quiches from her extra-large lunch bag. She handed one across the table to Zoe.

  “Is there bacon in this?” Zoe said curiously, poking at it with her fork.

  Natalia had already bitten into hers, and she frowned thoughtfully. “I think I taste Swiss cheese, too,” she said.

  Zoe thought it might actually be Muenster and was about to say so when a familiar voice rose above the others, catching her attention.

  “It’s not fair.” Charlotte and Malcolm were standing in a corner near the edge of the cafeteria, glaring at each other. Charlotte’s voice was bitter.

  “Don’t be like that,” Malcolm said, running a hand through his hair. “I don’t want to hang out with your friends all the time. I need to be by myself, to think. I’m trying to come up with a whole science fiction universe.”

  “But what’s the point of even going out if you never want to spend any time together?” Charlotte said. Her bottom lip was pushed out, and her voice trembled.

  “Fine,” Malcolm said, but he sounded resentful, as if he didn’t actually agree with her. Grabbing Charlotte’s hand, he pulled her toward the eighth-grade tables.

  Zoe stared after them, troubled. The trickling feeling of dread had returned. Charlotte had followed Zoe’s advice and it had worked—Malcolm liked her, too, and now they were going out. But they sure didn’t look happy anymore.

  Every couple fights, Zoe told herself. They’ll be fine.

  But what if they weren’t? Zoe couldn’t help wondering, what if her advice had been wrong? If Charlotte and Malcolm were unhappy, was it her fault?

  “I don’t think you need to worry about it,” Natalia chirped, bouncing a little in the bus seat across the aisle from Zoe and Emma. “From what I hear, Malcolm and Charlotte are going strong. They were holding hands when they left school.”

  Beside her, Caitlin shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think they have a lot in common. Charlotte’s so perky and Malcolm’s all quiet and myster
ious.”

  Natalia rolled her eyes. “That’s the point,” she told Caitlin. “Didn’t you ever hear that opposites attract?”

  “Anyway, Malcolm and Charlotte are not your problem,” Emma said sensibly. “Charlotte chose to go after Malcolm, and either things will work out between them or they won’t. Not every couple lasts forever, especially in middle school.”

  Zoe sighed. Charlotte and Malcolm never would have gotten together if it hadn’t been for her. “Giving people advice is a real responsibility,” she said. Natalia and Caitlin glanced at each other, smirking, and Zoe stiffened. “Well, it is.”

  “Okay, then,” Natalia said mildly. The bus was coming up to their stop, and she and Caitlin started gathering up their stuff. “Are you guys coming?”

  Zoe shook her head. “Tell Mom I’m at Emma’s and I’ll be back for dinner, okay? Caitlin, you’re staying for dinner at our place, right? I’ll see you later.”

  “Okay,” Natalia said amiably, and Caitlin waved good-bye.

  Zoe watched as her twin and Caitlin climbed off the bus, and then turned to Emma. “So, you think Charlotte and Malcolm are okay?”

  Emma sighed. “Like I said, whether they are or not, I don’t think it’s your fault, Zoe. You’re getting kind of obsessive about this.”

  “I guess.” The bus rattled to a stop at Emma’s corner, and the girls grabbed their backpacks and climbed off. As they headed for Seaview House, Zoe tried to explain. “I really like giving advice,” she told Emma, who nodded in agreement. “But if the advice I’m giving isn’t good, aren’t I hurting people?”

  They walked across the lawn to Seaview House without talking much, frost-covered grass crunching under their feet. Spring was coming, every day a little warmer than the last, but it was still so cold at night. Zoe huddled more deeply into her jacket.

  “Well, they don’t have to take our advice,” Emma said at last, as they pushed open the front door of the bed-and-breakfast. “We just have to do the best we can.”

  The warmth of the inn felt like a welcoming embrace after the cold outside. The stained glass–shaded lamps by the couches in the front room were lit against the darkening afternoon, and they gave a rosy, peaceful glow to the whole room. The B and B guests were doubtless all out and about in town, but Zoe could hear Emma’s dad chopping something in the kitchen.

  Grandma Stephenson was tidying the living room, reshelving books that guests had pulled out of the bookcases. She turned when they came in and smiled. “Two of my favorite granddaughters,” she said, and Zoe and Emma hurried over to hug her.

  “I haven’t seen you for almost a week, sweetheart. You were at brunch, but I didn’t get a chance to talk to you,” she said, smoothing Zoe’s hair back from her forehead. She peered into Zoe’s face questioningly, her eyes the same shade of light blue as Emma’s. “You look a little tired. Are you getting enough sleep?”

  “Sure,” Zoe said. “Just a long day at school.”

  “I see,” Grandma Stephenson said, her gaze sharp. “Well, I’m sure Emma will cheer you up.”

  Emma grinned. “Naturally.”

  “But first,” Grandma went on, “I suggest we repair to the kitchen. Your father”—she looked at Emma—“has spent the day experimenting with new cookie recipes. He’ll need our help to test them.”

  “Well,” Zoe said, considering, “if it’s to help the family business.” She pushed away the worried, tight feeling she’d been carrying around since she saw Charlotte and Malcolm arguing in the cafeteria. She was here, in the house her family had lived in for generations, people she loved all around her, and she could smell the lingering scent of baking cookies now. Those worries might hover at the back of her mind, but what could she do about Charlotte and Malcolm now? She might as well eat cookies.

  “Ugh, I’m still so full,” Zoe said an hour later, flopping down on Emma’s bed. The cookies had been terrific: crispy light ginger biscuits, rich shortbreads, and refreshing tiny bites filled with lemon curd. She and Emma had been able to weigh in with total confidence that Uncle Brian should add them all to the afternoon tea hour for guests. But they’d eaten way too many.

  After they’d eaten as many cookies as they could possibly hold, Zoe had painted a last few details on Hatshepsut’s cardboard sarcophagus, which was due the next day—the oral report was all prepared—and they’d gone through some advice questions. It looked like Caitlin had gone back over Natalia’s constructions, neatening the corners of the sarcophagus and brushing gold paint around the edges of the tomb itself. It was exactly like Caitlin, Zoe thought, to go back and adjust other people’s work to fit her standards, but Zoe had to admit it looked good. Now she had the comfortable feeling of having met all her responsibilities and having the rest of the afternoon and night guiltlessly free.

  “I still think maybe we should pick the question about the parents getting divorced,” Emma said, sitting next to Zoe’s feet and leaning back against the wall. “It’s a really important thing to deal with.”

  “Yeah,” Zoe agreed. “But I’m not sure how much advice we can give. Like, talk to your friends, talk to your parents, remember it’s not your fault. Parents getting divorced isn’t something kids can do much about; they just kind of have to deal with it.”

  “I guess.” Emma twisted her fingers together. “Still, it’s our last show next week. I want to do something really worthwhile.”

  “We will,” Zoe said. She didn’t like to think about the show ending and somebody new taking their place. Eager to change the subject, she rolled over on the bed to gaze out of Emma’s windows.

  Emma’s parents had made a cozy apartment out of part of the attic when they’d been renovating Seaview House so that they and Emma would have a space a little separate from the rest of the B and B. One whole side of Emma’s sloping-ceilinged bedroom was windows, looking out over Seaview House’s rose gardens and down to the Chesapeake Bay. In the summer, it was beautiful, full of the sweet fragrance rising up from the garden and with a view of the bay all blue and white and alive with boats. But now the roses were dormant, their bushes looking like just bundles of gray-and-brown sticks, while the bay was nearly empty of boats and reflected the heavy gray of the sky.

  “It’s kind of bleak-looking out there,” Zoe observed.

  Emma wrinkled her nose. “I know,” she said. “My room was really nice before it got all cold and dismal out, but now it’s pretty depressing. I can’t wait for summer to get here.”

  Zoe looked around. She and Natalia had helped Emma decorate her room when their cousin and her family had first moved into Seaview House. It was all done in shades of blue and white, vaguely nautical looking. A hammock swung in one corner, piled high with cushions. When the sun had been shining and the bay had been blue, Emma’s room had felt like an extension of the outdoors, like summer. Now the cool, watery colors made everything feel chilly.

  But Zoe could imagine the refreshing early spring version of this room. “All you need is some new colors,” she told Emma. “Maybe a light green. Or yellow or pink.” In her mind’s eye, she could see soft spring colors covering every surface, giving the high-up little room the feeling of a spring garden.

  Emma looked doubtful. “Pink and yellow together?” she asked. “Won’t it look kind of like a baby shower or something?”

  “Wait and see,” Zoe said, scrambling off the bed and onto her feet. “I bet we can find stuff in the rest of the attic.” The top floor of Seaview House was mostly a sprawling storage space full of boxes and chests and old furniture, ranging from the boxes of Christmas ornaments tucked away two months ago to trunks that had belonged to their ancestors more than a hundred years before. Stephensons apparently never threw anything away.

  “Look at this,” Zoe said exultantly, a couple hours later. They’d found a lot of treasure in the attic: fluffy sunshine-yellow curtains and pillow covers covered in a pattern of twining vines and flowers, which Emma’s mom had been happy to let them have. They’d run the material thr
ough the washing machine to get rid of dust. The real find, though, had been a great carved trunk full to the brim with different fabrics. Grandma had said that it had probably belonged to her own aunt, who had made all of her own clothes and been “a bit dramatic.”

  The fabrics were pretty dramatic, that was for sure. Zoe and Emma had tacked up swaths of shimmering silk in different shades of green, and Zoe had managed to fasten a huge piece of pink silk across the ceiling, where it billowed like a cloud.

  “It looks amazing,” Emma agreed. She and Zoe grinned proudly at each other. The room wasn’t cold and bleak anymore at all—it reminded her of a bird’s nest, perched high in a flowering country garden. Or an Impressionist painting, romantic and beautiful. Magical.

  Maybe I should be an interior decorator, she thought: A cool one who’s very artistic.

  She could picture it:

  Grown-up city Zoe listened patiently as a client asked for help. Her living room was bland and dismal: Coming home didn’t make her happy. But Zoe knew just what to do. Soon she had a paintbrush in her hand and was climbing a ladder, painting murals on the walls of the unlivable living room. High white birch trees stretched up the walls, their branches reaching across a ceiling painted with a twilight sky.

  “This is perfect,” her client gasped. “Now my house is finally a home. And thank you for your advice on my family’s problems as well. You’ve fixed my life and my living room.”

  It was all part of the same thing, wasn’t it? Zoe thought. She could help people by giving them good advice on their problems, or by making their spaces beautiful. Emma was happier now because of Zoe, and so were a lot of the people she’d given advice to. Maybe I’ll be a therapist or an interior decorator or have my own show when I grow up, Zoe thought, as well as being an artist.