The Invisible Rules of Zoe Lama Read online

  Pushing open the bathroom door, I step inside, and instantly my feet are under water. No! Mom’s gonna freak, because the bathtub faucet is on full blast and steaming water is pouring out of the tub, all over the tile floor! As quick as I can, I turn off the tap and reach in to pull the plug even though water spills out way worse when I stick my arm in.

  I yank every towel off the towel rack and throw them on the floor, but not before water starts pouring out into the hall. Racing to the closet, I fill my arms with every single towel and sheet I can find and throw them everywhere to sop up the mess, which is massive.

  At this very unfortunate moment, someone knocks at the front door. I don’t want anyone to see the lake that is now our bathroom. At least it can’t be Mom, since I know she remembered her keys; I gave them to her on her way out. I go peer through the peephole with one eyeball and see the building superintendent’s eyeball staring back at me.

  It looks huge. And mad.

  “You got a problem with your bathroom?” he asks as I open the door a little. “Because the Burtons below have some water dripping from their ceiling.”

  I can’t tell him. It’ll cost Mom heaps of money and she’ll only hurry faster to send Grandma away. Hiding my wet feet behind the door, I say, “Our bathroom?”

  He narrows his eyes and tries to look past me down the hall, like maybe he’s going to see a tidal wave coming at him. “Yeah. You got a leak?”

  “Um…” I start to say.

  He puts a hand on the door and starts to step inside, but I block the door with my foot. “Sorry. My mom’s not here and I’m not allowed to have anyone over until she gets home.” That was quick thinking.

  He makes a hissing sound and steps backward. “Tell your mother to call me as soon as she gets home. We got a real mess down below.”

  I nod and shut the door fast. I’m so not telling her to call him when she gets home.

  By the time I get back to the bathroom, the tub has stopped overflowing and is making happy gurgling drain sounds. Only I’m extremely not happy. All around me are sopping towels and if I don’t get them dried before Mom gets home, she’s going to say Grandma’s going downhill and there’s no more time to waste.

  I don’t want to hear those words; even if my wet feet and the footsie pajamas are proof they’re true. As I pull off my socks and hurry to Mom’s room to look for quarters for the dryer, I realize something that makes me want to go back to my pillow.

  Dr. Milner isn’t the biggest idiot of the geniuses I’d hoped he was.

  After I get everything dry and put away and get Grandma fed, I check the phone book and call every Robins I find. I don’t have much luck until I remember that Maisie spells her name wrong, with two bs. Then I call everyone named Robbins. The very last number—for Robbins, W—is Maisie’s.

  Her mother answers. “Hello?”

  I try to make my voice as casual as possible. “Hi. Is Maisie there, please?”

  I hear a muffled sound. It sounds an awful lot like Maisie’s mother’s hand covering the receiver. Then she comes back on and says, “May I tell her who’s calling?”

  “Zoë. From school.”

  More muffled sounds. Then I hear Maisie say she’d speak to anyone in the solar system but me. I think her mother argued with her, but it doesn’t really matter. Before she comes back on the phone to give me the bad news, I hang up.

  No one is home but Grandma and I need someone to talk to, so I tell her the whole story. Starting with Maisie’s old reputation and ending with me messing up everything. For a minute, Grandma looks like she understands what I said. And by the way she’s looking at me, tilting her head with watery eyes, I’m almost sure she knows me. That I’m not a stranger, but her actual granddaughter.

  But then she says, “Don’t try to paint spots on a leopard.” She turns back to face the TV and I realize I was wrong.

  Grandma wasn’t home after all.

  Mom walks in soon afterward. She plunks my chicken nuggets on the dining-room table and says a quick hello to me and Grandma before heading straight for Grandma’s bathroom. That’s also the guest bathroom and she probably wants to get it ready for Jason. About three seconds later she says, real loud, “Ugh! Zoë, what’s this puddle beneath the shower curtain?”

  So all my cleanup work was pretty much for nothing, because at that exact moment the phone rings and I can tell from Mom’s face that it’s the building superintendent. She keeps saying, “Oh no. Oh no,” and looking back and forth from Grandma to the bathroom. Finally she hangs up and slumps into a dining-room chair. She’s shaking her head and tapping a finger on the table. Then she drops her head into her hands and massages her temples with her fingers. By the time she looks up, her hair’s poking every which way and she reaches for two things.

  Jason’s business card and the phone.

  I head for my room. I don’t want to hear what she’s going to say. But just as I’m closing my door, I do anyway.

  “Jason? It’s Jocelyn. I just wanted to remind you to bring the application papers.”

  If You Gotta Jump, Take No Prisoners

  In the middle of the night, I wake up terrified and sit up fast. My heart is pounding and I’m gulping to breathe. I’ve been dreaming about Maisie and Smartin, only instead of millions of love letters blowing around the school, there were millions of pictures of me. Everywhere.

  Grandma was there, tucked into a beige flowery bed, and she and all the kids were laughing at me. Not a single person cared about my rules. I was the Zoë Lama no more. My reign was over.

  Just like real life.

  I sit there for a few minutes, clutching my blankets to my chin and blinking in the dark. Then a really bad good idea pops into my head. Really bad because it’s the last thing on Earth I’d ever want to do. And good because it’s the only way to make things right for Maisie.

  Settling back on my pillow, I work on a plan that is, no question, going to destroy me.

  It’s lunchtime. I’m sitting in my usual spot. At the middle table in the very center of the cafeteria. With a tray full of hamburger and fries and chocolate shake in front of me and Laurel and Susannah on either side. But delicious food can’t help me today. Neither can the two best friends in the world.

  From every direction, people are pointing at me, whispering and giggling. But that’s okay. It doesn’t matter anymore.

  I’m about to do something so ferociously wrong, so entirely against the laws of nature, that even my BFIS one and two are sure to be done with me forever. In fact, I’d recommend it.

  The noise of kids mocking me is deafening.

  And outside it’s raining, so we had indoor recess this morning. Which means the kids are extra riled up; throwing milk cartons and raisins at one another while the lunch ladies run around trying to stop it and getting hit in the head in the process.

  Laurel, who brought her own lunch, licks her empty blueberry yogurt container. “So, Susannah, when’s the big day? When’s the commercial?” Laurel is good people. Even if it kills her to hear about Susannah’s next shot at fame, she’s trying to pretend what’s happening around us isn’t happening.

  Susannah smiles and flicks her hair behind her shoulder, where it won’t get messed up by her burger. “Tomorrow. I get to miss the whole morning because I’m going to my agent’s first to sign some papers.”

  “Lucky,” grumps Laurel, who never gets to miss a school day for anything, on account of her mother being a high school principal and having strict…principles.

  I push back my chair. It’s time. Being extra small, I climb on top of my seat so everybody can get a good look at me while I make my announcement. If I’m gonna do this, I might as well do it big.

  “Zoë, get down!” Susannah says, tugging on my pant leg. “You’re going to get hit by raisins.”

  I wave her away and clear my throat. Only the place is too loud and crazy for anyone to hear my signal, so I decide to be more forceful. “Ahem!” I say, real loud. A few kids stop and loo
k at me, but the food fight continues. “AHEM!” I say even louder. The noise trails off into silence and I get a little dizzy when I feel about six hundred eyes staring at me. Sucking in a deep breath, I begin.

  “In light of certain letters that have been plastered around certain schools—letters about certain people—I have a certain announcement to make.” I pause to sip my milk shake, hoping the chocolate will stop my hands from shaking. “But I warn you, what you are about to hear might come as quite a shock, and many of you will feel a certain amount of revulsion. If any fifth-graders would like to leave the room, I recommend they do it now.” No one leaves the room, but an empty milk carton flies by my head and clatters onto the floor behind me. “It was my love letter,” I say. All around the room, kids and lunch ladies gasp. “Yes, it’s true. I am, in actual fact, in deep, deep love with SMARTIN GRANITSTEIN.” Laurel and Susannah both say, “No!” and Smartin stands up, punches both fists in the air and shouts, “YES!” Everybody else groans in disgust and makes throw-up sounds.

  I continue. “I can no longer contain myself, as MY LOVE IS TOO STRONG.”

  “Shut up, Zoë!” Susannah pleads. “You’re destroying yourself!”

  Tables begin to rock with laughter and raisins pelt me in the knees. “Smartin Lover!” someone calls out. I hope I’m wrong, but I think it was a lunch lady.

  Clapping my hands, I try to restore order, but it’s not easy with Smartin stomping across the tabletops, beating his chest like an ape. “Quiet now!” I shout. “I haven’t finished. The letter you all found might have had a certain new girl’s name signed at the bottom. But she is not to be held responsible. For it was I, in a fit of passion I could no longer keep to myself, who signed it Maisie. My passion overtook my senses.”

  A roar fills the room. I try not to vomit when I see Smartin standing on the window ledge waving to the eighth-grade boys, who cheer him and whoop their congratulations.

  “So please,” I shout over his filthy gloating, “forgive Maisie! It is I who must shoulder this burden alone.” I bow my head in shame and raise my hands in the air. “Do with me what you will.”

  Laughter is practically shaking the room and I fear my plastic chair might tip. Wiping ketchup from my face, I climb down and make my way to the door, holding my cast over my head to deflect the hamburger patties and balled-up napkins.

  The last face I see before passing through the door is Riley’s. I look at him and, for a moment, remember his plan—the getting down on one knee and the necklace. I want to say something. Anything. But it’s too late. He’s already turned his back on me.

  Pay No Attention to the Unwritten Rule Behind the Curtain

  The very next day is Friday, the day of the Snow Ball. It’s fairly unusual that the chairgirl of the planning committee has no intention of going to the dance she planned for weeks, but then again, these are unusual times.

  I went straight home yesterday. I didn’t have to fake a stomachache, because after that, I had a pretty fierce one. And the stupid part is, I was kind of hoping Laurel or Susannah would call me last night. Or Maisie, even, to thank me for freeing her. I wasn’t stupid enough to think Riley would call me. And he didn’t.

  The only call I got was from Smartin, making sicko-freakboy kissy sounds.

  As I’m lying on my bed, not going to the dance, my phone rings. It’s Laurel! “Hey, Zoë. My mom says we can’t pick you up, so I’ll have to meet you at the dance. I’ll be the one in—”

  I’m so happy she thinks I’m going, I could burst. “Let me guess, blue.”

  “Nope. Turquoise,” she says. She sounds proud.

  “Seriously? That’s not quite blue.”

  “I know. I’m working my way around the color wheel. Starting with green. Well, starting with not quite green.”

  “Outrageous,” I say. “How’s everyone?”

  Her voice changes. Gets smaller. “Okay.” She pauses. “So meet me at the change-room steps?”

  “I’m not going to the dance, Laurel.”

  There’s a long silence, during which I hear a loud, probably blue, hopefully turquoise, slurp. “You have to. You have all the rule sheets. If you don’t come we’ll have no rules. It’ll be total kiosk.”

  She means it’ll be total chaos, but I’m too frazzled by the stack of rule sheets on my bedside table to tell her. How could I have forgotten? “Can’t your mother pick them up on the way?”

  “She can’t go that way, I told you. Just stick them in your backpack. See you, there!”

  Horrible, stink-o-rotten luck.

  Now I have to go to school. Only I can’t go in my current state of being, which is Garage Girls pj’s and bear-claw slippers. I’m going to have to dress for the dance to blend in. Walk in fast, keep my head down, dump off the rules, and get the heck out of there before anyone notices me. Otherwise I’ll never be able to get back to my slippers and my room, where I plan to hibernate in my cave forevermore.

  With my backpack slung over one shoulder of my lavender dress, I hurry past the fruit market and around the corner onto Allencroft Boulevard. It’s so cold outside I can see my breath. On my way back, when the streetlamps are on, I plan to stand beneath one and see if I can blow smoke rings.

  The closer I get to the school, the more I think that maybe not going to this dance is exactly the wrong thing to do. That maybe dropping off the rules and running is a really bad idea. School dances are nerve-taxing group situations and there are bound to be scads of social blunders and desperate requests for advice. I mean, if I’d thought about it far enough in advance, I could have built myself a secret booth like LameWizard Richard’s, and set it up under the basketball hoop. I could have hidden inside and charged a dollar per Unwritten Rule and donated the proceeds to help pay for the pricey blueberry juice and the ginger cookies from the Netherlands.

  Besides, it’s Susannah’s big day, the day she signs for her new commercial that will hopefully mean the end of the dark glasses, and I need to be there to support her and keep sticky fingers away from her hair, which I’m not even sure she owns anymore. It might belong to the hair-care company. Or her agent.

  I slip inside the school and follow the blaring music through the halls, toward the gym. And by the time I reach the gym doors, which are closed, probably to keep the boys from running away, I’m feeling a bit better. Who needs public approval? I’m pretty sure I still have Laurel, and where there’s Laurel, Susannah can’t be far behind…

  Two girls burst out of the gym, laughing, and I grab the door before it swings shut. What I see inside takes my breath away.

  Balloons. Hundreds and hundreds of balloons in every pastel color imaginable. There are silver balloons floating to the ceiling, star-covered balloons stuck to walls, smiley-face balloons on the snack table, and balloons roaming loose all over the dance floor like wild animals, shooting every which way as people kick them and throw them in the air.

  I think I’m gonna faint.

  My feet step backward. Far away I hear people calling my name, but, I don’t know, it might just be the floor balloons tricking me. Dropping my backpack, I spin around and race through the school and out the front doors. People say my name, but I just keep running.

  I run past the fruit market and past the bookstore. I run past my apartment building and the dry cleaners and the café with the plastic German shepherd in the window. I run and run until I get there. The gazebo. The secret place.

  So secret that it has its own rule. Unwritten Rule # 11 is: Hunters Park gazebo is the most special place on Earth. No one knows this. Because no one but me knows this rule exists.

  I must have been smaller than a mouse when Dad took me here. The gazebo sits on top of a hill, like a pretty little shed that the wind can blow right through, and you can see the whole town from inside it. I still remember it was dark and it started to snow a bit, just light little flakes blowing around, and my dad showed me how, if you look real close, each snowflake really is completely different, just like they say.
r />   He smelled like a wood-burning stove and that smell kept me warm.

  But other than him taking that picture of me on the gazebo steps, that’s all I remember. Mom always says I’m not supposed to go to the gazebo hill alone, but my feet don’t care. They take me there as fast as they can.

  The gazebo is empty except for a little cat that runs away from all the noise my feet make when I thunder inside. When I drop to the floor, panting, I wish the cat had stayed. My thin coat isn’t doing much for me; maybe it could have helped keep him warm. And he could have helped me.

  A whistle of wind swirls some dried leaves around the floor and I pull my coat tighter. I think about my bear-claw slippers.

  The thing is, life’s a lot of work. My life’s a lot of work. But maybe there’s a way to lessen the burden without hiring a husband for Mom.

  A husband for Grandma, maybe?

  Nah. That wouldn’t help. It would just make me hate Mondays even more. Double the pills to count.

  Suddenly a thought pops into my head. It’s a thought I work very hard to make disappear. It has a lot to do with Unwritten Rule #10. Actually it is Unwritten Rule #10. And there’s a reason I never, ever reveal Unwritten Rule #10 to any of my clients.

  Unwritten Rule #10 cancels out rules one to nine. Erases them. Gone.

  Unwritten Rule #10 is: Sometimes the Best Way to Be a Friend Is to Just Let People Be Themselves.

  I’ve never liked Unwritten Rule #10.

  It interferes with business.

  Just then I hear what might be some voices climbing up my hill. I sincerely hope they’re not evil-stranger voices, because it’s starting to get dark and my feet already hurt from running in fancy shoes.

  “Zoë,” someone calls. Someone who sounds an awful lot like Susannah. “You up there?”

  “In here!” I shout, standing up and peering down the path in the fading light. Like a trail of ants in party clothes, a whole line of kids traipses up the hill.

  One by one they file into my gazebo. First Laurel, then Susannah and Maisie, then Avery, Alice, Brianna, Sylvia, Smartin, and, last, Riley. They all stand in a big half circle facing me.