The One and Only Zoe Lama Read online

  WHACK!

  That’s the thing about bugs—they never listen.

  “I’m telling you, this building is falling apart!” Mom says. “The elevator, the front door, the incinerator, and now roaches?” She looks at me like I should have an answer.

  But all I have is a question. “What’s wrong with the incinerator?”

  She murders another bug. “There’s something stuck in the chute. I have to go down to the fifth floor to dump our trash or it gets stuck. This never would have happened when your father was around, I can tell you that much!”

  I scoot closer and drop down onto my knees. Stories about my father, who died before I turned five, are pretty much my favorite thing in the world. “Why? Were roaches scared of him?”

  “No. But he’d have made sure the owner did a better job of running this building. And if things didn’t improve, he’d make sure we moved someplace else. Like when we moved here. Our last apartment had walls so thin we could hear our neighbors snoring. It kept me up all night, so your dad found us this place. And do you know what sold him on it?”

  “Thicker walls?”

  She smashes a bug, then smiles. “Well, that was one thing. But it was very important to your father that you be able to see Hunter’s Park from your bedroom window. You didn’t want to move from our old place because you were madly in love with the little French boy down the hall. He used to wear a powder-blue sweater with a woolly elephant on the front and pom-poms on the shoulders. Anyway, we couldn’t afford a place really close to the park, but your dad made sure that when you looked west, you could see a nice sliver of greenery peeking out from between the buildings.”

  “Really?”

  “Absolutely. You were the number one most important thing in the world to your dad.”

  If you have to miss a dad, it would be easier if he was a dad who thought you were, say, the third most important thing in the world. Or even the second. Knowing he loved you that much is kind of like torture. You know everything you do for the rest of your life would have been better with him around. How could it not? I mean, even if I was in love with a little French boy with bad taste in sweaters, moving here must have been so much easier because of that sliver of green. Which makes my stomach queasy.

  “He would never want you to grow up like this. With groaning elevators and bugs.”

  “I didn’t hear the bugs groaning.”

  Mom puts her hands on her hips and shoots me an exasperated look.

  My stomach kind of flutters. “We’re not moving, are we?”

  “Sadly, no. We can’t afford a place better than this.” She stomps down on another bug, but—lucky for the bug—she misses. The bug scoots under the oven. “Listen, I’m expecting my book club any minute and I’m going to need your help.” She hands me the dish scrubber, which has brown roach guts in the bristles and I hope is going into the trash. “You are going to have to be on duty. I do not want my friends to know we have bugs, so please kill them quietly. And whatever you do, don’t let any roaches crawl into the living room.”

  Half an hour later, I’m parked on the kitchen floor with my homework spread out on the floor in front of me. But I’m making absolutely no progress because I have the dish scrubber in one hand and the phone in the other.

  “So then…” Susannah says with her mouth full. I don’t have to ask what she’s eating. She just got back from her agent Sammy’s office, which happens to be right above the best donut shop in the city. “Then Sammy tells me that if I get this Neutrogena facewash commercial, I’ll have weight.”

  Huh? “Because of the donuts?” I smack the floor and frighten a bug, who takes off under the fridge.

  “No. I’ll have power. Clout. He says if I land this ad, he’ll bump me up to actress. Not just model. He’ll send me out on auditions for TV shows, movies, you know. Big stuff.”

  “Wow. You could hang with Hollywood brats instead of regular brats like me and Laurel. Hang on a sec…” From the living room, I can hear my mother and her book-club ladies swooning. I peer around the corner to see Susannah’s mother holding up the cover of her book, which has a muscly, long-haired guy standing on a cliff with his shirt half blown off. Which is weird, because I always thought book-club people read classic books, like Tom Sawyer or Pride and Prejudice. I’ve never heard of book clubs picking books like Stormy Passions. All the ladies study their covers, which are exactly the same, and start saying things like:

  “No, I bet he does ab crunches,” and

  “Oh, he definitely uses a cross-trainer. You can tell by his core!” and

  “I’m looking, I’m looking.”

  “Sus?” I whisper into the phone. “Our mothers have seriously lost it. Did you see their crummy book?”

  Susannah laughs. “Yeah. The guy on the cover is a total doof. Come on, his name is Thunder!”

  “And why is he all oily?”

  “I actually don’t mind the oil. It makes his muscles pop.”

  “I guess so. But what’s with his shirt? You can’t tell me it was made without buttons. Or that the wind is so strong it ripped them off. I seriously hope when we’re old we never get this desperate—”

  There’s a big gasp in the other room. I peek again and right away see the problem. A very large bug, maybe the grandfather of all the other cockroaches, is crawling over the toe of the very fanciest lady’s shoe. I drop the phone onto the floor with a clatter, and tear into the living room. All of the women freeze as they watch the roach crawl past the other feet and veer back toward the kitchen. No one says a word.

  I quickly scoop him up in my hands and laugh. “Oops! My science project is escaping!” Just as I scoot the heck out of there, my mother catches my eye and mouths, “Thank you.”

  Then I hear her say, “Sorry, Lorraine.”

  When the ladies finally leave, I’m still on the phone with Susannah, who is worrying because Friday is pizza lunch at school and she can’t afford to get a pimple from pepperoni grease. As Susannah lists all the horrible healthy crap she plans to bring for lunch instead, I watch Lorraine slip my mother a business card. “Call me,” she says, laying her hand over my mom’s.

  My mother stares at the card, confused.

  Lorraine asks, “Have you considered moving?”

  “Are you kidding?” my mom says. “Only every day of my life. But I seriously doubt I could afford much better.”

  Lorraine winks. “Call me. Housing prices have really dropped. You might be surprised at what you can afford.”

  And, just like that, my mother stuffs the business card into her pocket!

  My heart pounds faster. We can never move. For one thing, I’ve lived in this building almost my entire life. For another thing, it’s close to school and friends and Gram’s hipster nursing home. I mean, me and Gram have to stay in touch—she only moved out of our apartment and into Shady Gardens Home for Seniors a few weeks ago. Besides, she might need help with her instant messaging!

  A little wildlife isn’t so terrible…it’s charming. Earthy. Organic.

  Susannah’s voice drones on. “…but then again, cranberry juice might stain my teeth and my mother says I’m not allowed to use those whitening strips again until I’m twenty, because of hazardous chemicals. What do you think?”

  My mother says good-bye to her friends and shuts the door.

  “Zoë?”

  Mom pulls Lorraine’s card out of her pocket again and examines it, then wanders toward her bedroom with a dreamy look on her face.

  “Zoë, are you there?” asks Susannah.

  I peer down the hall just as my mom’s door clicks shut. “I’m not sure anymore.”

  Step Away from the Dinginess

  At the far end of the playground at school, there’s this bunch of little trees huddled around a ginormous flat rock. The PTA moms had it installed last year to show the middle-graders they know we’re not babies anymore and that, instead of needing wavy purple slides and tic-tactoe jungle gyms, we need private-ish places t
o talk about private-ish stuff. Susannah, Laurel, and I don’t exactly own this spot, but since we probably spend more time there than any other kid at Allencroft Middle School, we thought we should give it a name.

  Laurel first wanted to call it the Clubhouse, which made Susannah snort out loud, because a girl who’d soon be starring in actual TV shows and actual major motion pictures would never have a stupid clubhouse. But, if she got on a really big show like The Garage Girls, she might have a loft in Manhattan, which is a huge apartment with no walls between the rooms, big pipes snaked across the ceiling, and supertall windows overlooking the coolest city on Earth.

  And, if I have anything to say about it, the place would have jars and jars of candy on the kitchen counter.

  So anyway, that’s how our big flat rock got its name, the Loft.

  This particular recess we’re entertaining. Sylvia has been here for about seven and a half minutes. Not that I’m counting. We’re all sitting around here in our “lounge” area. I prefer to see clients on the lower part of the rock, the smooth area we like to think of as our dining room, but that part’s all wet today. Could be from melted snow, could be from a dog. So we avoid it—just in case.

  “So you’re sure you’re ready?” I ask. “Because we can go through it all a fifth time.”

  Sylvia nods. “I’m definitely ready.”

  Then Susannah, in an awesome and never-been-seen-before display of selflessness, asks, “Do you want to borrow my cape? I’d need it back as soon as you’re done, of course, and you’d have to promise not to let any part of it drag on the ground or get anywhere near Smartin. But other than that, I’m okay with it.”

  Sylvia shakes her head no. “That’s all right.” She moves her hand closer to the black fabric. “But can I touch it?”

  “Sure.” Then Susannah, all of a sudden, yanks back the cape. “Are your hands clean?”

  “Um, yeah. I think.”

  “Okay. Go ahead.”

  Sylvia fondles the material. “Is it cashmere?”

  “Better,” says Susannah. “Cashmina. Very rare.”

  Laurel snorts.

  I look up to see Avery wandering along in the snow, all bent over like he’s tracking a moose. And, like a gift from LameWizard heaven, Brandon is playing his game a few feet away with his friends. “Sylvia,” I whisper. “There’s never going to be a better time than right this very moment.” I push her off the edge of the lounge. “Go!”

  She stands up and dusts off her jeans. Then her hands fly up to her head. “Should I take off my hat?”

  In unison, we all say, “No!”

  “Right.” She sucks in a big breath and squints over at Avery, who may or may not be sniffing moose droppings. “You’re sure this will work?”

  “Positive,” I say. “Go get ’em, tiger.”

  We watch as she takes feeble little sparrow steps toward him. She doesn’t travel in a straight line. She weaves left a bit, then right, like a short kid desperately trying to catch a glimpse of the Santa Claus Parade from behind a wall of exceptionally tall and extraordinarily heartless grown-ups. Not that I’d know.

  Then we grab on to one another because she trips over an abandoned snow fort and falls forward, almost, but not quite hurtling straight into Avery’s arms. She loses her hat in the snow, but, at the last moment, she stays upright.

  “Huh. She’s more corrugated than you’d think,” says Laurel.

  “Coordinated” I say. “Corrugated would mean she’s all crinkled and rumpled.”

  We stare at Sylvia’s cowlicks, which have formed horns on either side of her head. Susannah sighs. “Either word works, really.”

  Avery looks up at her and grunts a nongreeting, then Sylvia points out a possible moose track. I grin, shocked. Never once did I mention her joining him on his large mammal hunt. That was pure genius on Sylvia’s part! (See, this is a mark of a truly noble client. After a while, she absorbs your words through some kind of Unwritten Rule osmosis and begins to think for herself. I’m so proud of her I could burst.)

  Both bent over now, Sylvia and Avery start talking into each other’s knees and, when Avery finally stands upright and looks her in the face, I see him smile. But what’s more important than Avery smiling is Brandon frowning. He watches as Sylvia compliments Avery on his beastly ski jacket, which looks like it’s made of silver oven mitts. Avery looks down and tries to shine it up—probably not a good idea if he’s hunting moose, too much glare—then Sylvia executes an Unwritten-Rulebook-perfect yawn, combined with the well-timed glance around the playground. Just so he knows she’s not stuck talking to him. She has other options, and may or may not be considering them at that very moment.

  Then she waves her knobby fingers at him and, without glancing back to see if Brandon is watching, she pitches and weaves her way back toward the school.

  My little bird is finally growing up.

  So that’s when I realized I left my science homework in my agent’s Hummer,” says Susannah as we wipe off the Loft and begin to make our way across the soccer field.

  Laurel rolls her eyes. “Do you think we’ll ever have a conversation that doesn’t have the words my agent in it? Or my agent’s Hummer?”

  Just as Susannah’s about to fling her cape around her shoulders and stomp away—probably to call her agent—none other than Devon Sweeney appears. She’s wearing a quilted watermelon-colored ski jacket and black leggings tucked into fluffy black boots. Nothing she’s wearing is made of cashmina, you can just tell. Still, and I’d never admit this to Susannah, Devon looks like she could be in an ad for a superfancy ski lodge. You know, sipping hot chocolate by the fire, surrounded by cute ski-instructor boys with windburned cheeks.

  Susannah and Laurel mumble hello and I actually smile. I don’t even have to force myself either. I haven’t stopped reeling with happiness over Sylvia’s performance and I might not stop for hours. When you’re having a day this good, you can afford to be a bit generous, even if your Lama status is temporarily turned upside down.

  Devon smiles, pushing her black velvet hairband farther back in her hair. “I hope you don’t think I’m being creepy, but I overheard what you were saying.” She’s looking at Susannah. “You’re really a model?”

  “For now,” Susannah sniffs. “I’ll be an actress pretty soon.”

  “That’s so cool. A lot of people say I have beautiful feet. They tell me I should be a foot model. Do you think I need a special agent for foot modeling?”

  “You don’t want to get into parts modeling,” says Susannah, shaking her head. “Your feet would have to be perfect.”

  I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone who blushes as often as Devon. She laughs a honking little laugh and waggles her head. “And what if they are?”

  “Trust me, they aren’t,” Susannah says. “One tiny mark can kill a parts model’s career. So unless you’ve kept them wrapped in thick socks and tucked into down-filled slippers that could never cause so much as a blister for your whole life, it’s not possible.”

  But Devon’s already bent down, unlacing her boot. She waggles her head again. “Okay, I’ll show you if you insist.” She whips off her boot, then sock, and holds up a foot so flawless, the clouds part and a single beam of sunlight shines down on it. Somewhere in the playground, a harp starts to play. Okay, maybe not. But that’s the kind of foot we’re dealing with here.

  Susannah drops to her knees in some kind of worship. “It’s unbelievable. There’s not a blister, not a scar of any kind. And the formation of your toes…” She looks up at Devon. “It’s magnificent.”

  Devon shrugs. “I don’t take special care of them. I just have supergood genes, I guess. Could you give me your agent’s phone num—”

  Susannah stiffens up in horror—she’ll give you her last Oreo, the answers to her math homework, and the exact size of her training bra, but she’ll never, ever give you her agent’s phone number. Some things, she says, are sacred. But before actual snakes shoot out from between her teet
h, Laurel grabs Devon’s gloves.

  “These are, like, the cutest blue gloves I’ve ever seen,” she says. I’m pretty sure Laurel only likes them because they’re blue. They have feathery fringe around the wrists and each finger has rhinestones where the fingernails would be. The kind of thing that might look fun on someone else, but if they belonged to you, you’d think they were the creepiest gloves ever.

  “You like them? I’m so glad. My father designed them, actually.” She supersmiles until I fear her face might burst. “He quit his attorney job to launch his own children’s clothing company, just so he could dedicate his working hours to bettering the lives of me and my sister. So now he makes everything we wear. Whatever we dream up, he designs it and has it on our beds by the end of the week. My mother says he does it because he loves us more than anything else in the world.”

  I feel an invisible fist punch me in the stomach and I can hardly breathe. Here before me is walking, talking proof of how my life was supposed to be. I try to look away, think of something else—just like I do when the class has to paint lousy picture frames for Father’s Day—but it doesn’t work.

  “That’s so nice of him,” gushes Laurel.

  “I wish my dad cared enough about me to design my entire wardrobe,” says Susannah. “On second thought, with his taste, I’d rather he didn’t.”

  Everybody laughs, except me. “Wow,” I say in a voice that sounds high-pitched and scary and sarcastic, even to me, “dedicating your life to crushed velvet and rhinestone trim. Now, that is fatherly love!”

  They all stop smiling and my nastyish-sounding voice hangs in the middle of us like a big ugly burp. No one knows what to say.