The One and Only Zoe Lama (15 page)

Later that day
Mrs. Patinkin is late coming back from lunch, which is never good. Smartin has his hand stuck deep inside the heat vent hoping to find things to snack on, Alice Marriott is drawing prancing kittens on the chalk-board and giving them names like Tea Bag and Spooner, and Stewie Buckenheimer has lost his retainer in the guinea-pig cage.

Devon comes in with extra-rosy cheeks, and a few moments later, Riley follows. They both hang up their jackets and wander over to the cage—like their coming in late together isn’t twisting one particularly tiny person inside out and back again.

Riley ruffles my hair and kneels down beside me. “What’s going on? Has Boris learned to speak French?”

I want to laugh, but then I spy it. One long blond hair
hanging from Riley’s muscley shoulder. I force a smile. “Where have you been?”

“Nowhere. I just went home for lunch. No biggie.”

No biggie? I fake-smile wider and pluck her hair off his sweater. “What’s this?”

He looks down. “Dog hair?”

“You don’t have a dog.”

He grins. “But I do have a goldfish.”

“Must be some hairy goldfish,” I say, turning toward the cage, where Stewie’s hand is wrist-deep in soggy shavings. “And big. And ugly.”

“Actually, she’s kind of cute,” he says.

I’m too shocked to blink. I can’t believe this is happening.
Devon has stolen my MUCGIS
!
My Riley
!
And he doesn’t mind one bit.
“Cute? Maybe. If you don’t mind getting long blond hair all over your clothes.”

“I don’t mind a bit.”

His words slap me in the face. In drama class last month, he and I were paired up and forced to do the trust test—where someone closes her eyes and has to fall backward and trust that a certain cute boy will catch her. So after Riley caught me, he made this big deal about getting three long, curly brown hairs on his rugby shirt—laughing and
saying if baldness runs in my family, he needs to know now so he can plan his escape.

So the question is—why is Devon allowed to go bald all over him and I’m not?

“Whoa!” says Avery now, watching Stewie. “You just missed a hu-uge intestinal nugget.”

“That wasn’t an intestinal nugget, Buckner. It was a food pellet,” says Stewie. “When are you going to get new glasses?”

“When your teeth stop growing sideways.”

“Real funny. Want me to make
your
teeth grow sideways?”

Avery shoves him and Stewie hurls himself on top of Avery and starts punching. The class is chanting, “Fight, fight, fight,” and Riley dives in the middle and pulls off Avery’s glasses.

“You’re the reason Boris turned cranky,” says Avery, trying to pull Stewie’s shirt over his head. “Your rotten fingers are always stinking up his cage!”

“Don’t label Boris!” I snap. “It’s bad for his self-image.”

“Well, it’s true. He never used to be cranky,” says Avery.

Suddenly Brianna gasps. She’s holding Bogus Boris belly-up and turns him around for us to see. Her face turns dark.
“Boris never used to be a girl before either.”

Everyone leans closer for a good look. Except me. I step backward, and by the time I reach my desk, I realize I’ve made a serious mistake. I should have backed out into the hall.

Devon spins around first. She narrows her eyes and walks toward me. “You had him last weekend. And I happen to know he was a boy before that! Then you took him home.
Where is the real Boris, Zoë?
”

The room starts to spin.

Laurel and Susannah rush to my side. “Leave her alone,” Susannah says. “She took way better care of him than any of you ever have. She built him a circus.”

“It was more of a carnival,” I say under my breath.

“She built him a carnival,” Susannah repeats.

“Then what happened?” asks Devon.

“Yeah, what happened?” asks Avery. “Did he choke on a hot dog at the carnival? Did a roller coaster fall on him?”

Smartin asks quietly, “Did Boris die?”

The class goes silent as they wait for my answer.

“He had a little surgery,” Susannah says, looking at me. “That’s all.
The vet needed to do a small
procedure to keep him mentally healthy.
That’s Boris all right. The
real
Boris. I know. I was with Zoë the whole weekend.”

“You were not,” says Brianna. “I saw you at the movies on Sunday afternoon. With your mother.” A few people snicker.

“That wasn’t me,” snaps Susannah. “We hired a look-alike to throw off the paparazzi—”

I put a hand on her arm. “It’s okay, Susannah. They should know the truth. Boris didn’t choke or get crushed by a roller coaster. He didn’t die.” I pause to take my final breath. “Boris ran away.”

Everyone gasps in horror.

“There was a hole in the wall and the phone rang and I looked away and he just…” Tears spill onto my cheeks. “I’m
so
sorry. You guys know I loved Boris. I feel horrible…”

“But not horrible enough to tell us the truth,” says Devon. “You know, losing our beloved class pet is one thing. We might have been able to forgive that. But buying another and trying to pass
her
off as Boris…?”

Riley steps closer to her and stares at me.

At this very moment, Mrs. Patinkin rushes in. “Sorry I’m late, people. Traffic was atrocious.” She drops her bags and writes
atrocious
on the board. Then she looks around more carefully. “Did I miss anything?”

B
y some miracle, Mrs. Patinkin sends me to the office a few minutes later with the attendance sheet. No one said a word to her about Boris not being Boris. Which doesn’t make me happy in the slightest. Devon would adore ratting on me. The fact that she didn’t can only mean one thing—she has even worse plans for me.

I take the absolute longest way back to class because I want to stretch out my life as much as possible. Just as I pass the darkened hallway by the woodshop, I spy Annika Pruitt wrestling with a dented locker door. Wood chips, balled-up lunch bags, and forgotten sweatshirts cover the floor and Annika is sniffling.

“Annika, what are you doing in this part of town?”

She looks up. Her face is wet with tears. “Justin told me she was his second cousin!”

“Who?”

“Tricia Hemmerling. He told me she was coming over
to help his mother choose carpeting for their laundry room.”

“No one puts carpeting in their laundry—”

“I know that now!” she snaps, then starts to cry. “You were right. Justin was a total creep all along and I didn’t want to see it.” She kicks the locker and it finally bursts open with a loud squawk. Inside, Annika’s books—carefully covered with pretty yellow paper—huddle together on the top shelf, which is falling down on one side. The whole inside of the locker is rusty and it smells bad. Real bad.

The girl is living in squalor. “So I guess the locker…”

“He kicked me out! He said it was
his
locker,” she sobs. “I put my heart and soul into that place. I wallpapered!”

“Yeah.
Sadly, wallpapering doesn’t get you any actual property rights.”

“I should have listened to you. It’s just that he’s so manly…I lost my head.”

Manly? The guy phones his mother every time he gets a C and says he’ll hold his breath if she doesn’t come into the school and make them change it. “Don’t beat yourself up, Annika. It could have happened to anyone who’s been taking advice from a Sixer—”

She gasps. “Devon chose the frolicking puppy wallpaper.
She dropped by with Cheese Nips. Believe me, Devon will be devastated when she hears what Justin did.”

Frolicking puppy wallpaper and Cheese Nips—these are Devon’s business moves? “The only thing I can suggest now is that we go after him for joint ownership. Which means you could maybe get the locker every other week. And alternating holidays.”

“I couldn’t do it. He’s already talking about Tricia moving in.” Her cheeks glow pink, which totally clashes with her orangey hair. “It would kill me to see her things scattered on my throw rug.”

That’s it.
Not only is Devon Sweeney going to destroy me and my future marriage, she’s going to destroy the entire school.
She’s taken her lousy advice too far. And these kids are gullible—they’re willing to fall for the first swindler who pulls a folder full of printed pages out of their pocket. I care way too much about my friends at this school. I care way too much about Riley.

There’s only one way I can beat her—and after losing Boris, it’s not going to be easy. I have to come up with the very best advice the peoples of Allencroft Middle School have ever heard.

Other than my knee
banging under the coffee table, the living room is completely silent. Outside, a bus roars along Chicoutimi Street.

I let out a big breath and smile. “This is nice.” I look around the room at Laurel, Susannah, and Sylvia. “Isn’t this nice?”

No one answers. I kick Laurel and Susannah under the table.

“Yeah!” says Susannah.

“Real nice,” says Laurel, picking through the bowl of blue corn chips.

“Come on, Sylvia,” I say. “Have another hot dog.”

She shakes her head no and goes back to examining her cuticles. “I’m still pretty full from all the Tater Pops you made me eat.”

“How about a pickle? Pickles aren’t so filling.”

“Nah. I’m allergic.” Sylvia looks around. “So when does Client Appreciation night start?”

I smile. She has no idea the fun she’s in for. “You’re living it.”

Before Sylvia arrived, Susannah, Laurel, and I brain-stormed about how to make it look like we’re an insanely fun bunch of girls. Laurel thought we should do makeovers, but we all agreed that Sylvia’s “after” might not be any better than her “before.” The only thing that’s going to improve her head of snarls is a wig. Susannah said we should watch season one of
The Garage Girls
because she couldn’t remember if Brie had bangs back then. So I had to invent a rule. Hair is not to be discussed in any way. And since people on TV tend to have perfect hair, no TV. And, since Laurel, Susannah, and I have kind of okay hair, no makeovers.

Which leaves us with really only two things: our sparkling personalities and a box of Boston cream donuts.

Sylvia looks at Susannah. “Susannah, did you go to your big audition? The one for the major-motion-picture role?”

Susannah hugs herself and nods. “They didn’t even make me read lines. They just took a few pictures of me, oohed and aahed, and told me they’d call me back next week. My
agent says it almost never happens this way and that I’m really lucky.”

“How exciting,” says Sylvia. “I’ve
always
wanted to be a model…”

Okay, this is very bad. If Sylvia starts setting her sights on impossible goals, it’s going to be very bad for business. I need to change the subject. Not only that, but I need to start being insanely fun. “I have a joke!” I say.
“What’s fuzzy and green, and if it fell out of a tree it would kill you?”

Laurel throws up her hand. “I know! A poisonous caterpillar!”

I shake my head.

“A moldy blueberry,” says Susannah as she brushes her hair.

“No,” I say.

“A green kitten!” shouts Sylvia. “With supersharp claws.”

Laurel falls over laughing. “Green kitten!”

“No,” I say.
“A pool table.”

They all look at one another, scrunching up their faces. Then Laurel huffs. “Why would a pool table be hanging from a tree?”

“I never said it was hanging!” I say. “It’s just sitting up there. Which is why the joke is so funny.”

Susannah says, “It’s not funny, Zo.”

“Yes, it is.” It needs to be funny. Insanely funny.

Laurel says, “The kitten’s better.” She starts to giggle. “He’s, like, all fuzzy and green…”

Susannah snorts, “A green kitten would get
so
much TV work.”

I clench my jaw and try to keep my voice calm. “Sylvia, what’s funnier? Kitten or pool table?”

“Umm…” The room falls silent while she thinks. I can hear the clock ticking in the kitchen.

“What was that?” asks Sylvia suddenly, tilting her head toward the wall. “It sounded like scritch-scratching.”

Laurel jumps up. “Maybe it’s Boris!” She rushes over to the wall and starts banging. “Boris! Here, Boris!”

“It’s not Boris,” says Susannah. “The walls are filled with bugs.”

Sylvia’s face goes pale and I nudge Susannah.
Ugly rumors like this can sink a company. I smile. “Zoë Lama and Associates does not have bugs.”

“Boris!” Laurel shouts into the wall.

“Someone get a piece of cheese!” says Laurel. “We’ll put it on the bathroom floor. As Boris bribery.”

“Yeah! Only guinea pigs don’t eat cheese. We need hay,” says Sylvia.

“Where are we going to get hay?” asks Susannah, rolling her eyes. To me, she whispers, “Can I get the donuts now?”

“Yeah. But eat slowly. Otherwise we’ll run out of things to talk about.”

Susannah jumps up and heads toward the kitchen. She comes back with the box. “Boston creams for everyone,” she sings.

“I
love
Boston creams,” says Sylvia.

“Same here,” says Laurel, pulling a spray bottle of blue food dye from her fanny pack. “I’m going to eat mine from the inside out.”

“Me, too!” Sylvia says. “First I squirt out the cream, then I pull the hole open and separate the top from the bottom, then I—”

“Eat the top first!” Susannah squeals. “That’s exactly what I do.”

We all reach into the box at the same time. “Not too many, Sylvia,” I say. “Remember what happened last time.”

“What happened?” asks Laurel.

I explain. “Nothing.
Sylvia gets night terrors if she eats too much chocolate before bed. Screams like a sick cat in the middle of the
night.
” I laugh. “Right, Sylvia?”

Sylvia goes pale. She drops her donut.

“What’s wrong?” I ask. “Is it starting already?”

She reaches for her overnight bag and heads for the front hall.

“Sylvia!” I call. “Where are you going?”

A few seconds later, I hear the front door slam.

“Did she just leave?” asks Laurel with her mouth full.

I tear out of the apartment and find her punching the elevator button. “Sylvia, wait! Don’t go, please!”

“My night terrors were a secret! You swore you’d never, ever tell anyone, remember? You said it right in front of my mother.”

Ooh. I actually do remember something like that. Vaguely. “But that was a few years ago. I completely forgot! Anyway, it’s only Laurel and Susannah. They won’t think badly of you, believe me, if you knew half the weird stuff they do—”

“That’s not the point. You promised you’d never say anything!”

“And I’m sure I meant it. I just forgot…”

She waves her hand toward the apartment. “I never
wanted a big event from you. I don’t care about flash and dazzle. All I wanted was an apology. I lost my
boyfriend
.”

I stare at her little face. “That’s all it would have taken to keep you as a client? And friend?”

She nods.

I wrap my arms around her and hug her tight. “I’m so sorry, Sylvia.”

She pulls away and steps onto the elevator. “Good-bye, Zoë.” And, for the first time in years, the doors close right away.