The One and Only Zoe Lama (8 page)

Mrs. Patinkin waits about three seconds for us to stop scratching and squirming, and start thinking up some crummy questions. Then she continues: “Good! Let’s divide the class, shall we?” She looks around, then rests her eyes on the highlighter stain Smartin left on the carpet. “Everyone to the right of the blue line, shift to the right. Everyone to the left of the blue line, shift left. We’ll add Martin to the group on the left. Look around at your groups, people. You’ll be working very closely with these people over the next few weeks.”

I look around me to find Susannah and Laurel made the cut—phew! So did Maisie, Avery, and a bunch of Sixers. And Smartin, if he survives. But, wait…someone’s missing. I look around to see Riley on the other team, which totally stinks.

Mrs. Patinkin says, “You have five minutes to come up with a name for your island. I want you to be inventive.
Think of names you’re certain have not been used for any other place on earth.” She pushes back her sleeve and checks her watch. “Sta-art now!”

Everybody starts whispering. My group throws out gruesome words like Hizzletown, Junglasia, and Sonderland.
Then I come up with the most perfect name ever for a fake island—Zentopia.
Right away my group agrees on account of it sounding like the Zentopian people won’t have to do a lot of work.

Pretty soon Mrs. Patinkin calls, “Ti-ime! Now I’d like each team to give me their name, and then we’ll vote on a winner.”

I stand up and say, “My peoples do solemnly believe our island should be called Zentopia.” I do a cute little bow and sit down. My group claps and hugs me. I happen to know Patinkin will like our name because she does yoga every morning before school. I think she likes to find her own Zen state before facing a day at school with us.

Devon stands up and says,
“The island should be called Icklesius, which is a democratic combination of everyone’s suggestions.
I feel it’s important that each and every voice be heard—”

“We’ll save our belief systems until next week,” says Patinkin. “Zentopia and Icklesius. Both very unique and well thought out. Shall we vote?”

I stand up again. “Mrs. Patinkin. Since we’re missing a member of our group, the voting won’t be fair. It’ll be fourteen against thirteen, since each person is obviously going to vote for their own group’s name.”

“Good point,” she says. “We’ll just have to use Devon’s suggestion of combining both names. It’s the most democratic thing to do.
We’ll take the
topia
from Zentopia and the
Ick
from Icklesius and call our island Icktopia.”

Which is the worst name an island could have.

As Mrs. Patinkin writes
Icktopia
on the chalkboard, I try to wave to Riley to let him know these teams stink and that the name Icktopia stinks even worse, but he’s leaning in real close to Devon, who is whispering something in his ear.

Maybe the name Icktopia is going to fit this island after all.

On Monday morning,
I’m late for gym because my mom forgot to put my
ALLENCROFT HAS SPIRIT
! T-shirt in the dryer, and Mr. Garson won’t let us take gym in our regular clothes in case we sweat all over them and he gets blamed for stinking up the halls with us later. So there I was at 7:30 in the morning, drying my stupid
SPIRIT
shirt in my apartment building’s creepier-than-creepy laundry room,
wa-ay
down in the basement, where the spiders and the incinerator live. The laundry room is right next to the storage lockers, too, and the whole time my shirt was drying, it sounded like something in Mrs. Grungen’s locker was whispering to me. So I had to leave before my shirt was fully dry and now I’m running to gym class in a clammy shirt.

I did, however, make time to pop into Mrs. Patinkin’s empty classroom to make sure Devon brought Boris back safe and sound. There he was, sleeping in his food dish like an angel. Just as I blow him a kiss and turn to go, I spy
a photograph leaning against his cage for all to see. It’s a picture of Devon feeding Boris a bedtime bottle from an eyedropper. In her bed. And I’m not sure, but it looks like she’s singing to him.

No wonder the poor pig is so exhausted. Her creepy attentions probably gave him night terrors.

I burst through the doors to the main-floor hallway and find Annika Pruitt standing in front of Justin Rosetti’s locker, which is considered THE best locker in the school, right beside the snack machine and the pay phone that everyone except the teachers knows works without quarters.

I’m going to be totally late, but I cannot resist. I stop. “Annika, what’s up?”

She beams. “Hi, Zoë,” she sings. “How are you this morning?”

I ignore the question. It’s Monday, it’s not a holiday, and my shirt is probably growing mold. Besides, she really doesn’t look like she cares. I point to the locker’s open door. “What are you doing? Isn’t your locker upstairs?”

“No.” She bats her eyelashes, which are almost as long and thick and curly as her enormous hair. “
Justin popped the question over the weekend.
”

“What question?”

“He asked me to move in with him.”

Whoa. I open the locker door a bit farther and, sure enough, there is Annika’s flowered binder and beaded pencil case lined up beside Justin’s fat, markered cardboard binder—the one he ripped the green vinyl from so he could graffiti it better. One wall is wallpapered with lovesick puppies and Annika’s fringed hippie purse is hanging on a hook beside Justin’s hoodie.

Okay. It’s important that I handle this situation with tact. Annika can be overly sensitive, especially when it comes to Justin Rosetti. “Wow,” I say, nodding. “I love what you’ve done with the place.” I reach up to touch an orange tiedyed scarf taped to the locker door. “This must be your idea. You’ve always had seriously impeccable taste.”

She nods. “Yes. At first Justin was worried it might make the place too girlie, but I convinced him I needed to do something to balance all his manly energy.”

I look at Justin’s scratched-up Ozzy Osbourne stickers. “Good thinking. Listen, Annika, I know you’ve been against it in the past, and I didn’t push it because you and Justin hadn’t taken any serious steps toward this kind of permanence. But I wish you’d consulted me first.
You really should have signed a prenup.
”

She looks shocked. “A prenup? I don’t want anything to come between me and Justin at a romantic time like this!”

“But it’s exactly what you need. Without a signed document that lists who gets what when you break up—”

“Justin and I will never break up! We’re going to get married one day and move to Australia, where we can live on the beach and I can make his dinner while he surfs! We don’t need any prenup!”

This plan is flawed on so many levels, I can barely stand straight. But you have to take baby steps with Annika. “Actually, it’s a little late for a prenup now. But I could do up a nice little postnup.” I glance around the neighborhood and nod my approval.
“We’re dealing with some prime real estate here.
Now that you’ve gone to all the trouble of moving in and redecorating, you might have some ownership rights. Certainly the longer you live together, the more you’re entitled to. Are you really prepared to give up the locker without a fight, should something happen?”

“It won’t. Justin and I love each other. Besides, Devon
Sweeney said prenups turn relationships sour. She’s seen it happen.”

This Devon is taking things too far.
It’s one thing advising people on sheepskin boot colors and guinea-pig care. But
now she’s endangering people’s housing rights!
“Annika, let’s remember that Justin does have a history of being less than gentlemanly with you. Remember the incident last month involving the bottom of your soiled shoe and your soiled heart?”

With this, Annika bursts into tears. “Ooh, this is
so
confusing! Devon said as long as I anticipate his bad behavior, I can change it! That all I have to do is praise him lavishly when he gets it right and he’ll turn out just fine.”

I squint, tumbling Devon’s words around and around in my head. Something’s twisted up and wonky here, but I’m too clammy under the arms to tell what, exactly.

Laurel, Sylvia, and I
watch in horror as Smartin plops down onto the bench beside Susannah. On his lunch tray are four things: an apple, a squashed milk carton, a plastic fork, and a stapler. Susannah slides her lunch tray away from his and says, “There are rules at this table, Smartin. If you sit here, you obey them.”

“Lay them on me, cover girl.” He opens the stapler and shakes all the staples onto his tray, where they land in a puddle of milk.

“No licking of body parts, yours or anyone else’s,” Susannah says.

“Ouch, that hurts me where I work.” He holds up his hand to Susannah. “High five.”

She ignores his hand and continues. “No shoes on the table and no chewing of any table legs.”

“I was kind of thinking
your
leg…”

“Ugh.” She swats him off and inspects her shoulder for rubble.

“So anyway,” says Sylvia as she bites into another dusty
rice cake, “right after I finished my homework, I asked my mother—”All of a sudden she starts coughing and reaches for her milk container, only it’s empty.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

She nods and croaks, “I just need a—
cough, cough
—drink.”

I grab my milk, then Laurel’s. Both are empty. I start to reach for Susannah’s but she sets her hand on it. “I’m sorry, but I can’t. It’s January and my skin needs the vitamin D.”

Sylvia stands up and points toward the far end of the cafeteria table, where Brandon and the other LameWizards are shoveling chili into their mouths and shouting while they battle dragons or goblin commanders or jack-o’-lopes. She says with a gravelly voice, “Brandon usually shares his leftover milk with me.”

After she leaves, we glance back at Smartin, who is cramming staples between his teeth. Every time he jams in another one, he looks up and gives us a big metal freakshow grin. “You never said anything about do-it-yourself retainers,” he says with a lisp.

“Ugh,” I say. Who would have thought I’d need a rule for this?
“Unwritten Rule #14. Amateur orthodontia is not permitted in the cafeteria.”

He looks at me and whispers, “Your
face
is not permitted in the cafeteria.”

A lunch lady stops beside our table and looks around. “Who said that?”

Laurel, who never eats cafeteria food on account of the scarcity of blue-food options, is staring into the porthole of wickedness itself, Smartin’s foul mouth. She crinkles her nose. “I think you have one stuck in your lip…”

Susannah stands up and climbs off of the bench. “I’m going to get another drink.”

Just then Sylvia returns from LameWizardland, still sputtering.
Uh-oh.
There’s a clientzilla look in her eyes that makes me grab my sandwich and start chewing. I’ve seen this look before in disgruntled clients. From my early Lama days, I’ve tried hard to keep looks like this to a minimum. I swallow, then offer a shaky smile. “Hey, Sylvia. Feeling better?”

The look goes from howling mad to boiling fury. Her nostrils flare into tiny sharp triangles. “No!” She coughs again. “And do you want to know why?”

I’m petrified to hear the answer. Like a brave little soldier, I ask, “Why?”

I can see now that her wings are trembling. “Because
Brandon said no. Actually, he said, ‘No chance!’
Brandon has always shared his milk with me—every single time I choked on my mother’s rice cakes.
And not just because he’s lactose intolerant either. I could always sense there was something more between us. Something that goes way deeper than one percent with Omega Three Essential Oils. But not this time. This time he looked at me like he hoped I would just go away.” She squints down at me. “Do you know what it feels like to be looked at like that—by someone you care about?”

I swallow. “Sort of.”

“Your whole plan backfired! And now I’ll never know where my love for him might have gone, what possibilities might have lain ahead for two innocent…”

Okay. I don’t yet have a rule about this, but, even in my horror, I feel one brewing. It’ll need some tweaking, but it’ll have an awful lot to do with banning gingerbreadwith-icing language that would make a unicorn want to hack off his own horn with a plastic spoon.

“Sylvia, everything is unfolding exactly as planned. First he gets hurt, then he brews for a while, then he thinks he should make a bigger effort with you. It’s how Brandon operates. Believe me, it’s the only way to get a guy like that
into an airless auditorium to watch girls in tartan skirts kicking their overdeveloped calves to bagpipe music. You have to trust me.”

She doesn’t say anything at first. Just blinks. “I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right.”

I pat her wing. “Believe in the system. Did I or did I not get Mr. Renzetti’s wife to come back from the hunting cabin after he got those hair plugs?”

She thinks about this. “You did, I guess. The bell’s going to ring soon. I better get in line for the water fountain.”

“Atta girl,” I call after her. I turn around and smile at Laurel. “She’s going to be all right, that kid.” I sigh. Laurel pats my hand in true #2 BFIS support.

“Uh-oh,” says Smartin, chewing on an apple core.

“What?” we ask.

“I think I swallowed my braces.”

The end-of-lunch bell rings, signaling us all to get out of the cafeteria and get outside or else we’ll get detention. Smartin tears out, leaving the evidence of his Frankenstein dental surgery all over the table. I sweep the staples onto my tray and wipe up his puddle of milk.

Susannah rushes back into the cafeteria. She’s out of breath by the time she reaches us. “Zoë. Red alert!”

“I thought we agreed to make all red alerts blue alerts,” wails Laurel.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“I just came back from the water fountain. Guess who was getting a drink?”

“Sylvia. She needed to clear her throat…”

Susannah shakes her head. “She was drinking all right. Devon was holding the water fountain on for her and she told Sylvia to take an ‘extra long drink.’ Even though there was a hu-uge lineup waiting.”

I squeeze my mouth into an angry little ball.

“It gets worse. When Sylvia had nowhere to wipe her dripping mouth…” Susannah looks around before leaning in real close, “Devon offered up the pretty green scarf her
father
made.”

We look at each other as the horribleness of the situation settles over us like really ugly, really moldy confetti.

Devon Sweeney is trying to poach my very best client!