Solving Zoe

by Barbara Dee

  “So I guess that’s it,” Anya was saying brightly. Oh, right: Math class. Do now! “Zoe? Any thoughts?”

  “Not really.” Zoe could feel her cheeks start to redden. Three.

  “Oh, come on,” Anya was coaxing her, as if Zoe were at her first ever swimming lesson and refused to wet her big toe. “Join the conversation! Don’t be afraid.”

  “I’m not afraid.”

  Paloma turned around and grinned at her just the way she had at lunch. And then Mackenzie Stafford, who went around telling everybody that she had “a near-photographic memory,” began giggling.

  “That’s great, Zoe,” Anya said, nodding. “Think of it this way: Numbers are sort of like toys. Try to play with them a little. You know, relax and mess around. Don’t worry about being right or wrong. Just have some fun with them, okay?”

  And all of a sudden Anya was right by Zoe’s desk. She was looking down at Zoe’s notebook with a funny expression on her face. “Is this what you’ve been doing all class?” she asked quietly, pointing a black-nail-polished fingernail at Zoe’s number doodles.

  “Um,” Zoe answered. “Not all class.”

  Anya leaned over Zoe’s desk. She studied the doodles for a couple of seconds. “Really cool. But this isn’t Art, you know?”

  “Sorry.”

  Anya shook her head. She cupped her hand and said quietly and distinctly in Zoe’s ear, “Listen. I hate to say this, Zoe. But unless I start seeing some actual work from you, you could very easily fail this class.”

  Then she walked back to her whiteboard and began writing some homework problems, the blue-black raptor on her left arm jumping around frantically, as if it had suddenly found itself locked in a tiny birdcage.

  3

  After horrible, endless Math was Recreation Arts, which at Lorna Hubbard was what you were supposed to call Gym. Rec Arts was all the way down in the basement, so when it was finally over, Zoe had to trudge four flights up the central marble staircase to her Ancient Civilizations class. And then she began to run.

  Because just down the corridor she spotted the eavesdropping boy from lunch: the blond head, the hunched shoulders. She had to talk to him—she didn’t know why, or what she’d even say. Hi, my name is Zoe, and why were you spying on me at lunch? sounded friendly, but definitely paranoid. Besides, maybe she’d imagined the whole thing. She still wanted a better look at him, anyway.

  Pushing through a bunch of Upper Division kids blocking the door to the digital recording studio, she rushed past an open classroom in which Randy, the Poetry teacher, was bellowing: “WHAT’S POETRY? WHAT ISN’T POETRY? WHO DECIDES?” On his door someone had duct-taped a huge spray-painted banner announcing tryouts for the musical (TODAY—MONDAY!!!), which reminded Zoe about this afternoon. Poor Dara, she thought again as she hurried past an empty mirrored dance studio and then the practice room of the Hubbard Non-Western Percussion Ensemble, all the while keeping the boy’s floppy blond hair in view.

  And then, somehow, she lost sight of him. She’d just blinked, maybe, right at the moment he’d wandered into some classroom. After all, if he was an applicant, he was probably visiting Hubbard to check out the coolest teachers. Well, don’t be fooled by tattoos, she warned him telepathically. Then she shoved open the door of Ancient Civs and headed immediately for the back wall, taking her usual seat next to Ezra Blecker, a brilliant boy who wore incomprehensible T-shirts and hardly ever spoke to anyone.

  “Hi, Ezra,” Zoe said, dumping her backpack onto the floor. “What are you reading?”

  He held up a thick paperback: Samurai in Cyberspace: Blue Screen of Doom.

  “Huh,” she said politely. “Is it good?”

  “I just started it. So far it’s pretty standard.”

  Zoe nodded, even though she didn’t have the slightest idea what Ezra’s books were like. At the end of the nod she added a smile, but by now Ezra was reading again, and didn’t seem to notice.

  “You okay, Zoe?” Paloma called out from the front of the classroom.

  “Of course I am,” Zoe replied. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “I don’t know. Because you seemed so out of it in Math.”

  Leg was in this class too. She stretched her slender, expressive arms, fluttering the floaty sleeves of her magenta-colored top. “So what happened?” she asked, yawning. “Another out-of-Zoe experience?”

  Paloma laughed. “Exactly,” she answered, looking over her shoulder at the rest of the class.

  The classroom door flew open. There was a predictable ten-second pause, during which everyone, even Paloma and Leg, became silent. Then into the room swept Signe Sorenson, Hubbard’s legendary teacher of Ancient Civilizations.

  “Good morning,” she said in her crackly voice, with its faint aroma of somewhere-in-Europe. She was a small round woman, shaped like a crab apple; often she wore animal-print ponchos or wild paisley shawls that only made her look smaller and rounder. Today she had on an enormous moss green cashmere scarf wound twice around her neck, the long tasseled ends dangling down the front of her black wool dress, trembling when she spoke. With her puffy white hair piled on top of her head like a generous dollop of whipped cream, her red plastic eyeglasses, and her high-top sneakers with their NBA logos, she looked like a grandma doll, as dressed by a naughty color-blind preschooler.

  But nobody ever giggled when she made her dramatic entrance. The thing about Signe Sorenson was, she was terrifying. At least she was to Zoe.

  Zoe couldn’t say why. But probably it had to do with all the unsubstantiated rumors about Signe’s life: She’d done something heroic, something top secret, maybe a spy mission behind enemy lines during Vietnam, or the Cold War. Whatever it was, it was very intimidating. So last fall, when Zoe finally met the famous teacher at the Welcome to Middle Division Tea, she had a hundred theories and questions buzzing around in her head. And when Signe Sorenson (who for the Tea had draped herself in an enormous peacock blue mohair shawl) came over to greet the Bennetts, she extended a surprisingly large, warm hand to Zoe.

  “Another Bennett,” she’d said in that crackly voice. “How very delightful.”

  “This is Zoe,” Mom had said, nodding encouragingly at her daughter.

  “Zoe,” Signe had repeated. “Such a lovely Greek name. Quite ancient, you know. I have always been fascinated by names.”

  Zoe glanced uncertainly at her dad. What was she supposed to say to this? But he was no help; he just smiled at her.

  Signe Sorenson beamed at Mom, but she continued to hold Zoe’s hand. “I truly loved teaching Isadora and Malcolm. Such talented, talented children. You must be so proud.” Then she turned to Zoe, still trapping her hand, and scrutinized her face as if she were committing it to memory. “So tell me, Zoe Bennett, what is your passion?”

  Her passion? Nobody had warned her to have a passion! She looked at Dad again, this time frantically, but he just kept smiling at her, probably because he couldn’t think of a passion for her to have either. But she had to say something, or else Signe Sorenson would probably end up amputating her hand. So she just blurted out the first thing that came into her head:

  “I like pizza.”

  Signe smiled. “As do I,” she said. She leaned toward Zoe as if she were about to confide a valuable secret. “I have a very strong feeling,” she added quietly, “that your answer will change dramatically before you leave our Middle Division.”

  Then she squeezed Zoe’s hand and toddled off to greet Mackenzie Stafford, who was standing with her parents beside the Gluten-Free Table. Signe was trapping Mackenzie’s hand but Mackenzie didn’t seem to mind. She was chattering on and on, probably about her near-photographic memory, and Signe was nodding encouragingly and smiling back.

  “Come on, Zozo, let’s go steal some brownies,” Dad was urging. “I’ll race you.”

  “No, thanks,” Zoe murmured. “I don’t want anything.” That was true. All she wanted right then was to escape the Tea, because she strongly suspected that she had just been g
iven a test, and had failed somehow.

  In September she knew she was right. For the first few days of sixth grade, Signe didn’t even seem to notice that Zoe was in her class. Once or twice she glanced in Zoe’s direction, but it was pretty clear what she was thinking: I have led a fabulous, mysterious, significant life, and you, Zoe Bennett, like pizza.

  Oh, well. Maybe you’ll change dramatically before you leave Middle Division.

  Zoe ran her fingers over her desktop. Signe’s room had special desks she said she’d ordered from some experimental school in Denmark. Really, they were just little whiteboards you were supposed to write on instead of paper. The idea was that you were allowed to take notes, but immediately you had to “internalize” whatever you’d written, because some other kid in the next class could just erase it with a smeary washcloth.

  Now Signe was saying something in that crackly voice about “a truly extraordinary new addition to the class.” Zoe glanced up from her whiteboard desk. Signe was beaming as she gestured grandly toward some kid at a desk near the windows. “Cryptoanalytic prodigy,” she was saying, or something close to that, with a lot of syllables.

  Zoe looked.

  It was the boy from lunch. The floppy-haired eavesdropper.

  So he wasn’t an applicant; he was an actual student. And not only was he at Hubbard, he was in this class.

  “I’m sure you’ll all be giving Lucas a very enthusiastic welcome,” Signe said, “in the warmest Hubbard tradition. Yes, Jake?”

  Jake Greiner, a kid who spoke seven languages fluently and claimed to know curse words in twenty-three, stood up and faced the windows. He bowed majestically at Lucas. “Willkommen, prodigy,” he intoned. “Bienvenidos, Benvenuto, Bienvenue, Welkom…”

  Everyone laughed, even Ezra.

  The boy—Lucas—didn’t. He stood, gave a stiff little half-wave to nobody in particular, and then sat down again, blushing.

  “Ah, Lucas, dear,” Signe said. “Aren’t you going to thank Jake for that lovely greeting?”

  “Yeah, thanks,” Lucas mumbled, not looking up.

  Zoe shifted uncomfortably in her seat, causing her chair leg to squeak. That was when Lucas noticed she was in the room. He immediately turned away. Zoe thought she saw him write something, but she couldn’t get a good look.

  “Excuse me, Lucas. You’re not supposed to use notebooks in this class,” Mackenzie announced. “That’s why we have these desks.”

  “It’s all right, Mackenzie,” Signe said calmly. “Now why don’t we all shift our attention to ancient Egypt?”

  Zoe tried again to peek at Lucas, but she couldn’t see past Ezra. She sighed as she unzipped her backpack. Jake is such an incredible jerk, she thought. Why did he have to show off like that? Why did everybody at Hubbard have to show off all the time? It was like this school was one giant stage, and if you didn’t want to be under a glaring spotlight with everybody staring at you every minute, you were lost.

  Well, Zoe wasn’t lost: She had her own fascinating thoughts. And who cared what Malcolm said about them, or Anya, or anybody else. She reached inside her backpack for the special dry erase marker that you had to use on Signe’s desks.

  In the upper right-hand corner of her desktop, in the smallest, neatest print she could manage, she wrote:

  4 = Blue.

  And she was very careful for the rest of the class not to accidentally smudge it out.

  4

  Almost every single afternoon Zoe and Dara went to Zoe’s apartment. Mostly they just locked themselves in Zoe’s bedroom and ate Skittles they’d bought on the way home, and laughed about their classmates. Or made up games, like the one they called Which, where you asked each other which was stupider, hip-hop or heavy metal? Or which was grosser, nose hair or toe fungus? The Zoe and Dara Show, Zoe’s dad called them, teasingly. Of course, now that they hardly saw each other at school, The Zoe and Dara Show was the highlight of the entire day.

  But this afternoon Zoe was in the school lobby, waiting. And Dara, who was upstairs auditioning, was already twenty-five minutes late.

  Zoe sighed as she adjusted her backpack straps, which were creeping into her armpits. She wished she’d brought a book, or an iPod, or something. There was absolutely nothing to do in this boring lobby but stand there staring at the massive oil portrait of Lorna Hubbard, with her amused eyes and her steel gray hair and her ugly mauve dress. MISS LORNA HUBBARD, FOUNDER, read the small gold plaque underneath the painting. What an incredibly demented name, Zoe thought. Lorna Hubbard. Lorna Hubbard. Who would give a baby a name like that, anyway? Maybe it sounded better backward: Anrol Drabbuh. Or possibly Lorna Hubbard was an anagram for something: Rolna Bradbuh. Norla Duh Barb. Hula born drab. Our blah brand?

  Suddenly Zoe realized that there was someone else in the lobby. Lucas. He was wearing a ridiculously un-kidlike brown tweed overcoat, and he was sitting on the floor, just about a foot away from the interior swinging doors that led to the auditorium. And, as always, he was hunched over his spiral notebook, writing.

  It was a stupid place to sit. But Lucas was new. Obviously he didn’t realize that any second some kid could come crashing through those doors and smack him in the head with a saxophone or a tennis racket.

  “Excuse me,” Zoe called out brightly. “Lucas? That’s your name, right?”

  “Right,” he said, not bothering to look up.

  “Um, I don’t know if you realize this, but those doors swing into the lobby. Somebody could bump into you if you’re sitting there.”

  “Okay, thanks,” he replied.

  But he didn’t move. He just sat there writing. And then sure enough, maybe ten seconds later, the doors banged open, and Tyler Russo and Calliope Pollock, two of the coolest theater-types in the seventh grade, came barreling through, crashing into Lucas and sending him flying through the lobby.

  “Omigod,” Zoe cried. “Are you all right, Lucas?”

  Lucas got up on his knees. He looked as if he were fighting tears. “I’m fine,” he said.

  “Sorry,” Tyler said. “But why were you sitting there, dude?”

  “I can sit wherever I want, cretin. I go to this school.”

  “Yeah? Well, good for you,” Tyler said, grinning. “But listen, dude, you were kind of asking to get hit. Sitting on the floor like a little gargoyle—”

  “Stop it,” Calliope squealed, smacking him playfully on the arm. “You’re so mean, Tyler. I hate you.”

  Zoe could feel her own cheeks start to burn. She looked at Lucas. Get up, she willed him silently.

  Tyler walked over to Lucas and extended his hand. “Hey, come on, bro, don’t be mad. I’ll help you up, all right?”

  But then all of a sudden Lucas scrambled to his feet and awkwardly ran out the front door, like a tangled marionette that was being yanked offstage. Tyler and Calliope looked at each other and burst into laughter.

  “Freak,” Calliope pronounced, as they walked past Zoe to join some other theater-types hanging out in front of the building. Zoe peered down the block after Lucas, but he was already out of sight. She glanced at her watch. It was already three twenty; where in the world was Dara? And how much longer would Zoe have to stand there, wasting precious after-school time, waiting?

  Then she spotted something. At first she wasn’t sure, because the lobby was old and dimly lit, and anything tiny and dark you saw out of the corner of your eye could be a dust ball, or someone’s lost glove. But she walked quickly to the interior doors where Lucas had first sat down. Then she picked up a little black object.

  His spiral notebook. Left behind in the crash.

  Without thinking, she opened the cover.

  PERSONAL PROPERTY!!! KEEP OUT!!!

  I’ll know if you read anything.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said aloud. Then she turned to the second page.

  And then to the third.

  And the fourth.

  And the fifth.

  And the thirteenth.

  It didn’t m
atter. Any page she turned to was equally impossible to read.

  What could it mean? She flipped through the pages, hoping that somewhere, maybe in the margins, there was a non-nonsensical clue. But there was nothing, just page after page of odd-looking near-letters and mutant symbols and fragmentary shapes. Why was she even looking at it? Lucas’s notebook was completely crazy.

  She slipped it into the pocket of her purple hoodie sweatjacket. She’d give it back to him tomorrow, she told herself. In a weird way she felt as if she’d failed him just now, and returning his notebook was a small, nice thing she could do.

  Even if he was obviously from another planet.

  “Zoe?”

  She spun around. “Oh, hi, Mackenzie.”

  “What are you doing here? Waiting for Dara?”

  Zoe nodded.

  “Well, I saw her upstairs at tryouts. There’s a ton of people ahead of her, so she won’t be done for a while. Sorry.” Mackenzie took out her cell phone and started dialing.

  “Actually,” said Zoe, not waiting for Mackenzie to finish her call. “There’s something I really have to do, and I can’t wait around anymore. Tell Dara if you see her, okay?”

  Mackenzie waved at Zoe. “Hi, Mom,” she shouted into her cell. “I just auditioned, and guess what!”

  Zoe waved back. Mackenzie wasn’t so bad, really. Although probably there was no such thing as a near-photographic memory.

  Zoe strapped on her backpack. Then finally she left Hubbard for the day, patting her hoodie pocket once or twice to make sure nothing had fallen out.