Solving Zoe

by Barbara Dee

  “Oh, come on, Zo. It was an accident,” said Malcolm. “He didn’t mean it.”

  “Cameron has a puppy,” Spencer explained. He zoomed his engine through a covered bridge, making pfft-pfft noises to show it was letting off steam.

  “So what?” Zoe said. “You think that means you get to spill glue all over—”

  “And I want one,” Spencer continued. He attached a few coal cars. “A orange one. Named Six.”

  Malcolm laughed. “Six? That’s a really dumb name, Spence.”

  “It’s not a dumb name! You’re a dumb name!” Suddenly the train violently derailed. Spencer dove under the table to rescue the scattered coal cars, leaving a few flakes of Elmer’s glue on the polished wood floor.

  Everyone turned helplessly to Dad, who had finally located the Hubbard directory in the kitchen utility drawer. “Okay, Spence, so why are you naming something Six?” he asked distractedly.

  “Because orange is six. Zoe said so.”

  “I don’t get it,” Bella said. “Why did Zoe say—”

  “Long story,” Malcolm said. He grinned mischievously at his sister. “Spencer’s right. That is what you said, Zo. Remember? One is white, two is whatever, three is—”

  “Shut up, Malcolm,” Zoe warned.

  “Five is puke green—”

  “I said shut up. It was emerald green, for your information, and anyway, it was just a theory, and I must have been crazy to even tell you.”

  “Oh, come on, Zozo,” Dad said, glancing up from the directory. “You know we loved your theory—”

  “Theory?” Bella repeated. “What about, Zoe?”

  “Numbers. How they’re really just colors,” Malcolm said, laughing.

  “Oh, awesome,” said Bella. “You know, there’s a word for that, Zoe!”

  “There sure is,” Malcolm agreed.

  Zoe flashed her eyes at him, then turned to her younger brother. “And you’re not getting a dog, Spencer, but even if you were, you’re not naming him Six or Sixteen or any other number for that matter, because it’s not even your theory in the first place.”

  Spencer burst into angry tears. “IT’S MY DOG!” he shouted. He picked up two coal cars and flung them across the dining room.

  “Oh, well,” said Bella. “I guess I’ll be off now. That is, if you’re absolutely sure you don’t need me.”

  Dad smiled tiredly. “We’re fine, Bella. See you tomorrow.”

  Then Zoe stormed into her bedroom and plopped onto her bottom bunk. Why was she even in this family? They didn’t appreciate the first thing about her. Or understand her. Nobody did. Not her parents. Not her teachers. Not Owen (who apparently hadn’t called). Definitely not Lucas! Dara understood, of course, but where was she? Still with Leg? She hadn’t even called, and now The Worst Day in Zoe’s Life was getting worse and worse by the second. If that was humanly possible.

  Zoe closed her eyes.

  Think about something else, she urged herself. Something random.

  Lizards. Arizona.

  Why is that even a word? Arizona. Anozira. Zoriana.

  Zoriana is a very cool name. But maybe for a superhero, not for an actual place.

  She thought about Isaac suddenly. Wherever he was—Arizona or Zoriana or Mars, for all she knew—he needed to hear about Deb. Even though he’d said that thing about not wanting to hear “trivialities.” But Deb’s phone calls didn’t sound trivial to Zoe. In fact, he probably should hear about them right way.

  She sighed. The last thing she felt like doing right now was getting out of bed and explaining all this to anyone in her family. But she really had no choice, did she? This wasn’t about her. Or about any other Bennett, although they’d have a hard time comprehending that.

  She walked into the kitchen, where Dad was stirring something weird-smelling at the stove.

  “Okay if I send Isaac an e-mail?” she asked, scrunching up her nose.

  “Not now, Zozo. I’m doing Spicy Ghana Stew. New improved recipe.” He started chopping up some bulb-shaped yellowish vegetable and tossing it into the big pot.

  “But it’s really, really important, Dad.”

  “Fine,” he said over his shoulder. “Just leave it in my Outbox, okay?”

  She nodded. Then she opened the door to the tiny office/studio where Dad worked when he was home. She clicked on his e-mail account and typed:

  Dear Mr. Wakefield,

  Sorry to bother you, but Deb called 2 times. She said if she doesn’t get a check from you she’ll call her lawyer. She sounded upset, and that’s an observation, not an overheated preteen reaction.

  Very truly yours,

  Zoe Bennett

  She read it over. Then she deleted everything in the last sentence after the word “upset,” hit Send, and quietly went back to her bedroom and shut the door.

  11

  On Wednesday morning at school Tyler Russo was standing a little too close to Lucas’s locker.

  “How’s it going, Gargoyle?” he asked loudly. “No posttraumatic stress?”

  Lucas blushed, but he looked Tyler right in the eye, and lifted his pointy chin defiantly. “Gargoyles, at least real ones on medieval cathedrals, are incapable of stress disorders,” he replied. “They were fashioned out of stone. So really the question you’re asking is nonsensical.”

  “Whatever,” Tyler said. He grinned at the kids who’d begun to gather around Lucas’s locker.

  “Moreover,” Lucas continued, “technically all gargoyles are waterspouts. So if you’re referring to someone as ‘a non-water-spouting stone carving,’ which is I believe your intention, you should call that person a ‘grotesque.’”

  “Or a freak,” Tyler suggested helpfully.

  Everybody laughed.

  “Oh, do tell us more, Dr. Info,” Leg said in a high voice. “We’re ever so enthralled.”

  Now Zoe could tell that her own cheeks were burning. But she didn’t feel obligated to rescue Lucas. Not after the crazy way he’d followed her yesterday, and all that stuff he’d said about Dara.

  And that wasn’t even counting his delusion about her. Which was maybe the weirdest thing about this weirdo kid.

  Still, she watched out of the corner of her eye as he shut his locker hurriedly and then half-ran away, head down. Why did he have to act like such a jerk in front of the other kids? Did he think they wouldn’t pick on him if he kept showing off like that? Even at Hubbard, where everyone was an expert in something, Lucas was crossing some very obvious line.

  Suddenly she heard Leg squeal. “Omigod! What is this?”

  Her locker was open, and she was waving around a small strip of white paper. Everyone crowded to get a look, including Zoe.

  Someone had written in perfectly formed letters:

  Cause division among them.

  —Sun Tzu,

  The Art of War

  “What’s that about?” Leg demanded. “Cause division among who?”

  “Nobody,” Paloma said. “It’s just some stupid fortune cookie.”

  Mackenzie shook her head. “Fortune cookies are always typed. Or printed. This is handwritten.”

  “Are you sure?” Tyler said. “It kind of looks like a computer font. You know, a handwriting one.”

  “But it’s not.” Mackenzie smudged the ink with her index finger. “See?”

  “It’s still stupid,” Paloma said scornfully. “Just forget about it, Leg.”

  Jake grabbed the paper out of Leg’s hand. He held it up to the light, as if he were checking for fingerprints. “Well, it means something,” he insisted. “Because why would someone choose this quotation? ‘Cause division’—you think that’s about math? And why write it so carefully? And then put it in Leg’s locker? Why her?”

  Paloma grinned. “Maybe whoever wrote it has a crush on Leg.”

  “Please,” Leg said, smiling.

  “Maybe it’s Ezra.”

  Jake snorted. “Ezra? You think Ezra Blecker has a crush on Leg?”

  “Who know
s,” Paloma said. “Nothing would surprise me about that mute little creep. And The Art of War—isn’t that the kind of warfare-strategy-thing he reads all the time?”

  “Okay,” Mackenzie said skeptically. “But why would Ezra stick a note about causing division in Leg’s locker? I mean, even if he does have a crush.”

  “Oh, stop it, you guys,” Leg said. She shut her locker. “I adore Ezra, I really do, but we’re just good friends, I swear.”

  Everybody laughed at that.

  Then Leg and Paloma walked off together, giggling. “Oh, I know,” Zoe could hear Leg say.

  Zoe frowned. She walked over to Dara, who was carefully taking her Chinese textbook out of her locker. “Were you listening to that just now?”

  Dara nodded. “Uh-huh. That was incredibly weird.”

  “It was just some dumb note. Why did Leg have to make such a big deal about it?”

  “Well,” Dara said slowly. “It’s her locker, right? So I guess it’s a big deal to her.”

  “I know. But I mean, it really isn’t fair to blame Ezra without any proof. Or to make fun of him like that.”

  Dara widened her big blue-gray eyes. “So you’re sticking up for Ezra Blecker? Why would you even do that? Besides, how much proof do we need?”

  “We?”

  “Groan,” Dara said. “Don’t be like that, Zoe.”

  “Don’t be like what?” She stared at Dara. “You mean, just because Leg and Paloma say, ‘Okay, everybody, blame weirdo Ezra,’ I should?”

  “I mean,” Dara said quietly, “that you should stop being so jealous about Leg. Truthfully? It’s getting slightly out of control.”

  Zoe could feel her throat start to tighten. “I’m not jealous, Dara. I’m really not! I just wish…” But what could she say? I just wish we were in all the same classes again. I just wish you saved us a private lunch table. I just wish you weren’t so busy after school. I just wish you’d called yesterday to ask about The Worst Day in My Life. “I guess I just wish Leg wasn’t around all the time.”

  “Well, I can’t help it if she likes me, Zoe. Or that she’s dancing in the musical, which, frankly, you don’t even seem to care about.”

  “What? How can you say that? Of course I care about it, Dara!”

  “Then how come you haven’t even asked about my part?” Dara shut her locker door. It made a firm little click sound. “You know what? I can’t deal with this right now,” she said. Then she turned away.

  For the rest of the morning Zoe doodled like crazy. She didn’t care how it looked to her teachers; she just needed something to take her mind off Dara. (And of course, her own stupidity. Because how could she have forgotten to ask Dara about the play?) Anya walked by Zoe’s desk once and put her hand on Zoe’s shoulder, but she didn’t whisper anything or take the paper away, so Zoe just kept drawing tornadoes in Prismacolor red. She even tried to doodle some emerald green reptiles, but the best she could do was a skink shaped like the number five. Then she decided that it didn’t look anything like the skinks in Isaac’s collection, so she crumpled up the page and stuck it into her backpack.

  At lunch she sat at the weirdo table next to Ezra. (Dara was huddled with Leg and Paloma and some other kids who were probably in the musical, so Zoe didn’t even consider sitting there.) Today Ezra was wearing a T-shirt that said DON’T MAKE ME GET MY NINJAS, and he was reading some thick book with “invasion” in the title. And he was listening to his iPod, so Zoe didn’t want to interrupt him to ask how his book was.

  She absently poked her potato chips into her tuna fish sandwich.

  All of a sudden, Ezra pulled out his earpiece and turned to her.

  “I don’t like Leg,” he announced.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Everybody keeps asking. So in case you were about to ask, I’m saving you the trouble.”

  “I wasn’t going to, Ezra. I never, ever thought—”

  “Good,” he muttered, and stuck his earpiece back in.

  Well, that was probably all the conversation Zoe was going to get out of him, she realized. But at least he knew she wasn’t going to tease him. Or accuse him of writing fortune-cookie notes. She nibbled a bite of crunchy sandwich. Then she tried to peek at Dara. What if, she asked herself, I just went over there and apologized? I’m sorry I forgot to ask about the play, Dara, but after all, you forgot to ask about Owen. That wouldn’t work, and anyway it would just make everybody at Dara’s table look up at her and ask: Oh, Zoe, did something happen with Owen? And then she’d have to shout YES, ACTUALLY. HE CALLED ME A PUPPET.

  She sipped some chocolate milk, which today, for some reason, seemed babyishly sweet. Why do I keep drinking this? she asked herself, pushing it away. All of a sudden she felt a poke from behind. And then something dropped onto her tray.

  It was a folded-up piece of paper.

  She spun around. Lucas was standing behind her with his arms crossed.

  “What’s this?” she asked, not touching it.

  He grinned. “Try to figure it out, Zoe.”

  She unfolded the paper and frowned. It was just a bunch of shapes, different from the notebook writing, but just as strange.

  Immediately she crumpled it into a ball. She got up from the table, tossed the paper into the trash, and marched back over to where Lucas was standing. “I thought I told you not to talk to me,” she said, trying to sound calm and authoritative.

  “But I wasn’t. I just thought you might think it was cool. Since you’re a Pigpen.”

  “Since I’m a what?”

  “Pigpen. I don’t mean you personally. I mean—”

  “I don’t care what you mean. Okay, Lucas?” Zoe said, her voice now squeaking a bit. “Don’t call me any names and I won’t call you any either!”

  “I wasn’t calling you a name.”

  “Oh, yes you were! Don’t lie!” This was definitely too loud; out of the corner of her eye she could see people starting to notice them.

  Ezra turned around and pulled his earpiece out. “Is Lucas bothering you?” he asked Zoe.

  “Yes! But I can handle it.” She glared at Lucas, but dropped her voice to almost a whisper. “I didn’t just mean no talking, okay? I meant no contact. That includes sneaking up on me in the cafeteria and handing me whatever that was. Stupid codes.”

  He shook his head. “It wasn’t a code, Zoe. It was a cipher.”

  “What?”

  “Codes substitute words. Ciphers substitute symbols. I gave you a cipher just now. That means—”

  “I don’t care,” she said loudly. “Do you understand? I’m totally not interested, okay?”

  He opened his mouth to say something. Then he just walked rapidly out of the cafeteria, bumping into a few kids near the exit. They didn’t act annoyed, though; they just shrugged and laughed.

  Zoe sat back down. She felt terrible for yelling at him in public, but really, what choice did she have? She had to be mean. It was the only way to get through to him. If she even had.

  “You all right?” Ezra was asking her.

  “Yeah, I guess. That kid Lucas is driving me crazy.”

  “Me too. Just try to ignore him. Here,” he said, and handed her his iPod.

  “But it’s yours.”

  “Well, yeah. I’m not giving it to you, Zoe. I’ll just read my book.”

  “Thanks,” Zoe said uncertainly. She met his eyes, which, she suddenly realized, were grayish green and actually kind of interesting. Cute, even. “Really. That’s so nice of you. But I mean, I don’t want to use it if you’re—”

  But Ezra was already lost in his invasion book. So for the rest of lunch Zoe listened to his vaguely menacing hip-hop music, and even though she couldn’t make out all the words, she didn’t care. In fact, considering the morning she’d just had, she almost enjoyed how it pulsated deafeningly, incomprehensibly, in her ears.

  12

  Finally the day was ending and it was time for Ancient Civs. As soon as Zoe sat down at her whiteboard desk, she groane
d.

  Because apparently she hadn’t gotten through to Lucas at lunch. He was obviously the one who’d been writing her tiny messages:

  4 = Blue.

  What is 5?

  Green.

  What is 6?

  What is 7?

  It had to be Lucas. Who else could it be? He probably thought the number-color theory was some kind of secret code she’d invented with her arguable brain damage. Well, maybe he finally understood not to talk to her in the cafeteria, but she wasn’t going to let him start sneaking messages onto her desk. Or horning in on her fascinating theory.

  So she got out her Signe pen and wrote in slightly larger letters “NOYB!!!” Then she spent the rest of the class doodling on the desk, tuning him out as he interrupted the class with more of his brilliant comments.

  Eventually Signe decided class was over, which meant Hubbard was over for the day. Zoe grabbed her backpack.

  “One moment, Zoe, dear,” Signe said, standing in front of her desk. “May I have a word with you?”

  “Oh, sure!” Zoe said hurriedly. “But there’s somewhere important I have to be.”

  “This will be brief.” Signe smiled patiently as she waited for the other kids to file out. Then she pulled a grape-colored shawl around her fleshy shoulders. “So, is everything all right with you, my dear?”

  Zoe nodded.

  “You did not seem intrigued by our discussion today. Is that because the ancient Egyptians have nothing to say to you?”

  “I’m sorry. I just couldn’t concentrate. I will tomorrow, I promise.”

  “Hmm,” said Signe. She sat down next to Zoe. “So I hear you’ve been chatting a bit with Lucas Joplin.”

  “I did. Not anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s a little…strange, isn’t he?”

  Signe pursed her lips. “In what way?”

  “He has this crazy idea about me. And yesterday he followed me after school.”

  “He followed you?”

  “To my afterschool job. Pet sitting.” She was about to add lizards, but stopped herself in time.