The Invisible Rules of Zoe Lama

by Tish Cohen

  Do something about getting either Handsome Mr. Lindsay to Mom, or Mom to Handsome Mr. Lindsay. Or else, how are they going to meet?

  Just then there’s a key-jangling noise in the hallway, which means Mom’s home. Which means spaghetti and meat sauce can’t be far behind.

  I carefully tear out my list and hide it where I keep all other Top Secret documents. The secret spot is above the head of my bed. It is a small tear in my wallpaper that I once found and made into a pocket by sliding a butter knife inside and unsticking part of it from the wall. The Husband-Snaring To-Dos will be safe in there.

  Other Top Secret documents in my wallpaper are things like the pictures Susannah, Laurel, and I took of each of us practicing how to kiss on this gigantic stuffed frog. And a certain poem given to me by the most unbelievably cute boy in the school who happens to be named Riley Sinclair.

  The best thing is Dad’s picture. The one of me at our secret place.

  “Hi, darling,” Mom says, coming into my room and kissing me on top of my head. Honestly, if she knew how many greasy-fingered people pat me on the top of my head during the day, because of my being about as small as a rubber boot, she’d probably choose a more hygienic spot. “There’s someone here, sitting in the living room. Why don’t you go introduce yourself?”

  Introduce myself? To our new dalmatian puppy, Spots? I race around the corner and stop dead when I see the someone.

  It’s a man.

  He doesn’t see me. He’s staring at some papers on the coffee table with a drink in his hand. Like he lives here. And the worst part is, he is not Handsome Mr. Lindsay. Immediately, I back up into the dining room so I can pull myself together before I’m stuck actually talking to him. I’ve had a bit of a shock and I need to adjust my face first.

  “Jocelyn,” he says, even though Mom is in the kitchen. “Did I mention the part about the monthly extended family Meet ‘n’ Greet? That’s where we invite the whole family down for a night of camaraderie and fun. Kids can come, too.”

  “Come where?” I say, stepping into the room.

  He smiles and extends his hand to me. “Hi there. I’m Jason from Shady Gardens.”

  Shady Gardens Home for Seniors? I think I tell him my name but I don’t shake his hand, since I’m peering down the hall to Gram’s door, hoping it’s locked. If he thinks he’s leaving here with my grandma tonight, he’s going to have to put up a fight.

  Mom comes into the room with a plate of cheese and crackers, which is terrible because it’s only going to make Jason from Shady Gardens want to stay.

  “Thank you, Jocelyn,” he says, looking up at her and winking. At my mother! On the day after I find out Hand-some Mr. Lindsay is single!

  “No problem,” Mom says. “You know, since you live so far out of the city, why don’t you stay for dinner? You can tell me more about the facility over meat loaf.”

  Hey. What happened to spaghetti?

  He gets this creepy smile all over his face and he sips from his drink. “Sounds wonderful. An old bachelor like myself never passes up a home-cooked meal.”

  Suddenly I get the feeling this guy’s trying to sell Mom much more than a dumpy beige flowered room for Grandma.

  I walk past him to get myself a cracker, and while I’m looking back at him to see if he keeps any sort of tools in his shirt pocket—which he doesn’t—the cracker tray tips over onto the carpet at his feet.

  “Whoops, Jocelyn! We’re going crackers in here!” Jason jumbo-smiles at me like the nurse in the brochure, and then winks like he’s saved me from police custody or something.

  “Zoë,” Mom calls, “can you clean up? I’ve got my hands full of ground beef in here.”

  So that is how I get to see Jason up close. Over a pile of crushed-up Ritz crackers. It’s not important how they got crushed. Okay, I stepped backward after he jumbo-smiled, mainly because I’ve never seen someone smile like that in real life.

  Once I get the mess all cleaned up, Jason hands me his glass and asks me to get him a refill. Which I do. Then he says I did a great job, but could I wrangle up a few more ice cubes, which I also do.

  By the time dinner’s over, I’ve gotten Jason one Kleenex, two drinks, three ice cubes, and the last butterscotch square, which I had seriously been planning to put in my lunch for tomorrow.

  And he’s given Mom not only a stack of dumpy brochures for his beige flowered grandparent jail, but his business card and his home phone number. Like she’s going to have to call him in the middle of the night to figure out if they serve the old people applesauce on Wednesdays or Thursdays!

  After he leaves the house without stealing Grandma, I lock every last one of the front door locks and breathe deep. “Finally,” I say to Mom. “I thought that jerk would never leave.”

  “Zoë,” Mom says, “Jason is being very helpful, offering to drive me around the grounds this weekend on his time off. He’s a very dedicated man.”

  Yeah, he’s dedicated, all right. Dedicated to stealing not only my grandmother, but my mother as well. And one thing’s for sure. Having Get-me-this-Get-me-that Jason around all the time isn’t going to make my life any easier. This guy needs his own assistant.

  And I need Handsome Mr. Lindsay. Now!

  No One Can Ever Know Unwritten Rule #10. Ever

  “I need to clear up my schedule if I’m going to fit

  in extra time to make sure Jason doesn’t steal the job away from Handsome Mr. Lindsay,” I say.

  My girls and I are patrolling the playground at recess, making sure Marcus Owen isn’t standing at the top of the hill behind the soccer field and pushing kids over the edge again. So far, we’ve had to chase him down three times and we’ve only been outside about eight and a half minutes. “As it is, I’ve got the two of you”—I pause to smile at Susannah and Laurel so they know I don’t consider managing them a chore—”who are fully trained, thankfully, then I’ve got my mother, Grandma, and Get-me-this-Get-me-that Jason. Then there’s the Snow Ball Planning Committee, twenty-six classmates, recess patrol, and Handsome Mr. Lindsay. And that’s not even including the people that stop me on the way to the water fountain for advice or Mrs. Grungen, who has me on a regular moisturizing schedule for Pavel.

  Something’s got to give.”

  “Wow,” says Laurel. “All I’ve got is a little food-coloring issue. I guess I’ve got it easy.”

  I wouldn’t trade all my duties, including Get-me-this-Get-me-that Jason, for her blue food concerns, but I don’t say it out loud.

  Susannah throws a huge black scarf around her head and face. “All I’ve got to worry about are the prying eyes of my adoring public.” Laurel rolls her eyes and kicks a leaf. Only she misses it completely.

  Susannah adds, “Did I mention my agent has gotten me another commercial?”

  This is big—Susannah is willing to go back into the public eye. This is huge. “No, what is it and when?” I ask.

  “It’s in about three weeks and it pays big, my agent says. It’s national. I don’t know what it’s for, but he said whatever I do, don’t cut my hair. He said to take extra-special care of it. So, that pretty much gives it away, don’t you think?”

  Laurel twists her mouth to one side. She looks none too happy that Susannah is about to be shoved back into the public eye, not after Laurel’s hopes got squashed the first two times. “Maybe they want it real long, so when they shave it off in the military school commercial, your adoring fans get a big thrill.”

  “Very funny, Laurel!” Susannah snaps. “You’re just jealous because your hair is so short from when you dyed it blue and they had to cut it all off!”

  “I didn’t dye it! I slipped in Gatorade!”

  Susannah laughs and Laurel looks like she wants to pluck out all of Susannah’s hairs, one by one, so I steer them toward the soccer field. Maisie and Brianna are timing each other while they run from one set of goalposts to the other. We watch Maisie, red-faced, tearing across the grass as fast as she can go.

  Lau
rel says, “At least you’re done with Maisie. You should have a huge chunk of time now that you’re not trying to make over her nasty reputation, right?”

  “She doesn’t have a reputation,” I say as we move closer. “Haven’t we had this discussion already?”

  Susannah laughs and says to Laurel, “Zoë’s very sensitive about her clients. Don’t you know that by now?”

  “And who says I’m done with Maisie, anyway?” I ask. “Just because she times Brianna while she runs doesn’t mean Maisie has completed her training with me.” And I’ve got her fully edited essay in my back pocket to prove it.

  “Have you told her Unwritten Rule Number Ten yet?” asks Susannah.

  “No. It takes a long time to get to Number Ten.”

  “I’m still waiting,” Laurel whines.

  “Me, too,” says Susannah. “Why won’t you tell us Unwritten Rule Number Ten?”

  “No one can ever know Unwritten Rule Number Ten. Except me, and even I try really hard to never think about it.”

  “You mean you’re never going to tell us?” asks Laurel.

  “She’s bluffing.” Susannah grins, elbowing me. “She’s just trying to create buzz.”

  “Buzz?” asks Laurel.

  “Heightened excitement,” Susannah says. “Advertisers do it all the time. I should know.”

  We stroll past Bloomer Girl, who’s staring down at a clump of rotten sandwich and laughing her head off. She looks up and sees me, then points down, laughing even harder. She’s doing such a good job, I slow down and laugh at it, too. To show her she’s infecting others with all the fun she’s faking. Then I look at Laurel and Susannah, who start fake-laughing, too.

  Before we walk on, I wink at Bloomer Girl. And I didn’t get that from Get-me-this-Get-me-that Jason. I’ve winked at people before. Ask Susannah.

  Just ahead of us, Brianna, who is sitting cross-legged in the grass, finishes timing Maisie and says, “Hey, Maisie, it’s the Zoë Lama. Maybe she can teach us how to run faster.”

  “I hope so,” Maisie calls from across the field as she walks back toward us. “Because I’m going to try out for the Olympics one day. And I plan to make it.”

  “Me, too, only I’ll probably make it first since I’m six months older,” Brianna says. Then she looks at me. “Can you give me any running tips, O Masterful Zoë Lama?”

  I totally could. She pumps her arms way too much while she runs. It wastes precious energy. But I cannot take on another client right now, so I just smile.

  I need to focus on giving Maisie her essay back without anyone seeing. I know exactly what Susannah would say if she knew about Phase Two, which she’s never even heard of, since I only just invented it. First she’d say you can’t change someone who’s bad, which Maisie isn’t. Second she’d say if Riley finds out, he’d say I’m going too far again.

  “My grandfather was a runner,” Laurel says. “Every Friday night he went running with someone named Rosa. She was his running partner. Or maybe his coach.”

  Susannah and I look at each other.

  Brianna laughs and says, “She might not have been his running partner…”

  “Brianna,” I say quickly, “I love your running shoes. Snazzy.”

  “They’re okay,” she says as Maisie arrives, huffing and puffing, and falls on the grass. “I wanted RaceMakers, but my mom said these were on sale.”

  As I inch closer to Maisie, I fiddle with her folded essay in my pocket. Maisie says to Brianna, “You’re a great runner. You don’t need a fancy piece of rubber stitched to white vinyl to get on the team.”

  “White leather!” snaps Brianna. “How many times have I told you, Maisie, all good shoes are made of leather!”

  Whoa. It’s beginning to seem that Brianna is going mad. She’s never been all that patient, but I’ve never seen her get worked up into a lather over man-made materials before.

  Susannah pokes me in the side and whispers, “Why don’t you blow off some of your chairgirl duties onto Brianna? That would free up your schedule and keep her crazy-lady angry fits as far away from me as possible.”

  Hmm. Not a bad idea. If I handed over, say, overseeing the dance decorations, it might even help me in two ways—less work for me AND more time for Maisie to focus on Phase Two.

  “Brianna, I have a little favor to ask…”

  Brianna doesn’t seem happy I’m handing out work, but she doesn’t complain too much right away, so I figure I should beat it before she starts coming up with lame excuses, like training for the track team. While she leans over her shoes and wipes at a green scuff mark, I fake a monster sneeze, bending over Maisie and slipping the essay into her hand. She looks down and beams with such joy that I feel a bit like Mrs. Patinkin when she gave me back my vocabulary test last week with a gigantic red “A+” scrawled across the front page.

  Just as Laurel asks Brianna to show her how to operate the stopwatch, Susannah nudges me. “What’s with the secret hand off?”

  “Nothing,” I lie. “I was returning some work to Maisie. Something I helped her with.”

  Susannah lowers her glasses enough for me to see a sliver of her eyes. “Come on. Spill.”

  Real fast, I whisper something about Phase Two, making sure to add in that Maisie practically begged to do it. Which she did.

  Practically.

  Susannah pushes her glasses back up her nose and laughs. “This should turn out ju-ust fine.” Then, as we turn to go, she bends over to pick up the stopwatch, which is now on the grass. “Hey, this thing’s cool. I could use this to time my hair conditioning.”

  Brianna grabs the stopwatch. “It’s not for hair! It’s for athletes.” She turns the thing over and shows us the back. “See? It says the Athletic Zone. Because it’s for athletes only.”

  “Yeah, I heard you the first time,” says Susannah, who doesn’t get screamed at by anyone, because of her fame.

  “Why don’t you try running?” Brianna asks Susannah. Brianna looks a bit evil when she smiles. “Goalpost to goalpost and back again. I’ll time you. We’ll see if you can beat my time. Or Maisie’s.” Then she laughs like it’s a physical impossibility.

  Susannah steps forward, stands over Brianna, who is sitting in the grass, and bends down. What she does next surprises even me. She lowers her glasses and looks Brianna in the eye. I don’t even think she lowers her glasses to look her mother in the eye. As far as I know, it’s only ever Laurel or me. “I’m Susannah Barnes,” she says. “I run for no one. I have people. And they run for me.”

  And with a flick of her cape, she’s gone.

  Face the Jackals or They’ll Eat You Alive

  Someone shouts from the edge of the field, “Hey, it’s Grandma-in-Pajamas again! The crazy one from the bus the other day!” A bunch of kids race across the playground to the chain-link fence, where, horror of horrors, Grandma is shuffling along the sidewalk in her footsies toward the front doors of the school.

  This can’t be happening. She’s coming to get me again?

  Is this what she does all day long while I’m at school? Walks back and forth from our apartment door to the locked school door? In her pajamas?

  This is very bad for three reasons:

  Any second now, everyone’s going to find out who she is and I’m going to be fried.

  I’m at school for, like, six hours each day. That’s six hours of trouble she could get herself into.

  Those flimsy footsies are going to wear right through and Mom’s going to find out the truth and Grandma’s going to be locked up tight.

  So what do I do?

  “Hey, Grandma,” someone shouts. “You better get home before nap time!”

  Okay. No one talks to my grandma that way. If that moronic sixth-grader thinks he can make fun of Gram, he’s about to get knocked into next year! I charge toward him, squeezing my fists. He doesn’t have to know why I’m pounding him. I won’t give him time to think about it. Besides, I need to shut him up before he attracts more attention to her.
>
  Susannah lowers her glasses and squints from across the field. Her mouth drops open and she races toward me. “Zoë, that’s your grandma!”

  “I know. I’ve got to get her home, but first I’ve got to pound a Sixer.” I keep marching toward my prey.

  “Don’t do it,” she says, running along beside me. “Then everyone will know. You’ll be ruined.”

  “I don’t care. He made fun of her and she didn’t even know it. Gram smiled back.” I stop to look at her. “She actually smiled at him. See why he needs his wormy face mashed into the dirt?” I start walking again.

  “I do. She’s sweet and innocent and he’s a rotten, stinking louse. But think about it, Zoë. He’s not worth your reputation. She probably can’t hear him anyway! She never hears the phone when I call you, right?”

  I slow my steps. It’s true. She’s looking up at the trees without a worry in the world. Is it really worth facing complete social devastation over one Sixer with a rotten mouth?

  “Grandma’s nearly at the school doors,” says Susannah. “She’ll be inside with the jackals while you’re wasting time losing your reputation over an idiot.”

  This stops me. I spin around to see Grandma getting close to the teachers’ parking lot. “I’ve got to get to her first.” I start running toward the school doors. I can cut through the fifth-graders’ hallway and stop her before she gets inside.

  “And don’t worry,” Susannah calls. “I’ll distract these morons so they don’t see you. Your reputation is safe with me!”

  Do I love Susannah, or do I love Susannah?

  Bursting out of the front doors of the school, I race down the driveway and catch Grandma pausing to peer inside a tiny red sports car. Mr. Stern, our science teacher, is having what the other teachers are calling a midlife crisis. Something about him really hating getting older and balder.

  “Grandma,” I call, out of breath. “Grandma!”