by Jackie Hirtz
“Come on, Mom, I’m bored.”
Diane Zola pushed the cart over to the checkout counter. Standing in line, Lola prayed to the Hurry God. “Get us out of here before Buck taps me on the…” Just then she felt the dreaded finger poke her on the shoulder.
“If it isn’t Lola Zola, Frizzyo-la,” said Buck. He hovered behind her, infecting the air with his dog breath. Lola ignored the intruder as he peered over her shoulder, into her cart.
“What are you doing with the sugar and chili peppers?” he asked.
Instead of answering, Lola grabbed a teen magazine off the rack. She buried her head in an article on…menstruation!
Buck leaned in closer. “What are you reading?”
“Nothing.”
“Looks like something to me.” Buck grabbed the magazine out of Lola’s hands. He read aloud. “Some girls experience bloating a week before their…Gross!”
“Beat it, Slime,” said Lola. She ripped the magazine from his hand. “You’re a menace to society. I’m surprised they let you in here without a leash.”
“Lola, don’t be so hard on the boy,” said Lola’s mom, observing the scene. “You sound like I did when I was a young girl.”
“You’re still a young girl, Mrs. Zola,” said Buck.
Lola wanted to throw up.
“Why, thank you, Buck,” said Diane Zola. She flipped her hair over her shoulder, stood a little taller, and smiled. Fortunately for Lola, Buck’s father gestured to his son to meet him in the frozen foods section. Buck’s prompt departure (he wouldn’t dare keep his dad waiting) put an end to the strained conversation.
Mr. Wembly barked, “Charles, on the double.”
Buck picked up his pace, as though his father had him on an invisible leash. Just when Lola was starting to feel sorry for Slime, she turned her head long enough to see Buck pretend to pick his nose and flick you-know-what at her. Gross to the max! No sympathy for booger flickers.
Lola had to stop her mother from ever, under any circumstances, becoming Buck’s father’s secretary. Standing by the citrus display, Lola eyeballed a pyramid of bright shiny lemons and prayed to the Squirt God for better days.
*** *** ***
Chapter 5
“Gee whiz, Mel, you’re an hour late,” complained Lola on the parrot phone.
Lola hung up the phone and waited for her only employee to report to work in the Zolas’ kitchen. There was no time to waste. In a few hours, the crowds would arrive—Mirage’s hodgepodge of health-conscious aerobicizers, New Age vision-questers, and first-daters—driving down her street and heading up the mountains to the nearby thermal hot springs. She and Melanie needed to set up the lemonade stand pronto.
Melanie arrived, minutes later. “I’m sorry, Lola,” said Melanie, “I was counting my freckles, the new ones.”
Lola handed Melanie half a lemon and a pitcher. “Just start squeezing.”
The Twister Sisters squeezed lemons until their fingers felt like limp noodles. On lemon twenty-five, Melanie asked, “Are you going to pay me for this? My fingers hurt.”
“You’re my best friend in the whole universe,” said Lola. “Of course I’m going to pay you. Better yet, I’ll split the profits with you if you share the worries.”
“Will I get vacation pay?” Melanie accidentally squirted lemon in her right eye. Lola handed her a paper towel.
“You can even take off Flag Day,” promised Lola. “But if you’re a partner, you can’t be late to work. Forget the freckles. Count the change instead.”
Melanie accidentally squirted her left eye. “Ouch, this burns. Do I get hazardous duty pay?” She paused. “I don’t know if I’m ready to be a businesswoman.”
“Fine,” said Lola. “You’ll be an employee. How’s three dollars a day?”
“Four.”
Melanie was already a businesswoman.
“Deal.” Lola couldn’t imagine a lemonade life without Melanie.
When the girls finished squeezing and squirting, they added sugar to the mix and were ready for taste testing. Lola insisted there was only one reliable taste tester in the house.
“Come here, Bowzer,” she called, pouring lemonade into the kitty bowl and setting the bowl on the floor. The cat, never one to hustle, snoozed in a stream of sunlight. Lola scooped Bowzer from the couch, scratched him on his little head, and escorted him to the cat bowl. “One little lick. Just try it, my prince.”
Bowzer sniffed, then ambled off without even a sip. What an insult!
Lola appealed to her father. “Please, Dad,” she said, pouring him a cup of lemonade. “You try it.”
Michael Zola took a gulp. “Superb!” he announced. Not that he was an impartial judge of his daughter’s talents. Lola’s mother would have offered a more candid evaluation, but Lola wouldn’t dare ask her.
Lola and Melanie carried their lemonade pitchers outside and set them on Diane Zola’s card table. They waited for cars to screech to a halt in front of their sign—“LOLA’S LEMONADE. ONLY 50 CENTS A CUP.” The wait was long; the sun an iron on Melanie’s skin.
“I thought you said you were going to buy me a lilac sun umbrella,” said Melanie.
“What’s wrong with this?” Lola pointed to a makeshift sunblocker she had rigged up at the last minute. Always the resourceful one, Lola borrowed her father’s fruit picker—a tall pole—and stuck a purple umbrella on top of it. It wasn’t a bad shade enhancer, and the hue was close enough to lilac.
“This fruit picker pole thing isn’t exactly a sun umbrella.” Melanie frowned.
At high noon it was 103 degrees in Mirage. Add a hundred and that’s what Melanie estimated her freckle count would total at the end of the day.
“Lower your tulip,” advised Lola. If Melanie tilted the flower on her straw hat, the sun might leave her alone.
A miffed Melanie fiddled with the tulip and would have continued fiddling if an old van full of hippie throwbacks hadn’t stopped in front of the lemonade stand.
“Hey, man,” came a voice from the hippie mobile. “Which way to the springs?” asked the driver, a man with a scraggly beard. “Can you give me directions?”
“Sure,” said Lola, “but first try our delicious thirst-quenching lemonade.”
The man hesitated long enough for Lola to shove a cup his way. “You don’t want to drink that water up at the springs. It smells like rotten eggs.”
“That’s right,” said Melanie. “It’s fine for bathing, but I wouldn’t want to swallow it. Yuck.”
The man and his friends, decked out in tie-dyed Tshirts and Indian bedspread attire, piled out of the car and threw down their quarters on the card table. Lola smiled, Melanie poured, and a mysterious someone peeked out from behind the drapes in Nelson’s, aka Hot Dog’s, Spanish-style house across the street.
“What do you think?” asked Lola, fishing for a lemonade compliment.
“It’s okay,” said a woman with a zillion bangle bracelets. “A little bland.”
“Bland?” Lola was insulted.
The woman shrugged. With that, Mr. Beard, Ms. Bangles, and the rest of the bedspread crew climbed back into the van and roared off up the mountain.
“Don’t believe them, Twister Sister,” said Melanie. “This is the best lemonade in the galaxy.”
Lola raised her eyebrows. “Bowzer didn’t think so. Our punch needs more punch.”
And so it went that first afternoon in the scorching heat, under the shade of the purple umbrella, on the street that led to the thermal springs with water too sulphur-smelly to drink. Drivers stopped for lemonade, sipped, and sped off into the hills. No one raved. No one returned for a second cup. No one told Lola lemonade swam in her veins. Their first business day was Dullsville until Hot Dog came out from behind his living room curtains to pay an unwelcome visit.
He surveyed the scene.
“Your lemonade stand could use some magic. Let me show you a trick.” He took two lemons from the bowl on the card table. “I can make these lemons disa
ppear.”
Melanie and Lola rolled their eyes.
“Now you see them,” said Hot Dog, juggling the lemons. Then, in a flash, he slid the lemons into the front pouch of his sweatshirt. “And now you don’t.” He hopped on one of Buck’s old skateboards and sped off.
Hot Dog was right. After six hours in the boiling sun, the Twister Sisters only grossed ten dollars.
Lemonade losers.
As the sun dropped in the sky and Lola and Melanie packed up, Lola’s sixth sense told her trouble was approaching on spokes. Sure enough, heading toward them on his expensive new mountain bike was Charles Wembly III, aka Buckster, waving his hands wildly in the air—just in case someone failed to notice he could ride a bike with no hands.
Lola burped three times—a signal to Melanie. Acknowledging the signal, Melanie returned the triple burp. It was their secret code, warning when Slime was in the vicinity. Buck rode up to their stand, stopping a breath short of knocking over the card table.
“Hey, burp twerpers,” said Buck. “Having a bad business day?”
“Beat it, Buck,” said Lola.
“Scram, man,” said Melanie. “Stick it where the moon don’t shine.” The correct expression requested the listener to place the object in question away from the sun, but Lola was not about to report Melanie to the language police.
“Pour me a cup,” said Buck, throwing a nickel down on the table. “I’m brave enough to drink your brew.”
“Closed,” said Lola. She threw the nickel back at Buck.
Not one to take no for an answer, Slime grabbed the pitcher of lemonade and stole a swig before Melanie wrestled the pitcher away from him, spilling lemonade everywhere.
“You heard the boss. We’re closed.”
Buck pretended to choke on the lemonade. He put his hands to his throat and coughed repeatedly. “I can’t, uh hum, swallow, uh hum, any more, uh hum, of this poison anyway, uh hum.”
“Good-bye, Buck,” said Lola.
“Lay-tah,” said Buck, hopping back on his bike, pedaling down the street.
Just when Lola thought Slime was out of the picture, the menace turned back and shouted, “See you tomorrow, burp twerpers.”
What was he talking about? Tomorrow was Sunday, which meant no school, which ordinarily meant no Buck. Lola couldn’t imagine what mischief Slime was plotting, but she had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.
More trouble ahead.
*** *** ***
Chapter 6
That sinking feeling returned with a vengeance the next morning. Lola and her parents were Mustanging it home after a non-denominational “whatever you believe in is cool” service at the Unity Realization Center. Attendance at the center was a compromise for the Zolas. Lola’s dad believed gods were everywhere. Lola’s mom believed God was nowhere.
Instead of kneeling and praying to a fatherly deity, center attendants sat outside yoga-style, breathing in clear desert air while communing with the cactus-covered mountains. Lola’s father said he could hear the tumbleweeds talking to him. Lola’s mom said she could hear her heartbeat slowing down. All Lola could hear was the mosquito buzzing her chili pepper-printed hair bow. Whack! Buzz…She always missed the bug.
Lola spied the first sign of trouble while the Zolas were driving home from the Sunday Unity service. A poster tacked to a stop sign read, “Buck’s Lemonade—the Best in the West.” On the brightly colored poster, an arrow pointed to Lola’s street. As her father turned the corner, Lola discovered Buck had blanketed the neighborhood with another message: “Buy Buckaid—only 40 cents a cup.”
“You’ve got competition,” said Lola’s mother, pointing to a picture of Buck swigging lemonade.
Duh, thought Lola. Sometimes her mother spoke to her as though she were in kindergarten. Any doofus could see Buck was trespassing on Lola’s lemonade turf.
So it came as no surprise when the Zolas rounded the corner of their street to see Charles Wembly III waving his hand triumphantly at them. What did come as a surprise, however, was his over-the-top lemonade stand: a chauffeur-driven sparkling white Cadillac stretch limo parked in front of Hot Dog’s house. Inside the trunk, cups full of lemonade on a silver tray waited to take the great plane ride to the mouths of thirsty customers. Next to the car stood Buck, decked out in a white three-piece suit with a lemon-colored tie and Dick Tracy hat. He twirled a yellow and orange cocktail umbrella. Mr. Cool.
Across the street stood Lola’s homemade sun umbrella. Not so cool. And where was Melanie? Hadn’t she promised to open the stand before Lola returned from church? Melanie was missing in action—probably counting freckles, comparing current freckle tallies with last week’s count.
The Zolas pulled into the driveway in front of their white stucco bungalow.
“Start praying,” said her father. “You’re going to need some divine help to win this challenge.”
Challenge? Yes, Lola’s dad was right. This was a major lemonade challenge and Lola wasn’t about to lose. Bolting from the car, she marched over to Buck and said curtly, “What are you doing here, Slime?”
Buck smiled too confidently. “Hot Dog invited me over when I told him I’d make him CFO.”
“CFO,” Lola repeated, pretending she knew what the initials meant. Creepy flying object?
“Chief financial officer,” Buck clarified, seeing straight through Lola’s pretense.
“Buck,” said Lola, “you’re invading my sales territory, so why don’t you pack up your cocktail umbrellas and set up your lemonade business further away—like Mars or a more distant planet like Pluto.”
“Sorry, Lola Zola,” said Buck. “I don’t speak Martian or Plutotian, so this corner of Mirage will do just fine. Right, Hot Dog?”
Hot Dog nodded while counting change in the metal money box. Next to Buck’s moneyman, a wiry kid juggled empty paper cups—two, three, four at a time—before filling them up with lemonade for future thirst quenchers. Max Hernandez, Hot Dog’s eight-year-old restless brother, never stood still for longer than a blink. Like his brother, he loved juggling and magic and classic cars.
“How much did that car cost?” Max pointed to Lola’s mother’s new red Mustang, now parked in the Zola’s driveway.
“None of your beeswax, jelly bean,” said Lola, who knew exactly how much her father paid for it: three thousand dollars down and five hundred dollars each month. Gee whiz, the last thing in the world she wanted Buck to know was that her family lived under a pile of bills. It was bad enough residing south of Cactus Avenue and listening to Northerners talk about the Olympic-size pool at the Mirage County Club. Lola would die of embarrassment if word escaped that the bank might repossess their car next month.
“I bet it’s got a lot of zip,” said Max, pretending to drive recklessly with his hands on an imaginary wheel. “Zip, zip, zip, zip, zip,” he said, running circles in the middle of the street.
“Why don’t you zip on back to your house,” suggested Lola.
“My employee is needed on the job.” Buck looked proudly at the younger boy.
“Oh, beat it, Slime Bucket,” said Lola.
“Why? Competition is healthy for the economy.”
Buck sounded more and more like his father. Why didn’t the guy just bring a recording of his dad lecturing about free enterprise? Then Slime wouldn’t have to open his mouth, just press the start button.
“You have no right to…” started Lola.
“Make a little extra change?” Buck held up a silver dollar bill. “Twirl a cocktail umbrella?” He danced a little umbrella between his forefinger and his thumb. “Fly a balloon?” He pointed to the array of colored balloons flying over his limo stand.
“You have no right to be here,” said Lola. “This is my street.”
“Oh, excuse me,” said Buck. “I didn’t know you owned the street. Do you own the mountains too? What about the sky?”
Lola wanted to rip off his hat and hurl it into the stratosphere, where it would become just another p
iece of space debris, but she restrained herself, reversed course, and headed back home to the parrot phone. She must talk to Melanie before losing her cool.
“Where are you, Agent 315?” Lola asked Melanie over the phone. During times of crisis, Lola and Melanie often referred to each other as members of a secret intelligence community. Melanie’s numerical designation was based on her latest freckle count, while Lola’s was based on the number of times a depressed Bowzer purred on a typical tailless day.
“Sorry, Agent 002, I had to feed the hamsters. Aunt Liza’s orders,” explained Melanie on her shoe phone, a birthday gift from Lola the previous year.
“Forget the hamsters,” said Lola, “I need you on the double!”
“But I have to clean their cages too. It’s poop central over here.”
“Mel, look out the window,” begged Lola.
From both Lola and Melanie’s windows, enemy forces could be seen flagging down drivers in front of Buck’s father’s Cadillac limo. Perfectly aligned paper cups sat in rows atop the car. Seated in a lounge chair under a beach umbrella, Buck gave a thumbs-up sign to his worker bees.
Melanie finally understood Lola’s urgency. “I’ll report to duty immediately, Agent 002,” she said.
Melanie arrived wearing one of Aunt Liza’s straw hats with plastic lemons on the brim. Confident the hat would provide protection, Melanie went to work filling up pitchers of lemonade and transporting them to the Zolas’ card table in front of Lola’s house. Michael Zola had adorned the table with a yellow-checkered tablecloth and a vase of his wife’s Double Delight roses.
Bowzer, aware of the commotion, took refuge under the card table, where he could view the action but avoid unwanted petting from sweaty palms. He hated when strangers remarked, “Poor thing. He has no tail.” All the talk about a missing tail could give a feline an inferiority complex. Too bad they didn’t have cat therapists in Mirage.
Taking her mother’s advice, Lola slashed her price and advertised her lemonade at thirty-five cents a cup, five cents less than Buck’s bad brew.