Zoe in Wonderland

by Brenda Woods

  Despite the quiet of the greenhouse, the question sounded loud inside my head. “Maybe I’ll never see him again,” I whimpered.

  Suddenly, from out of nowhere, Harper spoke. “See who?” he asked. “And who are you talking to?” he added.

  Please! Please! Please! Not now! Plus, the greenhouse is my special place.

  I glared at my brother. He was wearing a straw cowboy hat and, as usual, a smirk.

  How did he sneak in here without me hearing him?

  Like a volcano, I exploded. “Get out! Leave me alone! You’re driving me crazy!” I shot up from the floor and lunged at him.

  I must have really looked crazy-mad, because Harper’s eyes were filled with fright and he took off running. He pushed the greenhouse door open and bolted. I chased him, but I’m nowhere near as fast as Harper.

  And then—I tripped and fell, landing hard on the flagstone. Instantly, my knees burned and I knew they were scraped up bad. My jeans were torn and blood oozed.

  I panted until, like water down a drain, my madness disappeared.

  At first, Daddy grinned as I made my into the Wonderland’s store. Fortunately, he was alone. “Howdeedoo, Zoe,” he said. Then, noticing my bloody knees, he asked, “What happened?”

  I zoomed to him, hugged his waist, sank my face in his shirt, and sobbed.

  15

  Not Just Zoe Tonight

  Gently, Mom cleaned my knees and put medicine and Band-Aids on them while Daddy found out what hospital Kendra was in and arranged for a room full of flowers—mostly orchids, her favorites—to be delivered to her.

  My mom called the hospital and actually talked to Kendra on the phone and made plans for us to visit her early tomorrow before she got transferred to the special cancer treatment hospital that’s far away for chemotherapy and radiation.

  At dinner that night, Harper and Jade were forced not to be mean to me. I didn’t even have to help with dishes.

  And later, before I went to sleep, Mom and Daddy both came in my room. Mom sat on my bed, and Daddy plopped into my beanbag chair. For the first time in a long time, I had them totally to myself and that felt kind of awesome.

  “It’s a type of cancer with a high cure rate,” Mom said.

  “That means she’ll get all better?” I asked.

  Mom patted my hand. “I hope so, Zoe.”

  “Quincy could have stayed here with us, if I’d known,” Daddy said.

  I lit up. “Are you serious? Because maybe we can call his dad and he could bring him back and then he can still go to school here and—”

  Daddy interrupted me. “Calm down, Zoe. I was just thinking out loud. This is family business . . . their family business.”

  “Besides, he’ll probably be home before you know it,” Mom added, which got me thinking maybe she knew something I didn’t. Possibly there was another secret.

  I sat up in bed and asked, “Why do grown-ups think that it’s okay to keep secrets from kids?”

  “To protect them,” Daddy replied.

  It was exactly the answer I’d expected. “But it’s not fair to lie to us,” I told them.

  This time, Mom answered. “It’s not lying.”

  I disagreed. “Seems like it to me.”

  “It’s keeping the truth in, Zoe. Because sometimes the truth is hard,” Daddy explained.

  “Or sometimes we do it to keep kids from worrying too much,” Mom added.

  “But when we finally find out, we still worry. Plus, if Quincy had known that his mom was sick, he could have been really nice to her, the same way she was being really nice to him. And I could have given her flowers before she went to the hospital instead of after. And that would have made her happy because she’s always saying how she loves orchids but they cost too much.”

  I suppose they thought we had reached the end of our parent-Zoe talk, because they both kissed me and said good night.

  But I still had more questions. “How come some people get really sick?” I asked.

  Daddy thought for a while before answering. “Human beings can be fragile creatures, fragile the way some flowers are.” He paused briefly, then added, “Some things are hard to understand when you’re young.”

  “Some things are hard to understand, period,” Mom said.

  “Before you go, I have one more question,” I told them.

  Daddy sighed. “Hope we have the answer, Zoe.”

  “Do you guys have any important sad secrets I should know?”

  “No, Zoe,” they said at the same time. “G’night, Zoe.”

  “G’night,” I said.

  “Want us to leave your door open?” Mom asked.

  “I’m not a baby.”

  “Love you,” they said softly.

  “Love you too.”

  I lay there wondering what Quincy was doing and if he’d gotten to San Francisco yet. It hadn’t even been a whole day, but I already missed him, and even though I supposed he was mostly worried about his mom, I secretly hoped he was at least a little lonesome for me. Being lonely for him tasted like something sour. And worrying about Kendra tasted even worse.

  For the first day in a very long time, Imaginary Zoe stayed completely away. Being so super-smart, she must have known it’s better to be quiet on a day of too much extremely sad news.

  I pulled the comforter up around my neck and watched the lights from Mrs. Warner’s candles dance across the walls of my room.

  16

  The Hospital and Kendra

  On the entire day and night of too much extremely sad news, Imaginary Zoe seemed to have vanished, but on the drive to the hospital, she suddenly reappeared.

  Zoe was holding a pot of gold coins. She was at a place called the New People Store, where people could be duplicated. And if someone you loved died, you just headed to the New People Store and shopped for another one just like him or her—same personality and everything. If Kendra didn’t get well, Zoe knew exactly where to go.

  Before I knew it, Daddy was parking the car in the hospital’s lot, and a short time later the automatic doors parted in front of us. After getting our visitor passes, Daddy, Mom, and I walked along the clean gleaming floors of the extraordinarily long hallway toward Kendra’s room.

  Three Things About Hospitals

  Hospitals are like toilet paper. We don’t really think about them much until we need them.

  Like ice rinks, hospitals are always cold.

  And the same way a mechanic can usually fix your car but other times can’t, sometimes being in the hospital fixes people and other times, no matter what, it doesn’t.

  Kendra’s room looked like there’d been an explosion of flowers.

  She was propped up in bed, sleeping. Some tubes were hooked up to her arms and her head was shaved bald.

  Why is her head shaved? I wondered.

  Daddy put his finger to his mouth, whispered, “Shhh,” and we turned to leave.

  But right then, Kendra woke up. “Zoe?”

  I smiled. “Hi.”

  “Gimme a hug,” she commanded.

  So I did. But I must have hugged her too tight, because she groaned a little.

  “Sorry!” I told her.

  Kendra reached for my hands and held them. “Sorries aren’t allowed here, Zoe dear.”

  I wanted to inform her that she’d just made a rhyme but didn’t.

  “We won’t stay long,” Mom told her.

  “You need your rest,” Daddy added.

  “Thank you for the flowers, Doc and Gabby. Never had so many . . . ever.” Kendra glanced out the window, and I could tell she was trying hard not to cry. She won the battle with her tears after a minute, and then she smiled. Remembering how Quincy’s dad had called her a fighter, I pictured Kendra kickboxing, defeating the cancer.

  We were still talking wh
en some of Kendra’s family showed up and stuck their heads in the door. Because the hospital had a limit on the number of visitors a person can have inside their room, we said our good-byes and left.

  “Why’d they shave her hair off?” I asked on the drive home.

  “They didn’t. Kendra did that herself,” Mom replied. “Said the chemo and radiation were going to make her hair fall out, anyway. That’s sometimes hard on a person. So she decided to save herself from that.”

  “She still looks pretty. Even without any hair. Don’t you think?” I told her.

  “She does,” Mom answered.

  From the backseat, I gazed at the city’s scenery and cars as they zoomed by, thought about Kendra, and wondered if there would ever really be a place like the New People Store.

  17

  Without Quincy

  Two Things Being Without Quincy Was Like

  Being barefoot and stepping in dog poop.

  The worst, most boring Zoe days ever.

  If my world with Quincy had been, for instance, the size of Catalina Island, my world without him was now the size of an extremely small iceberg—an iceberg that was only big enough for one person to stand on: me. And my happy feelings, like an iceberg, were frozen. Secretly, I vowed not to smile again until Quincy returned and Kendra got better.

  At school, I spent a lot of time watching the clocks tick the time away. And when the end-of-the-day bell finally rang, I felt the way a prisoner must feel when she gets out of jail on a one-day or weekend pass—unable to feel too good about it because she knows that before very long, she’s going to wind up right back where she doesn’t want to be.

  Almost every other day Quincy called me, and as soon as I’d hear his voice, I couldn’t help but smile, temporarily breaking my vow. And we e-mailed each other almost every day, but it was nowhere even close to having him at school or Kendra and him living right up the street. Plus I really missed our not-a-date Saturdays at the movies.

  At home, I did my best to be alone.

  “She’ll get over it,” I’d heard Daddy tell Mom.

  “Soon, I hope,” she’d replied.

  They made it sound like the flu.

  The Reindeer parents have a rule about no cell phones until you’re twelve. But because I knew they felt sorry for me, I thought maybe they might make an exception. Parent pity just might work in my favor. “Can I please get a cell phone?” I’d begged at dinner. “That way, Quincy and I can text each other.” I glanced from Daddy to Mom, hoping at least one of them would weaken, but they remained parent-allies. Not even pity could make them break their cell-phone rule.

  “Can I use yours sometimes?” I’d asked Jade.

  Jade cracked up laughing. “You can’t be serious. As if . . .”

  The only thing that really changed at the Wonderland was Daddy taught me how to use the register. But mostly it wasn’t teaching because I already knew from watching him and Grandpa all this time. It was pretty easy, and after a while he started letting me ring stuff up for customers and even count out the change.

  And that’s where I was when the tall man from Madagascar came back to the Wonderland. Because it was a warm day, the door was propped wide open. Quietly, he ducked inside. The T-shirt he wore had the word CURIOSITY printed on it.

  Just like before, it was a Saturday morning, and also just like before, Daddy wasn’t there. This time, he’d gone to a plant show at the botanical gardens in Arcadia. But unlike before, Grandpa Reindeer was outside, asleep in the hammock, one leg dangling off, the book he’d been reading resting on his chest.

  The tall man smiled, showing both his top and bottom teeth. “Hello again, young lady.”

  Young lady is not a name, I thought. “Zoe,” I informed him.

  “Hello, Zoe. I’m Ben . . . Ben Rakotomalala.”

  I’d never heard a last name like that before. I tried to pronounce it but couldn’t. “Rakoto . . . huh?”

  “Rakotomalala,” he repeated. “Actually one of the shorter names in Madagascar and quite common. Most people call me Ben.”

  Seeing him again made me instantly un-forget about the baobabs. Since the day I’d planted the seeds, I’d completely ignored them. They hadn’t even been watered. And Quincy hadn’t reminded me. I suppose both of our minds had been on other things. As soon as the man leaves, I promised myself, I’ll head to the greenhouse.

  “We still don’t have any baobab trees,” I told him. “And I asked my daddy, but he didn’t want to buy any, so my friend and I bought some seeds and I planted them, so we should have some pretty soon, maybe.”

  My Zoe shyness is never completely gone. Sometimes, like lint in the dryer, there’s a huge wad of it, and other times, there’s only enough to make a small ball of lint fluff. Right now, probably because I liked the tall man, there was only a little fluff.

  “So Zoe is an entrepreneur?”

  I didn’t know what an entrepreneur was, but I felt ashamed to ask, so I just shrugged. “Spoze so?”

  “Didn’t see you at the open house we had at JPL last week.”

  “Oh. I forgot all about it, plus I’m not really into science. My brother, Harper, he’s the scientist. He knows a whole bunch of stuff.”

  “But you’re the imaginer?”

  Because he was right, I nodded.

  “Imagination is sometimes more valuable than having a head full of facts. Without imaginers, it’s likely we’d still be living in caves. Imaginers and adventurers can change the world.”

  “But I’m not an adventurer,” I told him.

  “I’ll be right back. I have something for you!” he exclaimed as he dashed outside.

  Through the open door, I peeked as he rummaged through his car’s trunk. On the back of his T-shirt was a picture of a telescope. “Rakotomalala,” I whispered.

  Seconds later, he slammed the trunk closed, and quickly, his long-as-stilts legs brought him back to where I was standing. He was holding a book. He handed it to me. “A small gift for you.”

  Because the Reindeer parents had taught us not to accept things from strangers, at first I was reluctant to take it. But it was only a book, and a paperback, even. I took it from his hand and read the title. Adventurers, Explorers, Inventors, Dreamers, and Imaginers: People Who Changed Our World.

  “I hope this will open your mind, Zoe,” he said. “And that your life will be a marvelous adventure,” he added.

  I glanced at the cover of the book and then back at the tall man from Madagascar named Ben Rakotomalala. “Thank you.”

  “You are very welcome, Zoe. Time for me to go.” Before he ducked outside, he told me, “Promise you’ll save one for me.”

  “One what?”

  “Baobab.”

  “I promise.”

  “So long for now, Zoe.”

  “So long,” I said, but I suddenly remembered the question I’d had about the moon. I rushed to the door. “Ben?”

  He halted. “Yes?”

  “Is there a special name for the moon . . . like you have for the sun?”

  He smiled and replied, “No, we astronomers just call it the Moon, but we spell it with a capital M, and for the record, the official name for the star of day is the Sun. I prefer star of day because it sounds poetic. Don’t you agree?”

  “Yes.”

  “Enjoy the book, Zoe Reindeer.”

  “Thank you. I will.”

  I stared at the picture of the telescope on the back of his T-shirt as he walked away and wondered exactly how far away you can see with one.

  Just like before, his tailpipe sputtered as he drove off. I studied the cover of the book again, then gazed up at the sky.

  18

  Trouble

  Instead of listening to the teacher, I was busy reading the book Ben had given me. Since Saturday, I couldn’t keep my nose out of it. T
here were so many stories about people who everyone called dreamers—

  Zoe had navigated the spacecraft to the planet of a distant galaxy. As captain, she landed the ship safely and her loyal crew leaped to their feet, cheering. She stepped outside the ship and smiled. It was exactly the way she’d pictured it, with its rivers and green hillsides and pastures where huge flowers and baobab trees grew.

  “Are you daydreaming, Zoe?” a voice asked. I glanced up. My teacher, Mr. Summer, was standing over me.

  Startled, I said the first thing that came to my mind—the truth. “Yes,” I answered.

  A few of the girls laughed.

  My face got hot with embarrassment.

  “Maybe you’d like to share with the class what you were daydreaming about?” Mr. Summer said.

  “No, thank you. I don’t think so.”

  Zena, a queen-bee mean girl who was sitting behind me, declared, “Probably dreaming about her boy-friend, Quincy, coming back.”

  This time, it seemed like the entire class cracked up. “Settle down!” Mr. Summer commanded.

  Zena was occasionally mean to me, but now, with Quincy gone, she was making snide remarks more and more. Quincy called her clique of friends “Zena’s puppets.” I turned around to face her. “He’s my best friend, not my boyfriend.”

  Of course, Zena mocked me, repeating my words in her whiny voice, and the kids nearby who heard her chuckled again. And that made her keep it up. “I know that’s right,” she added, “because Quincy could sure do a whole lot better than Zoe the so-not-cute Reindeer girl—U-G-L-Y,” Zena spelled out.

  Snickering followed, filling the room, and fingers, mostly from Zena and her puppets, pointed my way.

  “Settle down!” Mr. Summer commanded again.

  But Zena ignored him, leaned toward me, and said, “Zoe, the U-G-L-Y Reindeer girl.”

  This time, Mr. Summer must have heard exactly what she said. “That’s enough, Zena!” he scolded. “Bullying and name-calling will not be tolerated.”