Zoe is on the Air
Page 4
“I think that’s true, but this is something that happened a whole month ago,” Zoe said. “Can she suddenly start laughing about it?”
“Why not?” Emma said. “Not, like, hysterical laughter, but when people bring it up, she can just roll her eyes and say, ‘Oh, yeah, that was so embarrassing, ha-ha.’”
“She could call them out a little bit about it, too,” Zoe said. “Be like, ‘Really? You’re still talking about this a month later? Whatever.’ If they realize that it’s lame to still be trying to tease someone about something that happened ages ago, they might back off.”
“I think that laughing it off or being sort of scornful and whatever about it will work when people who she isn’t close to are the ones teasing her,” Emma said. “But it might be worth actually pulling her real friends aside if they’re still bringing it up and being like, ‘This is upsetting me, I want to forget about it, please stop talking about it.’ Because her real friends don’t want her to feel bad. They might not realize this is something that’s hurting her. They probably think she thinks it’s kind of funny, too.”
“Good point,” Zoe said briskly. She looked into the camera. “So, laugh it off or say whatever to people who don’t really matter, and try telling your real friends directly that you want them to stop. And remember that embarrassing things happen to everybody and that, in the long run, it’s not really a big deal.”
“Okay, my turn to read a letter,” Emma said. She was smiling, and Zoe grinned, too. The words were coming more easily now. This was starting to be fun.
“This is a question about love,” Emma went on. “Dear Zoe and Emma, There’s this boy I really, really like. We always smile at each other in class, and my friends think he likes me, too. We haven’t talked very much yet, but he seems great. How can I make him see me as more than just a girl in his class?”
“Ooh, I love this question,” Zoe said. “I say do something big and bold to get his attention. It already sounds like you’re pretty sure he likes you as much as you like him. So, take the plunge!”
“Like how?” Emma asked, a thin, thoughtful line appearing between her eyebrows.
“Like, some people think that guys should make the first move. But that’s ridiculous. Why should they have all the pressure, and all the fun? You should ask him out; don’t wait around for him to figure it out.” Zoe felt like she’d been struck by a bolt of inspiration. “Just go for it! Buy him flowers! Sing him a song! Put a poster on his locker! Make it clear that you like him!”
“Wow, really?” Emma asked. “You think she should put herself out there right away?”
“Absolutely,” Zoe said. “What could be more flattering? And it’ll be fun. The worst thing that could happen would be that he doesn’t like her back, and that’s not the end of the world. Better to find out for sure.”
“Huh,” Emma said slowly. “I agree that she should go ahead and make the first move. But I don’t think such a big gesture is a great idea, or that she should ask him out right away. They barely know each other. Maybe she should try talking to him. Like, go over and sit with him at lunch. Or ask him if he wants to study together. You need to figure out if you like someone enough to even be friends with them before you start getting all romantic.”
“So, we agree that, if you like this guy, you should go ahead and make your move,” Zoe said, looking into the camera again. “But whether you take it slow or go with a grand gesture is up to you. Good luck!” Mark was making a “wrap-it-up” gesture. “That’s it for this week!” she said.
“Thanks for watching,” Emma added. “This has been Zoe and Emma to the Rescue.”
Shoshanna smiled and pushed a button on the camera, then Ava clicked the program on the computer to OFF.
“Great job, guys!” she said cheerfully, and the rest of the crew murmured congratulations, too.
“So fun!” Charlotte said enthusiastically. “How do you feel?”
Zoe sucked in a deep breath. Her whole body was buzzing with excitement. “I feel wonderful,” she said.
“If you feel like your teacher doesn’t like you, you should probably start by figuring out why,” Zoe said, gazing confidently into the camera. “Do you talk a lot in class, or never do your homework? And maybe you should check with your friends who are in the class to see if they think it’s true that the teacher specifically doesn’t like you. Sometimes I feel like a teacher must hate me, just because I got a bad grade or got in trouble for talking during class or not doing my homework—or because the teacher’s a total grouch—but she’s not actually treating me any differently than she does anyone else in the same situations.”
“If, after all that, you still feel like the teacher’s being unfair, you should talk to her,” Emma said. “Politely. When you’re not mad and she’s not mad. Not saying that she doesn’t like you, but asking how to improve in her class. Teachers love that.”
“Or get your parents to talk to her,” Zoe added. “Sometimes when you’re dealing with grown-ups, you need your grown-up on your side.” Mark was making his “wrap-it-up” gesture, and she smiled into the camera. “Thanks for watching, and please keep the questions coming!”
“This has been Zoe and Emma to the Rescue,” Emma finished. “Bye!”
They both grinned at the camera until Shoshanna clicked a button on the camera and stepped back.
“And we’re done!” Mark said.
“Good job, guys!” Charlotte said.
Ava, winding up the microphone cords, shot them a thumbs-up, and mouthed, “Thanks!”
Zoe grinned, satisfaction swelling in her chest. The last letter must have been been Ava’s! The second show of Zoe and Emma to the Rescue had been much easier than the first. And Ava, at least, seemed happy with their advice.
“That was fun,” Emma said. She had looked worried before the show—although not as pale and tense as before the first one—but now her cheeks were pink and her eyes were wide with excitement.
“Totally,” Zoe agreed. “See? I knew you’d be great at this!”
As they hurried into history, Mr. Thomas stopped handing out papers for a moment and said, “And here are our celebrities!” There was a smattering of applause from the other kids. Emma ducked her head, blushing, but Zoe couldn’t stop smiling.
Once they’d settled in their seats and Mr. Thomas had turned back around, a note fluttered over Zoe’s shoulder and landed on her desk. Zoe glanced back to see Micah, a skinny boy with glasses, grimacing at her. She unfolded the note.
Zoe,
I failed my science test and I lied to my parents and said we hadn’t gotten them back yet. What do you think I should do?
Zoe blinked. Somebody she knew—not just an anonymous letter writer but someone in her class who was watching her with big, anxious eyes while she read his question—needed her help. Chewing on her lip, she thought for a moment, then scribbled an answer on the same piece of paper.
You have to tell them the truth—they’re going to find out anyway. If you go to them and tell them you’re having trouble in class and want them to help you figure out how to raise your grade, they won’t be as mad as they would be if you didn’t tell them. You’ll be trying to be responsible!
She folded the paper again and handed it back over her shoulder.
“Zoe!” Mr. Thomas’s voice cracked across the room, and Zoe froze. The teacher was looking at her sternly, but all he said was, “Attention on me, please.”
Zoe nodded and fixed her eyes on him, pushing Micah’s problem to the back of her mind. I need to forget about advice for a little while.
But it seemed as if Zoe and Emma’s advice show was at the front of everybody’s minds. In math class, she got another two notes passed from different corners of the classroom: one from Colin the basketball star, who wanted to convince his parents to let him get a dog, and one from Lily, who never talked in class, but who wanted to audition for a ballet her dance school was putting on and wasn’t sure she could be brave enough.
“I know!” Emma said. “People were asking me what I thought about stuff some last week, but now it’s gone insane. Diana told me she keeps forgetting her locker combination and asked what kind of memory tricks I know. I mean, that’s not really even regular advice, is it? Why would I know special memory tricks?”
“We’re suddenly experts on everything,” Zoe said. “I guess we should enjoy it while it lasts.” She reached into her backpack and pulled out a stack of paper. “I brought a bunch of new questions that were in the submissions box. I figured if we went through some every day, we’d be totally ready for next week’s show.”
“Okay, but let me get out lunch first,” Emma said. She opened the boxes in front of her and handed a smaller container to Zoe. “Sushi!”
Louise and Emma’s soccer friend Vivian, sitting together on Zoe’s other side, wrinkled their noses. “Ugh,” Vivian said. “No raw fish for me!”
Zoe cheerfully opened the container and popped a piece of sushi in her mouth. Delicious.
Natalia and Caitlin were at the end of the table, their heads close together as they talked. Emma had to reach over and nudge Natalia before she looked up and took her share of the sushi, immediately turning back to Caitlin.
I wonder what they’re up to, Zoe thought, but Emma was looking at her expectantly, so she didn’t lean over to ask. “Oh!” she said, digging into her backpack and pulling out a few pages. “So, this one’s kind of fun,” she explained. “Dear Zoe and Emma, I want to throw a surprise party for my friend’s birthday. What’s the best way to really surprise her?”
“Aw, that’s so nice!” Emma said. “I’d like to answer a fun one like this after all the serious problems we’ve been talking about.”
Zoe nibbled on a piece of pickled ginger. “Maybe if she threw the party after her friend’s birthday. If it was like two weeks later, her friend definitely wouldn’t be expecting it.”
“Yeah, but what if she thinks all her friends have forgotten her birthday?” Emma asked. “She’d be surprised eventually, but she might feel bad on her actual birthday, and I’m sure they don’t want that.”
“She could have the party a couple weeks before her friend’s birthday,” Louise suggested, leaning across the table. “She won’t be expecting that, either.”
“That’s a good idea,” Zoe said, nodding. “Or, if she wanted to throw it close to the actual birthday, they could make other birthday plans—like, say all their friends were going to go to a movie together—and then stop off at somebody’s house and make an excuse to go inside. And boom! The party is there.”
“Ooh! Or—” Emma began, but suddenly music broke out from the other end of the cafeteria, where the eighth graders sat, interrupting her.
They all turned and craned their necks to stare across the room. Charlotte Avery—upbeat, positive, head-of-the-student-council, super-organizer Charlotte—was standing on a cafeteria table, a friend standing on either side, music blasting from speakers at her feet.
“Is this a flash mob?” Ava asked, confused. “Is this what a flash mob is?” As they watched, the girls began to dance, and Charlotte began to sing along with the song.
Charlotte was pointing to the next table.
“Oh my gosh,” Natalia said. The boy Charlotte was pointing at was quiet, studious Malcolm Patel, who wrote poems for the school magazine and hardly ever talked. He was gazing up at Charlotte, transfixed, his mouth hanging slightly open.
Charlotte hopped down from the table and walked toward him, still singing.
“I really hope she gets to finish before the lunch ladies stop her,” Caitlin said, looking toward where one of the lunchroom aides was making her way through the crowd that had gathered around Charlotte and Malcolm.
The song finished just as Charlotte ended up right in front of Malcolm.
“Malcolm,” she said, staring into his eyes, “I really like you and I think we’d be good together. Would you go out with me?”
There was a long pause. Malcolm’s mouth was still hanging open a little.
“Oh no …” Emma whispered, twisting her hands together. Zoe could barely breathe. How awful for Charlotte if he said no, in front of everybody.
Then Malcolm began to smile. Standing up, he reached out and took Charlotte’s hand. “Okay,” he said quietly.
Everybody cheered.
“Back to your seats,” the lunchroom aide called sternly. “Settle down.”
As the crowd that had gathered began to head back to their cafeteria tables, Charlotte and Malcolm, side by side, headed for the cafeteria door.
“Where are they going?” Emma whispered.
“Malcolm has a library pass for lunchtimes,” Natalia whispered back. She always seemed to know who had special privileges and who did what when.
As Charlotte and Malcolm passed Zoe’s table, Charlotte caught her eye and winked. Zoe smiled back automatically, her breath catching in her throat. Charlotte was the one who had written in, asking how to ask a boy out, she realized. Zoe had suggested a big, bold gesture, and Charlotte had taken her advice. And it looked like it actually worked!
That night as she set the table for dinner, Zoe was still flying high on the success of her advice. “I think I have a knack for giving good advice,” she told Abuelita as she put out napkins and her grandmother took pork chops out of the oven. “Maybe this is what I’m meant to do. I really feel like I’m helping people, you know?”
“Glad to hear it,” Abuelita said cheerfully. “Run up and get your sister and brothers, would you? Dinner’s ready.”
Upstairs, Mateo and Tomás had a wooden train system sprawling across their bedroom floor and were lying on their stomachs, making choo-choo noises and frowning intensely as they pushed little blue-and-red trains along opposite sides of the track. But as soon as Zoe mentioned pork chops, they jumped to their feet and headed for the stairs.
“Don’t forget to wash your hands!” she called after them. “Hey, Natalia? Dinner!” There was no reply, and Zoe pushed open the door of Natalia’s and her bedroom. “Natalia?”
Natalia was at her desk, bent over something intently, but she jumped when Zoe came in. “What?” she asked, sounding startled, and pushed the papers she’d been looking at into a drawer.
“Dinner,” Zoe said again. She came closer, curious. “What are you doing?”
Natalia hesitated. “I’m not ready to talk about it,” she said at last. “I’ll tell you later, maybe, okay?”
Zoe was immediately dying to know what Natalia wasn’t telling her, but she listened to her inner advice giver. If she were someone else, she would tell herself to respect her sister’s privacy. “Okay,” she said. “But definitely tell me later. Because now I’m super-curious.”
She was proud of herself, she realized as she slid into her chair, for listening to her own good advice and not hassling Natalia to tell her what she was hiding. No wonder everyone wanted to know what she thought they should do about their own problems.
Probably this is my true calling, she thought dreamily. She could imagine getting older and wiser, until huge numbers of people were turning to her, asking her to fix their problems. And she’d be able to do it.
“Okay,” older, grown-up, sophisticated big-city Zoe said to the camera. “You’ve all been writing in with great questions about how to make your lives better, and I’m here to help.”
“It’s not fair,” Mateo said, and the pout in his voice snapped Zoe out of her daydream. “Robert is always grabbing my favorite car. He’s a pig!” Her little brother was frowning and glaring at his plate, his arms crossed in front of him.
“Well, honey,” their mother began, but Zoe broke in.
“Robert’s your friend from school who always has to be first?” she asked, and Mateo nodded. “Why don’t you make a deal with him? He can have t
he red car first every other day, and you get the opposite ones. And you do a big countdown together and then switch halfway through playtime.”
“Center time,” Mateo corrected her. “We both like the car center.”
“Okay,” Zoe said. “But if you make it into a game—a sharing game—instead of fighting over the car, he might be more likely to go along with it.”
Mateo thought it over and then uncrossed his arms and picked up his fork, looking less pouty. “Okay, I’ll try,” he said. Zoe smiled and slipped back into her daydream.
“The most important thing is to understand the other person’s psychology,” grown-up Zoe told her fans. “Get people on your side, so they want the same thing you do.”
Grown-up artist/advice-giving celebrity Zoe was untangling a complicated romantic problem from a fan when the sound of another voice interrupted her.
“The guests look at this amazing food Brian’s made for them, and they decide suddenly, without bothering to tell us in advance, that they won’t eat anything with tomatoes, and that everything has to be carb-free,” Zoe’s mom was saying to her dad and Abuelita. “We can’t fix a brand-new dish every time we get a fussy eater, or we’re going to go broke.”
“Well, why don’t you have them fill out their food preference online when they register?” Zoe suggested. “If they’ve had a chance to tell you about all their special diet stuff, Uncle Brian will have time to figure out in advance what everybody might be willing to eat.”
Her mom blinked. “I should have thought of that,” she said. “Thanks, Zoe, that’s smart advice.”
“You just think you’re an expert on everything now, don’t you?” Natalia said wryly, but she was smiling.
Zoe looked down modestly, but she couldn’t help feeling smug. Well, I kind of am.
The whole next week went by the same way. Every day, kids came up to Zoe and told her how great the show was, or asked Emma and her to give advice on their problems. All kinds of problems: She found herself trying to think of good ideas for what to enter in an art exhibit and what kind of birthday cake was best. Even the silliest questions filled her with a fizzing, excited joy—what she said mattered, it was important; she was helping people to solve problems they couldn’t solve themselves.