Lola Zola and the Lemonade Crush (6 page)

“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 piece 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 tail-less 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.

“Can you still afford to pay me?” asked Melanie. “I want to buy Heracles some new hamster toys—maybe a new mini-maze to start.”

“Of course I'll be able to pay you, Mel,” promised Lola, “as soon as I start rolling in the dough. Here come some customers.”

The hippie mobile, which had driven by the previous day, rounded the corner and slowed down in Lemonade Gulch, the term Lola coined to describe the middle of the street between her house and Hot Dog's. As the van approached, Lola hopped on her skateboard and skated up to the driver's window.

“Want another cup of my lemonade?” asked Lola. “It's fifteen cents less than yesterday.”

Ms. Bangles, sitting in the passenger seat, rifled through her burlap bag. “Cool, a deep discount.”

Buck jumped up from his lounge chair to lure a customer to his limo stand. “Why pay thirty-five cents a cup when you can slurp the best lemonade in town for only thirty cents?” he said to Ms. Bangles.

“Dig it,” she said, about to accept Buck's offer. The woman had an abbreviated vocabulary and a limited amount of spare change.

Lola felt desperate. “I wouldn't drink that if I were you,” she warned Ms. Bangles, just as Buck was handing the customer a cup.

“Why not?” asked Ms. Bangles.

“Yeah, why not?” repeated Buck.

“Because…“Lola searched for some reason why Buck's lemonade might be deadly. Finally, a pause later, she said, “It's probably contaminated with cooties, if you know what I mean.”

The passengers in the van murmured.

“Cooties?” Lola heard the driver say.

“Cootie-bugs,” came a voice from the backseat.

Buck was so taken aback, he was speechless—but only for a moment. “There's nothing wrong with my lemonade. In fact, it's superior. I import my lemons from special farms and use only the first squirts of the ripe lemon.”

Lola and Melanie didn't buy Buck's pitch, but the hippie-dippy vanload was getting impatient, not to mention a parched feeling in the back of their throats. Ms. Bangles and Mr. Weird Beard bought enough of Buck's special “imported” lemonade to fill up three stainless steel thermos bottles.

“Gotcha, Frizzyola,” said a smiling Buck, as the van drove off and up the mountain. Unfortunately, the “gotcha” bit became a familiar refrain that day as Buck outsold Lola cup for cup, hour by hour.

Even Bowzer was curious about Buck's brew and ventured over to the other side of the street to hop on top of the Cadillac and poke his sandpaper tongue into one of Buck's cups. Much to Lola's annoyance, her cat forgot his loyalties and tasted a tiny drop of the enemy's lemonade.

“Bowzer, come back to me,” pleaded Lola, “that's enemy territory. I need you here.” Taking pity on Lola, the cat ambled back to Lola's side of the street.

Melanie, in the habit of keeping statistics, scribbled the sales totals on the back of one of her homemade posters. At day's end, after carloads of city dwellers passed by on the way to the springs, Melanie's tally showed Buck had outsold Lola two to one. Ouch! Hiss!

After Buck and his Cadillac crew packed up and went home, Lola looked at her profit and loss statement and realized that all she had were losses and a lot of unsold lemonade. She had barely begun to cover her costs, as the sunblock alone cost seven dollars. How could she continue to keep Melanie as an employee?

“I don't know how to tell you this, Mel,” said Lola, as the girls cleaned up the kitchen and Bowzer licked his traitorous lemonade chops.

Melanie figured it was personal. “You don't like my hat.”

“No. I mean no, that's not it.”

“You don't think I work fast enough.”

“Cold,” hinted Lola, playing an impromptu game of hot and cold. “That's not it either.”

“I know,” said Melanie. “You want to cut my salary.”

“Warm,” said Lola.

“You want me to work fewer hours.”

“Hot.”

“You don't want me to work at all.”

“Boiling.”

There it was, on the kitchen counter, the truth. Corporate downsizing.

“I have to lay you off,” said Lola. “I'm sorry, I just…”

“You just don't need me,” said a dejected Melanie, looking down at the floor. She didn't want Lola to see the tears in her eyes.

“I need you, Mel,” said Lola. She gave Melanie a hug. “I just can't afford to pay you.”

“Then don't pay me.”

“I've got to pay you, Twister Sister. Otherwise I'm a take-advantage-of-you kind of boss.” Lola had heard her father refer to such bosses when talking about car parts companies that paid workers in China almost zip.

The girls stared at each other, trying to figure out how to resolve the problem. If Lola laid off Melanie, her best friend would never forgive her. If Melanie worked for free, Lola would never forgive herself. What was Lola supposed to do?

“Try one of these chili peppers,” said her mother, walking into the kitchen and offering Lola and Melanie some peppers. “They're the pepperiest peppers I've ever popped in a pucker.”

Normally Lola would have passed on the peppers, but not this time. She needed a picker-upper and so did sad Melanie. Chomping down hard, the two girls nearly screamed when the peppers set their throats ablaze.

“Gee whiz,” shouted Lola, “these peppers are burning hot!”

“Lola, my mouth is on fire!” hollered Melanie, her face as red as her hair. “I need something to cool off.”

Lola handed her best friend a pitcher of leftover lemonade. “Drink this.” While Melanie swigged, Lola grabbed another pitcher and also drank in hopes of beating the peppery heat. Swooshing the lemonade in her mouth, Lola could hear her taste buds clamoring in high-pitched voices:

“Not bad!”

“Lemon Dad.”

“Pepper spice…”

“Does entice!”

In the middle of the gulping and swooshing, Lola told Melanie, “My taste buds are rapping.”

“My insides are clapping,” added Melanie. “I like it.”

“How much?”

“A lot more than plain old lemonade.”

“More than peanut butter cookie dough?”

“Yup.”

“More than grape-flavored bubble gum?”

“Yup.”

“More than chocolate-covered pistachio nuts?”

“Double-yup,” confirmed Melanie. “I love the peppers in the lemonade.”

“That's it,” said Lola, her eyes twinkling.

“What's it?” asked Melanie, often two beats behind Lola.

“Our strategy.”

“Huh?”

“Our strategy against that Bucket of Slime. We'll put a touch, just a teeny weeny bit of chili peppers, in our lemonade.”

“We will?”

“Yes, but we won't tell anyone. It's our secret.”

“Like my freckle count.”

“Exactly,” said Lola.

Melanie wondered, “Do you think other people, regular people, with typical taste buds will like chili pepper lemonade?”

“Only one way to find out,” said Lola, determined.

“Ask Aunt Liza to drink it?” wondered Melanie.

Someone who managed a junkyard, used to be a stuntwoman, and fostered hamsters named after Greek gods wasn't Lola's idea of regular people.

“No, I had someone else in mind.” Lola winked at Bowzer, who was sitting on top of the television cabinet in the living room, licking his imaginary tail and pausing between licks to admire the cactus outside the window. Succulent heaven—from a cat's point of view.

“Who?” asked Melanie. “Who's going to test it, Lola?”

“None other than our chief taste tester,” said Lola, adding, “Of course we'll modify the recipe for the kitty palate.” She dropped barely a speck of a pepper seed into the lemonade in Bowzer's bowl.

“Bowzer is our chief taste tester?” asked Melanie, beats behind Lola.

Lola nodded. “His instincts were right before.”

“Yes,” agreed Melanie. “He thought our last batch was unsippable.”

Lola carried the bowl over to the television cabinet, reached up carefully so as not to spill any of the liquid, and set the bowl down in front of the tuxedo taste tester. Sniffing cautiously, Bowzer first bumped his nose against the lemonade, then slowly stuck out his tongue and finally took a teeny taste. He opened and closed his eyes slowly three times, sending cat-kisses to Lola.

“Hooray!” said Lola to Melanie. “He approves of our peppery concoction.”

“Maybe I should serve it to the hamsters. Heracles and the other Greeks might like it too,” said Melanie.

“The whole world might like it,” said Lola, calculating the millions she would make selling chili pepper-spiked lemonade. Not only would she support the family, but she would also take the entire class to Laser Lizards, purchase round-trip plane tickets for the Zola family (Melanie included) to visit every nature preserve on earth, and donate the rest to the Mirage Homeless Cat and Dog Sanctuary on Whiskers Way.

“This is our ticket to the big time,” said Lola gleefully.

“
Our
ticket?” asked Melanie, not sure she was still employed.

“Yes,
our
ticket,” confirmed Lola, “if we can raise enough money to launch this new pucker potion properly.”

“How do we do that?”

“We can't just throw a few peppers into the mix and expect fireworks. We've got to create a buzz.”

“A what?”

“A feeling of excitement about our product.”

Melanie wanted to understand. “How do we do that?”

“Through advertising, promotion, and word of mouth,” said Lola, “and that takes a lot of money.”

“You can't have it, Lola Zola.”

“I don't want it.” Lola knew that Melanie was protecting her freckle-removal stash. Lola thought Melanie's freckles added to her character, but Melanie thought they detracted from her potential beauty and dreamed of life without spots. “If only I knew someone with a lot of money,” said Lola, pondering.