Solving Zoe (3 page)

Zoe wasn't making an excuse when she told Mackenzie there was something she had to do right then. There was, and it really couldn't wait.

She had a job. Her first job ever, and it was incredibly important. And fascinating. And also a teeny bit disgusting.

Zoe was a lizard-sitter. For the next week or so, probably, she was being paid five dollars a day to feed thirty-two reptiles, all living in an elegant brownstone not three blocks from Hubbard.

It happened like this: One day Dad came home extra late from a new painting job. He was a muralist; once in a while he painted an important wall, like on a government building or a bank, but most of the time he painted dining rooms or kids' bedrooms. His two most popular walls were The Hills of Tuscany (dining room) and An Enchanted Forest (first-grade girl's bedroom). He painted these so often that he could do them with his eyes shut. Anyway, that's what he said.

But that day his eyes looked wide open and kind of
stunned. “You've got to see this new job of mine, Zozo,” he said, shaking his head.

“What's so amazing about it?” she teased him. “They don't want Tuscany, for a change?”

“Just see it. That's all I'm going to tell you. Here's the address. Meet me there after school tomorrow.”

She tried to get him to tell her more, but he refused. The next day Zoe easily found the elegant brownstone, and rapped on the door with the bronze knocker. A tall, bony man with a thin, graying ponytail opened the door. At first she thought she must have read the address wrong, but then Dad appeared and hugged her against his big stomach, enveloping her with his familiar turpentiney smell.

“There you are, Zozo,” he said, grinning. “This is Isaac Wakefield. Isaac, this is my daughter Zoe. The one I told you about.”

“Pleasure,” grunted Isaac. He turned his back and gestured for her to follow. They walked past a high-ceilinged parlor on the right filled with massive tangles of wire, almost like giant Brillo pads.

“Isaac's a wire sculptor,” Dad said. “Very famous.”

“Hogwash,” Isaac shouted over his shoulder. Zoe laughed, because it was the first time outside a cartoon that she had ever heard anyone use that expression.

And apparently she wasn't there to see his sculptures. He led them up the narrow stairs to the second floor. “There, there, and there,” he said, pointing to three different rooms. Zoe looked at her father questioningly.

“Reptiles,” Dad explained, grinning. “Isaac studies them. All different species. Take a look around, Zozo. Don't be afraid.”

She followed Isaac from room to room, gaping at the gleaming, orderly glass terrariums filled with iguanas, geckoes, salamanders, skinks, turtles, newts, anoles, and whiptails. (But no snakes, thank goodness!) Each terrarium was its own miniature reptile world, carefully landscaped with rocks and cacti and grasses and weathered branches. And beside each terrarium was a clipboard holding charts with titles such as “Gecko #4: Cricket Consumption,” or “Iguana #2: Water.” Zoe watched as Isaac stood perfectly still in front of each terrarium, then scribbled something on the charts.

“Got to be precise,” he said, still writing. “They look tough, but their ecosystems are actually pretty delicate. And too much food or water can throw everything off.”

“Whoa,” Zoe whispered to her father. “This is incredible! But what are we doing here?”

Dad smiled. “Isaac's commissioned me to do his bedrooms. He wants me to paint three different lizard habitats.”

“Three? I thought lizards just lived in deserts.”

“Some do. And some live in woodlands. Also savannas.”

“Oh.” Zoe watched a tiny yellow-headed gecko nibble a strawberry. She wondered if it tasted sweet to him; or maybe to a gecko this tasted like a pepperoni pizza. How could you even know? “This is way better than Tuscany,” she said in Dad's ear. “But I mean, why
lizards
?”

Suddenly Isaac was facing her. “Why
not
lizards?”

She blushed. “I don't know. They're not exactly—” She struggled for a word.

“Cute? Cuddly?” His eyes sparkled mischievously.

“Well, they aren't really pets,” she tried to explain tactfully. “I mean, I saw your charts. They don't even have names. They're just like, Salamander #4.”

“It's not their job to be cuddly. Or to have cuddly names. Just watch them, kiddo. Try to understand what you're looking at, and try to keep your overheated emotional preteen reactions out of it.”

Zoe laughed. This man was nuts, but she liked him for some reason.

And afterward, when they walked home together, Dad
told her that Isaac lived alone (except for his thirty-two lizards). He had six kids (one of them named Willie, a Hubbard first grader) and three ex-wives. But he was worried about his elderly mother in Arizona. He needed to visit her for a little while, and he needed someone to look after his lizards. All you had to do was feed them and write down what they ate. And, also, if you felt so inclined, maybe jot down a few notes about their behavior….

“You mean
me?
” Zoe asked, finally understanding what her father was saying.

“Sure. Why not you, Zozo?”

It sounded as obvious as when Isaac had asked,
Why not lizards?

“Because, Dad! They're so slimy! And the ones that aren't slimy have these weird spiny things—”

“Who said anything about touching them?”

“Besides,” Zoe argued, “what do I know about lizards?”

Dad squeezed her shoulder. “You don't need to know anything, Zoe. You just need to be willing to learn. After all those years at Hubbard, are you so afraid to open up your brain and use it a little?”

She stared at him. He'd never spoken that way to her before. “Of course not,” she said, a bit offended.

And so Dad made all the arrangements. Isaac gave her a key and a key chain he'd sculpted out of wire. There was a funny shape dangling on the end of it, which, Zoe realized with pride, was a letter
Z
. And every afternoon immediately after school, or on the weekend, she was to go to Isaac's brownstone, feed the thirty-two reptiles, record what they ate and drank, and then take a few notes if, as Isaac had put it, “the spirit moved her.”

It was a little scary at first, especially because it turned out that Dad had another Enchanted Forest job to finish up first, and wouldn't be starting Isaac's lizard rooms for at least a few days. So the first time Zoe went to Isaac's, she made Dara come with her. But Dara was too grossed out after five minutes in the iguana room, and fled downstairs to hang out with the giant Brillo pads until Zoe was finished.

Today was Zoe's second day. She let herself into the brownstone with her special key and carefully fed the lizards exactly the way Isaac had taught her. It was hard to record their food consumption with the kind of precision he expected, but she did her best. “Iguana #2: 3 1/2 crickets,” she wrote in her neatest handwriting. Then she tiptoed around the three bedrooms, stopping every once in a while to record her observations:

She crossed the last part out, then watched the smallish lizard carefully explore the walls of the glass terrarium.
Anole,
she repeated to herself.
Anole. Backward that's Elona, which is actually a beautiful name. Is it any different from Lorna? Oh, of course it is; E, not R. Funny how one letter totally changes everything.

The house was very still, very quiet. Almost like a kind of lizard lab. Or a peaceful reptile paradise. Suddenly the phone rang.

She ran down the stairs to Isaac's spotless white-tiled kitchen and answered the only phone he had, the ancient kind with a rotary dial. “Hello?”

“Who is this?” a woman's voice shouted. Zoe could hear street noises in the background; the caller was clearly on a cell.

“It's Zoe Bennett. I'm helping Isaac. May I ask who's calling, please?”

“Deb. Where is he?”

“Um, I believe it's Arizona.”

“I bet,” Deb said. Then the line went dead.

Zoe hung up the phone, wondering if she should have told Deb about Arizona. Well, too late now.

Then she picked up the phone again and called Dara's apartment, but there was no answer. And she didn't want to leave a message, because what would she say:
Where are you, Dara?
It made no sense to ask that if the person wasn't there to answer. And Dara didn't have a cell. Why did she need one, she once joked, when she was always with Zoe anyway?

Well, maybe she'd try calling Dara's apartment again later. From home.

“See you tomorrow, guys,” she called up the stairs, smiling a little at how funny that sounded. For a second she stood at the foot of the stairs, breathing the warm, strangely soothing air of Isaac's weird apartment. Then she locked the door with her special key and hurried outside, where a blasting truck horn immediately scolded her:
Hey, Zoe! You're back in the real world now, so wake up and pay attention!

The walls of Zoe's apartment were actually shaking.

That's how loud the music was: If you looked at the family photos in the entry (Isadora beaming as she took a curtain call, Malcolm hoisting his Math Olympiad trophy, Mom hugging Spencer a few minutes after his birth, Dad and Zoe waving from the Statue of Liberty), you could see them all twitching a little, back and forth.

Wincing, Zoe walked into the living room, where Isadora and her best friend, Nina, and some blond girl named Palmer were sprawled all over the Bennetts' ash gray sectional sofa, chanting some deafening hip-hop song to their invisible but adoring fans.

“Do you think you can turn it down a little, Isadora?” Zoe shouted. “You can practically hear it in the elevator.”

“Sorry!” Isadora gracefully jumped up to switch off the CD player, but the air was still vibrating. “We were just psyching ourselves up to go audition.”

“Yeah, Iz, like you really need psyching up,” teased Nina. “You know you already have the lead.”

“I don't!”

“Of course you do.”

“Of course I
don't
,” said Isadora, beaming. “Everyone's trying out, Nina. You never know.”

“Ahh, but you see, my dear, I know all,” said Nina. She picked up a sofa pillow and put it on her head. “I am zee swami,” she said in a heavily accented voice. “I can zee into zee fu-ture.”

“Nina, you are just too painfully bizarre,” Palmer said. “Shut up and let Isadora pretend to worry.”

“I'm not pretending,” Isadora protested.

“Oh, come on, Iz. You totally have the part. Nina's telepathic.”

“Clairvoyant,” Zoe corrected Palmer. She looked at her sister, who was organizing her thick sandy blond hair into a sloppy ponytail. Isadora was gorgeous. She was also an amazing singer; of course she'd get the starring role. “I thought the musical was just for Middle Division.”

“Upper Division too,” said Isadora. “The first co-division production in Hubbard history.”

Which means it'll be harder for Dara,
Zoe thought. “But weren't tryouts right after school?”

“For Middle Div. Upper's in half an hour.”

“Oh,” Zoe said distractedly. “Well, I need to make a phone call now, so if you guys could please….”

“We'll keep it down, dah-ling. Never fear.”

Zoe grabbed the hallway phone and locked herself in the bedroom she shared with Isadora. Then she called Dara's number again, and this time Dara picked up.

“Gasp!” Dara cried. “I'm so sorry, Zoe! I totally forgot you were waiting after school! Do you forgive me?”

Zoe sat down on her bottom bunk. “Don't be silly. Of course I do.”

In the background Zoe could hear a loud voice. “Is that Zoe on the phone? Tell her you were awesome.”

Dara giggled. “Leg says I was awesome.”

“Leg?” Zoe repeated. “She's at your house right now?”

“Yeah, she walked me home from auditions. I'm so ecstatic, Zoe. I mean, I was just incredibly nervous. But the weird thing was, once I started singing, it was actually kind of fun!”

“Well, you have such a great voice, Dara. I've always said so, right?”

“I know, but it's totally different in front of one or two people. I mean, I never get nervous; it's like singing in front of a mirror! But this was the first time in my life I had an
actual school audience.”

Zoe smiled. “That's so cool. I'm really, really happy for you.”

“Not yet! You can't be happy until I actually get a part. Say ‘fingers crossed.'”

“Fingers crossed. Oh, guess what. I was just over at Isaac's, and I noticed that the baby golden gecko was peeking at me.”

“Fascinating,” Dara said. “But also a little bit gross, actually. How much longer are you doing that thing?”

“I'm not sure. Like a week, maybe. Oh, by the way, I thought of a good Which: Which is more repulsive, greasy hair or body odor?”

“Body odor,” Dara said. “Whoops, someone's trying to call. I think it's my mom. Talk to you later.”

Zoe hung up, wondering what Dara meant by “later.” Was she planning to call Zoe back? Maybe after Leg went home? Or did “later” just mean,
I'm busy now, Zoe. I'll see you tomorrow at lunch?

She lay on her bed, staring up at the swirly bedsprings of Isadora's bunk. Then suddenly she sat up.
Lucas's notebook
, she thought. She'd forgotten all about it. But Lucas probably hadn't; probably he was really worried about it by now. Probably he thought he'd never see it again.

She slipped it out of her hoodie pocket and opened the cover, this time fully prepared to see the loud warning.

She opened the back cover then, but there was no other writing, not even a phone number she could call. On the last few pages Lucas had drawn something strange—not a doodle, but some sort of fantastical creature, over and over. It had a bird's beak and flowing hair and a big inhuman eye. Its stomach, or whatever it was, was decorated with a row of four perfectly round dots. Zoe counted: Lucas had drawn the creature eleven times, and every time, it was exactly the same.

She flipped to the middle pages, then back to the beginning. No other weird creatures, just more of the same incomprehensible gibberish. It was a whole notebook devoted to—well, what, exactly? She'd never know. But for some strange reason, she kept turning the pages. And when she got to page twenty, her heart froze.

Her name: ZOE. Right in the middle of all that outer space language, or numbers, or whatever it was. She shut the notebook in horror. So she'd been right: He
had
been eavesdropping on her in the cafeteria! In fact, he'd probably written down every single word she'd said. It was probably all there, in some kind of crazy, demented code. Who did that little alien think he was, anyway? Did he think Zoe was some kind of lizard he could just sit in the lunchroom and “observe”?

With a shudder she imagined the rest of the page:

“Zoe Bennett: Nibbled two thirds of tuna-and-potato-chip sandwich. Bobbed head at Dara Grosbard. Stared.”

She could hear footsteps in the hallway, so she quickly slipped the notebook under her pillow.

Then Isadora burst into the room, not even caring that Zoe had closed the door for privacy. Without a word of apology, Isadora kicked off her shoes, yanked off her
top, and slipped on a skinny black V-neck with shiny gold stitching.

“Well, I'm off to tryouts,” she announced. “Wish me luck, Zo.”

“You really don't need any, Izzy.”

“Oh, yes I do. There's so much competition for the lead this year, and I'm just incredibly nervous.”

Zoe blinked. “That's exactly what Dara said: ‘I was just incredibly nervous.'”

Isadora's face lit up. “You mean she finally auditioned?”

“Yeah. She did, actually.” Zoe watched Isadora brush her hair. Then something occurred to her. “What do you mean, ‘finally'?”

“Well, I knew she desperately wanted to, but she was always too scared.”

“Really? How did you know that?”

“She told me, I think.”

“
Dara
told you that? When?”

“I don't remember. Sometime last spring, maybe, when she was over here. Why? She never told you?”

Zoe shook her head.

“Well, maybe she was too embarrassed. Or too self-conscious. Or too, I don't know,
something.
” Isadora
slipped on a big pair of dangly earrings. “Listen, Zoe, Dara has a fabulous voice, but what they're looking for more than anything is stage presence. And tryouts can be so cutthroat; a lot of Hubbard kids just really know how to turn it on. So try to be there for her when they post the cast list. The important thing is that she's finally brave enough to audition.”

Isadora lip-glossed her mouth and made a kissy face in the mirror. She studied her reflection. “Zit city,” she announced.

Then she grabbed an enormous black leather bag and slung it over her shoulder. “As for you, dah-ling, stay out of trouble, think happy thoughts, bye-bye!”