Zoe in Wonderland (10 page)

A New Friend

A
s I headed to my table in the cafeteria, I heard Zena warn her puppets, “You know she'll rat you out if you say anything to her, so don't.”

Was Zena right? Was I going to be a rat every time someone bullied me? Would I run to Mr. Summer, the way he'd instructed me to, and squeal?

When I'd told Quincy what had happened, he'd said, “Sometimes you have to be a rat, Zoe.”

What did I have to lose by being a rat, anyway? Quincy was my only friend.

Except maybe not. Adam was wearing a green-and-blue plaid shirt when he sat down at lunch across from me again.

“You live in that Wonderland plant place, huh?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Must be interesting,” Adam said.

I decided to try very hard not to be shy. I took a deep breath. “Sometimes,” I answered, then spouted off nervously. “There's all sorts of stuff, even endangered plants. My dad's a horticulturist. Which is a fancy way to say he knows a lot about plants and trees and flowers.” I wondered if he was going to keep asking questions, but when he didn't, I asked one of mine. “Where'd you go to school last year?”

“In Rome,” he replied.

“Italy?”

Adam nodded.

“Were you born there?”

“No, I was born in Rhode Island, but because of my dad's work, we usually move every two years. So far, we've lived in Sweden; Japan; Washington, DC; Rome . . . and now here. My sister claims we're like animals that migrate, except we don't ever come back to the same place . . . at least not yet. My mom calls us nomads.”

I was sitting across from a worldwide voyager, and instantly I felt like a very boring girl with a life story so dull, it would make you yawn a thousand times—the
farthest I'd ever been from Pasadena was the Grand Canyon.

“Oh,” I said.

“My mom and sister hate moving so much, but I like it because every place is a new adventure. My favorite so far is Japan. It was the coolest.”

Adventure? Recently, lots of people were using that word—first Ben Rakotomalala, then Daddy, and now Adam.

“Can you speak Japanese?” I asked.

“A little, but after a while you start to forget. Good thing I have lots of pictures of all the places I've been to. I could show you, if you wanna see.”

“Okay. Or you could e-mail some of them to me too,” I told him.

“Cool.”

I scribbled my e-mail address on some notebook paper and handed it to him.

“Want mine?” he asked.

“Sure.”

Questions buzzed around me like flies at a picnic. Is he just being nice? Will he really e-mail me pictures? Does this mean I actually have a new friend? I hoped I'd have the answers I wanted soon.

Inside Mrs. Warner's House

T
he star of day was hard at work heating everything up, so I walked home on streets that had shady trees. Instead of being green the way they usually are in the fall, the foothills ahead of me were dry and brown from not having enough rain. By the time I turned the corner to the Wonderland, I was sweating and thirsty.

Mrs. Warner wasn't outside when I passed her house, but her front door was wide open and smoke was coming out. I ran to her door.

“Mrs. Warner!” I yelled. “You in there?” No reply. “Mrs. Warner!”

“Didn't your parents teach you not to scream?”

I whipped around. Mrs. Warner was standing behind
me. She must have been in her backyard. I pointed inside her house. “There's smoke!”

Mrs. Warner's eyes got wide with fright. “Help me get the hose!”

“We should call the fire department,” I told her.

Mrs. Warner ignored me. She yanked her green hose and toddled inside.

“Mrs. Warner! Come back!”

But she didn't listen. “Turn on the water!” she hollered.

I dropped my backpack, turned on the water, and was about to zoom home to tell my daddy when Mrs. Warner reappeared, coughing.

“It's out. Just a little nothing. One of my candles must have tipped over. You can turn off the hose.”

“We should still call the fire department,” I said, “just in case.”

“It's out, I told you! I do not need the fire department nosing around in my business.”

“Okay, then I'll go get my daddy.”

“And I don't need your daddy either. You want to do something to be of use . . . come inside and help me clean up the mess,” she demanded.

Finally, a chance to go inside Mrs. Warner's house.

What if the fire isn't really out? I worried. Never go inside a burning house, Daddy always said. His
warning screamed in my ears. But I peeked inside and could see the spot in the living room where the small fire had been. The floor and everything around it was water-soaked. Smoke hovered like fog.

“Help me open the windows!” Mrs. Warner commanded.

I stepped inside.

She unlocked a window and lifted it open. “Lucky for me you passed by when you did. You're an angel. I think that'll be my name for you from now on . . . Zoe Angel.”

Zoe Angel? That sounded awesome. Much better than Zoe Reindeer.

I helped Mrs. Warner open window after window, and by the time we were finished, the smoke had been sucked outside. We picked up the burned, soaked stuff, mostly papers, and carted it out to the trash.

Once we were back indoors and I was able to take a good look around, I thought, Daddy was right—there was way too much stuff piled around: old newspapers, magazines, junk mail. Like going through a maze, I made my way from the living room to the kitchen, where maps and old calendars plastered the walls. Ceramic creatures and stuffed animals, mostly teddy bears, were perched here and there, but the kitchen itself was what Mom calls “spotlessly clean.”

Shelves filled with books lined both sides of the hallway, making it a very narrow passageway.

“Have you read all of these books?”

“Some of them twice,” Mrs. Warner replied. “Nothing better than a book and a little music that takes you back to happier times.”

In the bedroom, lit candles inside colored glass containers still flickered, and beside them an old record player sat. A shelf was filled with vinyl records that nearly reached the ceiling.

“Maybe you should blow out all the candles,” I warned her.

“Nonsense!” Mrs. Warner barked. “And not a word of this to a soul. They'll put me in the old-people orphanage for certain. I don't ever want to leave my house. Promise me you won't say a word, little angel.”

“Don't you have any children you could go live with?” I asked.

Mrs. Warner plopped down on the bed.

“Had a daughter, but she died when she was about your age,” she replied.

“What happened?”

“Tornado. Back in Missouri, where we lived. Took her and her daddy just like in that movie
The Wizard of Oz
. Some things are hard to watch. Some things never leave your mind . . . no matter how hard you try to
force them away from your memory.” Mrs. Warner lifted a framed picture from her nightstand and patted the bed. “Sit down.”

I sat down beside her, and together, we looked at the photograph.

“This is her. Name was Lily. My girl was real pretty, don't you think? Pretty like you.” Mrs. Warner smiled.

Pretty? Me?

Mrs. Warner slipped her arm around me and hugged me to her side. Then she glanced at the glimmering candles and said, “She would always light candles at dinnertime, my Lily, even in the summer. Promise me—not a word to a soul about this. I will be careful. In all my years . . . never had a fire before. Promise me, Zoe Angel,” she repeated.

I knew I shouldn't make the promise, but I felt very sorry for Mrs. Warner. I didn't want her to have to go to the old-people orphanage.

“I promise.”

Since the
thing
with the police, Jade and Harper hadn't been like bee stings most of the time, and when they did start up, one glance from Daddy or Mom was all it took. And because of that, dinnertime had become slightly less gruesome.

At the table that night, Jade blabbed on and on about herself, sucking up five hundred percent of the attention, loving every minute all eyes were on her. I studied her like she was a bug under a microscope.

How many times, over and over and over, had I wished I were a Jade look-alike? But tonight, for the first time ever, probably because Adam had called me not-ugly and today Mrs. Warner had called me pretty, I stared at my sister without feeling that way. Jade looks like Jade and I—big feet, unruly hair, and all—look like me.

Jade seemed to have finished talking and I was about to, without mentioning the fire, tell them about going inside Mrs. Warner's house and Lily and the tornado, but Harper took over and started jabbering about science stuff. Like old leggings, dinner got stretched out. After a while, I didn't hear them anymore.

Instead, I pictured Lily's old, stained photo and imagined Lily and her daddy getting sucked up by the tornado. I gazed outside and wished Mrs. Warner could forget that extremely sad thing. Now I knew why she lit the candles. But at least she had the photograph—the photograph that made her smile.

“Zoe?” Mom said.

“Huh?”

“How was your day?” she asked.

“Fine,” I replied. “Can we light candles at dinner sometimes?” I asked her.

Jade rolled her eyes.

Mom looked at me all twinkly-eyed. “We can. Maybe on Sundays. That'd be nice.”

“That'd be real nice,” Daddy echoed.

Grounded

L
ater that week, Adam was sitting across from me during lunch—Adam sitting across from me had somehow become an everyday event—and I was wearing the bubble-gum-tasting lip gloss that I'd sort of permanently borrowed from Jade. Day by day it was getting easier and easier to talk to him. Also, my shyness was seeming to show up less and less and less. I supposed having to talk to someone I barely knew every day was why.

Adam quizzed me about the carnivorous plants in the Wonderland and finally asked if he could see them, and I was about to say yes—until I remembered I was still grounded.

“I'm grounded,” I told him.

“Because you ran away from school that day?”

“Yeah.” Until right then, being grounded hadn't really mattered and I hadn't even thought about it. Now Adam wanted to come over, so it mattered. And then I remembered Quincy was coming back this weekend. That made being grounded the worst.

Maybe the Reindeer parents would let me make it up another time—like a make-up test. I sure hoped so!

That night, I caught Daddy and Mom together on the sofa. Since their fight, I hadn't heard any more arguments about money. They were laughing at some TV show and they seemed happy.

Jade and Harper weren't around. Jade was out with her friends and Harper was in the garage, deep into his latest science project. So I'd caught the Reindeer parents alone and in good moods—perfect timing to plead my case.

I smiled my sweetest smile and spoke in my sweetest voice. “Since Quincy's coming home this weekend, can I be grounded another time?” I asked. “I'll even be grounded for another whole month,” I pleaded. “Please say yes. Plus, Kendra is finally getting out of the hospital, and I really want to see her. I'm begging.”

“So you're willing to extend your sentence for another whole month?” Daddy asked.

“Sentence? It's not jail, is it? I'll even clean the greenhouse for free.”

They stared at each other hard, like they were using their Reindeer parent superpowers to communicate. Finally, Daddy said, “It's a deal. Just clean the greenhouse for free and you're off punishment, but only while Quincy is here, understand?” He had his best Daddy-is-being-serious look on his face. “Understand?” he repeated.

“Yes,” I replied. “Thank you so much!”

And I knew I shouldn't push it any further, but I did. “Also, there's a boy from school who wants to come over and look at the carnivorous plants. So I was wondering—”

Mom interrupted, “Not part of the deal, Zoe.” She waved her index finger no. “Not part of the deal.”

“Thank you. I understand. G'night,” I told them. But before I headed to my room, a thought suddenly popped into my mind. Wait a minute. “Clean the greenhouse for free for how long? Not forever, right?” I asked Daddy. Was one weekend with my best friend worth forever?

“How about two weeks,” Daddy answered.

“Okay,” I agreed. Quincy was definitely worth a whole lot more than thirty bucks. “G'night. And thank you again.”

“G'night, Zoe.”

I headed to my room, did some homework, and took out the book Ben Rakotomalala had given me. I was more than halfway done. I thought about him being an astronomer with a telescope, gazing at all sorts of stuff in the nighttime sky. Lately, at night, I'd been looking up more and more at the moon and stars, thinking about what was way up there past the Milky Way.

At that moment, I wondered how much a telescope costs. I'd look it up online tomorrow. Seeing as Daddy was worried about money, asking for one for Christmas seemed out of the question. As soon as I started getting paid for cleaning the greenhouse again, I'd start saving my money to buy one. Ben's book was getting me more and more curious about all kinds of things. I cracked it and read on.

Right then, someone turned the doorknob to my room and cracked the door. Harper stuck his face inside.

“You're supposed to knock!”

“Sorry.” He closed the door and knocked.

“What!”

“Can I come in?” he asked.

“Why?”

“Just want to.”

Huh? What was the snox up to now? My curiosity won. “Okay!”

“Hey, Zoe,” he said. His eyes were fixed on the book Ben had given me.

So that was it. He'd probably been snooping in my room when I wasn't home and seen it.

“What's that book about?”

I held it up for him to read the title. “Just what it says, genius.”

“Where'd you get it? I couldn't find it online.”

Just like I thought—he had been snooping. “From this astronomer guy named Ben Rakotomalala who's from Madagascar but works at JPL,” I bragged.

Harper squinted at me jealously. “The Jet Propulsion Lab? How'd you meet him?”

“He came into the nursery when I was working there.” I decided to boast some more. “He says people with good imaginations, like me, are sometimes more important than people who have their heads full of facts.”

“Is that what you're doing when you zone out . . . imagining stuff?” Harper asked.

I nodded.

“Oh. I thought you were just daydreaming.”

“They're kind of the same thing,” I told him.

“I suppose,” Harper agreed, then asked, “What else did that man say?”

“He calls the sun ‘the star of day.'”

“The star of day? Wow. Hugely cool.” Harper glanced at the book. “Can I read it when you're done?” His eyes had that begging look.

An itty-bitty piece of me wanted to say yes, but most of me was still mad at him for stealing my science project idea and for being such a constantly annoying snox.

Zoe G. Reindeer thought for a minute. I finally had something Harper desperately wanted. But I wasn't about to give him something for nothing. “If you help me clean the greenhouse for a month, I'll let you read it.”

Harper eyed the book. He hesitated for a few seconds, then said, “Deal.”

“And one other thing . . . stop snooping in my room. Promise?”

“Promise.”

He was at the door when he turned and smiled at me.

“What?” I asked.

“Thanks, Zoe.”

“You're welcome.”

“And the next time that man comes to the nursery, can you come get me so I can meet him too?”

Hmmm. I wasn't too sure about that. With Harper-geek-super-smart-boy around, Ben might lose all interest in me—even if I am an imaginer. And I really didn't need one more person treating me like
just
Zoe. “Maybe.”

“Okay . . . G'night,” Harper said in a nice way.

I watched him close the door to my room. “G'night.”