Lola Zola and the Lemonade Crush (11 page)

That night Lola tossed, turned, and yearned for the answer to her citrus depression. What did Ruby Rhubarb mean when she said to bluff it? Lola prayed to the Spelling Bee God to spell out the solution to her family's financial woes, but when morning came, her mind was a blur and Bowzer was a cranky sleep-deprived wreck, no longer chasing his missing tail but actually trying to bite it.

Lola skipped breakfast. How many leftover casseroles could one girl swallow, even with salsa? Besides, she couldn't stand to look at her mother parading around the kitchen in her navy-blue business suit, talking about how she hoped to project a conservative impression the first day on the job at Boingo Bits.

“Lola love,” Diane Zola called from the kitchen.

“What, Mom,” said Lola, who was hibernating in the bedroom, reading
The Owl and the Pussycat
to Bowzer, showing him the whiskered pictures.

“Employees at Boingo Bits have to punch in a code,” said Lola's mother. “Otherwise the door won't open.”

“So don't open it,” shouted Lola, not wanting to hear one more syllable about Boingo Bits.

“You'll never guess what the code is, Lola.”

“Lemonade,” Lola said, sarcastically.

“Close,” said her mother. “It's…”

“It's time for me to go to school,” interrupted Lola, having heard all she could bear about the Wembly's video gaming com-puke-tor company.

*** *** ***

During recess Lola overheard Buck blabbing about office politics. “Truth or lie?” said Buck to a cluster of kids waiting to check out balls. “My dad is Lola's mom's boss.”

“Lie,” said a student.

“Truth,” said Buck, smirking.

“Lie,” the kids countered.

“Truth,” insisted Buck.

“Who cares?” said Samantha Roberts, clearly irritated at Buck. “Mr. Power-Tripper, Mr. Yo-Yo Boy, listen here—what your daddy does and who he orders around is of no concern to me.”

Just to spite Samantha—and Lola (who Buck could see was listening to their conversation), the Buckster pulled a neon-yellow yo-yo from his pocket, “walked the dog,” “went around the world,” and practiced a slew of impressive yo-yo tricks.

Lola rolled her eyes in exasperation. What was she going to do with this yo-yo-ing blabbermouth bully show-off?

Back inside the class, in the middle of a long division problem, Lola snapped her fingers and mumbled, “I've solved it!” No, she didn't have the five-digit answer Mrs. Rosenberg was seeking, but she did have the solution to her lemonade dilemma. And she could thank Ruby Rhubarb and Slime Bucket for helping her figure it out.

“We're going out of business,” Lola told Melanie on the parrot phone later that night.

“Going belly down?” asked Melanie. Another malapropism, oh well.

“It's ‘belly up' and no, not really. Just pretend. We're going to bluff it.”

“I don't get it.”

“You're going to work for Buck,” explained Lola.

“No, I'm not,” said Melanie. “I don't want to lose my best friend.”

“Melanie, I'm the one asking you to work for him,” said Lola, exasperated. Melanie's brain wasn't on vacation. It was on sabbatical.

“I still don't get it,” said Melanie.

“Agent 315,” said Lola, taking command, “I want you to infiltrate and agitate.” Those were a couple of ten-dollar words Lola had heard her father use
when talking union strategy. “Turn Buck's employees against him and then picket his Cadillac limo-lemonade stand.”

“Just how am I going to do that?” asked Melanie.

“You'll see,” said Lola, fiddling with one of her walkie-talkies.

*** *** ***

As instructed, Melanie poked Buck on the shoulder the following day during recess, and with tears welling up in her eyes (thanks to a raw onion from Lola) complained to Slime that Lola had laid her off and was going out of business.

“I'm unemployed,” said Melanie, chomping down hard on her grape bubble gum.

“Really,” said Slime, picking a Jujube out of his back molar. “No more magical squirtin' and slurpin'?”

“It's over, Lola can't compete with you,” she said, “not with your limo, umbrella, yellow carpet, and crew of two worker bees.

Buck expected to win, but not quite so easily. Something smelled fishy.

“So now you can tell me what the secret recipe is?”

Melanie, stalling for time, pulled the gum out of her mouth and stretched it as far as she could. When it broke, she popped it back in her mouth, chewed some more, then blew a giant purple bubble. Pop!

“The secret,” Buck reminded her. “What's the secret already?”

“Can't tell,” said Melanie.

“She laid you off,” Buck reminded her. “You can tell me now.”

“I can't tell ‘cause I don't know the secret. But when I find out, I'll tell you if…”

“If what?”

“If you give me a job at the Cadillac limo-lemonade stand,” said Melanie.

Buck hesitated. He didn't know if he should trust Melanie, and now he had a more urgent matter on his mind, unsticking the candy that was glued to the roof of his mouth.

“I, uh, already have a lot of lemon squeezers,” said Buck, finally dislodging the Jujube. When he popped another sticky candy, Melanie could see his tongue turn turquoise blue.

“I don't just squeeze,” said Melanie. “I schmooze. I have marketing skills.” Schmoozing was one of Mrs. Rosenberg's favorite verbs for chatting with important people. “I talk to the customers.”

Melanie had never seen Hot Dog or Magic Max talk to any of the customers—not in English, sign language, Pig Latin, or Morse code.

“I'll have to think about it,” said Buck, playing hard to get.

“Take your time,” said Melanie. “I need time too.” Then, using a Lola Zola tactic, Melanie said, “Aunt Liza says I should go into the lemonade business with her. So maybe I'll do that and share the secret recipe with her, once I find out what that recipe is.”

“When do you want to start?” asked Buck, offering her a Jujube. It was green.

“No thanks,” said Melanie, turning down the candy. “I want to start next weekend,” she said, smiling wide, looking at Agent 002, who was hanging upside down on the monkey bars on the other side of the schoolyard. Melanie jammed two more pieces of grape gum into her mouth and blew a humongous affirmative bubble signal bigger than Buck's yo-yo.

There were other signals too. Freckle counting meant “yes,” and earlobe fiddling meant “no,” as did knuckle cracking. Signals were the only way Lola and Melanie communicated that week in school when they were supposedly not talking to each due to the coming “demise” of the lemonade stand. The gum jamming, earlobe fiddling and freckle counting were all part of Operation Instigate, Lola's highly classified intelligence plan to undermine Buck's winning sales strategy, fueled by his father's moola.

“Whatever you do,” Lola told Melanie late Friday afternoon when the two were sitting in Melanie's room, petting their favorite hamsters, Heracles and
Aphrodite, “don't try to act grown up and wear Aunt Liza's heels. Stay on their level. Hunch your shoulders and slouch.”

“Can I wear my freckle-protector?” asked Melanie. Melanie's hat added two inches to her height.

“Yes, and you can also wear this,” said Lola, handing Melanie a walkie-talkie to hide in the pocket of Melanie's safari shorts. “But remember, don't let Buck or anyone else see it.”

“Yes, Lola, I mean Agent 002,” said Melanie, putting her hand out to high five.

“Operation Instigate, walkie-talkies hibernate,” said Lola and Melanie, slapping their palms together in the air.

The next morning, while Buck and his staff, Melanie included, put designer cocktail umbrellas in the soon-to-be-served lemonade cups, Lola languished in the living room watching travel movies with her mother. She carefully avoided any discussion of Mrs. Zola's first day on the job at Boingo Bits. What were they supposed to talk about anyway? How many letters her mother typed for Mr. Wembly? How many cups of coffee she served his clients? Please, she'd rather talk about Bowzer's missing tail.

“When do you think Bowzer's tail will grow back?” Lola asked, desperate to fill the silence and quell her belly's butterflies about Operation Instigate. She had already peeked out the kitchen window five times in the last half hour.

“Maybe our future scientists will discover a magic herb to regenerate kitty tails,” said her mother, staring intently at a travel show.

“Do you think we'll even have scientists in the future?” asked Lola, well aware her cash-poor school had cut back on most science labs.

Mrs. Zola muted the television set and turned to Lola. “Let's talk about something on a happier note. How's your lemonade stand, honey?”

Turning her thumbs down, Lola said, “I closed it. I couldn't compete with Slime. He's got cheap labor and a rich dad.”

Mrs. Zola put her arm around her daughter, “I'm sorry, Lola, but maybe it's just as well.”

Lola looked at her quizzically.

“I didn't feel comfortable,” said her mother, “about this lemonade competition. After all I, um, I…”

“…Work for Charles Wembly the Second,” said Lola finishing her mother's sentence. How could her mother be such a wimp? Where was her usual chili-pepper spunk?

“Mom! The Wemblys don't own us.”

“No, of course they don't,” said Diane Zola, her voice rising, “but they do own a company that employs a lot of people, and one of them is your mother, and your mother is the only breadwinner right now.”

Lola was about to say that she was working too, but then remembered that she had officially closed her stand and her mother didn't know about her covert operation. Believing her job as chief underminer was better kept a secret, Lola bit her tongue, so she wouldn't talk back to her mother. Not that she was in the habit of sassing her mother—her own rebellious hair, maybe, but never her mom—unless absolutely necessary.

Not wanting to blurt out something she shouldn't, Lola bounded off the Slinky-spring-popping sofa and headed into the kitchen for another peek across the street. The crowds of meditators, jock groupies, worried grinklers (gray and wrinkled), and
Lawrence of Arabia
fans lined up for Buck's lemonade and Sonny's autograph. Too many bodies blocked Lola's view.

She couldn't even see Melanie in the crowd, so she whipped out her walkie-talkie and whispered, “Agent 315, do you copy?”

“Copy, Agent 002,” said Melanie from across the street. She was crouching behind the Cadillac, trying to stay out of sight.

“Remember, the operative word is
guzzle
,” said Lola.

“Four ten,” said Melanie, forgetting the official “I got ya” code was “ten four.”

While Lola puttered around in the kitchen, Melanie guzzled Buck's lemonade and schmoozed with the clientele.

“I love your lace doily dress,” she told Mrs. Garcia, a neighbor who owned a vintage clothing store next to the Mirage Twin Cinemas.

“Come visit the shop some time,” said Mrs. Garcia, waiting for Melanie to pour her a cup of Buck's brew. “You can try on some petticoats from the fabulous fifties.”

Melanie was not about to visit Mrs. Garcia's old clothes boutique; poodle skirts were not Melanie's style—plus the dust in the shop made her sneeze little tornadoes.

“Thanks for the invitation,” she said, smiling, “here's another cup for you on the house.”

Mrs. Garcia was flattered. “You are a sweetheart. By the way, what happened to your friend Lola Zola? I don't see her anymore. I liked her lemonade much better,” she said with a wink. “It had a lot more to offer than this lemon water.”

Buck overheard the conversation and bristled at the reference to his brew as lemon water.

“Lola went out of business,” said Melanie, “but I'll tell her you said hello.”

“Please do, poor thing,” said Mrs. Garcia, dabbing her sweaty chin with an antique lace handkerchief. “I do love that girl's spunk.”

As Mrs. Garcia walked away, Melanie caught Buck sticking his finger down his throat as if he were gagging on the lace lady's words.

“Hey, Melanie, why aren't you charging for second cups? What's up with that?” said Buck, who noticed Melanie was giving away too many freebies.

“I'm just trying to be nice,” she said, pouring another cup, her seventh actually, for herself.

“Quit drinking all the profits,” said Buck.

“But I'm going to drop dead in this heat if I don't stay hydrated.”

Grabbing the pitcher out of Melanie's hand, Buck snapped, “No more slurping on the job, Melanie Papadakis. You're a hog and a slug, and you're slowing up the works.”

Buck had a point. Melanie, her bladder bursting, had already excused herself four times to go to the ladies room. Operation Instigate required numerous nature breaks.

“What about magic tricks?” asked Melanie. “Is it all right if I teach Max how to make a lemon fly? Wheee…” Melanie threw Hot Dog's baby brother a lemon and said, “Think fast.”

Max, always up for a game of catch, caught it and hurled the lemon back at her. Noting his father's reproachful stare and furious arm waving, Buck tried to intercept the next pass, but ended up playing a game of Monkey in the Middle. He struggled in vain to grab the flying lemon while Mr. Wembly, on his cell in the limo, shook his head in disgust and took another sip of what Melanie assumed was lemonade. Soon Hot Dog joined in the game, and it was three against one until the lemon almost hit a customer in the head and ricocheted off the trunk of the Caddie.

“That's enough,” said Buck. “Back to work, on the double!” He sounded like a clone of his dad.

“Oh gross! I'm totally sweaty now,” said Melanie, about to pour herself another cup of lemonade.