Lola Zola and the Lemonade Crush Read online

  “All right, child,” she said, taking a sip, “I’m waiting for the magic you promised.” Mrs. Rhubarb took another sip, and another and another. The woman was a silent sipping machine. All slurp, no talk. Finally their one and only potential investor murmured, “This is not good.”

  “It’s not?” Lola’s heart sank.

  “It’s not good,” said Mrs. Rhubarb, “it’s superb! In fact, this lemonade is absolutely liberating for the nasal system.” She put down her box of pink tissues and took a deep breath. “I feel like a new woman.”

  For the first time that afternoon, Mrs. Rhubarb could breathe easily.

  “I knew you’d love it,” said Lola, nodding her bumblebee bow.

  “Me too,” said Melanie, crossing her toes.

  “What’s in this lemonade?” asked Mrs. Rhubarb, as she slurped a second glass and punctuated her swallows with “Ahhhs.”

  “Can’t tell,” said Lola. “It’s a secret.”

  “Like my freckle tab,” said Melanie.

  Mrs. Rhubarb had no idea what a freckle tab was, but she did understand one thing—these girls were asking her to invest in a product about which she knew next to nothing except that it tasted peppery and cleansed her nasal passages.

  “I want to know the recipe,” insisted Mrs. Rhubarb.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Rhubarb,” said Lola. “Our recipe is top secret.” Actually, it was a matter of pride. If Lola revealed that she and Melanie had put chili peppers in the lemonade, Mrs. Rhubarb might laugh at Lola—and Lola wanted to be taken seriously. “I can’t give you the recipe.”

  “Fine,” said Mrs. Rhubarb, “then you can take your lemonade and slurp it all the way home. I’m not interested in investing my fortune in a mystery punch.”

  Desperate, Lola appealed to Mrs. Rhubarb’s sense of compassion. “If you don’t invest, Charles Wembly the Third is going to win the lemonade challenge, and my mother will have to work for his father. That’s, like, totally embarrassing.”

  “What, pray child, are you blabbering about?” asked Mrs. Rhubarb.

  Lola told Mrs. Rhubarb all about the recent events: the layoffs, the class election, her mother’s decision to work for Mr. Wembly, the car payment due at the end of the month, Lola’s plan to support the family, and Buck’s effort to sabotage her dream.

  “I’m listening, child,” said Mrs. Rhubarb. “I feel for you, honey. I really do. Okay, one hundred dollars it is. I don’t know about this magic business, but I want to help you out and make some interest on the side.”

  “Interest?” said Lola. “What’s that?”

  “Interest is what banks charge to make a loan—and it’s what I’m going to charge you.”

  Lola agreed to pay 3 percent interest, which on a one-hundred-dollar loan amounted to three dollars, so Mrs. Rhubarb agreed to fork over the cash. While Mrs. Rhubarb had tucked some of her money in bank accounts, stocks, and bonds, she also stashed a little cash in a place no burglar would ever peek, a place that was immune to the rise and fall of the stock market—behind the covered butter dish in the refrigerator.

  “Here’s the green,” said Mrs. Rhubarb. She pulled her hand out of the refrigerator. “Don’t worry, the bills will warm up soon.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Rhubarb,” exploded Lola, spontaneously planting a kiss on Mrs. Rhubarb’s cheek.

  “You go, girl,” said Mrs. Rhubarb, touched at the display of affection.

  And so after another glass of lemonade and a three-way handshake, Lola and Melanie left the Spanish villa on the hill to plot their rebound strategy. Look out, Slime. The Twister Sisters were coming back.

  *** *** ***

  Chapter 8

  “I’m suffocating,” complained Melanie, bundled up inside her winter parka on a scorching day. “What if I faint under this palm tree?” Mirage’s palm trees provided little shade.

  “Think sub-zero and imagine you’re a penguin,” advised Lola, wearing a faux down jacket and standing in front of Melanie in the movie line. “You don’t want to pass out and end up a scrambled egg on the sidewalk.”

  The two spies were involved in a covert operation, Project Pucker, and had chili-pepper-spiked lemonade pitchers hidden under their mounds of polyester. Lola had tried to keep the operation top secret, but when Hot Dog’s living room curtains opened and closed mysteriously, she wondered if there were other spies in the neighborhood.

  “We’ve got to boogie,” she had told Melanie as the two tightened the strings on their roller skates and zoomed off for the sleepy center of town.

  The first stop in Project Pucker had been the Mirage Twin Cinema, a movie house that reminded Melanie of her aunt’s junkyard—a mess.

  In keeping with its dilapidated look, the cinema only showed old movies and lacked both air-conditioning and a popcorn stand. Why anyone would go there in one-hundred-degree heat was beyond Lola and Melanie’s comprehension, but old movie buffs were a strange breed and all that mattered to them was the film’s Academy Award record. The marquee, its letters chipped and crooked, advertised Lawrence of Arabia, a thirst-arousing godsend for intelligence agents hoping to sneak in a special beverage that would quench a multitude of parched throats.

  Lawrence, the star of the movie, had reportedly been wandering through the desert for over an hour when Lola and Melanie arrived with their jackets bulging and their foreheads perspiring. Once inside the theater, the two girls went to work, roller skating up and down the musty aisles.

  “Excuse me, are you thirsty?” Lola asked a middle-aged woman sitting next to the aisle, munching on popcorn she must have smuggled into the theater.

  “Shush,” she said, “I’m trying to watch the movie.”

  “It’s a wonderful film,” said Melanie, the small-talk specialist. “The desert part is awesome.”

  “The whole movie takes place in the desert,” the woman said, annoyed that she had been drawn into conversation. She shook her head as if to say, “You imbecile.”

  “That’s why we thought you might want a thirst quencher,” said Lola, not waiting for the woman’s permission before pouring her some lemonade. The woman must have been dying of thirst, munching on salty popcorn and sitting in a furnace. “Here, try my pucker potion,” said Lola, handing the woman a cup.

  When the moviegoer hesitated to drink something that, as far as she knew, could be poison, Lola poured a cup for herself and downed it in a flash.

  “Mmmm deelish, and look, I’m still alive!”

  “Quiet,” yelled an elderly gentleman near the front.

  “Yeah, shut your traps,” hollered a woman with a raspy voice. “I can’t hear!”

  Lola, her palms sweating, anxiously awaited the popcorn smuggler’s first taste of lemonade.

  Taking a sip, then a slurp, then a gulp, the woman smacked her lips with delight. “This wild and wonderful lemonade makes the screen jump out and grab me. I’m there with Lawrence now.”

  Lola poured some more virtual reality lemonade and handed her a business card in the shape of a lemon. The card read, “Pucker-Power. Lola’s Magical Lemonade. Weekends and after school. Salt Flat Road. Be there.”

  A high school student in an usher’s uniform shined a flashlight on them and said, “A kid complained you’re making a racket. Quiet down, okay?”

  Smiling at the usher, who also happened to be the ticket-seller, Lola said, “Sorry, we were just looking for seats.”

  The usher shined his flashlight on a myriad of empty seats. “Find one and glue your butt to it.”

  The Twister Sisters plopped down in the nearest empty seats, waited for the usher to return to his ticket booth, and then bopped back up on their roller skates. Lola thought it was odd that a kid, not an adult, would report them to the usher. She scanned the dark theater but didn’t see any other kids. Go figure.

  Lola and Melanie moved on down the aisle, squeezing through rows and occasionally rolling over people’s toes. Ouch!

  “Do you feel like you have a cactus in your throat?” asked Lola
.

  “Is your mouth one big dried-out tumbleweed?” echoed Melanie.

  Parched movie viewers couldn’t quench their lemonade thirst fast enough. Business was good, thanks to Lawrence, who was now crawling in the sand like a dehydrated prune. A short while later, after they had poured countless cups of lemonade and distributed over fifty business cards, they were confronted by the irate usher.

  “The kid’s still complaining about your hustle and bustle, so pack up those pitchers and boogie on out,” said the usher. “I don’t want to lose my job.”

  “Totally understandable,” said Lola. “We’re history.”

  Agents 002 and 315 scurried out of the theater and across the street. They swarmed into the Mirage Beauty Salon to share the lemonade news among the blue-haired ladies and their gossip-spreading root-dyers.

  Cruising through the salon on roller skates, Lola and Melanie tried not to crash into anyone or roll over any toes as they passed out free cups of promotional pucker punch. Oona Lee Lewis, the spunky octogenarian of Cactus Springs, held her cup in the air and marveled at the refreshing zing in the lemonade.

  “This will keep me energized and hydrated under the blasting heat of the hair dryer,” said Oona Lee.

  “It will also keep you young, so you can go hiking with your grandchildren,” said Lola. She didn’t know if Oona Lee had grandchildren, but the handmade lanyard with the penguin charm hanging from her neck seemed like a clue.

  “Hiking?” said Oona Lee, mortified. ‘I don’t think I have that much oomph.” She took another sip.

  “You will,” said Lola. “Keep drinking.”

  “Hmmm, I see what you mean, dear. Maybe you should bottle this elixir.”

  Melanie shot Lola a look. She knew making false health claims was illegal. Melanie could be a stickler for rules.

  Lola ignored Melanie’s warning look and blanketed the counter and the table with her handmade lemon-shaped business cards. She handed a pile to a beautician busy teasing a client’s hair.

  “We don’t allow soliciting here,” said the hairdresser, handing back Lola her cards. She pointed the end of a styling comb in Lola’s direction, then made a sweeping motion toward the door. “Better leave now—like pronto,” she said.

  “Can I ask you favor first?” said Lola, as the beautician whipped out a grande size can of hairspray.

  “What?” she said, power spraying her client’s bangs. “Want me to straighten your frizz?” she shouted, much to Lola’s embarrassment.

  Lola referred to her hair as a frizz mop, but no one else dare label it as such. Her face grew red as she flashed back to the time she stood in front of her science class, giving her oral report on electricity. Buck had raised his arm (revealing his BO pit, phew) and blurted out, “How much electricity is located on your frizzy head, Lola Zola?”

  The entire class had cracked up, leaving Lola weak in the knees and shaking inside.

  “No, I don’t want my hair straightened,” said Lola. What an insult! “But I’d like you to tell your clients about my lemonade business. And, if you don’t mind, could you pass out my cards?”

  The beautician was engulfed in a hairspray-induced coughing fit. When she was done, she turned to Lola, “Pardonez-moi?”

  Having learned a few tips from Buck and Melanie, Lola decided to go heavy on the compliments. “Your hair looks like a fiesta,” she told the formerly gray-haired client who was now a midnight-black-haired señora. “Your beautician knows her stuff.”

  “¿De versas, muchacha?” said the customer. “You mean it?”

  “Si,” said Lola exhausting her knowledge of Spanish.

  Smiling, the señora slipped her beautician a generous tip. Pleased to the max, the hairdresser took one of Lola’s business cards.

  “I’ll do what I can, hon,” she said, sorting the dollars in her hand.

  Roller skating over to the door, Lola almost went flying when one of her wheels slid through purple goopy hair gel. The glop on the floor reminded Lola of the fake cow eyeball that Slime left on her seat, except it was a different color. But Lola kept her balance, for she was as agile on her feet as she was with her words.

  “It’s not right to lie and say the lemonade keeps you young,” said Melanie, when they stopped for a peanut butter ice cream cone en route to the Unity Center’s late-afternoon service. “I’ve told your lies before, but these fibs are getting bigger, and now they’re starting to bug me and I don’t know if I can fib as good or if I even want to.”

  “I didn’t lie,” said Lola, defensively. “I just limo-stretched the truth.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  Lola had been afraid Melanie was going to ask that question and take her back to the old pancake-flapjack debate. There wasn’t much of a difference between a lie and a truth-stretcher, but Lola wanted to believe that there was. Otherwise, how was she going to sell her pucker potion, rescue her parents, and win the lemonade challenge?

  “Truth-stretchers don’t hurt anyone,” Lola rationalized. “They’re innocent fib-olas.”

  “Guilty.”

  “Innocent.”

  Lola tried another approach, one that might appeal to Melanie’s integrity.

  “It cleared up Ruby Rhubarb’s nose boulders, didn’t it?” asked Lola.

  “Yeah,” said Melanie, “it was a booger-boulder-buster.”

  “So, maybe this lemonade does have some power.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “That woman in the movie theater said it did.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And it gave Oona Lee Lewis a mega-energy boost.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So maybe it can cure allergies and rehydrate wrinkles.

  “I don’t know,” said Melanie, softening.

  “People want to believe in something. And maybe if they believe hard enough, it’ll come true.”

  “Do you think it could fade my freckles?” asked Melanie.

  Now Melanie had Lola, who couldn’t in good conscience limo-stretch the truth about her friend’s freckles. “I don’t know about that, Mel.”

  “If it can blast the boulders out of Ruby Rhubarb’s nose and pep up a super-senior, why can’t it solve my freckle crisis?” asked Melanie.

  “Ummm…” Lola was speechless and not just because her waffle cone had a hole in the bottom, forcing Lola to quickly suck out the ice cream before it dripped all over her board shorts. Melanie wanted to believe the lemonade had secret powers, and there was no reasoning with the freckle-wisher-awayer, so why even try? Did Lola know for sure that lemonade with chili peppers couldn’t remove freckles? No. So then maybe it could.

  “Whatever,” said Lola, finishing the last peanut butter lick of her ice cream cone. “Let’s boogie.”

  “I want some lemonade first,” insisted Melanie, pouring herself a cup of freckle-fader punch before speeding off in a roller-skating whirlwind.

  *** *** ***

  When the Twister Sisters rolled into the Unity Center, the congregants were milling around outside with the ducks, discussing the alignment of the stars, the best yoga positions for a bad back, and the healing power of aromatherapy. Lola had always been curious about the powers of aromas and once tried to make a peanut butter candle in her kitchen. All she made was a mess, though.

  Deep in the middle of a conversation about visualizing world peace, two men in their twenties, both of them sporting what looked like peace sign earrings, abruptly stopped talking when Lola roller skated into their cosmic space and held up some lemons.

  “Visualize this,” she said, “lemons for peace, a world full of uplifting citrus vibes.” It was a good thing Melanie was off entertaining a kid she used to babysit. She would have thought Lola had flipped her frizzy lid.

  One of the men, a spectacled Harvard grad, no doubt, took a lemon from Lola and rolled it around in his hand. “I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying. Can you elaborate?”

  “Sure,” said Lola. “It’s simple. When you
see lemons, you think of sunshine—calm, soothing sunshine. You feel peaceful,” elaborated Lola. “It’s all kind of magical, like my lemonade.”

  “I don’t know about that,” said the other man, a true skeptic who probably hadn’t believed in the tooth fairy when he was a semi-toothless six-year-old with silver dollars under his pillow. He fiddled with an earring, which on closer inspection was a Mercedes Benz symbol, not a peace sign after all.

  “Go on,” said Mr. Harvard Grad, curious to see where Lola was heading with her fruity symbolism. “Tell us about the magical part.”

  Lola explained the allergy-busting-virtual-reality-fountain-of-youth powers of her potion and offered free samples. Gulps later, the men had to admit, the drink and its intoxicating (not in the alcohol sense) aroma was an eye opener. Literally.

  “I feel purified,” said the skeptic, wiping the red hot pepper tears from his eyes.

  “Maybe you have something here,” said Mr. Harvard. “Visionaries always stray from the path of conventional thinking.”

  “True,” said his friend. “Perhaps you should offer your purification drink during the enlightenment session.”

  Purification? What a concept! Now her chili pepper punch had another power, to purge your poisons and dissolve your sins.

  Lola, the wheels turning in her brain bucket, started writing her enlightenment speech in Pig Latin in her head. Other inspired souls shared corny stories and slogans like “Don’t worry, be happy,” during the minister’s sermons. Why shouldn’t Lola join the bandwagon and profit from her inspirational citrus-soother?

  “Sure, put me on the agenda,” said Lola, “under Squirt or Quirtsay.”

  An hour later, following the non-denominational prayer session, the minister, reading from a piece of paper, announced, “It’s time for…for…I think this says…Squirt or…Quirtsay? Is there a Squirt in the sanctuary?”

  Lola, long and lanky—not a squirt—stepped up to the podium, winked at Melanie, who was seated in a crossed-legged yoga position in between a statue of Buddha and a bronze replica of Moses, and was about to speak when something flew through the air, whacking her on her dome.