Lola Zola and the Lemonade Crush Page 9

  “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.

  Buck slammed his fist on the buffet table, causing the lemons to jump in their bowl. “I said, ahem, no sipping on th
e job!”

  “Not even for Hot Dog or Magic Max?” asked Melanie.

  “Not even,” said Buck, sneering.

  “Not even for The Rising Sun?”

  “Well, um, he’s different,” argued Buck.

  “Yeah, he’s a person and we’re zeroes,” said Melanie. She thought in numbers a lot, ever since she had started freckle-counting.

  “You were gonna tell me Lola’s secret recipe,” said Buck, hoping to change the subject.

  “I’ll tell you a secret,” Melanie said, leaning over and whispering in his ear. “We’re going to strike!”

  Before Buck could respond, Melanie turned to Max and Hot Dog and said, “Are you going to let him turn your dry mouth into a desert?”

  The two boys shrugged their shoulders. Melanie forged ahead.

  “Are you going to stand out here and die of rehydration?” Of course she meant dehydration, but she always jumbled her prefixes when her adrenalin was pumping.

  Hot Dog and Max shrugged their shoulders a second time.

  “This lowdown sliver of Slime won’t let us have a drink or go to the bathroom! I don’t know about you guys, but I can’t wait forever.”

  “Me neither,” mumbled Max.

  “Ditto,” said Hot Dog, jumping up and down. “This waiting is killing me.”

  “We’re not going to tolerate these pathetic working conditions anymore, are we?” said Melanie, repeating the line Lola had told her to say.

  The boys wimped out. They shrugged their shoulders for the third time. Union organizers, they weren’t.

  “There’s only one thing left to do,” said Melanie, “and I’ll tell you what it is in just a minute.”

  Ducking behind a crowd of Rising Sun groupies, Melanie pulled out her walkie-talkie, pressed the On switch, and whispered, “Agent 002, help! What do I do now?”

  From inside her kitchen, where she was consolidating near-empty peanut butter jars, Lola dropped her spoon and seized her walkie-talkie.

  “Agent 315, the operative word is scribble.”

  “Gotcha,” said Melanie. “I mean, copy.”

  The two girls signed off in unison. “Operation Instigate. Walkie-talkies hibernate.”

  Melanie would need her help, so Lola shelved the peanut butter consolidation project, picked up the parrot phone, and dialed Aunt Liza at the junkyard. The phone on the other end rang ten times before Aunt Liza picked up.

  “I’m doing surgery on a fender bender and engines don’t like to be kept waiting. What is it?” asked Aunt Liza.

  *** *** ***

  Melanie put her walkie-talkie back in the pocket of her safari shorts, returned to the Cadillac limo stand, and scribbled the words, “On Strike, Boss Sucks!” on the back of three of Buck’s advertising posters. Then she handed the posters to Hot Dog and Max.

  “These are your picket signs. Follow the leader.”

  “I don’t know,” said Max, hesitating to hold up the poster. “Do you think this is right?” The little guy doubted himself in a big way. “I mean, Buck’s always been our friend.”

  “Except when he ditched us at Laser Lizards,” said Hot Dog.

  “Except when I loaned him my last quarter,” said Max.

  “Except when he refused to let us ride his new mountain bike,” grumbled Hot Dog.

  “Yeah and we never even got to touch the handlebars,” said Max, fumbling nervously with one of his magic coins.

  “Don’t act like wimps,” said Melanie, growing impatient. “Follow me.”

  Melanie led the crew in a circular picket line that grew larger as more customers heard about the “No lemonade sips for workers during work hours” edict. The first customer to support the strikers was Lola’s benefactor, Ruby Rhubarb, who stopped by with her friends, all of them on their way to a save-the-succulents fund-raiser. People shouting “Boycott Buck!” made them forget all about the succulents.

  “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, young man,” Mrs. Rhubarb told Buck as he leaned against his father’s limo, twirling a cocktail umbrella in his hand. “Treating your workers like second-class citizens. This is the twenty-first century!”

  “I pay them,” said Buck.

  Not enough, thought Melanie. The only reason she had agreed to measly wages was because she was involved in an undercover operation and loved using walk-talkies. It was fun.

  “A quarter an hour makes workers sour,” Melanie shouted from the picket line.

  “One quarter? Oh, my, my,” said Ruby Rhubarb, “that’s a crime. Don’t you agree, Rising Sun?”

  The town’s number one basketball star put down his pen. “Is that true, Buck?” asked The Rising Sun. “You only pay your squeezers and sellers twenty-five cents an hour?”

  Buck hemmed and hawed, but no words emerged from his mouth.

  The Rising Sun abandoned the cup he was about to autograph. Instead, he stood in solidarity with Ruby, her young disciples, and their fair labor cause.

  “It would be a darn shame to patronize such a thirst-oppressive employer, don’t you agree, Rising Sun?” asked Ruby.

  “You’re right, Ms. Rhubarb. I had no idea Buck was taking advantage of his pipsqueak friends.” The Rising Sun stared Buck in the eye, “I just autographed my last cup for the little tyrant.” With that he jumped into his silver hybrid sports car and drove off into the hills, ignoring Buck’s pleas to, “Come back, please…”

  Just then, Melanie’s Aunt Liza roared up on her motorcycle. She pointed her finger at Slime.

  “I heard what’s going on and I don’t like it when people take advantage of my niece,” said Aunt Liza, glaring at Buck.

  “But, but,” Buck quivered, at a loss for words. Again.

  “She said she doesn’t like it,” said Melanie, “and neither does anyone else.” Melanie honked her aunt’s motorcycle horn at a caravan of cruisers converging on Lemonade Gulch.

  While the protest went on with chants of “Give it up, Buck,” Lola and her father (who could always be counted on in an emergency) carried an armload of equipment—the bridge table, the improvised shade umbrella, pitchers of lemonade, and paper cups—back to the driveway, next to the Mustang.

  “Beat the heat. Cross the street,” shouted Lola. “I’m back in business.”

  Aunt Liza and some friends quickly lined up for Lola’s secret recipe. Within minutes, neighbors, meditators, vision-questers, and fountain-of-youth seekers argued over their place in line. Lola thought this would be her moment of glory, but instead it was her moment of doubt, for across the street, in the midst of the crowds and the picketers, stood Charles Wembly II giving Charles Wembly III the third degree. Lola hid behind her patrons as she made her way to the other side of the street to eavesdrop on the father-son conversation.

  “Buck, what is going on here?” said Mr. Wembly. “I spent a fortune launching your lousy lemonade business, even going so far as to hire a star basketball player to autograph your cups.”

  Oh, so that’s why The Rising Sun had appeared on the scene. Lola should have figured that one out.

  Buck’s father continued, “Now the star is gone—and so is your business.”

  “I’m sorry, Dad,” mumbled Buck. “Please don’t be mad at me. I hate it when you’re mad at me.”

  Lola felt sorry for Buck, but she didn’t want him to know, so she walked back to her lemonade stand and pretended she hadn’t heard a thing.

  *** *** ***

  Chapter 11

  Mr. Wembly pointed at his son, curled his index finger in a “Come here, soldier boy” command, and opened the door of the limo. “Get in the car,” he ordered. Sheepishly, Buck removed his derby hat, slid into the limo, and sat down in the front passenger seat. He knew his dad was about to bawl him out big-time for making his lemon squirters and servers madder than a cat that just lost his tail to a gopher.

  “We’re going to have a little chat,” said Mr. Wembly, opening the door to the driver’s side, hunkering down next to his son, and rolling up the windows so the two
could have a private, none of your beeswax, conversation.

  What Mr. Wembly did not know was that the limo’s PA system—which had allowed Buck to advertise his lemonade at full volume—had been activated by Magic Max in one of his, “I’m bored and want to make some mischief” moods. The crowd was privy to every word, peep, and sniffle shared between father and son.

  “I’m disappointed, Buck,” said Mr. Wembly. “I had such high expectations for you.”

  The crowd hushed as they listened intently. Even Bowzer perked up his ears.

  “I, uh, uh, am sorry, Dad,” said Buck. “I can’t help it if…”

  “If you’re the laughingstock of this town. Picket signs. Labor slogans and chants. This is mighty embarrassing, son.”

  Lola winced. Embarrassing? I’ll tell you what’s embarrassing, thought Lola, what’s embarrassing is having a creepy dad like you.

  “Dad,” said Buck, his voice cracking, “I guess I’m just a…a…a…lemon.” Buck pulled his hat over his eyes, so his father couldn’t see them welling up with tears.

  “Is that your excuse?” said Mr. Wembly. “How’s a lemon like you ever going to run Boingo Bits?”

  “I don’t know,” said Buck, lowering his hat to his nose and his voice to half a peep.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. Is that all you can say to me?” Buck’s father pounded the dashboard.

  Ruby Rhubarb shook her fist at the limo; Bowzer hissed. Some people covered their mouths, aghast.

  “I don’t know,” said Buck tearfully. Oh baked potatoes, he said it again. Buck couldn’t help himself. His father turned him to mush.

  “I’ll tell you what I know,” seethed Buck’s father. “You’re a sissy.”

  “No, I’m not,” whimpered Buck.

  “Of course you are. Whoever heard of a girl beating a boy? Look at you, sniveling like a little crybaby.”

  “I’m not crying,” said Buck, trying to pull himself together, but unable to hold back more tears.

  That was it. Lola couldn’t take it anymore. Someone had to stop Mr. Wembly from spewing oodles of venom at his son. Abandoning her lemonade post, Lola wound her way through the crowd, marched over to the Cadillac, and pounded on the window.