8

NO ONE’S WHO YOU THINK
THEY ARE.

That was Zola.

I immediately identified her as human. I just didn’t know what kind of human. I mean, people in Beach Meadows don’t look like her. Some people there dressed a bit like her—but they were all under five and their mothers made them change before they went out. That day, for instance, Zola had on long plaid shorts like your grandfather would wear, a little shiny mini-skirt (over the shorts), work boots, orange leggings and three tie-dyed tank tops. She had this rag—and I mean rag—wrapped around her head a few times. (That’s why I didn’t know that she was bald until the next day.)

And that was a pretty normal outfit for her.

It sounds weird—and it was—but once you stopped expecting something else, it was pretty cool too.

Kind of like Zola herself.

Hard to believe I was afraid of her at first. I had a good reason of course. I mean, she did grab my arm right after my stomach rumbled. (I figured Mel had heard the gurgle and he was going to kill me for ruining the “take.”)

But that wasn’t it at all. Zola had just noticed I was by myself and was taking me over to be with her. We had to move fast before the cameras started rolling again.

I was still kind of scared of her even then because of the way she dressed. That’s stupid, but it’s true. It’s like I was afraid she was going to start talking to me in some language I didn’t understand.

Where did that idea come from? Like orange leggings and Grampie’s shorts are the national dress of a strange foreign country or something? How stupid is that? (At least I sort of understand now why grocery clerks get all weird when they see Bess’s neck tattoo.)

The truth is, Zola’s probably the nicest person I ever met. Not in the fake way most adults are (“Aren’t you a smart girl!”). But just nice, like that’s normal for her or something.

Take then, for instance. She didn’t have to bring me over to her workstation. She didn’t even know I was Kathleen’s niece, so it wasn’t like she was sucking up to her boss or anything. She just felt sorry for me.

She didn’t torture me with a bunch of stupid questions either. She just asked me my name (she even got it right the first time) and told me I could help her if I wanted to.

She’s a puppet wrangler.

I know. Sounds kind of Wild, Wild West, don’t it? Like she had to lasso and hog-tie them dang puppets or something.

Not quite. But she had to do everything else for them. She fixed them whenever they broke (which was, like, all the time). She made little costumes for them. She got them dressed and undressed. She cleaned and powdered them every night. (Even Jennifer Lopez doesn’t have someone do that for her.)

(At least, I don’t think she does.)

It looked like it was kind of a fun job. Most of it anyway. Zola had this big table set up that made her look like she was some kind of arts-and-crafts maniac or something. She had everything there: glue, feathers, paint, fake eyelashes, fishing line, chocolate cake mix—just in case they ever needed some “cybermud”—tennis balls, safety pins, makeup brushes, not to mention all these teeny-weeny tools for fixing the puppets’ “mecs.”

That’s short for “mechanisms.”

They’re the little metal rods and things inside the puppets that make their eyeballs move or their ears wiggle or whatever.⁸

So, like I said, Zola had a pretty good job. The only bad part was that she was the person everyone got mad at if something happened to the puppets. Even if it wasn’t her fault at all.

Which just goes to show you what a nice person Zola is. She went and rescued me that day even though everything was going wrong for her. The reason they had to do that scene a million times was that Bitsie kept breaking down. He was supposed to say, “You’re my Bitsiest bestiest friend,” but every time he got to that “bestiest” part, his mouth jammed open and his little pink tongue slipped out the side. He looked so human I couldn’t believe it. It was like he was gagging on it or something. Makes sense now, of course, but then no one could figure out what was going on.

It would have even been funny except that every time it happened, Mel would go ape and Zola would have to race up to the set and fix him.

Bitsie, I mean. Not Mel.

Though if you ask me, Mel could have used some help too. Like a bucket of chill pills for instance.

Or a tranquilizer dart.

I don’t know why Zola didn’t hate the guy. He’d be pacing around her on the set and looking at his watch and sighing and yanking at his hair (what was left of it). As if that was going to help. Meanwhile, Zola was doing anything she could to get Bitsie working again.

And I mean anything. Even though she had those special little tools, half the time she’d just have to Scotch-tape Bitsie together for the time being so they could start shooting again.

Mel at least always thanked her really nicely when she was done.

Yeah. Right.

He’d just yell, “Quiet on the set! Let’s go-ooo, folks!” and make everyone get back to work.

But none of that seemed to bother Zola. First time I saw it happen, she could tell by the look on my face I thought the guy was a jerk. (That’s another reason I liked Zola. I hardly ever had to actually say what I was thinking.) She just smiled at me in that sleepy way she has and said, “Don’t worry about Mel. All floor directors⁹ are like that. It’s their job to get the show done on time. I’m just glad it’s not my job.”

She was even that calm with Kathleen. If you can believe it.

Take that first day, for instance. Mel had gone crazy at Zola for like three hours, and then the day was over and Kathleen came in and went double crazy because they were behind schedule. I thought Mel was supposed to take the blame for that, but because it was Bitsie who kept breaking down, Zola was in trouble too. Kathleen hauled them both off to the office like she was Mrs. Corkum and they’d been caught smoking on the school grounds or something.

Kathleen was tapping her foot on the floor and holding the door open (is she Mrs. Corkum’s clone or what?), and even Mr. Tough Guy Mel was doing this “yes, master, right away, master” stuff.

But Zola? She just kept being Zola. She picked up Bitsie, asked the props lady to put the rest of the puppets away for the night and made me promise I’d help her the next day too. Then she said, “Okay. All ready!” and smiled at Kathleen, who almost smiled back.

Almost.

But, hey, that was pretty good for Kathleen.

Once I realized that Kathleen wasn’t going to kill Zola, I started feeling hungry again.

I went out into the hall to have another go at those chocolate chip cookies. By the time I’d filled my face and gone back into the studio, it was practically empty. There were just a couple of guys rolling up those big electrical cords that I was always afraid of tripping over. They didn’t pay any attention to me, and pretty soon they left too.

I didn’t know what to do. I had the feeling Kathleen wouldn’t really want to see me right then.

I wandered around the studio. I didn’t touch the cameras—I could just see me breaking one of those big boys and spending the rest of my life working at the Kwik-Way to pay it off—but I poked around the props table. It was sort of cool. Like someone had gone to a joke shop and bought two of everything.

Then I went and got a closer look at the set. The sets, actually. One was the straw beach house where Bitsie and Bytesie keep their cyber surfboards. Another was Amanda’s room. And another was just a black starry background with big papiermâché planets floating around. (That was supposed to be cyberspace.) It was kind of cool, the way they looked so real. Amanda’s room was just like a normal, bright pink, girl’s bedroom— except it only had three walls (and of course the bed was fake). The beach house was like a real one too. (Like I’ve been to Hawaii and would know.) Cyberspace was just lame—but you get my point.

Of course the thing that I liked best was that the sets were all built about a meter and a half off the ground so the puppeteers could hide underneath while they worked the puppets.

I peeked under the beach house. It was just a concrete floor, but Jimmy, Christine and Norm had made it kind of comfortable. Like someone’s basement rec room that their mother promised never to go into. There were pillows and magazines and old scripts scattered around. They’d taken a whole bunch of the blue Gatorade from the food table (I’d wondered where it went) and had hogged more than their share of muffins too. They’d also drawn pictures all over the plywood walls. (Some of them were kind of embarrassing. I couldn’t believe adults did that kind of thing.) They even had two televisions down there.

It was like the luxury condo version of Dreemland.

I knew it was probably trespassing, but I couldn’t help myself. I crawled under the set and lay on the floor. It wasn’t as cozy as my place—my bed’s only half a meter off the ground—but it felt good. Way better than Kathleen’s spare room.

I lay there for a long time. I thought about Mum and Dad and Bess a bit, but not much. I didn’t really miss them right then because I knew they didn’t miss me. They had other things on their minds. Mostly I just lay there thinking what I would do with the place if it were mine. (For starters, I wouldn’t leave those muffin wrappers all over the floor.)

I was just imagining what it would look like painted pale purple with red pillows when I heard noises.

A door squeaking open and then a voice.

“Let’s gooooo, folks!!!!! C’mon! Are you deaf?”

It sounded like Mel. I almost barfed—but I didn’t move. Or breathe.

He said it again—this time a little differently. “Leeeeeh-et’s go, folks! C’mon!” I couldn’t figure out who he was talking to. The studio’d been empty for an hour and I hadn’t heard anyone else come in.

When he said it a third time—“said,” as in “hollered,” that is—I thought I figured out what Mel was up to.

He was practicing.

Clearly, being a creep wasn’t as easy as I thought it was. I figured it must take lots of hard work and hours of practice to get just the right amount of sarcasm in your voice.

Maybe that’s what Kathleen told him to do during their little meeting, I thought. Work on his delivery. Develop his nasty side. Do what you need to do to get those lazy no-good puppets moving.

The longer and harder Mel “rehearsed,” the more spit I imagined splattering around the studio.

No, that’s not what I meant to say. (Even if it was true.)

This is what I meant to say.

The longer and harder Mel “rehearsed,” the scareder I got that he’d find me there. I couldn’t pretend I didn’t see those “Authorized Personnel Only” signs. They were all over the place. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be in the studio by myself. And I had serious doubts that Kathleen would rush to defend me, especially given the mood she was in.

This was bad. My parents couldn’t take seeing both their daughters led off in handcuffs in less than a week. (Unless it was for an environmental protest or something, which of course this wasn’t.) I figured I was doomed.

Until I heard Zola’s voice.

“No, I’m not deaf, Mel—I’m just sick and tired of listening to a jerk like you anymore.”

Whoa! I couldn’t believe my ears. It was like Zola was a completely different person after hours.

I wondered why. Did something really terrible happen in that meeting? Or did she just finally snap? ¹⁰

I didn’t know what to think. (Other than “hooray!” of course. About time someone told Mel off.)

What confused me was that Zola said it again. And again. She tried it a few times, sometimes calling Mel a moron, sometimes calling him an “evil chimp-like being.”

I actually started feeling sorry for the guy. Okay, he was a jerk, but she didn’t have to rub it in. And it wasn’t his fault that his arms were longer than his legs. (That might even have been why he was so cranky in the first place.)

As she went on and on about it, I started to think Zola wasn’t who I thought she was at all.

Especially when, a minute later, a small blue alien crawled under the set with me and I heard Zola’s voice come out of Bitsie’s mouth.

⁸ They’re also what make the puppets so expensive. Zola told me how much puppets cost and I couldn’t believe it. Like thousands and thousands! I guess you can’t just sew buttons on a sock any-more and hope the kids will all tune in to watch “Norman Foot’s Big Adventure.”

⁹ Okay, this is confusing. There’s a “director” and a “floor director.” They’re two different things. The director is the “creative” person with the “vision” for the show. You know—the guy in the cartoons who wears the beret and sits in the chair marked “Director” and starts to cry when Bugs Bunny keeps ruining Elmer Fudd’s lines. He’s too busy figuring out how the puppeteers should act and what angle the cameraman should shoot from and how big the fake spider should be to actually talk to the people doing the work, so he gets the floor director—that is, Mel—to give the orders for him.

¹⁰ Being Bess’s sister, I’ve seen my share of good people snapping.