Solving Zoe Read Online Free

if you didn’t want to be under a glaring spotlight with everybody staring at you every minute, you were lost.
    Well, Zoe wasn’t lost: She had her own fascinating thoughts. And who cared what Malcolm said about them, or Anya, or anybody else. She reached inside her backpack for the special dry erase marker that you had to use on Signe’s desks.
    In the upper right-hand corner of her desktop, in the smallest, neatest print she could manage, she wrote:
4 = Blue.
    And she was very careful for the rest of the class not to accidentally smudge it out.

4
    Almost every single afternoon Zoe and Dara went to Zoe’s apartment. Mostly they just locked themselves in Zoe’s bedroom and ate Skittles they’d bought on the way home, and laughed about their classmates. Or made up games, like the one they called Which, where you asked each other which was stupider, hip-hop or heavy metal? Or which was grosser, nose hair or toe fungus? The Zoe and Dara Show , Zoe’s dad called them, teasingly. Of course, now that they hardly saw each other at school, The Zoe and Dara Show was the highlight of the entire day.
    But this afternoon Zoe was in the school lobby, waiting. And Dara, who was upstairs auditioning, was already twenty-five minutes late.
    Zoe sighed as she adjusted her backpack straps, which were creeping into her armpits. She wished she’d brought a book, or an iPod, or something. There was absolutely nothing to do in this boring lobby but stand there staring at the massive oil portrait of Lorna Hubbard, with her amused eyes and her steel gray hair and her ugly mauvedress. MISS LORNA HUBBARD , FOUNDER , read the small gold plaque underneath the painting. What an incredibly demented name, Zoe thought. Lorna Hubbard. Lorna Hubbard. Who would give a baby a name like that, anyway? Maybe it sounded better backward: Anrol Drabbuh. Or possibly Lorna Hubbard was an anagram for something: Rolna Bradbuh. Norla Duh Barb. Hula born drab. Our blah brand?
    Suddenly Zoe realized that there was someone else in the lobby. Lucas. He was wearing a ridiculously un-kidlike brown tweed overcoat, and he was sitting on the floor, just about a foot away from the interior swinging doors that led to the auditorium. And, as always, he was hunched over his spiral notebook, writing.
    It was a stupid place to sit. But Lucas was new. Obviously he didn’t realize that any second some kid could come crashing through those doors and smack him in the head with a saxophone or a tennis racket.
    â€œExcuse me,” Zoe called out brightly. “Lucas? That’s your name, right?”
    â€œRight,” he said, not bothering to look up.
    â€œUm, I don’t know if you realize this, but those doors swing into the lobby. Somebody could bump into you if you’re sitting there.”
    â€œOkay, thanks,” he replied.
    But he didn’t move. He just sat there writing. And then sure enough, maybe ten seconds later, the doors banged open, and Tyler Russo and Calliope Pollock, two of the coolest theater-types in the seventh grade, came barreling through, crashing into Lucas and sending him flying through the lobby.
    â€œOmigod,” Zoe cried. “Are you all right, Lucas?”
    Lucas got up on his knees. He looked as if he were fighting tears. “I’m fine,” he said.
    â€œSorry,” Tyler said. “But why were you sitting there, dude?”
    â€œI can sit wherever I want, cretin. I go to this school.”
    â€œYeah? Well, good for you,” Tyler said, grinning. “But listen, dude, you were kind of asking to get hit. Sitting on the floor like a little gargoyle—”
    â€œStop it,” Calliope squealed, smacking him playfully on the arm. “You’re so mean, Tyler. I hate you.”
    Zoe could feel her own cheeks start to burn. She looked at Lucas. Get up , she willed him silently.
    Tyler walked over to Lucas and extended his hand. “Hey, come on, bro, don’t be mad.