Solving Zoe Read Online Free Page A

I’ll help you up, all right?”
    But then all of a sudden Lucas scrambled to his feet and awkwardly ran out the front door, like a tangled marionettethat was being yanked offstage. Tyler and Calliope looked at each other and burst into laughter.
    â€œFreak,” Calliope pronounced, as they walked past Zoe to join some other theater-types hanging out in front of the building. Zoe peered down the block after Lucas, but he was already out of sight. She glanced at her watch. It was already three twenty; where in the world was Dara? And how much longer would Zoe have to stand there, wasting precious after-school time, waiting?
    Then she spotted something. At first she wasn’t sure, because the lobby was old and dimly lit, and anything tiny and dark you saw out of the corner of your eye could be a dust ball, or someone’s lost glove. But she walked quickly to the interior doors where Lucas had first sat down. Then she picked up a little black object.
    His spiral notebook. Left behind in the crash.
    Without thinking, she opened the cover.
    PERSONAL PROPERTY!!! KEEP OUT!!!
    I’ll know if you read anything.
    â€œDon’t be ridiculous,” she said aloud. Then she turned to the second page.
    And then to the third.
    And the fourth.
    And the fifth.
    And the thirteenth.
    It didn’t matter. Any page she turned to was equally impossible to read.

    What could it mean? She flipped through the pages, hoping that somewhere, maybe in the margins, there was a non-nonsensical clue. But there was nothing, just page after page of odd-looking near-letters and mutant symbols and fragmentary shapes. Why was she even looking at it? Lucas’s notebook was completely crazy.
    She slipped it into the pocket of her purple hoodie sweatjacket. She’d give it back to him tomorrow, she told herself. In a weird way she felt as if she’d failed him just now, and returning his notebook was a small, nice thing she could do.
    Even if he was obviously from another planet.
    â€œZoe?”
    She spun around. “Oh, hi, Mackenzie.”
    â€œWhat are you doing here? Waiting for Dara?”
    Zoe nodded.
    â€œWell, I saw her upstairs at tryouts. There’s a ton of people ahead of her, so she won’t be done for a while. Sorry.” Mackenzie took out her cell phone and started dialing.
    â€œActually,” said Zoe, not waiting for Mackenzie to finish her call. “There’s something I really have to do, and I can’t wait around anymore. Tell Dara if you see her, okay?”
    Mackenzie waved at Zoe. “Hi, Mom,” she shouted into her cell. “I just auditioned, and guess what!”
    Zoe waved back. Mackenzie wasn’t so bad, really. Although probably there was no such thing as a near -photographic memory.
    Zoe strapped on her backpack. Then finally she left Hubbard for the day, patting her hoodie pocket once or twice to make sure nothing had fallen out.

5
    Zoe wasn’t making an excuse when she told Mackenzie there was something she had to do right then. There was, and it really couldn’t wait.
    She had a job. Her first job ever, and it was incredibly important. And fascinating. And also a teeny bit disgusting.
    Zoe was a lizard-sitter. For the next week or so, probably, she was being paid five dollars a day to feed thirty-two reptiles, all living in an elegant brownstone not three blocks from Hubbard.
    It happened like this: One day Dad came home extra late from a new painting job. He was a muralist; once in a while he painted an important wall, like on a government building or a bank, but most of the time he painted dining rooms or kids’ bedrooms. His two most popular walls were The Hills of Tuscany (dining room) and An Enchanted Forest (first-grade girl’s bedroom). He painted these so often that he could do them with his eyes shut. Anyway, that’s what he said.
    But that day his eyes looked wide open and kind ofstunned. “You’ve got to see this new job of