The Forget-Me-Not Summer (16 page)

“Y
ou only got one name?” Zinnie asked, her mouth full of vanilla-chocolate swirl soft-serve ice cream. They were sitting in one of the booths at Edith's. Zinnie had been waiting for Marigold for almost a half hour, during which time she felt really stupid sitting all by herself, looking as if she had been forgotten, though it had given her a chance to talk to Edith and meet her dachshund, Mocha Chip. Edith had even let her choose a few songs to play on the jukebox for free.

“Peter's name! I had to sail a boat to get it!” Marigold said, stealing a spoonful of Zinnie's ice cream. Zinnie pulled her dish closer to herself and guarded it with her hand. Marigold didn't seem to notice. She was smiling more than Zinnie had ever seen her. “It was actually really fun. We were going so fast and it
felt like the boat was going to tip over and then Peter showed me this secret little beach and took me under a bridge—”

“I got nine names,” Zinnie said, and held up her notebook. “Nine!” She held up nine fingers to drive the point home.

“It was not easy to get Peter to sign up,” Marigold said. “I've only ever sailed once before in my life, but today I made it all the way out to the buoy with hardly any help.”

“And I had to give up all of my saved allowance,” Zinnie said.

“What?” Marigold asked, sneaking another bite from Zinnie's bowl.

“For a prize! I needed a prize to get people to sign up,” Zinnie said, pulling her ice cream toward her again.

“Oh, good idea,” Marigold said.

“And while I was waiting for you, I convinced Edith to give us a gift certificate for four ice cream cones. So we have a second-place prize, too.”

“Doesn't seem quite fair to me that you should have to give up all of your savings,” Edith said as she wiped the counter. “I'm sure you can talk someone else into making a donation. It's not like you don't have the gift of gab, Zinnie. You could sell ice to an Eskimo. You almost convinced me to make pickle ice cream.” Edith shook her head.

“Ew!”
Marigold said.

“I know, disgusting, right?” Edith said.

“What? I love pickles and I love ice cream,” Zinnie said. “Why not put them together?”

“I'm telling you,” Edith said with her hand on her hip, “it was starting to sound like a good idea. You're going places, kid.”

“Let's see what people are doing.” Marigold said, and snatched up Zinnie's notebook. She read the list

  
1. Marigold, Lily, and Zinnie—Zinnie's play

  
2. Ashley—singing “Ave Maria”

  
3. Derek—stand-up comedy

  
4. Kara and Tara—gymnastics

  
5. Jake—break dancing

  
6. Katie—the song from
The Little Mermaid

  
7. Daniel—karate

  
8. Grace—recorder

  
9. McKenzie—magic tricks

10. Cody—animal impressions

Marigold added: “11. Peter—guitar song.” The bell that hung over the door rang, signaling a new customer.

“Hiya, Tony,” Edith said. “Let me guess. Iced coffee with a scoop of vanilla.”

“You know me,” Tony said. “That stuff is my kryptonite.”

Zinnie and Marigold waved.

“Oh, hey there,” Tony said. “You girls look like you're planning something big.”

“We are,” Zinnie said. “We're planning a talent show. And we need four more acts or we might not be able to do it.”

“You're bringing the talent show back?” Tony asked as Edith handed him his iced coffee topped with vanilla ice cream. “That's great. My girls won that two years with their ballet.”

“Do you think they'd want to be in it this year?” Marigold asked.

Tony laughed. “They're thirty-five and thirty-seven years old now, and my youngest is pregnant with twins. But you should stop by Miss Melody's School of Dance. That's where my girls used to practice. Their whole class used to participate. When is the talent show?”

“In less than two weeks,” Marigold said, “the day after the dance.”

“If we can get enough people to sign up,” Zinnie added. “We're on a mission.”

“Get on over to Miss Melody's,” Tony said. “It's right up the road.”

“Let's go,” Zinnie said, finishing the last bite of ice cream.

“Say, are you girls coming to the dance?” Tony asked them just as they were about to leave.

“Yes,” Marigold answered.

“I hope that means your aunt Sunny is coming too?” Tony asked. “My band is playing.”

“You have a band?” Marigold asked.

“Tony and the Contractors,” Edith said with a smile. “They always get me on the dance floor.” She bit her lip and danced a little twist.

“We do the Beach Boys, the Beatles; we really rock out,” Tony said. “I play the guitar myself.”

“And he does all the vocals,” Edith said, and leaned into her broom to croon a little Elvis. Mocha Chip howled in tune.

“Give my best to Sunny,” Tony said, his face turning just the slightest bit pink as he spoke her name.

Zinnie and Marigold walked all the way to Miss Melody's School of Dance. Tony was right. They got the extra four acts in no time. Two girls signed up for solo routines. One boy signed up for a Broadway song, and a whole class of ten- to twelve-year-olds signed up for a zombie dance number.

“That's fifteen acts,” Zinnie said to Marigold. “We did it!”

“Come on,” Marigold said, watching herself in the mirror as she turned a lively pirouette. “Let's go find Jean!”

A
few days later Zinnie sat in Aunt Sunny's study and gathered her materials. Pencils. Erasers. Paper. They'd handed over their list of fifteen acts, the town committee had approved, and Jean had officially put the talent show on the calendar. Now all Zinnie had to do was write a play.

“Are you sure you don't want to come to the beach with us?” Aunt Sunny asked Zinnie. She was standing in the doorway of the office with a white stripe of zinc oxide across her nose, a big, floppy hat on her head, and a canvas bag filled with roast beef sandwiches, lemonade, and oatmeal–chocolate chip cookies.

“Of course I want to go,” Zinnie said. “But I have a whole play to write.”

“She does need to write our play,” Marigold said as she passed by the open door in a purple bikini and
the sarong their mom had brought back from a trip to Mexico. “I need to get started on my lines.”

“I shan't keep an artist from her work,” Aunt Sunny said, fiddling with her keys. “The list of phone numbers is on the fridge. You've met all the neighbors. Holler if you need something. I'll have Jean stop by for lunch. Oh, and there's some leftover blueberry pie in the fridge. Make sure to offer Jean a slice.”

“Okay,” Zinnie said. She lined up her paper and placed an eraser next to her neat pile.

“Benny needs a babysitter,” Lily said, and sat her beloved bunny on the desk. She whispered to Zinnie: “He likes to have peanut butter on crackers after his nap. And don't let him sleep too long or he'll never go to bed tonight.”

“No problem,” Zinnie said, patted her little sister on the head, and pushed her out the door.

“The writer must be left in peace, girls,” Aunt Sunny said to Marigold and Lily, and shut the door behind them.

But as soon as she heard Aunt Sunny's station wagon rumble out of the driveway, Zinnie started to panic. She couldn't think of a single thing to write. The house was too quiet; the minutes were too long; the piece of paper was too blank. She needed help. She paced around the too-empty house for a good fifteen minutes and then left a desperate message on her father's voice mail.

When the phone rang, she answered it right away. “Hello?”

“Zinnia, I got your message,” Dad said. “And I'm extremely worried. What's the emergency?”

“It's a creative emergency, Dad,” Zinnie said, holding the heavy, old-fashioned phone receiver to her ear. She felt her whole body relax at the sound of Dad's voice. “I'm writing a play, and I need your help.”

“Jeez,” Dad said, “you nearly gave me a heart attack.”

“Sorry,” Zinnie said. She explained all the latest developments. “The talent show is on. It's actually happening, and it's only ten days away. But I can't think of any good ideas, and I don't have much time, and Marigold is depending on me. So can you tell me what to write about?”

“Sorry, Zin,” Dad said. “Part of being a writer is figuring out what to write.”

“But you have a zillion ideas, Dad. Can't you just give me one of them? Or if I give you a list, can you just say yes or no? Like, should I write about horses? Dragons? Dogs?” Zinnie could hear herself whining. “I don't know where to start.”

“Well, I can tell you that I usually start with something that's bugging me,” Dad said. “Is there anything on your mind these days?”

“I guess the fact that there are wars and global warming stuff,” she said, though she was really just saying what she thought a responsible girl who was
going into the sixth grade at Miss Hadley's should say. She knitted her brow and twirled the old-fashioned phone cord around her finger.

“Hmm,” Dad said. “Can you think about something more personal? Something in your life? What bugs you on a day-to-day basis?”

“Duh. Marigold,” Zinnie said.

“Why?” Dad asked.

“She thinks she's so awesome. Like, I had to give up my whole life savings for the talent show prize, but because she's, you know, Marigold, she didn't even offer to chip in. But she still expected me to do it. And no one would expect Lily to give up her allowance because she's so little and cute.”

“That's pretty rough,” Dad said. “How much savings do you have?”

“A hundred dollars,” Zinnie said.

“That's a lot. I'll talk to Mom about that. You shouldn't have to give up your savings, honey. Together we'll work something out. But I only have a few minutes here, so tell me, why do you think that happened with Marigold?”

“Because she's the automatic boss,” Zinnie said. “It's like Marigold is the queen of the world and Lily is so adorable and I'm just . . . blah. In the middle.”

“For the record, there is nothing blah about you. But there's your idea,” Dad said. “Write about being in the middle.”

“How?” Zinnie asked.

“I don't know, Zin,” Dad said. “There's no one right answer. Just remember that your main character needs a specific problem to solve, and there has to be a beginning, a middle, and an end. Oh, and something needs to happen!”

Zinnie sighed. She'd learned all this in English class. “Can you at least tell me how long it should be?”

“A play is about a page a minute. So if you want it to be about five minutes, write about five pages,” Dad said.

“Five whole pages?” Zinnie asked. With the exception of her report on gray wolves, which had included several pictures, Zinnie hadn't ever written anything that long.

“I need to go, sweetie. I have to get back to the team. They're measuring today, and they think we've got a winner. The tallest living thing on earth,” Dad said. “Oh, and here's one last piece of advice: If you get stuck, ask a tree.”

“Ask a tree?” Zinnie pulled on her curls in exasperation.

“I've been talking to this tree for weeks, and I've never felt so inspired in my life. And besides, we're from California,” Dad said, and laughed. “We've come from a tradition of nature lovers and tree huggers. Try talking to a tree. You might be surprised.”

A
half hour later, after eating a piece and a half of blueberry pie, clipping her toenails, and straightening the pictures on the wall, Zinnie sat back down at the desk. She placed a fresh piece of paper in front of her and decided to just write the first thing that came to her.

“Being in the middle isn't as easy as it looks,” she wrote. “You might get squished
.
” But then she had no idea what to put after that. She crumpled the paper and threw it in the trash. She took a deep breath and tried again, this time starting with a character. Zora? No, too fancy sounding. Alejandra? No, too long. How about Justine? Oh, yes. She liked Justine. “Justine: I'm a poor girl and everyone makes fun of my tattered clothes
.
Tonight I shall run away to join a traveling circus. As a middle girl, will anyone even notice I'm missing?”

Zinnie read it over. She liked the circus part, and Marigold would make a perfect Justine, but would that mean that Lily and she would have to play all the characters at the circus? She crumpled the paper. Maybe she wasn't any better at writing than at acting. Maybe she wasn't going to ever be good at anything. Maybe she really was just a . . . blah. A short, frizzy-haired, stuck-in-the-middle blah.

All this thinking had made her tired. She remembered that Mr. Herrera, who was probably the best fifth-grade teacher in the whole world, did yoga every morning before school and said that headstands were good for coming up with ideas because they made all the blood go to your brain. She decided to try a headstand right there in Aunt Sunny's study. She was desperate. When she was upside down, she found herself face-to-face with Aunt Sunny's bookshelf. It was packed with books about trees and plants, probably from her days as a science teacher. The bottom shelf, the one she was eye level with, was stacked with books about flowers.

When she saw
A Guide to California Wildflowers
written on the spine of the biggest book on the shelf, she somersaulted to a sitting position and opened it up. It was filled with photographs and illustrations of wildflowers that grew in California, as well as stories of how they got their names. She flipped to the index to search for zinnia. “Zinnias thrive in rugged
terrain and are favored by butterflies.” She smiled at the idea that her flower was the favorite of butterflies. “Zinnias symbolize constancy.” Constancy? She had an idea what it meant but decided to look it up in the dictionary to be safe. “The quality of staying the same: lack of change.”
Well, that's a boring thing to symbolize,
she thought, and looked up her sister's name.

“Marigold” meant “beautiful, golden daisy.”
Of course
, Zinnie thought, and rolled her eyes. However, she also read that marigolds also symbolized jealousy.
Interesting,
Zinnie thought,
very interesting
.

She looked up lily. There were about a million different kinds of lilies. There was the alpine lily, the meadow lily, the swamp lily, the tiger lily, the morning star lily, the trout lily, the snake lily, and, Zinnie's personal favorite, the liver lily. They symbolized sweetness and youth. That made perfect sense.

Then she read about other wildflowers with crazy names, names that had stories in them: jack-in-the-pulpit, ragged sailor, ghost flower. Some wildflowers sounded like a fairy language: maypop, chicory, trillium. And then there were the ones that read like the ingredients of a witch's spell: toadflax, soapwort, bloodroot.

Stories. Fairies. Witches. Zinnie felt she was on to something. Even though she couldn't quite get a grip on an idea, she was filled with energy. Maybe it was time to ask a tree. As she walked into the yard, she thought
about how maybe she could use the names of the flowers in her play. What if instead of Night Sprites she wrote about flower fairies? This would make her play close enough to Night Sprites that Mr. Rathbone would think that the sisters would be perfect for the movie, but she wouldn't be copying.

Zinnie broke into a skip, thinking that her idea might be even better than the Night Sprites. After all, sprites were made-up things, but flowers were real in a way that one could touch and smell and see. What if flowers had secret lives that no one knew about? What if the moment they were cut was the moment their souls had only a few hours left to fulfill a mission from the butterflies? Ideas were coming all at once. How was Zinnie ever going to decide which was the right one?

At the far end of Aunt Sunny's yard, through the archway, past the pear orchard and the vegetable garden, and beyond the shed, was a big beech tree with a zillion leaves. If there ever was a tree with answers, this was it. Zinnie walked beneath its branches and stared up.

“Hello,” Zinnie said. “Dad said that you could help me write my play. And I finally have a good idea, but where should I start?” Zinnie listened. A breeze blew. Leaves rustled. Maybe she was talking to the wrong side of the tree. She decided to do a little dance around it. “Help me with my play, great tree!” she chanted as
she skipped around its trunk.

“Zinnia?” A voice startled Zinnie out of her trance. “You okay?” Zinnie turned around to see Jean, standing at the edge of the driveway with a hand on her hip and an expression of concern. “Whatcha doin'?”

“Um,” Zinnie said. “Just . . . talking . . . to myself.”

“Hmm. Okay, well, I brought over some chicken salad,” Jean said. “How about you wash your hands and join me in the kitchen?”

“Okay, one sec.” She waited for Jean to walk up the driveway, and then she turned back to the tree and pleaded. “Please, I need a main character with a specific problem,” Zinnie whispered. “Oh, and a beginning, middle, and end. Thanks.”

“You coming?” Jean called from the back door.

“Yep,” Zinnie said, and started toward the house. Just then she spotted a cluster of small blue flowers growing near the shed. She'd never noticed them before. But why would she? There wasn't anything special about them. In fact, they were kind of ordinary looking. She walked past them. But seconds later something inside her made her turn around. She needed to see them up close. She needed to pick them. It was as if they were calling her name.

Zinnie ate her chicken salad sandwich and served Jean a piece of blueberry pie. After Jean left, Zinnie placed the blue flowers in a drinking glass. She filled
it with water and carried it into the office, where she set about identifying the flowers with Aunt Sunny's books. It took only a few minutes to discover that they were forget-me-nots and that they were as common in Massachusetts as they were in California. She wrote “forget-me-not” on a fresh piece of paper and circled it. There was a name with a story in it. The tree had given her an answer! Forget-Me-Not would be her main flower fairy character. Her dad had said that the main character needed a problem to solve, and Forget-Me-Not's was right there in her name. Zinnie sharpened her pencil and began.