Zip

Zip

ALWAYS LEARNING

PEARSON

Chapter One: Zip Zip, Scooting Star

Chapter Two: You Think You’re Slick

Chapter Three: Perk Up Those Little Ears

Chapter Four: Paper Airplanes, Peanut Jars, and Plans

Chapter Five: A Black Cat and a Lost Key

Chapter Six: The Hidden Lair

Chapter Seven: Twenty–Seven Times You Called Me

Chapter Eight: Goldfish Don’t Look for Mosquitoes: Let’s Hear It for the Cowgirls

Chapter Nine: Let’s Hear It for the Cowgirls

Chapter Ten: Cannibals and Bubble Gum

Chapter Eleven: Busking for Bacon

Chapter Twelve: Molto Bene!

Chapter Thirteen: I Am Here

Chapter Fourteen: Sirens and Storm Clouds

Chapter Fifteen: Motel Charybdis and the Whirlpool of Wonder

Chapter Sixteen: Betrayal Tastes Like Unwashed Socks

Chapter Seventeen: The Dead Lake and the Ugly One

Chapter Eighteen: Leonard the Bard and the Angry Cherry

Chapter Nineteen: Kung Pao Wow

Chapter Twenty: Balloon Wishes and the Sunflower Muse

Chapter Twenty-one: Gertie from Berlin

Chapter Twenty-two: Roots and Moonshine

Chapter Twenty-three: Being with You Feels Like Home

Ana Lee’s Homemade Granola

Acknowledgments

A
gust of warm Texas wind rolled over the stage, rustling the velvet curtain door of Ana Lee’s dressing room. The wind plucked petals from the flowers on the dresser and blew glittery makeup from the pots crowding the vanity table.

Lyssa looked up as the wind tickled the back of her neck. A film of gold powder settled on her nose and she sneezed, knocking over one of the dozens of bottles of nail polish spread out around her.

“Careful,” Penn said. Penn was Lyssa’s best friend. She was supposed to be helping Lyssa get ready for her big debut performance. Instead, she was pacing the dressing room on her hands, her skinny legs stretched up toward
the ceiling while her brown hair pooled onto the floor. Penn had been going to circus camp since she was six years old. She was more comfortable upside down than she was right-side up.

Lyssa never understood how Penn could get her body to do
exactly
what she told it to, because the only place Lyssa felt graceful was on her scooter, Zip. But her mom wouldn’t let her ride it around backstage.

“You look awesome,” Penn said, studying Lyssa’s toes from her position upside down. “I bet you actually sing onstage today. I can feel it.”

Lyssa didn’t answer. She looked back down at her freshly painted toes, humming under her breath. She always hummed when she got stage fright—which, so far, had been every single time she’d tried to sing in front of anyone other than her mom or Penn. But maybe Penn was right. Maybe tonight would be different.

“Is that an Athena song?” Penn asked, listening. Athena was their favorite musician—part cowgirl, part rock star.
“You think you’re slick, but I know your tricks!”
Penn sang.

“And I’ll get there first ’cause I’m quicker,”
Lyssa finished. She felt her nerves easing up a little. Music was her birthright, after all. Lyssa’s mom was the great Ana Lee, headliner in the Texas Talent Show. And when her grandmother had been alive, she had sung opera on some of the
greatest stages in the world, while her grandfather played the banjo. Even Lyssa’s dad, Lenny, had a band down in New Mexico, although Lyssa had never heard him play—in fact, she’d never met her dad at all.

Music flowed through her blood like oxygen. It had been passed on to her along with her mother’s green eyes and her grandmother’s narrow chin. So maybe Penn was right. Maybe tonight was
the
night.

Lyssa looked over her shoulder at her mom as another gust of wind—this one even stronger—whirled into the dressing room.

“Did you guys feel that?” Lyssa asked, trying to pat down her hair.

“Feel what? The wind?” Ana Lee caught her daughter’s eye in the mirror and winked. She finished applying her lipstick and pursed her lips together, leaning in to plant a kiss on the middle of the mirror. “Mwuah!”

Ana was already wearing her stage makeup: shimmery blush and dark mascara. Her thick, golden hair was twisted into intricate braids and wound around her head. Watching her, Lyssa fingered her own braids, which stuck out from her head like two yellow sticks. She’d always wished she looked more like her mom, but she was too tall and too gangly, with hands and knees that were far too big for her body.

Maybe that’s why Lyssa admired Athena so much.
The famous singer was over six feet tall, but when Lyssa had gone to see her in concert for her birthday last fall, Athena had clomped around stage in her high-heeled cowboy boots, not caring that she towered over everyone around her. Lyssa knew she was extra lucky to have seen Athena perform because right after that concert, Athena’s publicist said she’d come down with a bad case of bronchitis and would have to cancel the next show. Nobody was worried…until the show after that got canceled, too. And the one after that. In fact, Athena hadn’t been seen in public
once
since that night.

“Have I ever told you girls about the winds of change?” Ana asked, pushing one last golden strand of hair back into her braid.

Lyssa and Penn shared a smile. Both girls shook their heads, even though Ana had told them about the winds of change dozens of times. Penn rolled down from her handstand and curled her legs beneath her like a pretzel, sitting on the floor. Lyssa scooted off her chair and joined her. She stuck the end of her braid in her mouth. Her hair tasted like the organic shampoo her mom made using avocados from their garden. It was impossible not to sneak a taste every now and then.

“The winds of change blow through our lives whenever things need to be shaken up a little,” Ana said, turning
around on her chair. “The wind makes the world spin a little too fast; then all sorts of strange and wonderful things begin to happen. Everyday objects become great and powerful weapons!”

Ana grabbed one of the maracas Lyssa and Penn had made for her out of a packet of tomato seeds and brandished it like a sword. Then she threw the maracas into the air and began to juggle. She was an amazing juggler—if the singing thing hadn’t worked out, she liked to say, she could have made it as a circus clown.

Lyssa jumped up and searched the dressing room for other things Ana Lee could juggle. Lyssa threw her mom a few bottles of nail polish, and Penn, joining in, found a rolled-up pair of socks. Soon, it became a contest—who could find the most items for Ana to juggle. A minute later, Ana had over thirty different objects in the air, including one of Lyssa’s flip-flops and Penn’s wad of watermelon-flavored bubble gum. That was the thing about Lyssa’s mom: the stories she told always
sounded
impossible, but when Ana was around, the impossible
did
happen.

“Ana, we need you for sound check.”

The new sound guy—Michael—appeared next to the velvet curtain. He was tall, with shaggy brown hair, thick black glasses, and skin the color of skim milk. Ana elegantly caught each object in one hand and tossed them into a basket
next to the door. Except for her tomato seed maraca, which she threw to Lyssa.

“Be right back!” Ana kissed Lyssa’s head, then danced off past Michael to finish getting ready for her show. As soon as Ana had disappeared beyond the curtains, Penn turned to Lyssa, eyes shining mischievously.

“
Now
can I see it?” she demanded.

Lyssa rolled her eyes. “All right, all right.”

Next to her mother’s dressing table sat a beat-up trunk. Ana kept everything in this old trunk, and Lyssa was strictly forbidden from rifling through it unless her mom was there to supervise because Ana didn’t want anything to get lost or crumpled. Inside were old photographs, like from her first birthday, when Ana had driven a tiny baby Lyssa across Utah. They’d stopped at the Dead Lake, where—rumor had it—a fierce monster lived below the surface. And there were hot sauce packets from that time they searched the entire city of Austin for Tabasco sauce so hot it could make you breathe fire. It was a trunk of mementoes, and Lyssa had been promising to show Penn its contents for ages, especially Ana’s collection of playbills from her days as a traveling singer, before she’d had Lyssa. Recently, the trunk’s lock had broken, and Lyssa knew it was only a matter of time before her mom had it fixed and she and Penn lost their opportunity.

She tiptoed over to the trunk, accidentally knocking over two more bottles of nail polish. Thankfully, the caps were screwed on tightly. It was hard for Lyssa to know what to do with her long limbs sometimes.

“Um, Lyssa?”

Lyssa whipped around, surprised to see Michael still hovering by the entrance to the dressing room. She frowned—she thought he’d gone off with her mom.

“Hey,” she said cautiously, shooting Penn a warning look so she would know not to mention the trunk in his presence.

“I wanted to give you this.” Michael took a quick step forward and held out a flash drive. Lyssa hesitated before taking it from him.

“What’s it for?” she asked.

“Your mom was telling me you got stage fright. I loaded this up with some recording software. You can download it on your computer and use it to make your own demo CDs. I thought maybe it would help you get comfortable…you know, singing in front of people.” Michael coughed and adjusted his glasses.

“Thanks,” Lyssa said quickly. She thrust the flash drive into her pocket, purposefully avoiding looking at Michael or Penn. Shame stuck to her throat like extra-chunky peanut butter.

She couldn’t believe her mom had told Michael about
her stage fright. Lyssa didn’t want anyone knowing about that, but
especially
not Michael. He seemed sort of cool. For example, Lyssa and her mom didn’t have a computer at home, but Michael sometimes brought over his laptop and helped Lyssa find Athena’s concert videos online. Once, he even told Lyssa he thought she was a born musician, just like her mom or Athena. But now that he knew stepping onto a stage made her queasier than riding the Heinous Hurricane roller coaster three times in a row, he probably didn’t think that anymore.