Lola Zola and the Lemonade Crush by Jackie Hirtz

her skateboard and skated up to the driver’s window.
    â€œWant another cup of my lemonade?” asked Lola. “It’s fifteen cents less than yesterday.”
    Ms. Bangles, sitting in the passenger seat, rifled through her burlap bag. “Cool, a deep discount.”
    Buck jumped up from his lounge chair to lure a customer to his limo stand. “Why pay thirty-five cents a cup when you can slurp the best lemonade in town for only thirty cents?” he said to Ms. Bangles.
    â€œDig it,” she said, about to accept Buck’s offer. The woman had an abbreviated vocabulary and a limited amount of spare change.
    Lola felt desperate. “I wouldn’t drink that if I were you,” she warned Ms. Bangles, just as Buck was handing the customer a cup.
    â€œWhy not?” asked Ms. Bangles.
    â€œYeah, why not?” repeated Buck.
    â€œBecause…“Lola searched for some reason why Buck’s lemonade might be deadly. Finally, a pause later, she said, “It’s probably contaminated with cooties, if you know what I mean.”
    The passengers in the van murmured.
    â€œCooties?” Lola heard the driver say.
    â€œCootie-bugs,” came a voice from the backseat.
    Buck was so taken aback, he was speechless—but only for a moment. “There’s nothing wrong with my lemonade. In fact, it’s superior. I import my lemons from special farms and use only the first squirts of the ripe lemon.”
    Lola and Melanie didn’t buy Buck’s pitch, but the hippie-dippy vanload was getting impatient, not to mention a parched feeling in the back of their throats. Ms. Bangles and Mr. Weird Beard bought enough of Buck’s special “imported” lemonade to fill up three stainless steel thermos bottles.
    â€œGotcha, Frizzyola,” said a smiling Buck, as the van drove off and up the mountain. Unfortunately, the “gotcha” bit became a familiar refrain that day as Buck outsold Lola cup for cup, hour by hour.
    Even Bowzer was curious about Buck’s brew and ventured over to the other side of the street to hop on top of the Cadillac and poke his sandpaper tongue into one of Buck’s cups. Much to Lola’s annoyance, her cat forgot his loyalties and tasted a tiny drop of the enemy’s lemonade.
    â€œBowzer, come back to me,” pleaded Lola, “that’s enemy territory. I need you here.” Taking pity on Lola, the cat ambled back to Lola’s side of the street.
    Melanie, in the habit of keeping statistics, scribbled the sales totals on the back of one of her homemade posters. At day’s end, after carloads of city dwellers passed by on the way to the springs, Melanie’s tally showed Buck had outsold Lola two to one. Ouch! Hiss!
    After Buck and his Cadillac crew packed up and went home, Lola looked at her profit and loss statement and realized that all she had were losses and a lot of unsold lemonade. She had barely begun to cover her costs, as the sunblock alone cost seven dollars. How could she continue to keep Melanie as an employee?
    â€œI don’t know how to tell you this, Mel,” said Lola, as the girls cleaned up the kitchen and Bowzer licked his traitorous lemonade chops.
    Melanie figured it was personal. “You don’t like my hat.”
    â€œNo. I mean no, that’s not it.”
    â€œYou don’t think I work fast enough.”
    â€œCold,” hinted Lola, playing an impromptu game of hot and cold. “That’s not it either.”
    â€œI know,” said Melanie. “You want to cut my salary.”
    â€œWarm,” said Lola.
    â€œYou want me to work fewer hours.”
    â€œHot.”
    â€œYou don’t want me to work at all.”
    â€œBoiling.”
    There it was, on the kitchen counter, the truth. Corporate downsizing.
    â€œI have to lay you off,” said Lola. “I’m sorry, I just…”
    â€œYou just don’t need me,” said a dejected