A New Song

By Barbara Bensoussan

Like Harry Potter, Melody Wheaton is an orphaned kid who doesn't fit in--not into her freezing Midwestern town or the even colder relatives she lives with. All she knows is that she's different, and that nobody liked her dead mother because she was Jewish (whatever that means). Only music and her best friend Zoe keep her going.

But then life hits rock bottom. When a mysterious letter arrives out of the blue, Melody finally finds a way to answer some of her many questions, and a path to escape into a new world she finds often baffling and sometimes magical. In the process, she discovers a new family and her own true self.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barbara Bensoussan
• Release date: Jan 15, 2024
• ISBN: 9798223553915

Barbara Bensoussan

Barbara Bensoussan is an award-winning journalist and the ghostwriter behind many Jewish children's books. She is the author of A Well-Spiced Life, a Sephardic food memoir, and Pride and Preference, a novel which transposes Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice in the world of contemporary Jewish matchmaking.

Book preview

For my children

and grandchildren

The Ugly Duckling

T he ugly duckling looked into the water, and behold! He wasn’t a duck after all. He had grown over the winter, and the reflection staring back at him was that of a beautiful white swan. Spreading his huge white wings and stretching forth his graceful long neck, he lifted himself into the air. With a new song pouring from his throat, he soared off to join his swan cousins flying together happily over the lake.

Melody closed the book and looked around her. Two-year-old Tommy had fallen asleep to her right, thumb still halfway in his mouth, a drop of spittle drooling down his chin. Five-year-old Katy gazed up at her, gray eyes wide under lashes that were so blond they were almost white.

More, she wheedled.

Oh no, said Melody with a stern shake of the head, starting to wonder if she was going to regret having accepted this babysitting job. No way. I’ve read you five books already, and if your parents come home and find you still awake they’re gonna scream at you and at me too, okay?

Katy sighed and slid off her brother’s bed to clamber onto her own. It didn’t take her long to fall asleep under Melody’s watchful eye. Melody lingered a few minutes longer, contemplating the sleeping children with their hair the color of sweet August corn. A lot of folks in the tiny Midwestern town of Lake Tickitacki had blond hair like theirs. Melody’s hair was dark, wavy, and stubbornly unruly. She didn’t look like anybody from these parts. In truth, it was a problem.

She didn’t look like her Uncle Wes or Aunt Connie, with whom she lived, or like their children Cynthia, Allison, and Russ. All of them had dirty-blond hair, blue eyes, and sharp features. Melody had a longish nose, a full mouth, and large eyes that were very dark brown. Sometimes in school the kids teased her. What are you, Italian? they would jeer, although most of the time they used rude substitutes for the word Italian. Her best friend Zoe Lundstrom’s mother thought differently. I think you look like a gypsy, she enthused. With a pair of gold earrings and a headscarf, I could almost see you reading my palm and gazing into a crystal ball. When you’re older you’ll be glad to have such exotic looks.

But Melody wasn’t so sure, and Zoe’s mother didn’t have any idea what made Melody look so different. The reason for her differentness was a closely guarded family secret, rarely mentioned even among the family. It was clearly a source of pain for her Uncle Wes, who was her dead father’s brother, and he only talked about it when he’d had one or two beers too many.

Uncle Wes felt he had lost his brother quite a few years before he actually died. He was just too talented for his own good, he would sniffle. If he had just been an ordinary guy who stayed in town and worked in the factory like everybody else, none of this would’ve happened! But Bobbie was never ordinary, poor guy.

Melody had heard the story often enough: how her father, Bob Wheaton, had early on displayed an astonishing talent for music. He took up piano and trumpet and played in all sorts of groups. He won a full scholarship to college to continue his studies, Uncle Wes would boast. The whole town was proud of him! The Wheaton family was pleased as punch until they realized that Bob’s new world had pulled him so far away from Lake Tickitacki that he would never come home to settle down. Not only had he acquired vocabulary that none of them could understand, not only had he started to drink wine with weird foreign names instead of good old American beer, but then, to top it all off...

He started dating that Jewish girl from New York, Uncle Wes had growled contemptuously, one evening when they were cleaning out the desk and came across some old photographs. Uncle Wes’s views about Jews were well known in the family. He knew an awful lot about them, which was all the more remarkable given that he’d never met a single one, aside from Melody’s mother. He was thoroughly convinced that Jewish people were, in his words, the trickiest, stingiest, connivingest race to ever pollute the face of the planet. What was worse, according to Uncle Wes, they owned all of the banks, all of the newspapers, all of Hollywood, and even most of his favorite sports teams. Melody had a black mark on her name even before she was born.

Melody’s mother had been the worst kind — a Jew from New York. The trickiest ones come from New York, Uncle Wes asserted with a knowledgeable air. Susan Wheaton was a violinist who had studied at the same university as Bob, also on a scholarship. They shared a love of music and a love of life, and pretty soon after they graduated they married. After awhile, little Melody made her appearance.

That Susan was nothin’ but bad luck to him, Melody had once overheard Uncle Wes telling Aunt Connie. First she pulled him away from all that great country and rock ‘n’ roll he used to play, and got him into all that highfalutin, sissy garbage (this meant classical music and jazz).

He could’ve made it in the best rock bands, and here she kept him down working in jazz clubs. It’s her fault they got killed, she was the one who wanted him to take the gig that night! What a shame, oh, the whole thing never should’ve happened... Then Melody heard him sniffing back a tear, and popping the top off another can of beer.

Uncle Wes’s account was, strictly speaking, neither accurate nor fair. What happened had not been Sue Wheaton’s fault at all. She had only encouraged Bob to accept a gig in the city closest to Lake Tickitacki because she declared it was high time Bobbie paid a visit to his family. The gig was in a classy revolving restaurant at the top of a skyscraper, but they’d played in fancy places before. Bob and Susan had first come and spent time with the Wheaton family, bringing two-year-old Melody with them. They had left Melody with Wes and his wife Connie as they cheerfully drove off to play their gig, performing clothes on hangers in the back of the car and instruments in the trunk.

Tragically, they never came back. Towering Inferno Kills 65! screamed the newspaper headlines the next day. Everyone in the restaurant died of smoke inhalation, including the two guest musicians and the backup band. Two-year-old Melody’s visit was extended forever, for she had nowhere else to go; her mother had been an only child, and Melody’s grandparents were long deceased. Wes and Connie Wheaton dried their tears, grit their teeth, and made space in the attic for Melody. Melody learned early to stay out of the way and not make too much trouble.

The situation could’ve turned out a lot worse. Uncle Wes had a good job as a foreman in the cereal factory that employed much of the town’s population. They lived in a wooden frame house that was neither fancy nor shabby; it looked just like every other house in their development. Aunt Connie worked mornings at the Donut Delite truck stop just off the main highway. Every morning at five-thirty she would put on her pink uniform and a frilly apron and pour coffee and sling hash for the truck drivers stopping in for breakfast. Between the two of them, there was never any lack of breakfast food in the house. Uncle Wes brought home huge cartons of cereal from the factory, and Aunt Connie could be relied on to bring home the day-old doughnuts. Melody never had to worry about an empty stomach. In her case, the only part that felt empty was a secret, guarded place in her heart.

Melody now stood up and gave one last glance at the sleeping Svenson children, feeling a pang of envy for their cornsilk hair and picture-perfect family. She went downstairs and began solving the extra-credit math problems her teacher had assigned, and barely an hour later the doorbell rang, signaling the return of the Svensons from their night out.

Were the kids all right, Melody? asked Mrs. Svenson anxiously, rummaging in her purse for money to pay her.

Fine, Melody answered, gathering her homework and stuffing it into her knapsack.

Thank you so much, said Mrs. Svenson. It’s such a pleasure when you babysit for us. The other girls just get on the phone and yak all night. With you I know I’ll come home and find the children asleep. She pushed some dollar bills into Melody’s hand and then stayed on the front steps to make sure Melody got home all right as she walked down the block back to the Wheaton house.

Uncle Wes was sitting out on the front steps, smoking a cigarette. Where were you? he asked suspiciously. Rex, the family’s German shepherd, wagged his tail unenthusiastically.

Babysitting for the Svensons, she replied.

Aunt Connie didn’t let him smoke in the house; she said it was a filthy, lowlife habit, and besides, the smoke fumes were bad for Allison and Russ, who were on sports teams and always in training. So, in deference to his children’s athletic endeavors, Uncle Wes always stepped outside to smoke.

What was it tonight, their anniversary?

In Lake Tickitacki, there were very few secrets. Melody nodded. All right, said Uncle Wes, shrugging. Get yourself inside, then.

Melody entered the house, where Aunt Connie, Cynthia, Allison, and Russ were sitting in a darkened room, watching a movie about a runner who lost his legs in a car accident and then went on to become a world-famous coach. A few minutes was all it took for her to decide she wasn’t interested. Good night, she said politely.

Aunt Connie grunted. Russ growled, You’re interrupting, and the girls didn’t bother to respond at all. The movie had turned sad, and they were too busy fishing for tissues. Melody sighed and made her way upstairs to her room in the attic.

Going into her room meant she had to first pass the storage section filled with all the Wheatons’ old bikes, rusty trunks, sports equipment, Aunt Dottie’s old love seat, and crates of books that nobody but Melody ever bothered to look at. After that the attic became Melody’s domain, which was sparse but more or less neat with her bed, Aunt Dottie’s old dresser, and an old, cracked Formica table she used as a desk. During the summer, the heat rose and gathered like a cloud in the attic; in the winter, the wind howled through the rafters and hissed through the cracks in the roof, and Melody would put on two pairs of socks and a bathrobe to keep from freezing.

Now she flipped on her little radio and played with the tuner until she found something she liked. Sometimes she wondered what she would do if she didn’t have music to lift her spirits and break the boredom. She’d listen to anything, even stuff everybody else thought was weird. She just followed her ears and listened to what sounded good to her.

It was rarely what sounded good to the Wheatons. Would you turn that down? Cynthia would screech, as her room was directly below the attic. What is this, the Paris Opera or something?

It’s not opera, Melody would yell back.

Whatever, Cynthia shouted with the exasperation of a sixteen-year-old whose delicate musical sensibilities have been offended. Wouldja please just make it lower — like, much lower?

Melody would scowl and turn it down. Cynthia, of course, had no qualms about blasting all her rock and country favorites right through the ceiling. She and Allison would dance around their room, their thumping audible even over the high volume of the music. They were always trying to keep in shape; Cynthia had been Junior Miss Lake Tickitacki two years ago and now had her eye on the senior title for next year. She lavished hours of time on her hair with the blow-dryer and curling iron, and made sure to check her hairdo every time she passed a mirror. The year Cynthia had been Junior Miss Lake Tickitacki, she had been insufferable, putting on a lot of airs and entirely too much blue eye shadow. Allison and Russ were much easier to take. They were both athletes who were more interested in their teams than their hair. For them it was softball and baseball respectively in the summer, and hockey and football in the fall. Russ was born with a football in his hand, Uncle Wes loved to boast.

And what did I have? Allison would retort, annoyed at being left out, a hockey puck in my hand?

In your mouth, Russ taunted.

And what was Melody good at? Certainly not sports; she wasn’t particularly strong or coordinated. School, on the other hand, came very easily to her. The other kids, despite themselves, often had to enlist her help for homework assignments. The problem was that in Lake Tickitacki, being a whiz in school did little to heighten one’s popularity, and looking like a gypsy or an Italian didn’t help either. So Melody hung out with her friend Zoe, who was also considered something of an outsider, and tried to pretend the rest didn’t exist.

The time at the tone will be 11:30, said the announcer’s voice on the radio. "And now, selections from Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake."

Having just read Katy a story about swans, Melody’s curiosity was piqued. She snuggled into bed, listening. The sad, hauntingly beautiful strains of the ballet pulled at her heart, and she listened for a long time before she finally fell asleep.

Strumming

Melody woke up rubbing her head. She had just bumped into a stone wall. She’d been walking along looking for an ugly duckling that had merrily informed her it was going to transform into a swan, and she hadn’t noticed the mass of stone right in front of her...but then, here she was in her room, and it had just been a dream after all. Upon closer reflection, there was nothing wrong with her head at all. (At least not on the outside, she thought wryly.) Perhaps she had banged her head against the attic wall in her sleep.

Melody! Aunt Connie was already calling. Will you please get moving on down here on the double! How can I wash the kitchen floor when you all haven’t even finished breakfast yet? Then she lit into her own children: Russ! Dad wanted that yard mowed an hour ago! No lawn, no football practice! (An idle threat, Melody thought to herself as she hurriedly got dressed; the Wheatons would sooner cut off their own heads than let anything come between Russ and football.) Cynthia! Enough of your beauty sleep! This house is a pigsty! Allison! Get moving!

Bunch of lazy slobs, she grumbled. Do they think this place is a hotel? Do they expect me to do everything for them when I work like a dog all week to help pay for all their stuff? She disappeared angrily into the basement with an overflowing basket of laundry in her arms as Melody came into the kitchen and poured herself a bowl of cereal.

In the Wheaton household, the weekend meant chores: helping to fold laundry, run the vacuum cleaner all over the house, do the yard work, scrub the grit out of the bathrooms, dust the furniture. Once everybody had accomplished their assigned tasks, they went their separate ways. Uncle Wes and Aunt Connie played in a couples’ bowling league on Saturday afternoons; Russ and Allison usually disappeared to some team practice or other; and Cynthia practiced her baton routine (she was a majorette in the high school marching band). Melody, for her part, always ran off to Zoe’s house, her home away from home.

Melody’s best friend, Zoe Lundstrom, lived over in the next tract of housing, in a big, Colonial-style house that dwarfed all the others in their development. Zoe’s father was the head of the surgery department at the county hospital and was almost never home, so Zoe and her mother were mostly left to their own devices, rattling around together in the big, almost-empty house together with Bonnie, their faithful collie. Both of them were considered a little bit off by Lake Tickitacki standards.

Mrs. Lundstrom had grown up in Minneapolis, making her a big-city girl; her long, fluffy strawberry-blond hair always seemed to be half falling out of the bun she wore it in, and she was always reading books on subjects like reincarnation, astrology, and saving our precious planetary resources. Two years ago, she had gotten into macrobiotic food and sworn off meat, refined sugar, fried foods, and most of the other foodstuffs that Melody and Zoe privately thought made life worth living. She spent a lot of time running organic vegetables through her juicer and steaming large quantities of brown rice, and often composed huge salads that looked like a bunch of weeds she had pulled up from the backyard and gussied up with soy dressing.

My mother only eats food that’s green or brown, Zoe complained. Vegetables, rice, more vegetables, more rice.

That’s all right. Melody grinned. The Wheatons eat mostly brown food too. But their food is cereal and meat and potatoes.

We have that too. Zoe sighed. My dad won’t touch the macrobiotic stuff. My mother has to buy him steaks and hot dogs to keep him happy. Of course, she moans the whole time that he’s poisoning himself and unbalancing all his vital life forces.

While Melody liked Mrs. Lundstrom very much, she would have to admit that most people in Lake Tickitacki would consider Mrs. Lundstrom the more unbalanced member of the couple.

I’m sure your dad knows what he’s doing, Melody said. He’s a doctor, isn’t he?

Yeah, answered Zoe. But I don’t think he would give up steak if his life depended on it.

Zoe looked very much like a shorter version of her mother, except that her hair was stick-straight and limp instead of puffy. She had ambitions to be a singer-songwriter when she grew up.

This morning in the Wheaton household, Melody raced through her tasks. She had to match about fifty pairs of sweat socks, which was a kind of near-impossible assignment like something out of Rumpelstiltskin; nearly everybody in the family wore white socks every day and the only way to tell whose were whose was by the most subtle differences in size and the occasional colored stripe. Then she had to dust the entire house, taking particular care with the electronic equipment (and there was lots of it), and all the bowling and football trophies lined up like soldiers up on the mantelpiece. She didn’t get to Zoe’s house until after one o’clock. Mrs. Lundstrom had already prepared them a snack, so Melody joined Zoe at the kitchen table, where Zoe was carefully tasting a sort of milkshake with an air of deep suspicion.

Hey, Ma, you didn’t try and sneak spinach into this, did you? she asked disapprovingly, picking out a few flecks of green from her glass.

I wouldn’t dream of it, dear, responded her mother airily, plunking down a plate of whole wheat carob cookies in front of them with a flourish. The green is just from a kiwi fruit — very high in vitamin C.

Melody adventurously took a nibble of her cookie. The cookies came out much better this time, she offered politely. Yeah, they did, agreed Zoe; then, suspiciously, What’d you do differently?

Differently? Why would I change such a wonderful recipe? Because last time nobody could eat them, Zoe said tactlessly.

Mrs. Lundstrom ignored the insult. Well, she admitted, this time I did use unrefined sugar instead of barley syrup to sweeten them. Anyway, hurry up and finish eating, girls, we’ll never make it to Twin Pines by two at this rate.

They drained their fruit smoothies, passed the remaining cookies under the table to Bonnie, and ran upstairs to fetch Zoe’s guitar. Mrs. Lundstrom brought Zoe to her weekly guitar lesson in Twin Pines, the next town over, which Zoe took with a guy named Richie.

Richie looked like a member of a motorcycle gang with his ponytail, ripped jeans, and tattoo on one arm. But in spite of his scruffy appearance, he was a good-natured and patient teacher who never blew up over Zoe’s frequent mistakes, and he never seemed to mind that Melody would sit next to Zoe and listen in. In fact, he was even nice enough to make extra copies of his chord sheets for her. Mrs. Lundstrom would sit in the back of the room reading The New Age Gazette, while Zoe plowed painfully through the songs. Thanks to Richie’s generosity, Melody learned to read music and absorbed quite a bit about chord structure and scales — quite a bit more, probably, than Zoe, who was much less interested in the nuts and bolts of music than in being able to accompany herself just enough to stand in front of a band one day and sing the lead vocals.

Today they were working on learning Blowing in the Wind. Come on, Zoe, these are easy chords, Richie said encouragingly. Move your third finger higher — up to the second fret. No, no, over one more. That’s it. Now strum.

Laboriously, they strummed through the first verses, singing the lyrics together. Zoe wasn’t particularly gifted as a guitar player, but she did have a pretty singing voice, sweet and clear. Mrs. Lundstrom sighed from the back of the room. I remember when that song first came out on the radio, when I was a little girl, she reminisced aloud. Back in Minneapolis it was always a big hit, since it was written by a Minneapolis boy. My mother knew his family, you know. Of course, their real name was Zimmerman. Such a nice Jewish family; I’ll have to ask my mother if she’s still in touch with them.

Melody’s ears perked up in surprise. It was the first time in her life she had heard anyone say something positive about Jewish people. But she kept her mouth shut, not caring to interrupt the lesson or surprise her friends with any unexpected information about her long-deceased mother. Richie looked impressed. Wish I could write songs like him, he said. They don’t make ’em like that no more.

Zoe and Richie limped through a few more repetitions of the song, until Richie was satisfied that she’d gotten down the basics and their hour was up. Melody liked the song; she was already making up harmonies for it in her mind. Back at the house, she’d try them out with Zoe. The two of them would repair to the privacy of Zoe’s large bedroom with the posters of rock stars on the walls and the lilac and blue tie-dyed bedspread, and practice till they ran out of steam. Then they’d revive themselves with a small feast taken from Zoe’s private store of high-sodium, high-sugar, and high-cholesterol junk food that she kept hidden carefully under her bed in a carton marked Winter Sweaters.

Have to keep body and soul together, grinned Zoe. What am I supposed to do, live on fruit smoothies?

Melody grinned back. Pass the nacho chips, she said. Why don’t you sleep over tonight? Zoe proposed suddenly. My parents are going out. I bet they’d let us stay home alone if we were together.

Fine with me, returned Melody. Ask your mother.

Of course it was all right with Mrs. Lundstrom, who always had a soft spot for Melody. (Mrs. Lundstrom, it must be admitted, also had a soft spot for stray kittens, rodents raised in farms for their fur, and rare animals in danger of extinction.) Melody figured the soft spot in her case was due to her status as an orphan, although she knew Mrs. Lundstrom also appreciated that she was such a good student who helped Zoe stay on track in school.

It’s a good thing I’m able to get away to Zoe’s house on the weekends instead of spending them all alone in my room, Melody thought to herself gratefully as she helped Zoe put clean sheets on the guest bed. If I couldn’t do that, I think I’d be spending my weekends in a mental institution!

But all she said to Zoe was, Pass me your guitar, would you? I want to try out those chords we learned with Richie today.

School Daze

School for Melody and Zoe meant Lake Tickitacki Middle School, and the daily scramble of getting to the bus stop on time so as not to have to walk half an hour into the center of town. The middle school stood, just as its name might suggest, right in between the elementary school and the high school, with a raggedy lawn at the front and vast expanses of athletic fields at the back. The town’s main street ran in front of the school, and on the other side of the street were the little post office, a hardware store, and the main supermarket where Melody and Zoe sometimes stopped off to restock Zoe’s secret supply of junk food. When the weather was nice they would skip the bus, buy themselves ice-cream bars, and walk the two miles back to Zoe’s house.

The middle school itself was a perfectly ordinary-looking structure of cinderblock and linoleum tile, with banks of lockers lining the corridors and a smell of sweat socks near the gym. Its one distinguishing feature was a statue in front of the school of Chief Running Deer (more often referred to as Chief Running Nose by the students), who was the most illustrious leader of the Tickitacki Indian tribe, the tribe from which the lake and town drew their names. During the football season someone always placed a football in the crook of Chief Running Deer’s arm, and all of the school’s sports teams were called The Indians. The exception was in gym class, where the teachers always called one team the Ticks and the other the Tacks, which they seemed to think was awfully clever.

Most of the kids in the school came from families who were associated in some way with the same cereal factory Uncle Wes worked for, and almost all the rest came from farm families, arriving at school with the perfume of barnyard chores still wafting from their jeans, yawning after having gotten up at dawn to feed the animals. Most of the time it seemed pretty clear that both students and teachers spent their days wishing they were somewhere else. Mr. Carlson, the math teacher, tried to liven up fractions by using chalk of different colors, and Miss Schmidt would bring in slides of her vacation trips around the world during English class. But Mr. Klephammer, the science teacher, had lost his patience for teaching at least thirty years ago, and despite his short, portly body he had been known to chase Kenny Flanagan and some of the other class clowns all the way down the hall to the principal’s office

Melody spent a lot of time bored silly in school, as the teachers rephrased and reviewed information she had gotten down weeks ago. She would count the minutes on the big wall clocks, groaning inwardly with boredom, and filling up time doodling musical notes and song lyrics in the margins of her notebooks. In social studies class, where Mr. Whipple would simply read them the Constitution of the United States in his droning voice when he couldn’t be bothered to prepare, Melody took to bringing books to class and reading under the desk, knowing he wouldn’t notice anyway.

The only time things livened up a little was when the graduating class would play their pranks, like the time some enterprising kids stole a For Sale sign and planted it on the lawn in front of the school, or the time somebody else brought a cow up onto the third floor and nobody could coax it back down the steps. Oh yes, and there was the time Kenny Flanagan crumbled blue cheese into all the radiators on a freezing winter’s day when the radiators were going full steam. The odor of blue cheese still clung to certain classrooms when the weather got cold.

But most of the kids in the school didn’t care much whether they were being taught anything or not. The only thing that got them fired up was sports. This was the road to popularity and glory, and being the school quarterback or head cheerleader was the summit of Lake Tickitacki Middle School success. This, of course, was where Melody lagged behind. When they selected teams in gym, she was usually one of the last to be chosen, right before skinny Patty Borden with the Coke-bottle-bottom glasses. She didn’t even try to fit in with the cool kids, even though she knew Russ and Allison were embarrassed by her. It just wasn’t worth the effort. The only kid she had anything in common with at all was Zoe.

Zoe’s mother was a little concerned. The two of you are always together, she said worriedly one bright October afternoon when Zoe and Melody had come inside after tramping around outside in the leaves. That’s fine, but don’t you ever hang around with anybody else?

With who? snorted Zoe. All the other kids are slow or snobbish.

Snobbish about what? Mrs. Lundstrom returned in disbelief. This isn’t exactly a town full of rich people. Why, Zoe, your father has a much better job than almost anyone else in town.

It’s not about money, Ma, Zoe groaned in exasperation, amazed that her mother was so naive. It’s about being on a sports team, or being really good-looking.

Good-looking? Again Mrs. Lundstrom looked incredulous. But the two of you are both beautiful young ladies!

Zoe shook her head and rolled her eyes. Of course you think like that, you’re my mom, she said.

We don’t have the right kind of hair or clothes or anything, Melody put in.

Yeah, but we don’t want to be like them, Zoe asserted. We’re artists.

Ah yes, I see, replied Mrs. Lundstrom, raising her eyebrows and nodding. Now I understand. Yes, I suppose the path of artistic genius is a rather solitary one, isn’t it? She smiled to herself as she helped them pull out a pack of whole wheat pretzels and a carton of orange juice. I suppose you’re right; it’s hard to fit in when one is so far ahead of his times. Melody grinned at Zoe. I don’t think we’re so far ahead of the times, she said. I think Lake Tickitacki is so far behind the times that anybody who isn’t seems like they come from another planet.

Zoe giggled, and Mrs. Lundstrom considered her thoughtfully. You know, perhaps you’re right, she admitted. This town really does seem to be stuck in another era sometimes. Even I sometimes feel as if I’m speaking a different language from most of the people here.

Yeah, Mom, what about you? challenged Zoe. How many friends do you have out here, not counting Dad?

Mrs. Lundstrom’s fair complexion reddened. Well, there are plenty of people I see regularly, she said defensively. I talk to Richie and that Denise from the health food store every week when we go to Twin Pines. And I see the ladies from the hospital’s volunteer society, and the folks at the animal shelter on the days I help out. There are a lot of nice people around here.

Well, a lot of the kids from school aren’t even nice, Zoe declared. They won’t even talk to you if you’re not a cheerleader or head majorette or something. They call me Carrot Top because my hair’s red, and they call Melody the Brain because she always gets the best grades. Do you think we’d want to waste our time hanging around with kids like that?

All right, all right, you win, conceded Mrs. Lundstrom. "Maybe quality is more important than quantity where friendships are concerned. I just want to