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Do I get hazardous duty pay?” She paused. “I don’t know if I’m ready to be a businesswoman.”
    â€œFine,” said Lola. “You’ll be an employee. How’s three dollars a day?”
    â€œFour.”
    Melanie was already a businesswoman.
    â€œDeal.” Lola couldn’t imagine a lemonade life without Melanie.
    When the girls finished squeezing and squirting, they added sugar to the mix and were ready for taste testing. Lola insisted there was only one reliable taste tester in the house.
    â€œCome here, Bowzer,” she called, pouring lemonade into the kitty bowl and setting the bowl on the floor. The cat, never one to hustle, snoozed in a stream of sunlight. Lola scooped Bowzer from the couch, scratched him on his little head, and escorted him to the cat bowl. “One little lick. Just try it, my prince.”
    Bowzer sniffed, then ambled off without even a sip. What an insult!
    Lola appealed to her father. “Please, Dad,” she said, pouring him a cup of lemonade. “You try it.”
    Michael Zola took a gulp. “Superb!” he announced. Not that he was an impartial judge of his daughter’s talents. Lola’s mother would have offered a more candid evaluation, but Lola wouldn’t dare ask her.
    Lola and Melanie carried their lemonade pitchers outside and set them on Diane Zola’s card table. They waited for cars to screech to a halt in front of their sign—“LOLA’S LEMONADE. ONLY 50 CENTS A CUP.” The wait was long; the sun an iron on Melanie’s skin.
    â€œI thought you said you were going to buy me a lilac sun umbrella,” said Melanie.
    â€œWhat’s wrong with this?” Lola pointed to a makeshift sunblocker she had rigged up at the last minute. Always the resourceful one, Lola borrowed her father’s fruit picker—a tall pole—and stuck a purple umbrella on top of it. It wasn’t a bad shade enhancer, and the hue was close enough to lilac.
    â€œThis fruit picker pole thing isn’t exactly a sun umbrella.” Melanie frowned.
    At high noon it was 103 degrees in Mirage. Add a hundred and that’s what Melanie estimated her freckle count would total at the end of the day.
    â€œLower your tulip,” advised Lola. If Melanie tilted the flower on her straw hat, the sun might leave her alone.
    A miffed Melanie fiddled with the tulip and would have continued fiddling if an old van full of hippie throwbacks hadn’t stopped in front of the lemonade stand.
    â€œHey, man,” came a voice from the hippie mobile. “Which way to the springs?” asked the driver, a man with a scraggly beard. “Can you give me directions?”
    â€œSure,” said Lola, “but first try our delicious thirst-quenching lemonade.”
    The man hesitated long enough for Lola to shove a cup his way. “You don’t want to drink that water up at the springs. It smells like rotten eggs.”
    â€œThat’s right,” said Melanie. “It’s fine for bathing, but I wouldn’t want to swallow it. Yuck.”
    The man and his friends, decked out in tie-dyed T-shirts and Indian bedspread attire, piled out of the car and threw down their quarters on the card table. Lola smiled, Melanie poured, and a mysterious someone peeked out from behind the drapes in Nelson’s, aka Hot Dog’s, Spanish-style house across the street.
    â€œWhat do you think?” asked Lola, fishing for a lemonade compliment.
    â€œIt’s okay,” said a woman with a zillion bangle bracelets. “A little bland.”
    â€œBland?” Lola was insulted.
    The woman shrugged. With that, Mr. Beard, Ms. Bangles, and the rest of the bedspread crew climbed back into the van and roared off up the mountain.
    â€œDon’t believe them, Twister Sister,” said Melanie. “This is the best lemonade in the galaxy.”
    Lola raised her eyebrows. “Bowzer didn’t think so. Our punch