Jayden jumped off the chair, and Hannah and Parker Stevens, twins in Mrs. Wexler’s fourth-grade class, asked about braids.
Aly had started braiding Parker’s hair in a fishbone when she saw Suzy Davis walk by with her sister and her dad. And all of a sudden, Aly had a fantastic idea.
seven
Cherry on Top
Aly quickly finished Parker’s braids and walked to the other side of the booth, where Brooke was polishing Zorah’s pinkie with Cherry on Top.
“Brooke,” Aly said, “I need to talk to you over here.”
“I’m in the middle of a manicure,” Brooke said.
“I know,” Aly said. “But this is very important. I have an idea. For something to add to our booth.”
“Okay, okay, I’m coming,” Brooke said. She turned to Zorah. “I’m really sorry, but I’ll be back in two seconds. Well, maybe ten seconds. But as fast as I can. I promise.”
“Suzy Davis is the answer,” Aly said to her sister. “I think we should add Suzy Davis and Suzy’s Spectacular Makeup to our booth. She can do all the makeup, and we’ll make more money for the girls’ side. Hopefully, we’ll win and get to go to the water park.”
“Suzy Davis?” Brooke said, tugging on her braid. “But we spend all our time trying to get rid of Suzy Davis!”
“I know, I know,” Aly replied. “But Suzy’s Spectacular Makeup actually is a good idea. People really liked it on Picture Day, remember? Plus, even if she makes one dollar, that’s one more dollar for the girls’ team we didn’t have before.”
Brooke ran the end of her braid back and forth across her cheek. After a few seconds, she said, “Okay, you’re right. It’ll help us win the water park. So I vote yes.”
Aly hugged her sister and then went and told Charlotte and Lily the plan. She knew Brooke would tell Sophie.
Aly ran from Roll a Hole in One to Paint Your Face, from Balloon Darts to Soccer Score. No Suzy. For a minute she was afraid Suzy had already left the carnival, but she finally found her leaning against a tree, eating popcorn.
“Hey, Suzy,” Aly said.
“Aren’t you supposed to be at your Sparkle Spectacle booth, or whatever you called it?” Suzy answered, popping a kernel into her mouth.
“I am,” Aly said, “but I . . . uh . . . I have an idea that I think you can help me with.”
Suzy crunched the popcorn. “Why would I want to help you?” she asked.
Aly let out a huff of breath. “Because Charlotte and Lily and I helped you on School Picture Day. And because you want the girls to win and go to Water World.”
Suzy stood up a little straighter. “I’m listening,” she said.
Aly swallowed. She needed to convince Suzy, fast. “Remember how Principal Rogers told us we couldn’t have the Sparkle photo booth?”
“Yes, because Aubrey’s was better,” Suzy said.
“Right,” Aly said. “It was. But anyway, she said we were allowed to add a third thing for our booth. When I saw you walking by, I remembered how popular your makeup was on School Picture Day, and I thought maybe you could be our third thing. If you want to add Suzy’s Spectacular Makeup to our booth, I think we could beat the boys.”
Suzy ate another piece of popcorn. “Let’s say I wanted to do this,” she answered. “I don’t have my supplies here.”
Aly thought for second. “Maybe you could pick them up from home. I saw your dad before. He could drive you home. Or your mom could bring your supplies here.”
“My mom’s working today,” Suzy said.
“But your dad?” Aly was really hoping Suzy was going to say yes soon. There wasn’t any time to waste.
“Okay. I guess I could ask my dad,” Suzy finally said. “And just so you know, I’m only doing this because I love water parks.”
“Of course,” Aly said. She headed over to Principal Rogers to tell her their plan. On the way, she passed the boys’ Tattoo You booth. A long line with everyone from first-grade girls to sixth-grade boys was wrapped around the booth. Oh, boy, Aly thought, we’ve really got work to do.
She hurried back to the Sparkle Spa Celebration booth, filled in the girls about Suzy, and returned to braiding and polishing.
A little while later, AP Amari came out with his bullhorn again.
“New numbers to report! The boys are now at five hundred seventy-eight dollars and the girls at five hundred twenty-one!”
Aly was not happy with this latest tally. Would her Suzy Davis plan turn things around? Where was Suzy, any—
“We’re here!” Suzy suddenly appeared out of nowhere with her sister behind her. “Heather’s going to help too,” she announced. “Since you have two braiders and two polishers, it makes sense to have two makeup-ers. We’ll set up over there.” She pointed toward a corner of the booth next to the manicure stations, where a little bit of counter space was available.
“Great,” Aly said.
Brooke rolled her eyes but agreed.
As soon as Suzy set up, she asked to borrow Sophie’s chair. She stood up on it and started to yell, even louder than AP Amari with his bullhorn. “Attention! Attention! The Sparkle Spa Celebration now includes Suzy’s Spectacular Makeup! If you want fairy dust or shimmer lip gloss, it costs one dollar! I would’ve had perfume, too, if Principal Rogers let me do my own booth. But now it’s just fairy dust and lip gloss, so you can blame her.”
Aly had to bite her bottom lip to keep from laughing at that last bit.
Before Suzy could even jump off the chair, girls came running. Suzy and Heather started applying makeup—well, Suzy did and yelled at Heather for not doing it right. Aly and Charlotte continued braiding, and Brooke and Sophie kept on manicuring.
The afternoon flew by, and before the girls knew it, it was time for Lily to hand money over to Principal Rogers again, and for Mr. Amari to read the results. “This is going to be a close race!” he said. “The boys have earned seven hundred ninety-nine dollars and the girls seven hundred fifty-five. The girls are closing the gap!”
“Just forty-four dollars from a tie. I think it’s because of my makeup,” Suzy said.
Brooke rolled her eyes again, but Aly smiled. She didn’t care why the girls won, she just wanted them to win. She was still worried about the cookie bet and getting into trouble with her mom and Joan. If Suzy Davis was the reason the girls raised the most money, that was fine by her! She just hoped they could keep it up.
eight
Tie-Dye Tango
Two hours later, broken hair elastics lay on the ground, cotton balls overflowed the trash, and Suzy Davis had a thick smear of fairy dust on her white T-shirt. It looked a little like Tie-Dye Tango, a polish Mom had ordered last week.
The girls had been inching closer to the boys with each measurement, and last time Aly had checked the giant thermometer, the girls were at $1,744 and the boys at $1,756.
“Twelve dollars!” Lily kept saying. “They’re only beating us by twelve dollars!”
Throughout the day, even though the Sparkle Spa booth was super busy, the girls had taken short breaks so that they could go to the carnival themselves—on the girls’ side. They had gotten married to each other and decorated more cookies and played the Wheel of Fortune and took pictures at the Be a Super-Model booth, which Aly had to admit was a better photo booth than the one she and the girls would have made.
“Can we play balloon darts?” Brooke had asked right after she and Aly had taken pictures together wearing green alien headbands and blue boas.
Aly checked her pocket. “We’ve spent all our money!” she giggled.
Walking around the field, the girls saw lots of kids—and even some grown-ups—with tattoos, mainly the glow-in-the-dark ones, which they kept cupping their hands around their arms to see. The other boy booths were pretty busy too, especially Win a Fish.
“Do you think the girls are going to win?” Sophie asked when Aly and Brooke returned. She had just finished a Cotton Candyland polish job on Keisha, a second grader, and now Keisha
was getting her makeup done.
“It’s possible,” Lily said, trying to count the wad of money in her hand. Every time she got halfway through, someone would hand her more money, and she would get mixed up and have to start counting all over again.
“Fifteen minutes until the end of the carnival!” boomed Mr. Amari.
Suzy Davis pushed Sophie off her chair and climbed up on it. “If you haven’t gotten your makeup done yet, come now!” she yelled. “And get braided, too!”
Aly was impressed that Suzy remembered to talk about the braiding.
“What about manicures?” Brooke reminded her.
“And manicures, too!” Suzy shouted.
Brooke seemed satisfied, especially when a third grader came over and asked for purple fingernails, and then Daisy’s little sister, Violet, requested blue ones. Aly flexed her fingers when Maisie came to the braid side of the booth and asked for three braids braided together. Aly got to work.
At 3:30 on the dot, AP Arami informed everyone that the carnival booths were closed. “Please deliver your last round of money to me and Principal Rogers and clean up your areas.”
Charlotte held out a giant bag as one by one the girls threw out the day’s garbage. Heather Davis was very happy with herself. “I did so much makeup today,” she said. “Does that mean I get to be part of your business forever, Suzy?”
“I’ll think about it,” Suzy told her sister.
Aly turned to Brooke and gave her a Secret Sister Eye Message: I’m glad we’re Sparkle Spa partners.
Brooke smiled and started packing polishes into the wheelie suitcase they had brought them in.
“I wonder what’s taking so long,” Lily said, checking her watch. “It shouldn’t take this long to count the money.”
“Maybe they want to be extra sure,” Charlotte said. “There is a day at Water World on the line here.”
And a batch of Joan’s cookies, Aly thought.
Sophie nodded as she tied up a trash bag. “They do need to be sure.”
Brooke had just finished rolling up the Sparkle Spa Celebration sign when AP Amari blew his whistle into the bullhorn. The shrill sound was deafening.
“I’m sorry it’s taken us so long,” he said, “but Principal Rogers and I counted, and counted again, and then recounted all of the money for each team. We now have the official totals. The girls have made one thousand, nine hundred ninety-six dollars—”
Lily whooped. Aly and Charlotte cheered. And Sophie and Brooke jumped up and down. Heather jumped with them.
“It’s not worth cheering until we hear how much the boys made,” Suzy said, her arms crossed. Aly didn’t like admitting it, but Suzy was right.
AP Amari continued. “And the boys have made one thousand, nine hundred ninety-seven dollars. Congratulations, boys, you won by one dollar!”
“One dollar!” Lily groaned.
Brooke looked like she was about to cry. “It’s Dad’s dollar,” she said to Aly. “For the Sports Trivia. If he hadn’t played Sports Trivia, they wouldn’t have won.”
Aly tried to think of something comforting to say, but Brooke was right. If Dad hadn’t spent that dollar, the girls would’ve tied.
Charlotte looked dejected. Lily had collapsed onto a manicure chair. Sophie’s head was in her hands. But Suzy Davis was crawling around on the ground.
“Suzy, what are you doing?” Aly asked.
Suzy looked up. “When Lily was counting money before, I thought I saw a dollar fall out of her hands. But then I wasn’t sure, and I had to finish putting fairy dust on Keisha’s cheeks. After that I didn’t see it anymore. But maybe it got pushed to the side of the booth.”
Aly got down on her hands and knees too. “And if a dollar really did fall . . . ,” she started.
“Then we’d tie!” she and Suzy both said together.
“It’s over,” Lily said. “Besides, I don’t think I dropped any money.”
Even though Lily was upset, Charlotte had perked up. “Maybe Suzy did see you drop something. You never know, it might still be there.”
Soon Charlotte was on the ground next to Aly. And then Brooke, Sophie, and Heather.
Then Heather gasped. “I found it!” she said. “I found it!” She tugged the corner of a dollar out from underneath one of the manicure chairs.
“Wait!” Suzy Davis yelled in her loudest voice, pulling her sister next to her. The Davis sisters ran over to Principal Rogers and AP Amari. Heather was gripping the dollar tightly in her hand. “We forgot a dollar! It was stuck to the bottom of a chair. The girls have one more dollar!”
Principal Rogers and AP Amari looked at each other.
“I’m not sure we can count this,” Principal Rogers said. “It wasn’t in by the deadline.”
“But it was our dollar!” Suzy explained. “We made it fair and square. It just fell out of Lily’s hands. Look, it even has fairy dust on it. That’s how you know it’s from our booth. Heather found it. Please let it count.”
Aly and Brooke had followed Suzy and Heather. Aly was surprised at how reasonable and nice Suzy sounded.
“I’m not sure we can,” Principal Rogers said again.
Just then a man with white hair and a white moustache walked over to Principal Rogers. He was wearing a sweatshirt that said WATER WORLD.
“Excuse me,” he said, looking right at Suzy. He gestured to Principal Rogers and AP Amari to follow him. The three talked quietly. Who is that? wondered Aly.
“Thanks for sticking up for our booth,” Aly said to Suzy while they waited.
Suzy shrugged. “Whatever,” she said. “I just wanted to go to the water park.”
Aly smiled. “Well,” she said, “thank you anyway, no matter what your reason was.”
A minute or so later, the white-haired man, AP Amari, and Principal Rogers walked back to the crowd that had formed around the Tanner and Davis girls. AP Amari spoke. “For those of you who don’t know, this is Mr. Molina, the owner of Water World. We’ve just talked over the last-minute dollar with him, and Mr. Molina has said it will count.”
At this, the girls on the field cheered and the boys booed.
“Which means,” AP Amari said over the noise, “this competition ends in a tie. Mr. Molina will provide a free day at Water World for the entire school!”
Instead of booing this time, the boys cheered too.
Aly and Brooke looked at each other and started screaming as loudly as they could. Lily put two fingers in her mouth and whistled. And the Auden Angels broke out in their soccer cheer. “Go, Auden! Go, Angels! Go, Auden! Go, Angels!” they shouted.
“And what’s more,” AP Amari yelled, “Mr. Molina will be matching the three thousand, nine hundred ninety-four dollars we’ve raised for the Community Chest.”
Everyone kept cheering.
“I’m so proud of all of you,” Principal Rogers said, taking the bullhorn from AP Amari. “And I want everyone to thank Mr. Molina for everything he’s done for us and for our community.”
“Thank you, Mr. Molina!” everyone chorused.
“But really I think this happened because of you,” Aly whispered to Suzy.
Suzy looked surprised. And then she surprised Aly by smiling at her. For the very first time since Aly had known Suzy Davis, she wondered if maybe there was a nice person underneath all Suzy’s meanness. Just maybe.
nine
Light Bright
Not quite a week later, on Friday morning, Aly and Brooke were packing their backpacks for school. But instead of homework and lunches, it was bathing suits and towels and—at Mom’s insistence—sunscreen.
“Are you girls ready?” Mom asked, jingling her car keys.
“So ready!” Brooke said, skipping out the door. “Sophie and I have a plan. First we’re going to go down all the slides. Then the lazy river, and finally, the tide pool.”
Aly smiled and slipped on her backpack. Brooke and Sophie had been talking about their plan all week—at school, at the Sparkle Spa, on the
phone after dinner.
“Do you want to know the order of the slides?” Brooke asked as they all got into Mom’s car. “Because we made an order.” Brooke chattered the whole way to school, but Aly was thinking of one last thing she had to do before they went to Water World.
Aly and Charlotte met at the front doors of Auden. Aly opened her backpack and took out a container of cookies. Joan’s cookies.
Even though the carnival had ended in a tie, the girls still felt they owed Cameron his winnings. Right after the carnival, Aly and Charlotte had confessed their problem to Mom and Joan. Mom wasn’t pleased, but Joan said as long as Aly and Charlotte helped her bake the cookies, she didn’t mind. Brooke helped too, even though she was a little mad Aly hadn’t told her about it either.
The girls walked over to the buses lined up for Water World. Charlotte spotted Cameron, standing in front of Caleb. She took the container from Aly and handed it to him.
“You won the bet, fair and square, Cameron. And I bet these are the best cookies you’ll ever taste.”
“Thanks, Charlotte,” he answered. “That’s really nice of you. I guess girls—well, at least you and Aly—are pretty cool.”
* * *
Once they were at Water World, Aly, Charlotte, and Lily teamed up with Caleb, Garrett, and Cameron, and the six of them raced up Rocket Launcher for their fourth trip down. It was nice being friends with the boys again instead of enemies.
“Rocket Launcher is the best water slide in this whole place!” Caleb said, sliding his tube onto his shoulder so it would be easier to climb the ladder.
Lily slipped her tube over her head. “It totally is,” she agreed.
Aly thought so too. When she was almost at the top of the ladder, she turned around to look out at the rest of the park and all of Auden Elementary sliding, swimming, and racing.
At the bottom of the ladder, Aly saw Suzy Davis, alone. Just like that, she made a decision.
“I’ll meet you guys at the top,” she said.
Bling It On! Page 4