Glam Opening!

by Jill Santopolo

  Contents

  Chapter 1 Ruby Red Slippers

  Chapter 2 Blue Skies

  Chapter 3 White Out

  Chapter 4 Orange Juice

  Chapter 5 Very Cherry

  Chapter 6 Green Beans

  Chapter 7 Shimmy Shake

  Chapter 8 Clouder Than Words

  Chapter 9 It’s a Cele-great-tion

  How to Give Yourself (or a Friend!) a Grand Reopening Special Occasion Pedicure

  About the Author

  For Marie, Eliot, Marianna, and Anne, who have been on this sparkly journey with me since the very beginning

  With many glittery thanks to Karen and Miriam, and to all the dazzling people at Simon & Schuster and DeFiore & Co.

  one

  Ruby Red Slippers

  Munchkins, you can come over here with me!” Aly Tanner’s younger sister, Brooke, was standing on top of a teal pedicure chair. “Sophie and I have all the brightest colors!”

  Aly was glad that Brooke was dealing with the Munchkins. The Flying Monkeys were on the opposite side of the Sparkle Spa, right near where Sparkly, the girls’ dog, was sleeping. They were looking at darker nail polish colors with Lily. And Charlotte was standing at the door with her twin brother, Caleb. She was checking names off the appointment list, and he was handling “security.” Caleb didn’t always help out at the Sparkle Spa, but once in a while, when the girls thought the salon would be extra crowded, they asked him to stand by the door to make sure there weren’t too many people coming into the salon at once. Today was the most crowded day Aly could remember.

  She kept looking at the sign on the wall, the new one a man from the health department had put up last week. It said: OCCUPANCY BY MORE THAN 16 PEOPLE IS UNLAWFUL. There was a similar sign hanging right outside the Sparkle Spa, in Aly and Brooke’s mom’s salon, True Colors, but there you were allowed to have fifty people. If the girls and their mom didn’t obey the signs, the health department could close their salons—maybe even forever.

  Aly counted: six Sparkle Spa workers, five Munchkins, and four Flying Monkeys. Luckily, Sparkly didn’t count, according to the health department, since he was a dog.

  “Caleb,” Aly said, walking over to the door, “we’re only allowed one more person in the spa.”

  He nodded. “I’ve been keeping track,” he answered.

  While Aly was standing there, Jenica Posner came in from True Colors. “Hey,” she said. “Looks super-busy in there.”

  Aly tucked her sweaty bangs behind her ear. “Yes,” she said. “Because the second- and third-grade play is The Wizard of Oz, a bunch of the Munchkins and Flying Monkeys wanted to get their nails done before tomorrow’s performance.”

  “And they all want to stay to see how everyone else’s manicure looks?” Jenica guessed.

  “Exactly,” Aly told her.

  Jenica Posner was the coolest girl in all of Auden Elementary. She was the captain of the sixth grade girls’ soccer team, the Auden Angels, and was one of the main reasons that Aly and Brooke were allowed to start the Sparkle Spa in the first place. One day when True Colors was extra busy, Mom let Aly give Jenica a rainbow sparkle pedicure. Jenica scored a ton of goals in her next soccer game, and before long all the Angels wanted rainbow sparkle pedicures.

  True Colors couldn’t fit them into its daily appointments, so Aly and Brooke were able to start their own salon, the Sparkle Spa, in the spare back room of their mom’s salon. There were lots of rules the girls had to follow, but they’d been doing a great job, and their salon had been open for almost the whole school year. The Angels still came by for rainbow sparkle pedicures every Tuesday, but sometimes Jenica stopped by to say hello when her nana was getting a manicure in True Colors.

  “Your mom’s salon is pretty crowded today too,” Jenica said, stepping into the Sparkle Spa.

  “Bridal party,” Aly said. “In addition to regulars. And the health department came by yesterday to give us these signs about how many people could be in each space. You’re the very last person who can be in the Sparkle Spa right now, until someone leaves. You’re number sixteen.”

  “Wow,” Jenica said. “You’d better get some of these Munchkins out of here.”

  Aly nodded. “I should probably start doing some manicures.”

  “Sounds good,” Jenica said. “At least when the Angels come, we don’t stay too much past our drying time!” Then she turned and headed back into True Colors.

  Charlotte tapped Aly’s shoulder. “Clementine’s ready for you. She’s a Munchkin and she wants polka dots.” She handed Aly two bottles of polish: Ruby Red Slippers and Yellow Submarine.

  Aly took them and then walked over to the manicure station, where Clementine Stern, a second grader, was waiting.

  “Congratulations on being a Munchkin,” Aly told her.

  “I’m really excited,” Clementine said. “I really wanted the part of Toto, but then I found out that you can’t get that part unless you’re a real dog. So now I get to do ‘Follow the Yellow Brick Road,’ and I’m in the Lollipop Guild.”

  “That’s pretty awesome,” Aly said. “When I was in second grade, our play was Mary Poppins. I was a chimney sweep. Munchkins get much better costumes than chimney sweeps. So red dots on yellow, or yellow dots on red?”

  “Red on yellow,” Clementine answered.

  “You got it.” Aly put some polish remover on a cotton ball and started removing Clementine’s old polish.

  She was so caught up in the manicure, she didn’t notice that even though some people had left, more Munchkins, along with Glinda the Good Witch and the Wicked Witch of the West, had arrived.

  “Brooke, Aly!” Caleb called. “We need you.”

  Aly and Brooke hurried over, telling their customers they’d be right back.

  “What’s going on?” Brooke said, pushing her glasses up on her nose as she got to the door.

  “This,” Charlotte said, pointing into True Colors.

  Four girls were waiting by the door to get into the Sparkle Spa.

  Six grown-ups were in waiting-for-a-manicure chairs.

  Eight grown-ups were waiting for drying-after-a-manicure chairs.

  Three grown-ups were standing near the reception desk.

  And that didn’t count all the people Mom’s manicurists were working on. Or the manicurists themselves!

  “We already have sixteen people in the Sparkle Spa, and there’s not even a place to tell them to wait in your mom’s salon!”

  Just as Aly was checking out the situation, Mrs. Tanner, the girls’ mom, came over.

  “Brooke, Aly,” she said, “your customers can’t overflow into True Colors. I’m bumping up against my fifty-person limit, and I can’t have them in here.”

  “We’re at our limit!” Brooke wailed. “I hate the health department!”

  Mom closed her eyes for a moment. “I’m not a superfan of their new signs either,” she began, slowly opening her eyes. “But it’s important to follow their rules, because they keep our customers safe—and if we don’t follow the law, they could shut us down. I trust you girls will figure this out.”

  “We just need more space,” Brooke said. “If we had more space, we could have more people, and if we had more people, it wouldn’t be a problem. But the Sparkle Spa is really small compared to everything else in the world, except for maybe my closet. And no one can run a business out of a closet anyway.”

  Aly couldn’t help but smile. Brooke made her smile all the time. She wasn’t sure if it was because Brooke was in third grade and Aly was in fifth, but Aly sometimes found the way Brooke’s brain worked to be funny.

  “We’ll fix it, Mom,” Aly said. “Don’t worry.”

  “Thank you,” Mom said. “But I hear you about the space, Bro
okie. I could use more too.”

  “What are we going to do?” Brooke asked Aly.

  Aly sighed. There seemed like only one obvious answer. “We’re going to have to tell people who have dry manicures to leave. And that they can meet their friends next door at the Men’s Shoe Shack.”

  “The Men’s Shoe Shack?” Brooke repeated, scrunching up her face.

  Aly shrugged. “There’s never anyone in there anyway. They can wait out front on the bench there.”

  It was true: Almost every time the girls passed by the Men’s Shoe Shack, which was probably about ten times a week, hardly anyone was inside buying shoes.

  “Okay,” Brooke agreed. “The Men’s Shoe Shack it is!”

  When the sisters went back to the Sparkle Spa, Aly stood on a pedicure chair and explained the situation. Anyone whose nails were already dry had to leave, and she and Brooke suggested they meet in front of the Men’s Shoe Shack.

  There were lots of grumbles and “No fairs” coming from the Munchkins and Flying Monkeys. Aly sent her sister a Secret Sister Eye Message: Help! What do we do now?

  Brooke smiled and then quickly jumped up next to Aly and said, “And whoever tells us the name of the silliest-looking shoe in the front window gets an extra-special surprise pedicure from me next time you come to the Sparkle Spa!”

  That did it. Everyone wanted the extra-special pedicure, so three Munchkins and one Flying Monkey headed out the door. Caleb and Charlotte told the four girls waiting by the door leading to True Colors that they could come inside, and everything calmed down for a moment.

  But Aly knew it was only for a moment. She also knew that the play was a special case and they didn’t always have this many kids wanting to come to the Sparkle Spa at once . . . but there had been more and more special cases recently. Enough that Aly knew they’d have to figure out a plan. What could they do about finding more space?

  two

  Blue Skies

  The next morning, Aly and Brooke were getting ready to head to Auden Elementary, even though it was a Saturday. They decided they couldn’t miss watching their clients perform in The Wizard of Oz.

  “I’m still surprised you didn’t want to be in the show, Brookester,” Aly said. Since Brooke was in third grade, she could’ve tried out for any part she wanted. “Lily and Charlotte and I had fun being chimney sweeps two years ago. Even if the costumes weren’t great.”

  Brooke shrugged as she snapped a clip with sparkly streamers into her hair. “I like saying my own words, not words other people tell me to say.”

  Aly laughed. Her sister certainly did like to talk a lot, and Aly had never considered that being onstage meant you had to say someone else’s words. She could understand why Brooke wouldn’t like that.

  “Anyway,” Brooke said, “this way I get to polish everyone’s nails and then cheer for them and be a part of the show in two ways—as a polisher and a cheerer. And two ways is better than one way.”

  That made sense to Aly. “Do you want to go to True Colors after the show?” she asked. Because of their mom’s rules, the Sparkle Spa was only allowed to be open three days a week—two school days and one weekend day—so the girls usually had the spa open on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Fridays, unless there was a special request.

  That meant that Saturdays were free days. Sometimes the girls went to the park, sometimes they hung out with friends, sometimes they went places with their dad, and sometimes they went to True Colors to help out. They refilled rhinestone bags for the manicurists, reorganized the polish wall when it got messy, straightened up the magazines, and talked to the regular customers while their nails were drying.

  “I don’t know,” Brooke said. “It’s been so crowded. And we’ll be adding to the people count. And what if there are too many? Then we’d have to hide in the Sparkle Spa with no customers, and that’s a little bit boring. I mean, we could do each other’s nails, I guess, like in the old days, but maybe we can figure out something else to do today.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Aly agreed. Her sister did make a lot of sense.

  Aly and Brooke were about to head downstairs for breakfast when their mom poked her head into their room. “Brookie, I heard what you said, and there’s something else you could do this afternoon. How about you girls come with me to look at different new spaces for True Colors?”

  “A new space for True Colors?” Brooke asked, just as Aly said, “And for the Sparkle Spa too?”

  “Yes and yes,” Mom said. “Our current space is too small. I want a salon that can fit at least sixty-five people, not fifty. And I want you girls to be able to fit at least twenty-five people, not sixteen. I talked it over with Dad last night, and this is the answer that makes the most sense. We need to expand.”

  “Wow,” both girls said.

  “I have so many ideas,” Brooke added. “About what we could have at the new Sparkle Spa.”

  But Aly stopped listening. She was already making a list in her head of what they should look for in a new space:

  • A big, big area for True Colors, and a bigger-than-they-had-now area for the Sparkle Spa

  • Within walking distance from school (like TC and SS were now)

  • Windows facing the street (which was good for attracting customers)

  • On the ground floor (for the same reason)

  • Really pretty and bright (because when places were pretty and bright, people liked being inside them)

  Aly thought that was a great list. She would tell Brooke about it later and see if there was anything to add.

  Later that morning, the Auden auditorium was packed for the show. Besides Brooke and Aly’s friends, lots of other kids were there too, along with parents and grandparents.

  Aly was very impressed with the show. It wasn’t the whole Wizard of Oz, just the greatest hits—the songs most everyone knew. The music teacher, Mr. Mehta, explained this before the show started, but the performers had costumes and were singing and dancing. It was pretty awesome.

  “Look at our manicures!” Brooke squealed when the Munchkins came onstage. “Don’t they look wonderful?”

  Aly thought they did. They made the stage look even brighter.

  Of course the girls wanted to stay for the after-the-show celebration, but with their mom waiting for their business date, they hurried off.

  The first place they saw was a former coat store, right next door to the bridal shop where the girls got their dresses for the wedding of their mom’s best friend—and best manicurist!—Joan. There were still some coatracks in there, and signs on the walls advertising “Kids’ Denim Jackets!” and “Womens’ Raincoats!” Aly wasn’t surprised that the coat store had gone out of business, because where the Tanners lived, it was pretty warm all year round. That’s why people always wanted pedicures. The coat store space was big, but Aly wasn’t sure if it was much bigger than the space True Colors was in now.

  “What do you think, Mom?” she asked.

  Mom was walking around the store, talking to the woman who owned the building. She was asking about the plumbing. Aly hadn’t even thought about the plumbing, but they’d need more pedicure sinks, which meant lots of pipes carrying water. Aly added that to the list in her head.

  Good plumbing.

  “Well,” the building owner said, “you’re welcome to renovate, if you’d like, but there’s no plumbing other than in the restroom.”

  “Oh,” Mom said. “I see.”

  She walked back to Aly and Brooke. “I have a feeling this isn’t the right space for us,” she said.

  Aly and Brooke nodded.

  “Not enough windows, anyway,” Brooke said. “We need a brighter space so everyone can see the beautiful nail polish colors.”

  The second place they visited was gorgeous—huge and bright—with windows on two sides, since it was a corner building. It had been a hair salon, so there was plumbing. And it was decorated in white and silver with a Blue Skies trim. It was really pretty, as far as Aly was concerned.<
br />
  “I love this one!” Brooke said as they walked in.

  “It does look promising,” Mom said. While Mom was touring and asking questions, Aly and Brooke headed toward a back corner. There was a window on one side and a wall on the other.

  “If Mom rents this space, do you think we could get a window in the Sparkle Spa?” Brooke asked.

  “Maybe,” Aly said. She thought about how cool that would be. Right now, the Sparkle Spa didn’t have any windows. Just a door that led to the Dumpster behind True Colors.

  “Girls?” Mom said, from the door of the shop. “Let’s go.”

  “What was wrong with that one?” Aly asked. “It seemed perfect.”

  Mom sighed. “It was great, but much too expensive. True Colors is doing well, but not that well. We can’t afford that place.”

  The third location the girls went into wasn’t as small as the first one or as big as the second one. It had windows on one side of the building and it used to be an ice-cream shop. So while it didn’t have the kind of plumbing they needed, it did have some plumbing they could easily make work for the salon, Mom said.

  “We probably won’t get a window here,” Brooke whispered.

  “Probably not,” Aly said. She looked around and tried to figure out where the Sparkle Spa could go. Maybe in the area where the ice-cream freezer was? That was a pretty big space. As long as Mom could figure out a way to make it warm in there.

  Once Mrs. Tanner took another quick walk around, she told the woman who owned the building, “This looks great. I need to run some things by my bank, but I should be able to make an offer soon.”

  “You’d better make it fast,” the woman said. “Because some other people have been looking at this space and have said the same thing. A coffee shop, a cupcakery, and a juice bar. I need all my offers by today at four.”

  Back home, while their mom was on the phone with the bank, the girls wrote a list of everything they wanted in the new Sparkle Spa:

  • Four pedicure chairs (instead of two)

  • Four real manicure stations