My Summer of Pink & Green

by Lisa Greenwald

  Well, I’ll show them. I’ll be busy too, with Yamir and Sunny and Evan. We have plans to go to the beach and we’ll be busy with the Earth Club stuff. Mrs. Deleccio wants us to come in a little over the summer to work on the Going Green school board proposal.

  I try to eavesdrop, but I can’t really hear much.

  “Next time, we’ll need a little more notice,” Grandma says to Claudia, no longer whispering. “This isn’t a hotel, and bringing a boyfriend home is a serious thing.”

  The thing is, Claudia’s not the only one with a boyfriend. I sorta have one too. I mean, yeah, Yamir and I haven’t come out and said it, really. We don’t go around telling the whole world how in love we are or anything.

  But I’m pretty sure he’s my boyfriend. He looks out for me, pays attention to me. We see each other almost every day. It’s in a group, but it’s still seeing a lot of each other. So that’s gotta mean something. I always get excited to see him, and it seems like he gets excited to see me too. That’s really the most important sign of a good relationship, I think.

  Their conversation ends and Claudia and Bean walk over to me. “Wanna go swim, Luce?” Claudia asks. “I’ve been practicing my dives. You’re not even gonna believe my flip.”

  “Liar. You swim in Chicago?”

  “Oh, does she swim!” Bean exclaims. “She’s practically a fish.”

  I don’t want to be happy; I want to stay mad at Bean for being here over the summer. But at this moment, all I can think about is the pool in the backyard and Claudia being home and dumping buckets of ice water on her stomach while she’s sleeping on the lounge chair next to me.

  It’s summer. Claudia’s home. The ground breaking for the spa is happening tomorrow. Even with Bean here, I have to be a little bit happy.

  When Claudia’s around, it’s not just that everything feels better. Everything is better.

  the next day. This always happens to me when I’m really excited about something or really nervous about something. And in this case, it’s both.

  It’s almost seven and no one else is up yet. I can’t believe it. We have to be at the pharmacy by nine. Mayor Danes said to be prompt, and we can’t just run in when all the news crews are there—it would look so unprofessional. Besides, they’re going to want interviews and stuff. I can’t look sweaty and frazzled.

  I walk around upstairs and try to make as much noise as possible—loudly closing the medicine cabinet door, slamming down the toilet seat, flushing a few extra times. Nothing’s working.

  And then I hear creaking on the stairs from the attic to the second floor. And then I remember: Bean. Figures that Bean is the first one up. Now I’m going to have to see him all awkward in the morning in his pajamas with messy hair before he’s brushed his teeth. It’s grossing me out.

  “Good morning, Lucy!” he says, so cheery. And then he does this weird salute thing that I don’t really understand.

  “Good morning,” I mumble, not looking at him.

  “Ready for your big day?”

  I like the fact that he’s calling it my big day, which it kind of is even though it’s everyone’s big day too, but I can’t focus on that because all I’m thinking about is that he hasn’t brushed his teeth yet. I am a brush-your-teeth-as-soon-as-you-get-up kind of person.

  Soon everyone’s getting up, and since I was awake and ready before everyone else, I take it upon myself to make breakfast. I scramble some eggs and fry some French toast and I even put a carton of orange juice in Mom’s fancy pitcher. I want this to feel like a special day since it really, really is.

  “Thanks for breakfast, Luce,” Claudia says after a sip of juice. “So what exactly happens today? I was thinking I’d throw my beach stuff in the car, and Bean and I will probably go there for the afternoon.”

  “You’re going to the beach?” I ask, with my mouth half-full of French toast.

  Claudia makes a disgusted face. “Eww. Don’t talk with your mouth full.” She shakes her head at me like I’ve completely lost all sense. “Yeah, we’re going to the beach. The ground breaking won’t take all day.”

  I finish chewing and then speak. “Claudia, don’t you realize how much work we have to do? This is just the official ground breaking, so construction has already started, but we still need to order everything, hire staff, all of that stuff.” I look over at Bean to see if he’ll agree with me. He’s sipping coffee and reading the newspaper, and I bet he’s not even listening.

  “Relax, Lucy.” Claudia smiles her you’re-insane smile and pulls her chair back from the table.

  A little while later, Mom, Claudia, and Bean are still doing who knows what in the house, so Grandma and I are waiting in the car for them.

  “Lucy, doll,” Grandma says, looking back at me from the front seat. “You know I am so unbelievably grateful for all that you did to help save the pharmacy, right?”

  I nod. She’s told me like a billion times. She’s said over and over again how smart it was for me to apply for that Going Green grant and how entrepreneurial it was of me to start doing the makeovers and to create the Relaxation Room. I don’t know why she’s saying it again now.

  “But here’s the thing, love,” she goes on, and I know that whenever she starts a sentence like that, whatever follows will definitely not be good. “I don’t expect you to totally take care of opening the spa on your own. What do we know about opening a spa? If we’re going to do it right, we need a professional to help us, don’t we?”

  I’m not really sure what she’s getting at. Is she telling me I’m fired? If you’re not an official employee, can you really be fired anyway?

  “You’re still going to be a huge help, though,” Grandma continues. “You’ll be—”

  “Hola, amigos!” Bean yells as he’s getting in the car. “Doris, if you ever want me to drive, just say so. I have a clean driving record. I could be the Desberg chauffeur!”

  I roll my eyes. “You mentioned that yesterday.”

  Grandma cracks up. “Thanks, Bean.”

  “OK, you can be the family driver, but only if you wear a uniform and a hat and call me m’lady,” I add.

  Grandma shoots me a look. “Lucy,” she warns.

  I wish Claudia would hurry up instead of leaving me in the backseat with her dumb boyfriend. He totally interrupted Grandma’s train of thought when she was telling me what I’d actually be doing at the spa, since apparently I’m not “professional” enough to be in charge.

  Finally Mom and Claudia come out. Bean slides over so that he and Claudia can sit next to each other, which works to my advantage because Bean gets stuck in the awful middle seat. Plus, he’s really tall, so the top of his head hits the roof.

  I’m about to laugh when I notice that Claudia and Bean are holding hands, which makes the whole situation no longer funny, just ridiculous. They don’t really need to hold hands right now, when we’re all in the car together.

  “I just got a text from Gary,” Grandma says. Gary’s our investor; he’s known Mom and Grandma forever. “They’ll be able to make it today after all.”

  It’s still really funny to me that my grandma knows how to text. I wonder if all grandmas do, or if she’s just incredibly hip.

  “What? Really?” Mom asks. “Ugh, I needed to prepare for that. Gary’s not a person you just spring on others.”

  “Yeah, not like Bean,” I say sarcastically under my breath and then regret it.

  “Lucy!” Claudia hisses.

  Mom and Grandma are arguing in the front seat about Gary and I don’t need to hear this same conversation for the millionth time. “Why is your name Bean, anyway?” I ask him.

  “Well, my real name is Noah Beanerman, but everyone has always called me Bean.”

  “Even your parents?”

  He laughs. “No, I mean, like my friends and stuff.”

  “Got it.” Am I the only one who notices that he really does look like a string bean, though? He’s so tall and thin. I think about bringing it up, but I’m not s
ure if Claudia would find it funny.

  We get to the pharmacy and there are already a million people there, just like I thought there would be. OK, not exactly a million, but at least fifty or sixty. They’re taking up the whole sidewalk, all the way down to the car wash.

  My stomach starts getting that rumbly feeling and soon everyone’s out of the car and off in a million directions and I don’t even know where to go. It’s my family’s store, and for the first time I feel like I’m lost in it, like I don’t know my way around.

  I know Sunny and Yamir and their parents are coming, so I decide to make finding them my project. I hope that when I find them, Yamir is nice and supportive to me. Sometimes he’s nice, but sometimes he’s weird and aloof and only half-paying attention to me. That makes me wonder if we’re boyfriend and girlfriend or not. It’s not clear-cut like it is with Evan and Sunny or Claudia and Bean.

  With Evan and Sunny, he basically just said he wanted to be her boyfriend one day when they were waiting on line to buy slushies at the movies. And she said OK, and it’s been that way for two months now.

  But with Yamir … nothing. We hang out and we have fun together, and sometimes I think we are boyfriend and girlfriend, but we might not be anything more than friends. It used to be that just being friends was good, and I liked the way things were, but is there something wrong that he doesn’t want to be my boyfriend? Am I missing something?

  Everyone’s standing on the sidewalk in front of the pharmacy. As I’m about to walk in, someone hands me a hard hat, like I’m a real construction worker. This is what happens at ground-breaking ceremonies, so I put it on happily.

  “Oh, Lucy, I’m so glad you’re here!” I hear someone say, and turn around. It’s a tall woman in a white sundress. “I’m Amelia, Mayor Danes’s chief of staff. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” She shakes my hand while staring down at her iPad. “Your whole family is here now?”

  I nod, still in awe of the fact that this woman does all of her work on an iPad. Does that make the clipboard obsolete? I always thought clipboards were so cool. But I have no idea why I am thinking about something as insignificant as clipboards at such an important time.

  Amelia takes her cell phone (an iPhone, obviously) out of her dress pocket. “Phil,” she says into the phone in half a second. I don’t even know how it had time to ring on the other end. “The Desbergs are all here. Let’s get started.”

  I’m still thinking about the fact that this super-important chief of staff woman knew who I was and recognized me, when I see Gary coming into the pharmacy.

  Oh joy. Where’s my mother? I need to warn her. I could say it in code, like “The eagle has landed” or something. She should know what that means.

  “Lucy!” a little pip-squeaky, whiny voice yells, and then I see a short, chubby girl running up to me. One of her socks is higher than the other and she has a huge wet spot in the middle of her T-shirt. “Remember me? Bevin! We spent that whole afternoon having raft races in your pool that time we were eight. Remember?”

  “Yeah. Hi, Bevin.” I smile. “How are you?”

  “I’m grrrreat!” she yells so loud that people turn around to look at us.

  “OK, Lucy, we need you.” Amelia grabs my arm and pulls me away. I wave good-bye to Bevin, but I’m relieved not to have to talk to her anymore.

  Amelia leads me outside and that’s where we find Mom, Grandma, Claudia, and Bean.

  “Hello, Desbergs!” Mayor Dane, says, going down the line shaking each of our hands. “The day is here! Can you believe it?”

  “Well, we began construction a month ago,” Grandma says. “But yes, we appreciate the town’s commitment to our store and this wonderful celebration you guys are having for us.”

  “Of course, Doris.” He smiles in his politiciany way.

  It’s funny because Grandma has known Mayor Danes since he was a little kid. He grew up in Old Mill and went to a school that was around the corner from the pharmacy. It was turned into a supermarket about ten years ago.

  I wonder if it’s hard for Grandma to take Mayor Danes seriously since she remembers when he would get milk mustaches at the pharmacy counter and count out his spare change to see if he had enough money to buy a pack of bubble gum.

  Soon we all have our hard hats on and we’re standing in front of the entrance of the pharmacy with Mayor Danes. There are a few news crews here and writers from the Old Mill Observer and the Connecticut Chronicle.

  There are people standing all around us and when I look into the crowd, I spot Sunny, Yamir, and their parents. Sunny’s waving at me and Yamir is looking down at his phone or his handheld game or something.

  “Thank you all for coming out today for the official ground breaking of the Pink and Green Spa at Old Mill Pharmacy,” Mayor Danes says into his megaphone, and everyone starts clapping. It’s so loud that I wonder if people sitting in the movie theater are able to hear it. But then I remember that it’s only nine thirty in the morning. I don’t think movies ever start that early! “As I’m sure you all know, Old Mill Pharmacy is a local business that embodies community. It is where we go for prescriptions, where we go for advice when every lotion on the market will not help our dry skin.” He pauses and everyone laughs. Who ever thought dry skin could be so funny? “But it is also where we go when we need some advice on anything from meddling mothers-in-law to the best method for making chicken soup. It is where we go for a smile after a hard day or a friendly face after a long winter. It is Old Mill’s home away from home, and we are all so lucky to have it.”

  I look around the crowd again and I recognize so many of the faces—Meredith Ganzi and her mom from the movie theater down the street; Eli from the video store that the spa is expanding into; Mr. Becker and his baby son, Wyatt. Even my makeup client Courtney Adner and her parents came out. And everyone seems so happy to be here. It’s early in the morning on a hot summer day and they’re standing on the sidewalk, and yet they really seem happy.

  “And now this pharmacy will be even more than a pharmacy,” Mayor Danes continues. “It will be a spa. A place for beauty and rest and relaxation. And a green spa! Not only are the Desbergs of Old Mill Pharmacy saving us from life’s pharmaceutical and everyday woes, but they are now saving the environment, too!”

  After that there’s more applause and I look around to see if I can find Mrs. Deleccio. She said she was going to come. After all, it’s her Earth Club that got me into caring about the environment and the research during that club that helped me to find the Going Green grant for local businesses of Old Mill.

  “And who would believe that the person behind all of this expansion and vision was a thirteen-year-old girl with a big heart and even bigger dreams?” Mayor Danes looks at me, and Claudia whispers in my ear, “He is soooo cheesy.”

  She’s right, but she doesn’t have to say it. He’s saying amazing things about me, and I don’t care if they’re cheesy—I like hearing them.

  “Thank you, Lucy, for all you have done, and all you will no doubt continue to do!” Mayor Danes says, and I bet if we weren’t all already standing, people would give me a standing ovation. It just feels like that kind of moment. “So, let’s all go inside, make sure your hard hats are on, and we will continue with the official ground breaking!”

  I hope people don’t mind that the wall between the pharmacy and the video store was already torn down and other walls for the treatment rooms have already been put up. I hope this ground breaking doesn’t feel anticlimactic. We learned that word in English this year, and I think there are a lot of anticlimactic things in life. Come to think of it, Claudia coming home ended up being a little anticlimactic. I was all excited about it, and then … well, it hasn’t been quite what I hoped for. But I guess that’s just the way it is sometimes.

  We all shuffle in and stand near the wall. Mom, Grandma, Claudia, and I are up front, and I’m glad that Bean is toward the back a little bit, because it means he realizes he’s not part of the family. Not yet anyway.


  The wall is mostly torn down and the archway is in the process of being remodeled, but we left a little bit up just for this purpose.

  Mayor Danes hands me a sledgehammer. “Would you like to do the honors, Lucy?”

  I look at Mom, Grandma, and Claudia and they’re all nodding at me.

  In my head I can hear Erica Crane saying something about how this is such a liability and her uncle who’s a lawyer could totally report us or something else about the law and codes that really doesn’t make any sense.

  I quickly scan the crowd for her, but I don’t see her. I’m relieved, even though I didn’t really expect her to come.

  “OK,” I say, and I take the sledgehammer and slam it as hard as I can into that plaster wall. As I’m doing it, I’m imagining everything I’ve been angry about—Yamir acting dumb, Erica Crane being mean in Earth Club, my dad postponing his yearly trip to the United States, Claudia bringing Bean home for the summer. I guess I’m not very strong, because even using all of my strength, my hits don’t do very much damage—barely any plaster falls off, and the hole isn’t even very big—but as I’m hitting, all the anger I’ve been feeling seems to dribble away a little bit. I take one more slam and then put down the sledgehammer. I take a bow and everyone claps.

  “Doris and Jane,” Mayor Danes says, turning to face them. “Would you like to give everyone a little tour of the new space?”

  “Phil,” Grandma says, nudging him in her direction so she can say something to him quietly. “Is this safe? I mean, there’s some loose flooring, a bunch of open wiring, and who knows what else?”

  “It’s OK, Dor,” he says. “We do this all the time.”

  She shrugs.

  “Follow the Desberg ladies!” Mayor Danes yells out to the crowd, and soon everyone’s following us through the half-torn-down wall and the archway into the old Fellini & Friends video store.

  It’s hard to believe that within weeks, Pink & Green will really be open. Customers—brides-to-be, prom goers, bat mitzvah girls—will be coming in for makeup and massages and facials.