by Lisa Siberry
I couldn’t help but smile.
‘There’s just one problem.’
‘What?’
‘We only have one bottle. So get your laundry detergent and coconut juice and orange whatevers on standby, because you’ll need to make more soon.’
More? My smile faded, and as the minutes ticked by and Faye’s breathing eventually turned into snores, questions started circling in my head.
What if I can’t make more? What if it was just a lucky fluke? What if I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing?
I swished my curtains aside. The moonlight tumbled through the window onto my open notebook, illuminating the three shampoo ingredients. One of them must have turned my shampoo into hair glue. But which one?
There was no way I could sleep, so I yanked on my slippers, snapped on my clip-on toe-lights (another Dad invention) and padded out to the kitchen. Mum was in bed, which meant I had to be extra quiet as I picked through the recycling. When I found the empty coconut milk cans I gave them a sniff. Stinky, but normal. Same with the dishwashing detergent.
That just left the orange.
It only took a few seconds to scale down the fire escape, and soon I was scrambling up our giant mulberry tree, with my slipper lights guiding the way. I pulled myself high up into the branches until I got to the top of the back wall. Being extra careful not to slip, I crept out onto the ledge and pushed through the mulberry leaves until I reached the dark outline of the orange tree poking up from Rosa’s side. It was dead still. A sliver of moonlight illuminated the spiky leaves, but no matter how hard I stared into those gnarly old branches, I couldn’t see any oranges growing on Rosa’s tree.
It’s Ivy’s tree too, I reminded myself.
I shook the thought away and reached for my slipper lights, thinking I could search the tree for more oranges. But a strange sound drifted up from the other side of the wall and I froze. It sounded like muttering. I switched off my lights and peeked through the leaves into the garden.
It was a huge wilderness, and something about it twinkled and rustled. I leaned out further, trying to get a better look in the darkness. Directly below, the ground glowed with tiny pinpricks of purple light, and dark plants crouched like sleeping animals. In the distance, water bubbled. Then I heard the muttering again – and it was coming closer.
I held my breath, wondering if it might be Ivy, but suddenly there was a rustle and the outline of a hunched woman appeared in the weak moonlight. She had a braid coiled on top of her head, and she was mumbling non-stop, like she was talking to … the plants?
I gripped the wall in fright, but something tickled my hand, and when I looked down, a vine was slithering one of its dark tendrils towards me and curling itself around my finger.
I yelped, flicking the horrible thing away and grabbing the orange tree to steady myself. Big mistake. The tree started shaking and shivering, and the old woman snapped her head up in my direction. My heart exploded with panic as I leapt off the wall and sprinted through the weeds, a deep shiver running through me the whole way back to my bedroom.
Either my eyes were playing tricks on me, or there was something very strange growing in that garden.
Eventually I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew, the morning sunshine was burning my eyes and Faye was shouting at me from downstairs because I was late for salon set-up. I slumped out into the kitchen, made myself some tea and toast, and swept the breadcrumbs down the kit-chute – that’s the tube in the kitchen bench that funnels scraps down to Crunch’s food bowl. Dad invention.
While I ate, I gave the fridge a once-over. As always, it was covered in yellow Post-it Notes. Mum’s positive thoughts of the week. There was a new one above the freezer handle: When life gives you lemons, make lemonade!!
I liked that. Although if life gave me lemons, I’d make a lemon juice and mashed-banana face mask for Mum. Or a lemon and olive-oil anti-dandruff shampoo for Faye. I was wondering if I should add that to the Post-it Note when Mum poked her head out of the bathroom.
‘Morning, sleepyhead. How’s my little shampoo inventor?’
‘Inventor?’ I thought I was hearing things until I remembered the Glue Goo and it all came rushing back: Faye’s hair, the orange tree, the vine wrapping around my finger. I gulped down the rest of my tea and told myself the vine must have been a trick of the moonlight. ‘Did you really like the shampoo, Mum? Honestly?’
‘I’m still not crazy about the dishwashing detergent.’ Mum thoughtfully screwed a heel into the sole of her purple ballet flat. ‘But I do love that you were being creative and trying to help. Your father did the same thing, you know. Tinkered, experimented, tried to make things better any way he could.’
‘Like those?’ I pointed at Mum’s screw-in high heels – another Dad invention – and we both giggled.
‘Your dad would be proud of you, Lily. But remember, it’s just one bottle of shampoo.’ Mum glanced at the calendar on the wall, which had a star beside next Monday.
The day of the invention competition.
‘Let’s not get too excited, understand?’ said Mum.
‘I’ll try, but you know what Faye’s like with a new beauty product.’
‘Oh, that reminds me.’ Mum held up a bottle of purple nail polish. ‘I found Violet’s favourite shade – Purple Rain. Tell her I’ll do her nails next time she’s in?’
I dumped the rest of my toast in Crunch’s bowl and headed for the stairs. ‘Violet’s been kind of busy lately.’
Mum gave me a long look. ‘Hey, I love you!’ she called out behind me. ‘And remember …’
‘Today’s going to be a beautiful day!’ I shouted back.
Mum’s laugh followed me down into the salon, where the clock was ticking over to eight-thirty and, right on cue, Violet walked past the window. I waved, but her face was glued to her phone.
I wondered if I should run after her.
‘Morning, frizzball.’ A frothy mountain of Ocean Mist Curl-Defining Mousse landed on my head, and before I knew it, Faye was scrunching my curls and Violet was gone and I was getting another morning makeover. I looked like I had cream pie in my hair, and Faye had Glue-Gooed hers into a giant bun with squiggles cascading around her ears. She looked like a jellyfish. But still, I felt a little splash of pride because, jellyfish or not, she was using my shampoo.
‘Nice hair.’ I winced as my sister yanked my head backwards.
‘Big day, got to look our beautiful best.’ Faye kept scrunching. ‘Scarlet, Zara and half my class messaged me. They’re coming over for a Glue Goo treatment after school. I told you that video would work and, as always, I was right.’
I craned my neck sideways to check the appointment book. There were twelve appointments lined up back-to-back all afternoon.
Twelve appointments! I couldn’t remember the last time we’d had so many customers in one day. I did the calculations: twelve wash/styles at sixty dollars each equalled … seven hundred and twenty dollars?
I wobbled with happiness, then coughed. Something smelt bad, and it wasn’t just the Ocean Mist mousse. It was musk.
While Faye droned on and on about my dirty sneakers and wrinkled shirt, I sniffed the air. Definitely musk. And there was a thin stack of papers hanging through the mail slot in the salon door, with a golden business card and a handwritten note clipped to the front.
I tugged my hair free and grabbed the papers.
‘What’s that?’ Faye put down the mousse.
I read the note out loud.
Dear Kitty,
As discussed, I have an anonymous buyer who is very keen to purchase your apartment and salon. Please sign the attached contract by Monday so we can proceed with the sale of Kitty’s Beauty Parlour. Sincerely, Sylvester Sebold
Turning Bricks into Gold!
The sale of Kitty’s Beauty Parlour?
I read the words over and over, but they kept adding up to the same terrible thing. ‘Mum’s selling the apartment.’ I swallowed hard. �
�And the salon.’
‘Impossible.’ Faye snatched the papers off me. They made a soft fluttering sound in her shaking hands as she read the note. ‘This has to be a mistake. Mum would have told us if she was selling. She would have told us, right?’ Faye glared at me like this was my fault.
I shrank back. All I could think about was the star on the calendar upstairs. Mum was planning on signing these papers on Monday. She was going to give our whole life away in less than a week.
‘I can’t believe she’s doing this!’ Faye’s disbelief was turning into anger. Even the blush on her cheeks was getting brighter, like little red stop signs. ‘I tell her all of my amazing business ideas, but do you think she listens? No. She just throws away the family business, without even telling us.’
‘It’s not just our business, Faye. It’s our home too.’ I slumped into a chair and stared at Dad’s old height chart near the washbasin. All I could think about were the pen marks etched into the wallpaper, and the word Lily written next to the last little line. Can you take a piece of wall with you when you move? Or would someone just paint over it like Dad never existed?
My chest was hurting. I breathed in, then out. The hurt wouldn’t go away.
‘This salon was supposed to be ours one day, Lily.’ Faye’s voice droned back into focus. ‘I was born to run this business. And Be the Boss says you should never give up on your business dreams.’
I watched Faye’s face. She was getting that look. The same scary look she gets when she’s about to give me a makeover.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
‘I am being the boss.’ My sister threw the papers in the washbasin, tipped an entire bottle of nail polish remover on them, then took a box of matches off the shelf.
‘No,’ I whispered.
‘Yes.’ Faye lit the match and tossed it into the basin. The papers burst into flames, throwing a bright orange glow across her determined face. ‘Nice try, Mr Sebold,’ she said as the flames died and she washed the ashes down the sink. ‘But the Green Girls aren’t selling.’
Oh, boy. I could hear Mum clacking around upstairs in her screw-in heels. ‘What do we do now?’
‘We commence Operation Beauty Miracle.’
‘Operation … what?’
‘Keep up, Lily. We can hold off this real-estate agent for a bit longer, but he’ll be back, which means we have exactly’ – she counted on her fingers – ‘six days to get customers back in here and convince Mum not to sell.’
‘Six days?’
Faye nodded. ‘Six days to make Kitty’s beautiful again.’
It sounded impossible. ‘How do we do that?’
‘Like I said, Operation Beauty Miracle.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Customers in seats and money in the till. It’s Be the Boss business basics.’
I frowned. Why hadn’t Mum told us things were so bad? Couldn’t we just try harder to make things better? But then I remembered the dark circles under her eyes, and all the Post-it Notes on the fridge, and the endless hours she spent in the back office, and I realised Mum was just trying to protect us from all of this. She was barely keeping things together, but she still managed to smile and say that today would be a beautiful day. That was so Mum, and it just made everything hurt more.
I should have helped more in the salon, I thought. I should have learnt how to paint a stupid manicure.
‘Lily, are you listening?’ asked Faye.
‘Yes. Listening. Operation Beauty Miracle.’ I blinked. Don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry. ‘But I’m twelve, you’re sixteen – there’s nothing we can do.’
‘Not true. When you want something, you have to make it happen. Now, think about it, one bottle of Glue Goo got us twelve appointments, correct?’
‘Correct.’
‘So imagine if we had ten bottles. Or a hundred. Or a thousand.’
‘A thousand?’ I squeaked.
‘You get the idea.’ Faye rested her hands on my shoulders. They felt heavy and important. And for once she wasn’t messing with my hair or forcing me to clean the salon. She was looking right at me. ‘Lily, I don’t care how you do it, but you have to make more of that shampoo. TODAY.’
More shampoo. Today.
But how? I walked to school in a daze, thinking it over until my head hurt. I knew I could get more coconut milk at the corner store. And we had a two-litre bottle of dishwashing detergent under the kitchen sink. But the orange juice? I kept thinking about that shivering orange tree. Something told me Glue Goo’s secret ingredient wasn’t in a can or a bottle – it had to be the orange.
Which meant one thing: I needed to get into that garden to find more oranges.
Easier said than done, I thought with a shudder. I definitely didn’t want to climb that wall to search Rosa’s tree again. And taking things without asking didn’t feel right.
So find another way, I told myself.
I turned the corner, deep in thought. Up ahead, Ivy was walking to school with the blue budgie on her head. The bird squawked, and the beginnings of an idea started to sparkle inside me.
Another way.
It might work … I just hoped Ivy liked shampoo.
I waited until the last class of the day – art class. Luckily I got a seat right next to Ivy, but we couldn’t talk straight away because Miss Birchgrove was in a bad mood and made everyone draw a vase of half-dead tulips while she read a romance novel behind her desk.
I snuck a look at Ivy. She was doing a really good sketch with her glitter pens. That day, she was wearing a stack of green bracelets and rainbow parrot earrings with little green tassels. Her hair was even crazier than mine, with a huge knot sticking out over her right ear.
Faye would go into a makeover meltdown if she saw Ivy.
‘Um, Ivy?’ I whispered. ‘I think I might have an idea for the invention competition.’
Ivy looked up in surprise and her earrings made a soft tinkle. ‘Are you talking to me?’ She checked over her shoulder like there was someone behind her.
‘Er, yes, we’re partners for the comp, remember?’ I said.
Ivy blinked her huge brown eyes. They were the colour of Chocolate Pop nail polish. ‘Sorry. Automatic new-girl reaction. Not many people talk to me.’
She smiled and flicked her eyes to the other side of the table, where Bella, Saanvi and Zoe were busy gossiping. Violet was sitting with them too. She was next to Zoe (again), and staring at her phone (as usual), and she even had dabs of silver eye shadow on the outer edges of her eyes – exactly like Zoe.
I felt a tight squeeze in my chest, but ignored it. I had to stay focused.
I turned back to Ivy and opened my green notebook. ‘Like I said, I have this idea –’
‘Wait, it’s not a robot, is it?’ Ivy looked worried. ‘Robots are scary.’
‘Nope, no robots. I was thinking more like …’ I tapped the Glue Goo recipe. ‘Shampoo.’
‘Shampoo?’
‘Sure, I made it yesterday, but it’s sort of, um, special.’ I knew how dumb that sounded, and I guess Zoe knew it too, because she laughed.
‘Shampoo? Pur-lease.’ Zoe leaned over to get a look at my notebook and I slammed it shut. ‘Take my advice, Green – boring old shampoo won’t cut it for the comp,’ she sneered.
‘I think it’s a good idea,’ shrugged Ivy.
‘Yeah, if you want to lose.’ Zoe smugly pushed her glasses up her nose. ‘Violet and I are working on something that’s going to blow your shampoo to bits.’
‘We are?’ Violet looked up from her phone. We weren’t supposed to use phones in class, but Violet had hers under the table.
‘Yes. We are.’ Zoe shot Violet a look that could have cut through metal. ‘We’re totally going to get on TV with the Lab Girls. Unlike pukey peppermint over here.’
I had a horrible memory of last Christmas. Instead of bringing in candy canes, I made peppermint-gingerbread perfume sticks for my class. But it was such a hot day, they melted in everyone�
��s pockets, and we all ended up with giant peppermint-oil stains on our butts.
Of course Zoe showed up the next day with thirty bottles of frangipani perfume in perfect glass bottles tied with perfect silver ribbons.
Zoe always wins. Always.
‘Anyway, as I was saying …’ Zoe turned back to the other girls like Ivy and I didn’t exist. ‘I’ve been helping Mother develop this new expanding hair mousse at BeautyGlow. It’s got silver pufferfish venom in it, so when you add water, it makes your hair expand to ten times its size.’
Ivy made a face at me and muttered, ‘Hair that’s ten times bigger? I think Zoe’s head is big enough already.’
A laugh slipped out of me, and Miss Birchgrove gave us a warning look. Ivy and I went back to our drawings.
‘Oh, you know what else your mum should make?’ Violet said to Zoe.
My ears perked up.
‘A fun new shade of lip balm! That would make a great video with serious user appeal.’ (User appeal?) ‘Getting views is all about original high-quality content.’ (Original what?)
Violet and Zoe nodded in unison and I pressed my pencil down so hard the tip snapped. What was Violet doing? In the five years she’d spent hanging out under the salon desk with me, she was never interested in makeup. Or dumb videos. Sure, one time we melted crayons into empty lipstick tubes and tricked Faye into thinking it was real lipstick. And occasionally Mum would paint Violet’s nails purple. The rest of the time we just watched the salon TV and chewed through the customer gumballs so we could add to our fossilised gum collection.
But ever since drama camp, it was all makeup and videos, and for a horrible second I wondered if Violet liked Zoe because she had a nicer salon and better beauty products than Kitty’s.
Violet wouldn’t be that shallow, I told myself. Would she?
‘No. Way.’ Violet checked her phone.
Bella and Saanvi leaned in to get a look.
‘Un. Real!’ hissed Saanvi.
‘What? Show me.’ Zoe snatched the phone off Violet and everyone went quiet.
Probably another stupid makeup video, I thought, drawing a wonky petal. Ivy had finished her drawing. She was seriously good. She’d done shadows and everything.