by Lisa Siberry
‘I can’t wait to make this shampoo.’ Ivy flipped open a laptop on the kitchen bench and hit play on a Lab Girls video. ‘Dad says if I can get an A in maths or science he’ll let me do art lessons as well as foul, foul violin. Do you think we’ll get an A in science if our shampoo wins the comp?’
‘Definitely,’ I nodded, then gulped, thinking of Faye’s reaction when I told her what I was about to tell Ivy. ‘But, well, I don’t think we can make the shampoo anymore.’
Ivy looked disappointed. ‘Why not?’
I watched Mina and Mai on the laptop screen. I wanted so badly to get on that show and just be, I don’t know, something. For one minute. Something my dad would have been proud of. But I knew I couldn’t make the shampoo without the orange juice. Which meant I had to come up with something else. Fast.
‘I just think we could try something new,’ I said, taking out my green notebook and running though my list of ideas. Compared to Glue Goo, they all looked horrible and amateurish.
‘Oatmeal and mint body cream,’ said Ivy, peering over my shoulder. ‘What does that do?’
‘It doesn’t do anything.’ I thought of Faye laughing at me. ‘It’s a bad idea, no-one wants to cover themselves in porridge.’
‘If you say so.’ Ivy jabbed at the list. ‘Ooo, how about the peanut butter and apple-cider-vinegar hairspray? Sounds delicious. What’s that one do?’
‘Detangles hair.’ I cringed as I said it, and wished Ivy would stop looking at my list. ‘Forget about it, stupid idea.’
‘But it’s perfect!’ Ivy pointed at the knots in her hair.
I sighed. Faye had laughed at my invention ideas. And Zoe would be in hysterics if I showed up at the comp with a bottle of peanut butter and apple-cider-vinegar hairspray. ‘Another time, Ivy, I promise. But right now, we need something better than that.’
Something so incredibly beautiful it’ll cast a spell over everyone, I thought. Something that will win the competition. And make Violet hang out with me again. And best of all – get customers back into Kitty’s.
One beauty product to solve all of my problems. But what?
I felt the weight of the berries in my pocket as I read the last thing on my list. It was Violet’s idea: Super-amazing lip balm.
It’s funny how cartoon characters always get light bulbs over their heads when they have great ideas. My ideas aren’t like that. Mine feel like they’re hidden inside me, as small and shiny as diamonds. I have to dig around for them, but when I find one, it makes my whole head sparkle.
Like lip balm.
I turned the idea over in my mind, wondering if it would work. Ordinary lip balm’s boring, but I had some berries in my pocket, and if they could make Bertie change colour, they might be able to turn boring lip balm into something magical.
Way more magical.
It won’t be the shampoo Faye asked for, I thought. But something’s better than nothing.
I turned to Ivy. ‘What about lip balm?’
She scrunched up her face. ‘How are we going to make that better? I’ve tried fifty million flavours and nothing beats watermelon swirl.’
‘I can make a better lip balm.’ Saying it made me believe it.
Ivy didn’t look convinced. ‘Can I put food colouring and glittery things in it?’
‘Do you have to?’
‘Do you want it to look good?’
I thought about that. Most of my beauty products looked pretty bad. ‘I guess, but glitter’s made of plastic.’
‘Not mine. It’s eco-friendly.’ Ivy unzipped her pencil case and a flood of art materials tumbled out. ‘Colour makes people happy. And glitter is my signature colour.’
Urgh. ‘Fine. But we’ll need other ingredients.’
‘Like these?’ Ivy opened Rosa’s pantry door and I almost dropped my notebook.
The pantry was filled with hundreds of glass bottles of oils, seeds, liquids and herbs. Just looking at them made the sparkly idea in my head glow brighter.
‘We need something to mix it in.’ I dragged a pot onto the stove, next to the other bubbling mixtures. ‘Will your nan mind if we cook the balm in her kitchen? Should we ask first?’
‘She’s having her afternoon nap. And anyway, Rosa’s always trying to get me to cook something. Let’s do this.’ Ivy clapped her fingertips together. ‘What first?’
I started with olive oil, glugging a thick golden stream into the pot. Next, a few scoops of sludgy coconut oil. The berries jumbled around in my pocket as I paced between the pantry and the stove, but Ivy didn’t notice. She was too busy peering into the pot.
‘Do you know what you’re doing?’ she asked.
‘Sort of.’ Honestly, I’d never made lip balm before, but I’d read the backs of all the ones in the salon. ‘Does your nan have any beeswax? Or something sticky to hold it all together?’
‘On it.’ Ivy raced out of the room. A few minutes later she came back holding a pot of Vaseline. ‘Nan rubs this on her feet, and I also hear it’s good for babies’ bums.’
I frowned.
‘Come on, it’s super moisturising.’ Ivy scooped out a handful and held it over the pot.
‘Fine,’ I sighed. It went in with a splat, and Ivy started giggling. I couldn’t help laughing too.
I put down my measuring spoon and opened a jar of honey, letting the whole thing plop into the pot. Ivy tipped in a few splashes of pink lemonade, which made the mixture fizz and bubble. I threw in a block of butter.
Ivy dumped in some cupcake sprinkles.
I tried a few drops of peppermint oil for extra flavour.
By then we were laughing like crazy, and my fingers were tingling. I hadn’t had that much fun for ages.
‘Cinnamon?’ I asked, holding the bottle over the pot.
‘Why not.’ Ivy shook my hand, hard, and it went everywhere. She fell over laughing, then before I could stop her, she tipped half a box of hot chocolate powder into the pot, which made me sneeze, and a huge cloud of it exploded all over us.
We were both covered in guck and breathless from laughing when we finally looked into the pot. It was full of bubbling brown sludge.
‘That is one hot mess,’ panted Ivy.
‘Oh.’ The laughter fizzled out of me. ‘Is that bad?’
‘Are you kidding me? It’s perfect! But it needs the Ivy touch.’ She brought over some food-colouring bottles.
I went to choose one, but Ivy waved my hand away.
‘Don’t just throw them in,’ she said. ‘If you do it’ll turn brown. You have to mix primary colours, then you get something really pretty.’
I watched her drip in yellow and blue until the mixture turned bright green, like a glass bottle in the sunshine. Next, she sprinkled green eco-glitter into the pot. The mixture bubbled away, filling the kitchen with the heavenly scent of honey and chocolate and peppermint.
‘See?’ Ivy stood back.
Glitter and food colouring weren’t my thing, but I had to admit she’d made it look better.
‘Now we just pour it into something big.’ Ivy rummaged around in a drawer and pulled out a cake tin. ‘Want to do the honours?’
I took the tin and got ready to pour the hot lip balm in to set. But as Ivy turned away to wash her hands, I remembered the berries in my pocket. I’d had so much fun, I’d almost forgotten I was there for a reason.
I slipped the vine out of my pocket and dangled the five black berries over the pot. They didn’t look like little monsters to me. And I didn’t know what was scarier: Rosa finding out I’d stolen a few berries, or failing Operation Beauty Miracle with a boring lip balm that would never get customers back into Kitty’s.
I hesitated, wondering if I should tell Ivy.
She’ll say no, my brain yelled at me. We promised Rosa we wouldn’t touch the plants in the back of the garden. Just do it. Make it better.
The berries dangled over the bubbling lip balm.
Ivy would never understand how much my family needed this. So I did it. I picked the berries of
f the vine, squished them between my fingers, and threw them in. The lip balm bubbled and slopped against the sides of the pot, and a faint hiss of black steam rose off the surface.
I checked over my shoulder. Ivy was busy wiping hot chocolate powder off her apron, so on a new page of my notebook I wrote Lip Balm, then scribbled down all the ingredients, including the most important one: Rosa’s berries. Quietly, I slipped the notebook into my bag before Ivy could see.
Ten minutes later, the shimmery green gloop was cooling in a cake tin, we’d wiped the kitchen clean, and Ivy had drawn a picture of me on the big toe of her right sneaker.
‘We did it,’ she said. ‘Or more like, we made it. I think we make a good team.’
I nodded. ‘I should go. Do you mind if I take the balm home with me? I’ll let it set overnight, and we can test the results tomorrow.’
‘Sure.’ Ivy looked excited, and I was too. Everything was riding on this lip balm. I just hoped it was as good as the shampoo.
‘Ivy, have you started practice yet?’ There was the sound of footsteps and Ivy’s mother walked into the kitchen. She had dark hair like Ivy’s, except it was pulled back into a severe ponytail. ‘Hello, you must be Lily.’ She gave me a tight smile, then raised her eyebrows at Ivy. ‘Remember what we talked about?’
‘Yes, Mama.’ Ivy picked up her violin. All the excitement from our lip balm experiment leaked out of her like air out of a balloon.
Ivy’s mum swept out of the room, calling out over her shoulder, ‘I keep telling you, Ivy, if you want to be a musician you have to practise, practise, practise.’
‘And what if I don’t want to be a musician?’ said Ivy under her breath.
She waved her violin bow at me as I headed down the hall with the lip balm. The screech of her violin followed me outside, and for a moment I wondered if I should have left the berries out of the balm. Ivy and I had had fun, and I’d lied to her. Well, not exactly lied. I just hadn’t told her the whole truth.
Stop worrying, I told myself. They’re only berries.
It was true.
So why did I feel so bad?
I walked home in slow motion because a) I didn’t want to spill the lip balm and b) I was thinking, thinking, thinking.
Deep down, I was worried the lip balm wouldn’t work, and Faye would be furious, and I’d fail Operation Beauty Miracle, and then what? The answer bubbled up in my head: Mum will meet the real-estate agent on Monday and sell the salon.
I tried to imagine losing Kitty’s and the apartment. No more bottles, or Mrs D, or tinkling front doorbells. No more purple aprons, or names written on walls, or glowing flower mobiles. We’d have to move into a house with white walls and a bedroom with a blank ceiling, and Dad would disappear forever.
Gone.
I clutched the cake tin tighter.
How is one batch of lip balm going to change anything?
I had no idea. And if there’s one thing I hate, it’s having no ideas. I shoved the salon door open and braced myself for the usual sad silence. But instead, I heard … laughter.
I blinked. My head cleared.
It was like the salon had shuddered to life, and there were people in there. Actual real-life customers. Four of Faye’s friends sat in the salon chairs, while over in the manicure corner, eight more flicked through the nail polish bottles. And presiding over it all was my sister in her purple apron, counting money (money!) into the till, her hair Glue-Gooed into a dramatic side-flip.
I stood there gaping.
‘Is this high enough for you, Zara?’ Mum was dabbing at a girl’s glowing mohawk.
Zara beamed. The girl next to her had locks as flat as a pancake. Another was admiring the teetering cone on her head. And I think the last girl was a Star Wars fan because she had two giant buns looped over her ears, sticking there without a single elastic or bobby pin.
‘There’s my beautiful girl,’ Mum waved at me in the mirror. She had shampoo spattered all over her purple apron, and her cheeks were blazing pink, but she looked so happy. ‘What do you think, honey?’
‘It’s …’ I tried to think of the right word. ‘Busy?’
‘And beautiful,’ said Faye, sniffing a fifty-dollar bill.
The cake tin trembled in my hands and something new bubbled up inside me. A sort of squishy pride. My shampoo did all of this.
I made something good. I made something better.
‘Lily, get over here.’ Faye curled an orange nail at me.
I shuffled over, trying not to spill the balm. ‘The plan’s working,’ I whispered.
‘I told you it would.’ Faye slammed the register shut and flicked her hair. It was so stiff, the whole thing quivered and a tiny section snapped off, floating onto the salon desk. Faye didn’t notice. She was making a yuck-face at my cake tin. ‘What’s that?’
‘It’s my school invention project, and hopefully our, um, next beauty product.’ I picked up the little piece of hair, but it dissolved in my fingers. It looked like … Dirt? Did Faye’s hair just turn into dirt? I checked the rest of her hair. It looked normal. If you called a rock-hard side-flip normal.
‘Lily, I told you to make shampoo, not green sludge.’ Faye frowned at the cake tin.
‘It’s not sludge, it’s …’ I took a deep breath. ‘Lip balm.’
‘Lip balm?’ My sister’s voice dropped to an angry whisper. ‘We’ve officially run out of Glue Goo, and you go and make LIP BALM?’
I glanced at the shampoo bottle. It was empty. Mum must have used it all.
‘Lily, what part of Operation Beauty Miracle didn’t you understand?’ hissed Faye. ‘Without Glue Goo, we’re back to nothing.’ She pointed at tomorrow’s appointment list. There was just one booking – Miss Sparrow, for a manicure. ‘We have to show Mum we can turn this place around for good, not just one day. Which means you’ – she jabbed me in the collarbone – ‘have to make more Glue Goo, or we may as well turn the salon sign to “closed” right now.’
No. I gripped the tin and hurried through the buzzing salon towards the beaded curtain.
Faye followed. ‘And how hard is it anyway?!’ she shouted as we thumped up the stairs to our bedroom. ‘You said there were only three ingredients in that shampoo.’
‘I couldn’t find the right oranges.’ I remembered the dark shadows at the back of Rosa’s garden. I couldn’t tell Faye about the garden. She’d be over that wall in seconds, stealing whatever she could get her hands on. Rosa had said not to take anything from the back of the garden. And I hadn’t.
Bertie had. Technically.
‘Then forget the oranges and put something else in it,’ insisted Faye. ‘Apple juice, sardines, soy sauce, whatever other goop you use. Just make the shampoo, Lily! Not slime cake!’
I dumped the cake tin on my desk and looked out the bedroom window. A soft, blueish haze was falling over our yard, and the back wall winked at me through the darkening mulberry leaves. I thought of all those monstrous flowers growing on the other side. ‘I’m trying, Faye.’
‘Well, try harder. Which reminds me, you need to see something.’ Faye dragged me out into the hall and stopped in front of the linen cupboard. She fumbled around on the top shelf. Downstairs, the salon was still humming, but when Faye pulled down a bundle of purple fabric everything around me seemed to stop.
She was holding a brand-new purple apron.
‘Mum’s been saving this for you.’
I ran my hand over the crisp fabric in disbelief. ‘Me? Mum’s going to give me an apron?’
‘Soon,’ nodded Faye. ‘I got mine when I mastered a triple-coat gel manicure. I think Mum’s just waiting to see what you’re good at, then she’ll give you this.’
I traced around the apron pocket. It didn’t have any gold embroidery on it yet, but one day it would have my job title on it.
Junior Beauty Assistant?
My heart thudded in my ears. I desperately wanted to try it on, but Faye had already returned the apron to the cupboard and was dragging me
back to the bedroom.
‘If you make more Glue Goo, it’s only a matter of time before you get that apron,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘But if we fail Operation Beauty Miracle and Mum sells the salon, there won’t be any aprons, Lily. There’ll be nothing left. Game over.’
She marched over to the lip balm tin and dunked her finger in it. ‘So, no pressure or anything, but if you can’t make more Glue Goo, your apron and our future basically depend on this.’ The goop dripped down her finger.
‘Oh.’
‘Yeah.’ Faye sighed. Maybe she felt sorry for me because she added, ‘At least it looks better than your usual brown muck.’
‘Thanks.’ I took the compliment, even though the green food colouring and the eco-glitter were both Ivy’s ideas.
‘And the consistency’s good.’ Faye rubbed the balm over her lips. ‘But …’
I waited for something amazing to happen.
Nothing.
‘It’s boring old lip balm. And I can’t sell boring.’ Faye put the cake tin on the floor. ‘Crunch!’
Right on cue, Crunch sauntered into the bedroom and I felt numb with disappointment. My invention was cat food – again – but even Crunch wasn’t interested. He gave it one sniff and scampered away.
‘Harsh critic.’ Faye frowned and a flash of colour rippled across her mouth.
I looked at the green lip balm, then back at Faye’s lips. They were morphing from a natural pink to an odd shade of yellow. ‘Um, Faye?’
‘I don’t know what I was thinking,’ she muttered. ‘Asking you to make shampoo for the salon. We really are desperate.’ Her lips changed from yellow to purple.
I leaned in to get a better look. ‘Whoa.’
‘Whoa what?’ Faye put her hands on her lips, and they transformed into a turquoise blue. Like Bertie.
‘The berries.’ The words slipped out of my mouth.
Confused, Faye looked in the mirror and shrieked when she saw her bright blue lips. The blue turned into a deep shade of black. It was like her lips were changing colour with her … thoughts?
‘Lily, what’s happening?!’ Faye shouted. Sure enough, her lips changed again, blooming into a bright, fire-engine red.