Bad News Nails Read online

  “And about the soccer party this weekend . . . ,” Suzy started.

  “Yeah, we have to get decorations,” Brooke said. “I was thinking sparkly streamers with paper soccer balls hanging off of them.”

  “Where are you going to get paper soccer balls?” Suzy asked, filing a third grader’s nails.

  “I’ll draw them,” Brooke told her. She turned on the warm water to fill a pedicure basin for her next appointment, a sixth grader named Uma.

  “Brooke’s a really good artist,” Charlotte said.

  “Well, it won’t look professional,” Suzy said, “no matter how good an artist she is. I’m just saying.”

  Aly tucked her hair behind her ears. She didn’t like to admit it, but Suzy Davis was right about a lot of things. As far as Aly was concerned, though, since Brooke was a good artist, who really cared if her soccer balls looked professional or not?

  Hannah Goodman, a fourth grader from Auden, walked in. Aly sat down at the second manicure station to do her nails.

  “Is there a Color of the Week?” Hannah asked.

  “It’s Orange You Happy,” Brooke said.

  “That’s another thing,” Suzy said. “What’s the point of the Color of the Week? Does anyone actually care?”

  Charlotte opened her mouth, but she ended up throwing her arms in the air and shaking her head.

  Aly didn’t know how Suzy did it, but now she was making customers feel bad about liking the Color of the Week.

  Suzy was just about done with her first manicure when Anjuli, the goalie for the soccer team, walked in and took Power to the Sparkle off the display wall. Charlotte pointed her toward Suzy.

  “I just need a touch-up,” she said. “My index finger is chipped, and I want to make sure I have as much sparkle power as possible for the state championship tomorrow.”

  Suzy checked Anjuli’s nails. “I can just redo them all,” she said. “So it’s fresh.”

  “Okay,” Anjuli said. “I have time.”

  While Suzy removed Anjuli’s old polish, Anjuli said, “I’m really excited about the spa party on Sunday. Have you come up with a cool surprise yet?”

  “We did,” Aly said.

  “But we’re keeping it a secret,” Brooke added.

  “Even from me?” Charlotte asked as she looked over the schedule.

  “We’ll tell you later, Char,” Aly said. “We don’t want to give away the surprise.”

  “What about me?” Suzy asked. “I work here too now, you know.”

  Aly hesitated. She didn’t want to tell Suzy anything she didn’t have to. And what if she made fun of their idea?

  “You’re only here one more day,” Brooke reminded her.

  For once, Suzy didn’t have a reply. But that only lasted a moment. “Anjuli, don’t you think it should be a pool party?” She took the last bit of polish off Anjuli’s pinkie.

  Anjuli shrugged. “Pool parties are fun.”

  “No, they’re not,” Brooke huffed.

  Did Suzy just smile? Aly asked herself. She wasn’t sure why, but it made her a little nervous.

  “Yes, they are,” Suzy said. Then she screeched, “Oops! I got polish on my leg.”

  “You can get it off with some remover,” Aly said. “It’s a good thing it was your leg and not your shorts.”

  “Actually,” Suzy said, “I think I can turn it into a flower.”

  Anjuli watched as Suzy made petals and a stem with nail polish on her leg.

  “That’s pretty cool,” Anjuli said. “Can you make me one too? Maybe on my arm?”

  “Sure,” Suzy said. “It’s easy.”

  “Wait,” Aly said. “I’m not sure if that’s allowed. I should ask my mom first.”

  “Isn’t this your salon?” Suzy asked.

  Aly looked at Brooke. Brooke looked at Aly.

  “Fine,” Brooke said. “It’s our salon. And we say it’s okay to paint on people with nail polish.”

  After Anjuli, Suzy polished a Red Between the Lines heart on Parker Reed’s wrist, two Lemon Aid stars on Laurel Forte’s left ankle, and an All That Glitters moon on Heidi Yeh’s knee. She was just about to paint a butterfly on Karina Montoya’s upper arm when Mrs. Tanner came through the door.

  “Hi, girls,” she said. But then she stopped in her tracks when she saw Suzy holding Karina’s arm. “Aly and Brooke, may I see you in True Colors, please?”

  The girls quickly followed their mother out the door.

  “What’s going on in there?” she asked quietly. “Nail polish is not meant to be painted on skin. And more than that, it’s a waste of money to use nail polish for that purpose. If you want to add body art to your salon, let’s talk about the products that are made for that reason.”

  Aly was staring at the wood grains on the floor. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Aly?” Mom said, lifting her daughter’s chin up with her finger.

  “We won’t do it again,” Aly said, a little louder.

  “It wasn’t even our fault!” Brooke complained, pushing her glasses up her nose. “And Aly wanted to ask you, she even said—”

  Aly gave Brooke a Secret Sister Eye Message: Shhh.

  In the end, she and Brooke were in charge of the salon and had to take responsibility for everything that happened there.

  “Hmm?” Mom prompted. “She said what?”

  “It’s nothing, Mom. You’re right,” Aly said. “We should have known better. When we’re home later, we can talk about body art.”

  “Okay,” Mom said, smoothing Brooke’s hair back. “Make sure those girls take the polish off their skin before they leave. I don’t want them walking out of here like that.”

  Once Mom left, Brooke turned to Aly and whispered, “Now Suzy even got us in trouble!”

  As they walked back into the Sparkle Spa, Aly felt pretty sure that they’d gotten themselves in trouble. Suzy Davis had just helped.

  Once the afternoon rush was over, Brooke started putting the polish bottles back on the display and Lily counted the donations before she left for the day.

  “So, for my internship,” Suzy said while she puffed up the floor pillows, “I’m curious: What do you ask each customer who wants their nails done—what information do you get?”

  Aly was surprised at Suzy’s interest, but maybe she was trying to make up for the way she’d been acting all week. Charlotte looked surprised too. “Well,” she answered, “we get their name, what services they want, what time they want to come, and their phone number—in case we have to cancel or change their appointment.”

  “And where do you store the old schedules once they’re done?”

  “In that drawer,” Charlotte told her, pointing to one at the bottom of the desk. “We like to see how many new people we get each week. One day, when it’s not so busy, I’m going to make a list of all of our clients.”

  “That’s a good plan,” Suzy said.

  Aly started to grow suspicious. This was the first time since Suzy began her internship that she’d said something positive about the salon.

  An alarm beeped on Charlotte’s watch. “I have to go,” she said. “My mom will be outside soon. We have to pick up Caleb at karate and can’t be late.” Charlotte hugged Aly good-bye.

  “I’ll call you later, about the soccer surprise,” Aly whispered in her ear.

  Sparkly whined in his corner.

  “I think he needs to go out,” Brooke said, petting his head.

  “Want to come with us to walk him?” Aly asked Suzy, secretly hoping that she’d just go home.

  “My babysitter’s coming to pick me up in five minutes, so I should probably stay. But I’ll see you on Sunday.”

  “Okay,” Aly said. “See you on Sunday.”

  Brooke clipped Sparkly’s leash on his collar, and they led him outside.

  “Was Suzy being extra weird just now?” Brooke asked.

  “I know. She has to be up to something, but what could it be? I don’t know what to think about her,” Aly answ
ered.

  “At least her internship is up after the weekend. Then she’ll be gone for good,” Brooke said.

  Sparkly raced ahead, and Aly and Brooke had to run to keep up with him.

  “She’ll never be gone for good,” Aly said. “She goes to Auden. She’ll be with us forever.”

  eight

  Yellow Giggles

  When Aly and Brooke returned from walking Sparkly, Suzy Davis was gone. But before she’d left, Suzy had made some changes to the Sparkle Spa. She’d rearranged the furniture so that the jewelry-making area was now about two feet farther to the left, which created more space between the manicure stations. In that space, she’d moved the desk chair and put ten different nail polish colors on it.

  “What is that?” Brooke asked. “And what happened to our waiting area?”

  “This has Suzy Davis written all over it,” Aly replied as she started gathering their things together to leave for the evening.

  Brooke marched over and put everything back where it belonged. “I can’t believe her!”

  “You know,” Aly said, “I bet Suzy would actually be good at being in charge somewhere. She’s just not very good at not being in charge.”

  “We’ve got more important things to worry about,” Brooke answered. “Getting everything ready for the soccer party and getting a camera for our photo shoots.”

  Finding a Polaroid camera wasn’t as easy as Aly had thought it would be. The local camera store didn’t carry them, and it was way too late to order one online. Plus, Polaroid cameras—and their film—were expensive. More than the thirty-seven dollars and fifty-nine cents Lily had counted in the strawberry donation jar that afternoon.

  Brooke hadn’t come up with one of her creative solutions to this problem yet, so at dinner that night, she barely touched her meal.

  “What’s wrong, Brooke?” Dad asked. “Chicken and rice is one of your favorites.”

  Aly answered for her. “We need a camera for Sunday’s Sparkle Spa soccer party. Not only haven’t we found one, but even if we did, we wouldn’t have enough money to buy it,” Aly told their parents. “And that was going to be our big surprise—a Polaroid photo shoot. Now we have to come up with a whole new idea all over again.”

  “When we’re finished eating,” Dad said, “let’s check the attic. I have a feeling there might be something up there you can use.”

  “The attic?” Aly groaned. “We’ll never find a camera up there that works.”

  Taking one last bite of chicken, Brooke added, “Aly’s right, Dad. The attic is just filled with old junk.”

  The attic in the Tanner house had become the place where everything the family didn’t use anymore had found a home. It was filled with old stacked boxes labeled everything from BABY CLOTHES: 6–9 MONTHS and MARK’S BUSINESS SCHOOL BOOKS and GRANDMA BETTY’S CHINA to ALY’S SCHOOLWORK: 1ST–3RD GRADE and BROOKE’S KINDERGARTEN ARTWORK.

  Of course, that’s also where the girls had found a lot of the furnishings for the Sparkle Spa—including the teal strawberry jar, which their mother had made when she was in art school, and the pictures they’d hung on the walls.

  “You really think there’s a camera up here?” Aly asked after she and Brooke had climbed up the rickety ladder behind Dad.

  “Help me look for the box marked ‘old apartment,’ will you?” Dad asked. “I think it’s over there.”

  “Old apartment?” asked Brooke, peeking underneath a dusty quilt. “What’s that?”

  Dad leaned against a dresser and smiled. “It’s everything left over from the first apartment your mom and I lived in together right after we got married. She wanted to throw out anything we didn’t need. But I’m a saver. I packed most of my things away and stored the boxes up here. If I remember correctly, I’m pretty sure there’s a Polaroid camera in that box.”

  Aly had wandered to the other side of the attic and found a pile of boxes behind a wobbly bookshelf. “Here it is! The box from the old apartment!”

  Dad used a key from his key ring to slit open the sealed box. Aly and Brooke peered over his shoulder. He took out a broken flashlight, a rolled-up welcome mat, and a smaller box filled with letters. Underneath all that there was another square box.

  “The Polaroid!” he said. Then he rummaged around a bit more. “And film. I knew it!”

  He opened a package of film and loaded it into the camera. “I doubt the film will still work. But it was sealed up this whole time, so let’s try. Smile!” he said to the girls.

  He clicked a button, a flash went off, and a few seconds later a grayish piece of paper came out of the camera.

  “The picture is going to develop. Watch,” Dad told them.

  Slowly, the shiny gray paper started looking not so gray anymore. Aly and Brooke saw ghosts of themselves start taking shape on the paper, and then there they were! The detail wasn’t great, and neither was the color, but it was definitely them.

  “Whoa!” Brooke was grinning. “Awesome. Just like at Katie Heller’s party! It smells funny, doesn’t it?”

  “It’s certainly different from the kind of digital pictures we take now. We just need to find newer film. I can drive out to the mall tomorrow and check a few stores,” Dad said. “So do you think this will work for the soccer party, Aly?”

  “I think so,” she said, smiling.

  The three Tanners climbed down from the attic, Dad carrying the camera and the three boxes of film he’d found.

  Brooke was chattering away a mile a minute. “This is going to be so, so cool,” she was saying. “The camera’s like magic. Maybe we should tell everyone it’s magical. That would be so funny. But I don’t know if anyone would believe us.”

  Aly couldn’t help but laugh. When Brooke was excited about something, she couldn’t stop her mouth from going and going and going.

  On Saturday, Sophie was still sick. But later that afternoon Charlotte and Lily came over to help with the party decorations. Brooke and Aly had bought a big roll of brown paper that was taller than Brooke. The girls decided on three different backgrounds for the photo booth: an ocean, a mountain, and a starry sky.

  Brooke had already finished outlining the scenes, and the other three girls were coloring them in as Brooke had instructed them.

  “This is going to be so neat,” Charlotte said. “Maybe, for practice, we should take our pictures in front of the backgrounds with your dad’s camera. You know, to see how they come out.”

  Brooke shook her head. “We can’t waste the film. My dad found some more in a small camera shop in Waltham this morning, but we still have to save it. Maybe once the party is over we can take a few pictures of ourselves.”

  “Or maybe we can take one practice shot tomorrow before the party,” Aly suggested. “How does that sound, Brooke?”

  Brooke thought about it. “We’ll see.”

  “So, Charlotte,” Aly said, “let’s go over the rest of the plans for the party.”

  Charlotte stopped coloring. “Okay, well, we’ll have four stations running at the same time. Aly, you’ll do pedicures, Brooke will take care of the manicures, I’ll do braids, and Lily can take the pictures. The players can be in charge of beading bracelets themselves. And we’ll set up the pizza and the cookies on the table at the start of the party so everyone can eat whenever they want.”

  It all sounded good to Aly, but then she remembered: Suzy Davis. “What about a job for Suzy?” Aly asked. “She’s still our intern for one more day, and we need to give her a party assignment.”

  Charlotte groaned. “How about if she’s in charge of the jewelry station, then? Or helping pick out polish colors?”

  Aly had a feeling Suzy wasn’t going to like either one of those jobs. “Maybe she can do pedicures with me. They take a little longer than manicures, so it might be good to have two people.”

  “If you want the help, sure,” Charlotte said.

  By the end of the day, the girls were as ready as they could be for tomorrow. Part of Aly didn’t care if
Suzy went along with all the arrangements or not. The party wasn’t about Suzy. And Aly planned to keep it that way.

  nine

  Not Number Blue

  Isn’t Suzy supposed to be here by now?” Lily grunted.

  It was ten thirty on Sunday, a half hour before the Auden Angels’ soccer spa party was set to begin. Lily was standing on one of the pedicure chairs, taping a streamer to the wall.

  “Are you really complaining because she’s not?” Charlotte asked her.

  “It would just be easier with more of us here to help,” Lily answered. “With Sophie still not feeling well, we really need Suzy today.”

  Aly had been stacking containers of Unicorn Treats on the table, but now she walked over to help Lily. She climbed onto the second pedicure chair and took the other side of the streamer. “How’s this?” she asked, holding her end up against the wall. “Are we even?”

  Brooke was unrolling the photograph backgrounds on the floor and looked up. “A smidge higher, Aly,” she said.

  “Now?” she asked.

  “Perfect,” Brooke said.

  The little paper soccer balls Brooke had made were dangling from the streamers, floating back and forth in the breeze from the air vents.

  “Should we hang the backgrounds up now?” Brooke asked, holding up the first one. “I was thinking we could do it behind the jewelry station.” That seemed to be the only place in the spa with any open wall space.

  “Sounds good,” Charlotte told her, and she headed over with a roll of masking tape to help.

  Ten minutes later the Sparkle Spa was transformed. “It looks beautiful in here,” Brooke said. “I think it’s okay if we take just one sample picture in front of one the backgrounds so everyone knows what to do.”

  Lily picked up the camera. “The three of you stand together, and I’ll take the photo.”

  “Say ‘sparkle’!” Lily said.

  “Sparkle!” Aly, Brooke, and Charlotte repeated. And just like magic, the picture developed in front of their eyes.

  “Girls,” Mrs. Tanner said, walking into the spa, “you’ve done a wonderful job. It looks great in here. Nice photo booth too.”