Fashion Disaster (4 page)

After breakfast, on the drive to school, instead of chattering nonstop like she usually did, Brooke didn't say a word. Aly knew she was really nervous.

As Mom pulled up to the curb, Aly asked, “Ready, Brookester?”

“I think I need my hat,” Brooke whispered. She pulled it on, looked at Aly, and asked, “Okay?” Aly nodded. Then Brooke took a deep breath and opened the car door, with Aly secretly wishing the day was over instead of just begining.

Maybe everything would be okay, though. Because that morning when Aly saw Brooke in the hall once, she'd taken off her hat and she didn't look upset. Aly thought that was a good thing. At least she hoped it was.

At recess Aly was sitting with Lily and Charlotte under the slide. It was one of the prime recess places to
sit when you didn't want to be bothered, and Aly, Lily, and Charlotte didn't want to be bothered.

“So . . . do you know if Suzy got into trouble?” Lily asked. “Charlotte said your mom seemed really mad at her yesterday.” Lily had gotten to the Sparkle Spa after Suzy and Brooke had left, and she was a little upset that she'd missed the action. So she'd been asking a lot of questions about it.

Aly shrugged. “I don't know. I know my mom called her mom, but really, I mean, it was a dumb, ridiculous idea to cut hair, but it was also kind of dumb of Brooke to volunteer. If no one volunteered, there would have been no haircut. Suzy didn't force her.”

“True,” said Charlotte, picking up a handful of pebbles and letting them run through her fingers. Then she smiled. “So, what do you think: No haircuts at the Sparkle Spa? Or should we offer Suzy a corner?”

“Ha,” Lily said.

Aly smiled too.

“
There
you are!” someone said, bending down under the slide. Aly turned around. That someone was Suzy Davis. “I've been looking all over for you, Aly. Just in case you wanted to say thank you.”

“What are you talking about, Suzy?” Charlotte asked, dropping the last of the stones from her hand.

Suzy scooted under the slide, and the girls had to shift to make room for her. “Haven't you heard?” she said. “All anyone is talking about is how cool your sister's haircut is. How it's floppy and fun and how they love her barrettes. So I thought you might want to thank me.”

Aly pulled a rock out of the back of her sneaker. “I don't quite think I'm going to thank you, Suzy. Even if it turned out okay in the end, Brooke was really upset yesterday—and this morning, too.”

Suzy shrugged. “It's not my fault she didn't realize how great she looked with short hair.”

Sometimes Aly couldn't believe how Suzy's brain worked. “Forget it,” Aly said. “It's fine.” Aly knew Suzy didn't mean to be so . . . Suzy . . . all the time. She just wasn't very good at seeing things from other people's points of view.

“Do you know where she got those barrettes, by the way? Because I'd love some. And I bet Heather would too,” Suzy said. Heather was her little sister.

“Oh,” Aly said, “my mom made them a while ago.”

Suzy's eyes widened. “You should make some more!” she said. “Everyone loves them. Anyway, it's kind of dark and dirty under here. If you decide you want to thank me later, I'll be around.”

The moment Suzy had walked out of earshot, Charlotte burst out with, “That girl makes me so annoyed! I can't believe you're friends with her now.”

Before Aly could respond, Lily added, “But she has a good idea about those barrettes. Because if people really like them, we could sell them at the Sparkle Spa. And get more money for our donation jar.”

Since Mom had said that the girls couldn't charge for their manicure and pedicure services, they'd set up a donation system, collected in a strawberry-shaped teal jar Mom had made in an art school ceramics class. All customers were encouraged to make a donation when they got their nails done, and when the jar was full, the Sparkle Spa staff chose a charity to donate the money to. Since Lily was CFO, she was in charge of the jar and always liked it when they had special Sparkle Spa fund-raisers.

Had Suzy come up with a good idea this time?
Should
they sell barrettes at the Sparkle Spa? Or would that mean less time to polish nails? Aly would have to talk to Brooke.

S
ince it was Monday, the Sparkle Spa wasn't open for business. According to Mom's rules, the girls could open the spa only three days per week—two afternoons on school days and one weekend day. Usually, the girls picked Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday, unless there was a special event. And on the days when the Sparkle Spa was closed, if the girls didn't have an after-school activity, they helped out at their mom's salon, like they used to do before they started their own business.

That Monday, all anyone at True Colors could talk about was Brooke's hair. Luckily, as Suzy had reported,
everyone
at school had loved her short haircut. And when she walked through the salon's front door, the customers went wild. Brooke loved the attention.

“I hadn't realized your hair would curl,” Mrs. Franklin said. (Aly hadn't either.)

“It brings attention to your face,” Mrs. Howard said. (Aly thought she was right.)

“It's very trendy,” Miss Lulu said. (Was that true?)

“And I love those barrettes,” Mrs. Bass said.

Mom looked up from manicure station number one when Mrs. Bass said that. “I made those barrettes such a long time ago,” she said. “I thought I might want to start a side business, but making them took too much time away from True Colors.”

Aly paused. She'd been straightening up the piles of
magazines and collecting polish bottles to return to the polish wall. “Any chance you have leftover supplies?” she asked her mom. “Because a few girls at school asked me about Brooke's barrettes.” After recess Annie Wu and Uma had both wanted to know where Brooke had gotten them.

“You know,” Mom said, “I think I may have jammed the supplies in the bottom desk drawer in the back room. They'd be in a zipped pouch. Plain barrettes, ribbons, glue—everything I used. You might have to go digging under a lot of paper, though.”

Brooke looked over from where she was refilling Carla's little box of nail rhinestones. Carla loved doing manicures with rhinestones for her customers. “Even if there aren't enough supplies to make them for kids at school,” Brooke said, “we should make more for me!”

The salon customers laughed, and then Brooke and
Aly raced back into the Sparkle Spa to go hunting in the desk. Sparkly was sitting quietly in his doggie bed.

“Where are they?” Brooke said, opening a desk drawer. Then she stopped. “Oh,” she said. “Oh.”

Aly walked over. “Your braid,” she said. “I'm sorry you saw it. I couldn't bring myself to throw it out.”

Brooke sat down on the floor. “My new haircut turned out okay, but I'd be sad throwing out my braid too. Maybe there's something else we could do with it.”

“Let's make a list of ideas,” Aly offered. She pulled out a piece of paper:

Things to Do with Brooke's Braid

• 
Hang it on the bedroom wall

• 
Wrap it in tissue paper and put it in the closet

• 
Make it into a doll

• 
Stuff it in a pillow

• 
Throw it away

“I don't know about any of these,” Aly said, looking back over the list.

“How about . . . make it into a wig?” Brooke said.

Aly looked at her sister. “Wait!” she said. “Remember when Mrs. Rosenberg, the secretary at school, was sick last year and she wore that wig that was practically the color of Back to the Fuchsia?”

Brooke nodded.

“Well,” Aly said, “I wonder if there are people who are sick who might want to use your hair to make a wig.”

Brooke was nodding so hard now that her short hair was flopping all over the place. It made Aly smile.

“Yes!” Brooke agreed. “That's exactly what we should
do with my hair. But . . . how do we find people who might need it?”

“I'll look it up online. And we can ask Mom or Joan,” Aly said. “In the meantime, let's put your braid back in the drawer and see about this barrette business.”

After a bit of rummaging around in the desk, Aly and Brooke found the zippered pouch with all the barrette materials in it. There were thirty barrettes, so knowing Mom, Aly figured that meant there would be enough ribbon to make all thirty of them. Brooke took one out of her hair so the girls could see exactly what their mom had done.

“Look,” Brooke said. “She braided four pieces of ribbon together, tied a knot, then left a few inches for the streamers. Then she tied a tiny knot at the end of each streamer.”

Aly took the barrette from her sister. “And it seems
like she glued the braided part to the barrette, then tucked the top of the braid under so you can't see the fraying ribbon at the top edge. We can make these no problem.”

In fact, with Aly braiding and Brooke gluing and knotting, they made twelve barrettes in an hour.

When it was time to clean up, Brooke asked, “Should we set these up near the donation jar so our customers can buy them?”

But Aly was only half listening. She was still thinking about Mrs. Rosenberg.

Brooke repeated the question.

“I'm not sure, Brooke,” she finally answered. “I might have another plan.”

Brooke zipped up the remaining ribbons in the pouch. “Okay. Tell me when you're ready.”

But somehow, thinking about Mrs. Rosenberg also made Aly think about Sparkly. Could he be sick? Is
that why he seemed so quiet and tired and heavier than usual? Aly swallowed that thought down.

Before bed that night, Aly found just what she was looking for: a charity called Loving Locks, which donated wigs to people who had lost their hair because they were sick. The charity needed hair that was at least ten inches long, and Aly knew Brooke's hair was much longer than that. Plus, they took donations in money as well as in hair.

Aly was ready to share her idea with her sister, but Brooke had already fallen asleep. She was tempted to wake her up to tell her about her plan, but she didn't want to jinx it. Tomorrow, then, she decided—first thing.