I So Don't Do Makeup (7 page)

Like an annoying yappy dog, I spring up and down. “Look at this.” Still jumping, I point with both hands at my cheeks. “You can't tell me this is nothing.”
Up. Point. Point. Down
. “This is something.”
Up. Point. Point. Down
. “This is worthy of your talents.”

I sink onto the bench, panting.

“Sherry, you're a teen. Y'all have skin problems.”

I'm too exhausted and out of breath to argue.

Growing and expanding like an inflatable holiday snowman, Mrs. Howard floats up and stretches across the ceiling. The room is thick with an overcooked syrupy smell. “There is no cosmetics case at
the Phoenix Mall; it is merely a cosmetics inconvenience. This inconvenience will not be handled by our Academy. Not by your mother. Not by you.”

Mrs. Howard's voice grows louder and bounces off the walls.

“In fact, the higher-ups in our Academy have decided to not give you or your mother any work. Your mother must devote all her energies to passing the difficult tests in the foreign Academy's strenuous ongoing interview process. It is imperative for us that our two Academies finally join forces.

“Your job is to lie low. Maintain a code of circumspect behavior. Do not encourage further exposure on the WWWD. The foreign Academy is watching you. Your actions reflect on your mother and on us. Don't give the foreign Academy any reason to reject your mother's application.”

Yikeserama.

A medium Oreo Cookies Blizzard floats through the wall and slides across the table to me.

“Thank you kindly for visiting, Miss Sherry. Your services are not required at this particular moment in time. Return to your own world, where you can be a normal teen”—Mrs. Howard pauses—“who behaves herself.”

Poof!
She's gone. Along with her overpowering, sickly sweet cinnamon-bun smell.

I ignore the Blizzard. I stand, stick my sunglasses
on my nose, straighten the aluminum foil around my arms and legs, and strap on my helmet.

In fearless-explorer style, I toss my backpack over my shoulder, take a deep breath and march to the door.

During the brief moment when I have one foot in the Academy and one foot in Dairy Queen, when half my body is under attack by sharp blue zapping pings, I make a decision.

A decision Mrs. Howard won't like.

I
ride the bus to the mall, where I vainly attempt to repair my looks in the restroom. Without a ceramic iron to tame my wild and woolly hair. Without the incredible skin-repairing china clay. After ten minutes of hard work in front of a cloudy mirror, let's just say
Seventeen
magazine won't be calling me for a photo shoot. Unless it's a “before” shot.

Junie and I planned to meet at the food court before doing some investigative work. But I text her to come to the restroom instead.

“I don't know if I should be out in public, asking questions,” I say the second she arrives. “I look like I'm practicing for Crazy Hair Day at school while boycotting sunscreen.”

Junie rolls her eyes. “Your hair looks fine. Maybe a little fuller than usual. And don't even talk to me about skin. At least your face doesn't look like it fell on sandpaper. Besides, we already agreed to split fries.”

I'd forgotten about the fries. While we're walking to the food court, I give her the short version of my visit to the Academy.

“Let me get this straight,” Junie says. “You go to the Academy to ask for your mom's help with the case. You leave the Academy and your mom can't help, you're supposed to drop the case,
and
foreign ghosts will be spying on your behavior.”

“Basically.” At the American Potato Company counter, I ask for a large fries.

“Are you going to follow Mrs. Howard's orders? And drop the case?”

“No way. I can't do that to Lacey. I can't do that to us.”

“You know you can count on me.” We bump knuckles.

“Here's what I'm thinking,” I say. “If the PSS is ignoring what's going on with Naked Makeup—”

“It must be a simple mystery.” Junie sprinkles salt on our fries. “Which means—”

“We can solve it,” I say, loving this BFF-finish-the-sentence thing. “Easy—”

“Schmeasy. And Mrs. Howard will be begging you
to take five minutes of Real Time with your mom as a reward.”

“And I'll be even more famous on the WWWD, and the foreign Academy—”

Junie shoves the cardboard boat of fries at me and sticks her fingers in her ears. “Do not tell me any secrets. Seriously. I do not want to know what I'm not supposed to know.”

I chew furiously on a fry. When I get excited, my mouth takes on a life of its own, flapping and spewing away. And now I can't remember exactly what was secret and what wasn't. What I'm allowed to share and what I'm not allowed to share. Which means I have to keep all of it to myself. Wah!

Junie unplugs her ears. “Is it safe?”

“Yeah. I'm under control.” I squirt ketchup in the corner of the boat. “Something Mrs. Howard never brought up? My grandfather.”

My grandfather's fiercely loyal and has a great sense of direction. He'll be a good help with this mystery.

Junie grabs a fry. “So, it's you, me and your grandfather.” She dunks the fry in the puddle of ketchup. “Plus, Nick and Josh can help us.”

“Let's get going!”

Junie pops the fry in her mouth. We both push our hair behind our ears so that our cute matching best-friend earrings dangle and swing. Then, legs in sync, we stride off for some important mall recon.

“The plan is to check out the entire mall and see what other stores and kiosks sell makeup, right?” Junie's got a determined look on her bleached freckled face. The same look she gets when a teacher's passing out a big test.

We wander past every store on every level.

At the entrance to the department store, we stop. We can see the makeup counter where Amber used to work till she quit for Naked Makeup. Amber's ex-boss, Crystal, is packing nail polish into a box.

“What do you think?” I say. “I mean, Lacey and Crystal are competitors, but they're such good friends. Amber says the three of them eat lunch together and share beauty tips.”

“Right after she switched jobs, I asked Amber how weird it was to still be at the same mall. She told me to grow up, that I just don't get the makeup world.” Junie shifts her fake leather purse on her shoulder. “Maybe if we were a couple of years older and had part-time jobs in the cosmetics industry, it wouldn't seem weird. Maybe we're just too thirteen.”

And that, in a nutshell, is why I love having Junie on my team. She's beyond smart.

At the Beauty Connection, we pop in to check out the merchandise.

Junie opens and sniffs a bottle of foaming bath oil. “There's some overlap between the stuff in here and
Naked Makeup's inventory, but Lacey's products are much higher-end.”

“Not to mention no one works here for more than a week.” Which is handy for Junie and me. We come in to use their free samples almost every weekend, and no one recognizes us or asks us if we're ever planning to buy.

I hold up a black-with-white-polka-dots cosmetics bag that would fit perfectly in the front pouch of my backpack. “Cute?”

“Go for it,” Junie says.

Mall recon and light shopping go hand in hand. In the bookstore, Junie buys a magnetic bookmark with the periodic table. At Brittani's Baubles, I find a striped lipstick holder with a miniature mirror inside. Which I definitely need. I remember to get my card stamped. Only four purchases to go before I'm eligible for my freebie. Although I see several more items of interest, I hold back. I gotta save a little money to buy snacks at the movies later with Josh. He's covering the cost of the tickets, and I'm in charge of popcorn and candy and drinks.

If my dad could see me and my careful shopping habits today, he'd be forced to eat his “Sherry spends her allowance like we've got a money tree in the backyard” words. And, honestly? I'd be way more financially responsible if I had more money. I so need a major raise.

In terms of cosmetics competitors likely to sabotage Naked Makeup, Junie and I are coming up with zilch. There are several stores that sell some makeup, but not one that specializes in it.

Finally, we're on the last section of stores. We discuss skipping it because our feet are übertired. Also, this part of the mall is like the desert at the edge of town. As in, it's deserted. But Brianna told me there's often free tortilla chip samples, and my stomach's grumbling from all the walking. The french fries were miles ago.

We pass the under-construction vitamin store, the out-of-business shoe store and a closed-on-Sundays fabric store.

Then, suddenly, a chili pepper is dancing toward us. It's the hot-sauce kiosk guy decked out in an embarrassing puffy red outfit with tights and an ugly green cap for a pepper stem. Even more embarrassing, he has no rhythm.

Still high-stepping, he waves us over with skinny stick arms. “Free samples. Free samples.”

Ya don't have to say that three times.

Junie and I head for the hot-sauce kiosk, which, actually, is attractively decorated. Mini chili-pepper lights blink around the forest green awning-roof. Different-sized and-shaped jars of various kinds and colors of salsa and hot sauce and whole chilies line the shelves, along with aprons, T-shirts, caps and
even jigsaw puzzles. There's a pyramid of prickly pear cactus jam. And a stack of prickly pear cactus candy. Bags of fresh peppers hang from hooks. Who knew Phoenix was home to an entire subculture of chili pepper lovers?

Best of all, a large ceramic bowl of free tortilla chips and three small matching bowls of complimentary sauce sit on the counter.

“What are the sauces?” Junie asks.

The kiosk guy ends his jig. His face all sweaty, he points a skeletal finger. “Mild, medium, deadly. The deadly is extreme heat. It's five hundred times hotter than a jalapeño pepper.” He picks up a small, thin bottle and shakes it. “Snake Spit. With habanero pods.” He hands the bottle to Junie. “Don't even think about trying this undiluted.”

Junie reads the ingredients, then plucks a chip from the basket and scoops up some mild sauce.

Personally, I'm going straight for the deadly. I've never tried it before, but I was practically born eating Mexican food. When my mom was alive, our favorite family restaurant was Tio Roberto's. And there was nothing on the menu too hot for me. Habanero pods will be a walk in the park.

I dip a chip and pop it past my lips and directly onto my tongue. Definitely spicier than usual. But flavorful.

I dip another chip. I turn to ask Junie about the
mild sauce. I miss my mouth. The chip + deadly sauce collides with my lips.

For, like, two seconds, there's a fizzy, tingly feeling on my lips. Then it's like someone's holding a lit match up against them.

“Yowzer!” I fan my mouth with my hands. “Hot, hot, hot!” I'm fanning fast, at airplane propeller speed. “Water, water, water!”

Junie grabs my arm and drags me to a water fountain. Which means warm, murky water with unidentifiable floaties. But I'm desperate.

I twist the knob with a jerk and submerge my lips in the arc of brackish water cascading from the faucet.

Finally, the pain subsides enough that I can gasp out, “My lips are burning. Like with the lip gloss!”

H
uffing and puffing, Junie and I arrive at Lacey's kiosk. When the chili pepper guy wasn't looking, I grabbed the bowl of deadly sauce.

Miraculously, there's a lull in business at Naked Makeup, and we can actually talk to Amber and Lacey. Good thing—I'm not sure I could have prevented my mouth from blurting out our discovery. Even in front of customers.

“Snake Spit burned my lips like the tainted lip gloss!” I plunk the bowl of sauce on the kiosk counter.

Amber and Lacey, who are both cleaning with pink feather dusters and rearranging bottles and jars,
turn at the same moment. Two beautiful, but confused, faces.

“Speak English, Sherry,” Amber says. She is not known for her manners.

“You know the kiosk over by the out-of-business shoe store? The hot-sauce place with the weirdo vendor? Anyway, I dipped a chip in this bowl of habanero sauce.” I'm talking all breathy and at roadrunner speed. “At first, my lips went tingly, which wasn't too bad, but then they were painfully, crazily on fire.”

Lacey and Amber are still looking beautiful and vacant.

“Like the contaminated Naked Makeup lip gloss!” Junie says. “We think the mystery ingredient is the same ingredient that's in the super hot sauce Snake Spit.”

“Another lip gloss was returned.” Lacey opens a drawer, pulls out a little pot of gloss, then twists the cap off. With a Q-tip she paints a little gloss on her wrist, then pokes the other end in the sauce bowl. She drips it on the same wrist.

After a minute or so, she grabs a water spray bottle. Pressing the trigger faster and faster, she washes down her arm. “Felt exactly the same.”

“But the sauce is red.” Amber does not offer a wrist. “None of the returned glosses were red.”

“'Cause the sauce has tomatoes,” Junie says. “But
if you squeezed the juice from the pepper, it'd be clear. The active ingredient is capsicum.”

“He sells peppers too,” I say.

“I know the guy you're talking about,” Lacey says. “Will. He seems pretty nice. I can't see him contaminating lip gloss.”

“If by ‘nice,' you mean ‘loser,'” Amber says. “And someone needs to tell him to eat another helping at dinner. Pencil thin is not attractive.” Amber always judges people by their looks. “And he's such a whiner.” She opens a drawer and drops in her duster, then gets to work tightening lids on bottles of hand lotion. “Always complaining he never has any customers and how it's not fair we're so busy. What does he expect with a kiosk off in the back forty?”