The Brilliant Ideas of Lily Green

by Lisa Siberry

  Rosa.

  As soon as the word slipped out of Ivy’s mouth I could almost see it floating in the air like a soapy bubble, then popping right over Zoe’s head.

  Zoe flinched.

  Did she hear it?

  Too late to find out – Zoe was dragging Violet and the other girls away and Mum was chiming her scissors against the lolly jar. Everyone fell quiet.

  ‘Thank you all for coming,’ said Mum. ‘We’re so happy to see all these faces in Kitty’s today. Things have been a little quiet around here lately, but you know what they say, every cloud has a silver lining.’

  ‘I think you mean a purple lining,’ shouted Faye.

  There was ripple of laughter as my sister took over, standing on the stool behind the desk and holding up a pot of Glow Girl body cream. I instantly forgot about Zoe and her evilness, because my sister had never looked so happy.

  It made me think how sometimes the weirdest of ingredients go together, like chilli and chocolate, or peanut butter and pickles. Maybe Faye and I were like that: complete opposites, but surprisingly good when smooshed together. Sweet, but sour. Gross, but delicious. Messy, but perfect.

  I smiled and crossed my fingers inside my apron pocket as Faye unscrewed the Glow Girl pot.

  ‘Now, I know you’ve already heard about our world-first Lip Switch lip balm,’ said Faye. ‘Which, by the way, you can buy today for just twelve dollars a pot.’

  Lots of heads swayed to get a look at the lip balm pots, but a red-headed woman in sunglasses shouted, ‘What about the body cream? What does that do?’

  ‘Good question, lady near the washbasin with the great hair. I’m about to show you.’ Faye dug her hand into the pot and scooped out a wad of purple cream. ‘Our latest custom-made body cream has been crafted from all-natural yoghurt, maple syrup, blueberries and …’

  As Faye read out the ingredients (minus the flowers), I heard a tap on the salon door. It was the real-estate agent, and when I opened the door a crack, his musk cologne crept so far up my nose I could practically taste it. Urgh.

  ‘Is your mother in?’ he asked, trying to push the door open. I jammed my foot against it.

  ‘We’re at capacity,’ I said through the crack.

  ‘This is important. We have a deadline we need to talk about.’ Mr Sebold gave me a slimy smile that reminded me of dead things at the bottom of our fridge.

  ‘If you’re here to talk about selling, don’t bother.’ The words came out all angry and I realised how much I hated this guy for trying to convince Mum to give up our home. ‘As you can see, Mr Sebold, we have lots of customers, so we won’t be selling.’

  ‘That’s cute.’ Mr Sebold laughed and looked over my shoulder at Faye, who was smearing the body cream over her face and arms. ‘Just pass along a message to your mother, will you?’ he said, looking back at me. ‘Tell her she has three days left to make a decision. My buyer’s getting impatient, and they won’t wait around forever.’

  I watched Sylvester-Sebold-Bricks-into-Gold disappear down the street, then I shoved the door closed with relief. We didn’t need him to save us. We were doing that ourselves. As if to prove it, Faye’s face and arms were slowly turning a soft, dreamy purple, like someone had switched on a light underneath her skin, and the floral fragrance radiating from the cream was so rich and heavenly, you could see it wafting off her in delicate purple waves.

  ‘Want glowing skin that will make you stand out from the crowd?’ smiled Faye. She was now surrounded by a hazy circle of purple light, sort of like a jellyfish, but in a good way. ‘Get Glow Girl. It looks like magic, smells like flowers, and the best part?’ She dipped her finger into the pot, then ate a whole mouthful of the cream. ‘It tastes Glow-Girl-gorgeous!’

  By now everyone was clapping and trying to get a look at my sister’s glowing skin, and – even better – Zoe was storming out of the salon, followed by the red-headed woman in the sunglasses.

  This was going perfectly … except I wasn’t so sure about Faye eating the body cream.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have told her there was maple syrup in it?

  I was still thinking this over when the clapping stopped.

  Silence. Except for a cough, like a cat coughing up a fur ball.

  I stood on tiptoe to get a look at my sister. She was still on the stool, with the Glow Girl in one hand and her other hand around her neck. She coughed again, and a speckle of tiny purple dots appeared on her arms and face. Dots that looked like pimples or freckles or … Flowers?

  There were gasps in the crowd as purple flower-shaped welts started forming on Faye’s skin. Rosa’s garden flashed through my head. The purple flowers pushing up through the moss. The pollen spurting into the night.

  Faye coughed again, and swiped at her fringe to get it out of her eyes, but an entire section of hair snapped off like a twig in her hands. A few people in the crowd shrieked. I felt my insides go cold.

  Now Faye was holding her fringe in her hands, and the purple rash was spreading across her cheeks, and when she turned to me, her green eyes were wide with terror. She opened her panic-purple lips, revealing murky, stained teeth, then she let out another cough.

  And the second I saw the sparkling purple pollen shooting out of my sister’s mouth, I knew for sure: I was in deep, deep trouble.

  The salon emptied out faster than suds down a drain. All that was left were a few scuff marks on the floor, a hundred bobbing balloons and Ivy, with Bertie squawking on her head. The budgie flew across the salon and pecked at Faye’s rock-hard hair, but she swatted him away.

  ‘What. Just. Happened?!’ she shouted.

  I took a frightened step backwards, and the door handle jabbed into my back.

  ‘Faye, sweetie, let’s not panic …’ Mum did a few meditation breaths as my sister went over to the mirror and stared at her arms and face, which were now covered in the purple rash and sprinkled with sparkly pollen. Her hair hung in a stiff wooden curtain, and her snapped-off fringe gave her an eerie, crazed look.

  ‘This is not a beautiful day,’ Faye whispered.

  ‘You shouldn’t have eaten that cream,’ I said.

  Faye whipped around and her voice was a wall of fury. ‘NOT. A BEAUTIFUL. DAY!’

  I shrank back. Faye yells all the time, but the look in her eyes wasn’t just anger. It was something crushed and desperate. I could feel it, too. Not a single pot of body cream or lip balm had been sold and my sister was now a walking beauty disaster.

  ‘We failed Operation Beauty Miracle!’ shouted Faye. ‘All because of your freakish beauty products!’

  ‘You told me to make them,’ I said weakly.

  ‘Everyone, let’s keep calm,’ soothed Mum. ‘Now. We all tried the Glow Girl cream earlier today and it was fine. So there must be an explanation for this.’

  The plants. My head throbbed with the truth. The orange tree, the berries, the flowers. Rosa had told me they were little monsters, but I’d used them anyway.

  What had I done?

  ‘Maybe some of the ingredients were off?’ suggested Ivy.

  My sister ran her eyes over Ivy. ‘Who are you? And why are you talking to me?’

  ‘I’m Ivy. I helped Lily make the lip balm.’

  Faye’s mouth twisted into a grimace. ‘Great, so I’ve been wearing lip balm made by two dorky twelve-year-olds. And by the way, you need to do something about your hair.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ shrugged Ivy.

  ‘Hair-talk later, girls. Right now we have bigger fish to fry.’ Mum paced around the salon. ‘I just don’t understand. Lily, how could the ingredients be off? You only made the cream last night.’

  ‘And it was supposed to be all natural,’ said Faye, turning on me.

  ‘It is, but …’ I tried to piece things together. The plants were definitely causing the side effects, but my sister had also taken things too far. ‘You shouldn’t have eaten the cream, Faye.’ My voice shook. ‘And the shampoo – you’ve used it four times, not once, like everyon
e else. And why did you have to wear the lip balm for three whole days?’

  Everyone fell silent, but I could see the panic in Mum and Faye’s eyes. Five minutes ago the salon had been full of customers and all our problems were solved. Now, Kitty’s was empty and we’d have to sell up and move, and it was all because of me and my beauty-obsessed sister.

  But mostly me.

  I tried to tell them about Rosa’s plants, but the inky black cloud of guilt was back, creeping up my throat, choking the words. If I told them what I’d done, it would be like admitting I was hopeless. That I couldn’t make a single thing right. And then I’d just be the same hopeless me I was before all this started, only worse, because now I’d hurt Faye and lied to everyone I loved.

  Just for a stack of beauty products, I thought miserably.

  ‘Come on, Faye,’ Mum gently steered my sister towards the door. ‘We can talk about this later. First, we need to get you to a doctor.’

  ‘Forget it, I’m not going out looking like this.’ Faye stubbornly plonked herself down on a chair.

  Mum reached for a bottle of sorbolene cream. ‘I’ll see what I can do, but Lily …’ she gave me a worried look. ‘Lily, I think it’s best if you and Ivy stay out of the way while we clean up this mess.’

  My mess.

  ‘No need to panic, honey,’ Mum dabbed some cream on Faye’s arms. ‘It’s probably just a little rash.’

  ‘You mean a freaky flower rash!’ wailed Faye. ‘And my hair’s snapping off like twigs!’ She broke off another chunk off her fringe, and sobbed when she realised what she’d done.

  I couldn’t stand there swallowing my secrets for much longer – I had to find a way to fix things and make Faye better. But how?

  Or … who?

  Somewhere in the muddy depths of my brain an idea glimmered and I pushed against the salon door.

  ‘Lily, where are you going?’ asked Mum.

  I slipped my notebook into my apron as I backed out the door. ‘I might know someone who can help.’

  Ivy and Bertie trailed after me as I ran towards their house. It was only when we hurried down the stone path in Rosa’s garden, past the snapping pink lilies, that Ivy grabbed my hand.

  ‘Lily, wait, why are we seeing my nan?’ she puffed. ‘And what’s going on with your beauty products? None of this makes sense.’

  I kept pressing on down the path, ignoring the tiny yellow flowers that unfurled around my sneakers. ‘I just thought Rosa might have a plant that could help Faye, that’s all.’

  Ivy stopped, and I reluctantly turned around. Her face was crumpling with confusion. ‘A plant? Why would you want to use one of Nan’s plants? They’re creepy.’ As if to prove it, Ivy picked one of the whirring white daisies and let it fly into the air. It spun away in the breeze like a tiny helicopter. ‘And you didn’t answer me about the beauty products.’

  I swallowed hard.

  ‘Was it really the hot chocolate powder that made our lip balm special?’ Ivy spoke slowly, as though she was afraid of the answer. ‘Or is there something else in your beauty products that’s making them go bad?’

  I hesitated, and caught my reflection in Ivy’s big brown eyes. My head looked huge and weird and not like me at all. ‘It wasn’t meant to turn out like this, Ivy, I promise.’

  ‘What did you do?’ Ivy’s voice dropped to a whisper.

  I wanted to tell her. I had to, but just as I opened my mouth, a shrill voice rang out across the garden.

  ‘IVY!! Violin practice started half an hour ago!’ It was Ivy’s mother, standing at the back door. ‘Let’s GO!’ She clapped, and Ivy did a little jump, like a spooked horse.

  She gave me one last worried look, then headed back to the house, and within seconds, scratchy violin notes filled the air. I took a shaky breath and headed deeper into the garden, with Bertie flapping around my ears. I had to find Rosa and help my sister.

  If her garden got me into this mess, maybe it can get me out of it, I told myself.

  But when I found Rosa, she was sitting in her striped lawn chair spraying a patch of weeds with a bottle of brown liquid, and I realised just how dumb my plan was. What was I going to say?

  I took your little monsters to solve all my problems and they got me into trouble. Any chance you have a magical plant that can reverse things?

  Stupid, stupid, stupid. This wasn’t a fairy tale. And Mrs D was wrong – there definitely were bad ideas, and I was full of them.

  ‘Nice to see you again, Green Lily,’ said Rosa, interrupting my thoughts. ‘You’re just in time to help me with the weeding.’ She held out the spray bottle, and I pointed awkwardly at myself.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes, you. Make yourself useful, girl.’

  I took the bottle and spritzed it at a weed near my feet. The thing shrivelled up instantly. ‘Hey, that’s amazing. What is this stuff, Mrs Rodríguez?’

  ‘Apple cider vinegar. The perfect solution for killing weeds. It’s an old gardening trick.’ Rosa’s eyes twinkled as she said it, and I couldn’t help but give the spray another go. More weeds fizzled at my feet as the vinegar rained down on them.

  ‘Pesky things, weeds,’ continued Rosa, pulling herself up from her chair. ‘They like to kill everything growing around them.’

  Just like BeautyGlow, I thought, pumping the spray at another weed. If they hadn’t taken all our customers, none of this would have happened.

  I watched the weed die. It felt good. I sprayed the vinegar at another one, and wished BeautyGlow had never existed. I spritzed another, and wished Faye had just used my beauty products the way they were supposed to be used. I went to attack another, but Rosa put her hand on my arm.

  ‘Easy now,’ she smiled. ‘Don’t kill the flowers along with the weeds.’ She tucked the spray bottle into my apron pocket and gave it a pat. ‘Keep it. It’s yours.’

  I was wondering what on earth I was going to do with a bottle of vinegar at home when I heard a noise coming from somewhere near the back wall.

  Rosa heard it too. We turned and stared into the dark green shadows at the back of the garden. There was another rustle, and suddenly the leaves of the berry vine trembled as a pair of silver ankle boots clambered over the wall and landed with a thud on the mossy ground.

  ‘Zoe?!’ I shouted.

  Beside me, Rosa touched my arm to steady herself. Meanwhile, Bertie fluttered into the leafy alcove, pecking furiously at Zoe’s head.

  Zoe swiped at the budgie with a small shovel, then pulled a garbage bag out of her silver backpack. ‘Not the easiest place to get to, is it?’ she said, stomping over the delicate purple flowers. ‘After Ivy dropped that hint back in the salon, I had to walk around this whole pathetic neighbourhood asking people where Rosa lived. How convenient it turned out to be just a hop, skip and jump away from your place, hey Green?’

  Rosa looked at me in confusion. ‘Who is this girl?’

  ‘She’s evil.’ I blinked. ‘And she’s after your berries.’

  ‘Oi! That’s no place to play, girl.’ Rosa waved her cane in the air. ‘Those plants are dangerous.’

  ‘I’m not playing, lady,’ said Zoe, straightening her glasses. ‘And if you could just tell me where the berries are, I’ll gladly get out of this dump.’ She frowned at some dirt on her boots like she’d never stepped outside the pristine whiteness of BeautyGlow.

  My legs shook with nerves as I stepped forward. ‘Zoe, you don’t need those berries. They’re bad news.’

  But Zoe must have seen my eyes flick to the berry vine behind her, because she checked over her shoulder, then gave me a cold smile. ‘Nice try, Green, but you can’t fool me.’ She snapped the garbage bag open. ‘I know all about your secret ingredients.’

  ‘You don’t know what they can do.’

  ‘I saw the Glow Girl cream. Did you make that with something in here too?’ Zoe looked down at the purple flowers, and I panicked.

  ‘You left early, Zoe. You didn’t see what happened,’ I stammered. ‘The
cream backfired and now my sister’s covered in a purple rash.’

  Zoe’s shovel glinted in the afternoon sun. ‘Liar.’

  A part of me wanted to strangle her, but another part kept remembering the way Elektra had dug her nails into Zoe’s arm that day in BeautyGlow and called her nail polish idea garbage.

  ‘I know your family wants you to do this,’ I said. ‘You’re just trying to be good at something, I get it.’

  ‘No you don’t.’

  Trust me, I do.

  ‘This isn’t the way to help,’ I tried again. ‘Forget about the lip balm. You should make that spray-on nail polish instead. It’s a good idea.’

  Did I just say that?

  Zoe was shocked too. ‘How did you know about that?’ For a second her face softened and she looked almost normal. Not exactly nice. But not completely evil either.

  A car horn honked in the distance, and her face got all nasty again.

  ‘You don’t know anything about me, Green.’ Zoe raised her shovel, and Rosa gasped beside me. ‘I’m a Von Hammer, and I’m a cut above the rest.’

  The shovel came down, and there was a sickening crunch as it cut through the base of the berry vine, ripping through dirt and roots. With one hard tug, Zoe hauled the entire bush out of the ground and threw it, roots and all, into her garbage bag.

  And just like that, she scrambled back up the wall, her silver boots flashing like knives.

  I flew through the undergrowth and clambered over the wall.

  And the whole time I cursed Zoe and stinking BeautyGlow, because those cheats might have stolen my lip balm formula, but I was not going to let Zoe rip a whole gigantic GloggenWeed-infested plant out of Rosa’s beautiful garden and get away with it.

  Behind me, Rosa was yelling and clanging her little bell, but I kept going, sprinting through my backyard and up the side path, furious at myself for letting this happen. What was I thinking putting those plants in my beauty products? So what, they made people look pretty. Big deal.

  Not so pretty now.

  I should have listened to Rosa in the first place and stayed out of that garden. I wanted to cry. But when I got to the street, the pricks of tears turned to disbelief. A trail of dirt led to a black car parked nearby, with Elektra in the driver’s seat. And she was shaking hands with – Mr Sebold?