The Brilliant Ideas of Lily Green

by Lisa Siberry

  Whoa.

  Mr Lee grabbed the desk to steady himself. Mina started laughing in delight.

  Mai rubbed a few strands between her fingers. ‘Interesting,’ she said. ‘And you’ve tested this hair dye thoroughly, I assume?’

  ‘I sprayed it on three days ago,’ Zoe pushed her glasses up her nose. ‘And I can safely say there are no visible side effects.’

  Three days. I thought of Faye’s teeth after three days of wearing Lip Switch.

  ‘Extremely interesting,’ mused Mai, stepping back to inspect the bottle. ‘Can you show me how it works?’

  ‘Of course I can.’ Zoe pumped the spray to demonstrate, and the silver liquid spritzed over her Perfect Purple hair. ‘It works just like magic, and it’s only ninety-nine dollars a bottle.’ She turned to the audience. ‘Only available at BeautyGlow stores. Place your orders TODAY, people.’

  Everyone clapped like mad. Of course they did.

  Elektra and Zoe had done it, and I wanted to slide down in my chair and disappear, but the judges were already walking over to our table.

  Mr Lee cleared his throat. ‘Lily and Ivy, the green team!’

  ‘What have you got for us today, girls?’ asked Mina kindly.

  I couldn’t stand up. Ivy had to literally haul me up by my T-shirt, and even then my mouth wouldn’t work. My sparkling idea suddenly felt bad, bad, bad. I’d told everyone in my class that I could make anything and now I was holding a bottle of vinegar, and it wasn’t going to work, and the Lab Girls would laugh at me and I was going to fail, again, in front of the entire school.

  ‘What are you “making better” today?’ prompted Mr Lee.

  Ivy prised my frozen fingers off the bottle and held it up for everyone to see. The green liquid sloshed around and it looked so ridiculous compared to Zoe’s invention. I felt my face burn with embarrassment.

  ‘We worked together on this,’ said Ivy in her biggest voice. ‘It’s called Happy Hair Sparkle Mist, and even though it smells bad, it works great.’

  A few people in the audience smiled. Elektra swiped through her phone in a bored way. And at the back of the hall, the door creaked open, and a girl with shiny brown hair and an orange headband snuck into the hall.

  Faye?

  My sister leaned against the back wall and gave me a little nod.

  Ivy kept going. ‘Happy Hair is made from apple cider vinegar, peanut butter, olive oil and environmentally friendly glitter, and all you do is spray’ – she squirted the glittery green liquid at a knot in her hair – ‘then comb!’ Ivy flicked open the comb, just like I’d shown her, and ran it through her dark hair, instantly detangling the knot. She popped open the mirror, checked her reflection, then waved a hand around her head. ‘See? Hair! Happy!’

  At the back of the hall, Faye started laughing – in a good way – and it made me think how exactly one week ago, she’d laughed at my vinegar hairspray idea, and I’d given up on myself. Just because one person thought it was a bad idea.

  I decided not to do that again. And as an experiment, I forced myself to feel proud instead of mortified. I cleared my throat. ‘Um, it’s also one hundred per cent natural,’ I said in a shaky voice.

  ‘And you can even eat it, if you want,’ said Ivy, spraying some in her mouth.

  ‘But you probably don’t want to do that.’

  ‘Nup.’ Ivy’s mouth puckered and she wiped it on her sleeve.

  ‘But, there are definitely no …’ I made myself say it. ‘Definitely no strange side effects.’

  Faye shook her head, but I could tell she was loving it.

  ‘And let’s not forget, it looks beautiful,’ Ivy added, holding up the bottle so everyone could see her label.

  The hall filled with clapping, and I think I even saw Ivy’s parents proudly taking a photo of us.

  Mina shook our hands. ‘Nice work, girls,’ she said. ‘A thoughtful invention, great presentation, and I love the label.’

  ‘You’re on film, guys! Wave for the camera!’ said Violet behind us.

  We all waved at Violet’s phone, just as Mai put her arm around Ivy and me and said, ‘Watch out world, these green girls are taking over the beauty world, one hair knot at a time!’ She gave me a high five, then headed towards the stage.

  I wasn’t sure if I was breathing. Did that actually happen? The Lab Girls liked our hairspray?

  The Lab Girls liked our hairspray.

  ‘The Lab Girls liked our hairspray!’ said Ivy, jumping up and down next to me. Across the hall, Elektra was sending us evil death rays, but I didn’t care about her or Zoe anymore. All I cared about was that I’d made something I was proud of. No plants, just me – Lily Green – and Ivy, and a bit of my dad, too. Which, when I thought about it, was the perfect combination of ingredients.

  So I was fine. Cool as a cucumber, really, when Mr Lee, Mina and Mai got up on stage and huddled together to decide the winner. Violet told me to give the camera one last wave, so I did, and she happily finished filming. Beside her, Zoe tossed her purple hair and got ready to collect her award. It was done. Dusted.

  Then something really weird happened.

  Zoe yelped and scratched her purple head.

  Everyone turned in their seats to see what was going on. Zoe yelped again, even louder, and scratched her scalp so hard I wondered if she had nits.

  ‘Zoe?’ I asked. ‘Are you all right?’

  But Zoe only managed to scream in reply, because the ends of her hair had begun to twitch. I’d never seen anything like it. Her hair was moving all on its own, dividing into thick strands that flicked and wriggled like vines, searching for something to grab onto. One of them wrapped around Zoe’s ear. Another slithered across her glasses.

  Panic pulsed through me.

  The berries. I remembered the side effects from just five berries. Zoe had used the whole bush. This was way worse than a rash. It looked like the berries had made her hair … come to life?

  Violet screamed and fell sideways off her chair, while Zoe tore at the hair-vines, trying to rip them away. A thick purple strand curled around her wrist. Another one crept around her neck. Within seconds, Zoe’s whole head was a twisting mass of purple, vine-like hair.

  ‘Muuuuuum!’ she screamed, tugging at the vines, which only made them move faster. ‘Do something! Get this disgusting hair off me NOW!’

  Across the hall, Elektra started shoving parents out of the way to get to her daughter, but even I knew a hairdresser couldn’t deal with an out of control weed. The purple hair-vines were wrapped tightly around Zoe’s neck, and the look of desperation on her face jolted me into action. I’m not a gardener, but I know the one thing weeds hate.

  Vinegar.

  Which gave me a brilliant idea.

  I picked up the bottle of Happy Hair Sparkle Mist and unscrewed the nozzle in three quick twists.

  ‘Somebody help me!’ screamed Zoe, clutching at her neck. Her face was turning a weird shade of blue. I had to do it, now.

  I tipped the Happy Hair bottle upside down. The sparkly green liquid fell through the air and splashed all over Zoe’s head. There was a strange sizzle, a flash of steam and a nose-tickling stench of vinegar. The liquid dripped through the hair-vines and they seemed to wriggle in pain.

  I thought about Rosa’s weeds fizzling.

  Slowly, the hair-vines unwrapped themselves from Zoe’s neck and slithered back across her shoulders. There was a high-pitched deflating sound, like air rushing out of a balloon, as the hair twitched, jerked, and finally gave up, hanging limply down Zoe’s back. Dead as dead weeds.

  The air whooshed out of me.

  Zoe and I swapped terrified looks, and for a second I thought she might say thank you, or sorry, or something. But she didn’t have the chance, because Elektra pushed me out of the way and grabbed Zoe by the shoulders.

  ‘What happened?’ Elektra hissed. ‘What did you do to the hair dye?’

  ‘Nothing,’ whimpered Zoe. ‘It just attacked me.’

  ‘Nonse
nse. You did something wrong, as usual.’ Elektra glanced at the judges. ‘Get up, now. We’re going straight back to the lab to fix this.’

  ‘But my hair,’ sobbed Zoe. ‘It’s still purple.’

  Which was true. The colour-changing effect must have worn off so quickly it got stuck on purple, and now Zoe’s hair looked like vinegar-drenched grape bubblegum.

  ‘Your hair can wait,’ Elektra said through gritted teeth. ‘We have more important things to worry about, like the six hundred people who’ve already paid for the Spraynbow.’

  Zoe let out another sob, and as Elektra hustled her out of the hall, I heard her say, ‘We don’t fail, Zoe Von Hammer. We’re BeautyGlow, and what are we?’

  ‘We’re a cut above the rest,’ moaned Zoe, disappearing through the doorway.

  They were gone. All that was left was a puddle of vinegar hair-detangler on the floor. I looked at the empty bottle in my shaking hand, then at Ivy. Her brown eyes were shining brightly and her hair looked disturbingly neat, and I wondered if she was thinking the same thing as me: that we were probably the first people in history to save someone with hairspray.

  Everyone else must have been thinking that, too, because it took ten minutes for the hall to calm down, and Mr Lee needed three cups of tea and a little lie-down backstage before he and the Lab Girls finally came back out and announced the winner.

  And nope – it wasn’t us.

  We came second, so at least Ivy still got her A in science, but we didn’t get the trophy. It turned out Violet was right. Everyone really does love cupcakes, because Bella and Saanvi won with their genuinely genius cupcake icing-gun. I watched them collect their prize, and kept thinking how the old me would have seen that as one giant fail. But the new me remembered Dad’s green notebook lying under my pillow at home, and I figured we hadn’t lost anything at all. My one idea had solved Ivy’s hair problem.

  And saved Zoe from a near-death hair-dye disaster.

  I had a feeling Dad would have seen that as one big success.

  We all walked home together: me, Ivy, Violet and Faye.

  The four of us kept going over what had happened at the competition and re-watching Violet’s video, with Ivy pausing it every single time to admire her hair. After our seventeenth viewing, Violet asked if she could post the video to her new channel. Faye said, ‘Do it.’

  ‘This is so brilliant.’ Violet started tapping at the screen. ‘The camera work’s a bit shaky, but your presentation was amazing, and I got the Lab Girls on camera! I think this might be the one to send in to Shut Up and Shoot!’

  ‘Shut up and what?’ I stopped walking.

  ‘My favourite magazine.’ Violet stopped too. ‘Didn’t I tell you?’

  You haven’t told me anything lately.

  Violet pulled the magazine out of her backpack. There was a guy with a camera on the cover. ‘I did some filmmaking classes when I went to drama camp, and the teacher gave me this movie-making magazine. It says to start small, so I made all those makeup videos with Zoe.’

  ‘Makeup videos?’ Faye’s ears perked up.

  ‘And then there were the baking videos with Saanvi and Bella,’ continued Violet. ‘But now that I’ve shot this, I think I might be able to do more live-action stuff, like real short films.’ A light seemed to go on in Violet’s eyes. A light I’d completely missed.

  She held up her phone and showed us her new channel. It was called VioletBlooms.

  ‘Great name. Garden-y, in a good way,’ said Ivy, and Violet grinned at her.

  ‘And look, the hairspray video’s already getting views,’ said Faye, pointing at the screen.

  ‘Does my hair still look good?’ asked Ivy.

  My sister laughed. ‘Way better.’

  Violet turned back to me. ‘Anyway, Shut Up and Shoot! does profiles on young filmmakers, so fingers crossed they like my work. I really think this might be my thing, Lily.’

  Filmmaking. How had I missed that?

  I thought about all the stupid things I’d done to get Violet’s attention over the past week, when the whole time she was just experimenting and trying to make something too. I wasn’t sure if this changed things between us, but something felt different. Like there was more space between me and Violet now, but in a good way – the way flowers need space to grow. I smiled, thinking Rosa would like that one.

  ‘I’m really happy for you, Vi,’ I said, and kept walking, with Violet on one side and Ivy on the other. ‘This could be the start of something beautiful.’

  ‘Ooo, speaking of which …’ Ivy spun around and walked backwards, her scribbly sneakers sliding against the footpath. ‘We need to make more Happy Hair. Can we come over to the salon now?’

  ‘And your mum could paint our nails purple?’ suggested Violet.

  The salon. My footsteps slowed as we turned the corner into my street. Ahead, the salon glowed a deep purple in the afternoon sun. My watch said it was three-thirty.

  ‘I’m not sure if it’s even our salon anymore,’ I said.

  ‘Only one way to find out.’ Faye pushed the door open. Mr Sebold was sitting at the desk with Mum, stinking up the place with his musk cologne.

  He gave us an annoyed frown and turned back to Mum. ‘Like I said, Mrs Green, we need your signature here, and here, so we can officially turn these worthless old bricks into gold.’

  Mum’s pen hovered over the sale papers.

  ‘Lots of gold,’ added Mr Sebold, running a hand over his gelled hair.

  I felt a twist in my gut. Ivy and Violet were giving me confused looks, and my sister – what was she doing? She just kept staring into her phone.

  ‘Faye, do something,’ I whispered.

  ‘In a minute,’ she whispered back. ‘The Lab Girls just shared Violet’s Happy Hair video.’

  ‘What?’ Violet peered over her shoulder. ‘8,800 views??’

  ‘And counting,’ hissed Faye.

  ‘Girls, I know you’re all WhoTubing and CatChatting these days,’ quipped Mr Sebold, ‘but can you please do it elsewhere while the adults do business?’

  ‘Mum –’ Faye was about to say something when the salon phone rang.

  We all jumped.

  ‘I don’t have all day, Mrs Green,’ said Mr Sebold.

  ‘I understand, just one moment.’ Mum answered the phone. ‘Hairspray?’ she frowned.

  ‘Oh my gosh, it’s happening.’ Faye slid her phone across the desk and it landed right in front of Mum. The Happy Hair video was running, and as Mum watched it, she slowly put the salon phone down.

  ‘The Lab Girls endorsed Lily and Ivy’s hairspray,’ said Faye, her voice rising. ‘Be the Boss says a celebrity endorsement is the first step to major business success.’

  ‘And the whole world is watching.’ Violet checked her screen. ‘12,003 views, and rising by the second! I mentioned Kitty’s Beauty Parlour in the video description, but I had no idea people would call you.’

  Ivy looked pale. ‘Does this mean we got on TV?’

  ‘Sort of.’ My head was spinning, and it didn’t help that the salon phone was ringing again, filling the space with a shrill buzz. This time Mum didn’t pick it up.

  ‘Mrs Green, I must remind you my client’s offer ends today,’ insisted Mr Sebold.

  ‘They can wait,’ snapped Faye. ‘We’re in the middle of an important business meeting. Look.’ She held up her phone. The screen was lighting up with comments.

  Saw the video. Where can I get HHSM?

  All-natural hair detangler?! How much??

  Do you ship to Paris?

  I need this. NOW! Five bottles please.

  ‘What’s your point, Faye?’ sighed Mum.

  ‘These are customers.’

  ‘They’re comments on a video.’

  ‘Written by real people!’ Faye burst out laughing. ‘All over the world.’

  ‘And there are hundreds of them,’ said Violet, scrolling through her phone. ‘Everyone’s saying they want to try Happy Hair.’

 
‘But that’s impossible.’ I puffed a stray curl out of my face.

  ‘Not impossible.’ Faye gave me a funny look. ‘A beauty miracle.’

  ‘I’ve never heard such nonsense.’ Mr Sebold stood up, just as a dark car squealed up to the kerb outside. The car’s horn honked. ‘Ladies, we need to finalise the sale of this salon immediately.’

  ‘Not if I have anything to do with it.’ Faye snatched up the papers and stuffed them in the wax pot. ‘Mum, you wanted a solution, and you’ve got one. It’s made of vinegar and it’s called Happy Hair and we can sell it to the world.’

  Mum rubbed her forehead. ‘We already tried this.’

  ‘And we failed. So what?’ Faye put her hands on her hips. ‘We just try again.’

  Try again?

  Ivy gave me a nudge. ‘Lily has a whole notebook full of other great ideas.’

  Confused, I looked down at the black-and-white tiles under my feet, then my eyes travelled up the walls, along the ruined purple wallpaper and over to the patch of bright green wall where Dad’s height chart used to be. The green bricks seemed to wink at me.

  ‘I can already see the business plan.’ Faye’s voice hummed in the background. ‘We start with the oatmeal body cream and the avocado hair treatment, but we make them better. More professional, with lots of high-end, natural ingredients, instead of stuff out of the fridge. No offence, Lily.’

  ‘None taken,’ I murmured.

  ‘And Mum, with your beauty expertise, and my business skills, and Lily’s ideas, we could put a whole new spin on Kitty’s.’

  ‘But our reputation is a mess.’ As soon as Mum said that, Dad’s crossed-out inventions flashed through my head.

  Not working! Start again. Think BIGGER.

  ‘So we start something new,’ I said slowly.

  ‘Yes!’ Faye snapped her fingers. ‘A new business name. House of Beauty.’

  ‘Glimmer Girls?’ suggested Violet.

  ‘Hair We Are!’ shouted Ivy.

  ‘No, it has to have us in it,’ I said, still thinking.

  ‘Right. Put the you in beautiful,’ agreed Faye.

  Everyone fell quiet, and the phone kept ringing and ringing, but all I could see was that green patch of wall where Dad used to be, and something sparkled inside me. ‘Let’s just be who we are,’ I said, looking at Mum. ‘The Green Girls.’