The Brilliant Ideas of Lily Green

by Lisa Siberry

  Faye’s eyes widened. ‘Green Girls Natural Beauty.’

  Mum put her pen down with a clatter, and I knew that she was in.

  ‘Mr Sebold? I don’t think we’ll be selling the salon just yet,’ she said in a small voice.

  ‘You’re making a big mistake,’ he snarled, storming out of the salon.

  ‘Not a mistake, Mr Sebold,’ said Faye to his disappearing back. ‘Just making the world a beautiful place!’

  ‘One experiment at a time!’ I added.

  I’m pretty sure I heard Elektra screaming in her black car before it skidded off for good. But I didn’t care what was happening out there. Everything I needed was in here. Ivy was jumping around excitedly, Violet had slid behind the desk to show Mum the video again, and after Faye flipped the salon sign back to OPEN, she turned to me and her eyes were shining so brightly they practically sparkled.

  ‘Lily, I think this time you actually did it,’ she said.

  But I shook my head, because everyone knows it takes more than one ingredient to make something beautiful. ‘We did it.’

  Can you change your life in three weeks?

  I’m beginning to realise that if you have an idea, you can change anything, because so much has happened at the salon.

  Firstly, we didn’t turn our bricks into gold – we made them green again. It took five days and four broken fingernails, but Mum, Faye and I managed to scrape off all the old purple wallpaper, and now Kit Bat Pur – I mean, Green Girls Natural Beauty –is officially green again. And it looks beautiful.

  The washbasin is fixed, the pipe is mended, and the salon shelves are full of our brand-new beauty products. There’s the oatmeal, mint, pink grapefruit and vanilla body cream, also known as Calm Balm. (Mum added the vanilla pods – Faye came up with the name). And the avocado, egg-yolk and orange-flower hair treatment that we like to call Pretty as a Petal. Oh, and of course there’s Happy Hair. That shelf empties out every day, because if there’s one thing I’ve learnt lately, it’s that a lot of people around the world have knotty hair.

  Four hundred and fifty-two at last count.

  That’s how many people contacted us after they saw the Happy Hair video. Four hundred and fifty-two! And we keep getting more orders every day. Sometimes, I re-watch Violet’s video and think how funny it is that I’ve been making weird things for her since forever, but the first thing she made for me has changed everything.

  I feel a ripple of excitement at the thought of what’s about to happen, and peek in the salon mirror. This morning Faye styled my hair into a ‘half top-knot with scrunchy waves’ – not bad – and last night Mum re-embroidered my apron pocket.

  That’s the other thing that’s changed. I’m not a Junior Beauty Assistant anymore. The job title on my apron is CBPI, which is short for Chief Beauty-Product Inventor (Mum couldn’t fit it all on the pocket). I run my hand over the gold lettering and for the first time in ages, I feel like myself, but somehow … bigger. Kind of like the Green Lily cutting, which is growing in a vase on the windowsill. It already has a green flower bud ready to burst open.

  When Mum saw it, and I told her the story about the Green Lily, she got this funny look on her face and said something about how nature is a good reminder that everything has to keep growing. Then she did a strange thing – she got Faye and I to back up against the wall beside the washbasin, and she drew two purple lines over our heads. They’ll never replace Dad’s old lines, but they do feel like the start of something new.

  There’s a tap on the salon window and I squint out into the afternoon sun. Ivy’s standing on a ladder outside, waving at me. Bertie’s on her head, pecking at the seeds in her dark brown hair, which is perfectly untangled and pinned back with a hair clip in the shape of a pencil.

  ‘How does it look?!’ she shouts, pointing at the new gold lettering she’s painted on the window.

  Green Girls Natural Beauty.

  ‘Beautiful!’ I shout back. ‘Don’t forget, ten minutes until show time!’

  Ivy gives me a thumbs up, Bertie squawks, and I manage to grab Crunch before he throws himself at the window.

  ‘No more shampoo disasters, Mr Crunch,’ I whisper, tucking him into my arms and swishing through the beaded curtain. When I get upstairs into the kitchen, the smell of mulberries envelops me like a warm blanket.

  ‘Lily, when’s the new Mulberry Madness hair masque going to be ready?’ asks Faye. She’s sitting at the kitchen table with her laptop, wearing a purple apron that’s also been re-embroidered. It says one word: Boss. ‘We already have three hundred preorders. People are going wild over it.’ (Faye doesn’t talk to me me like I’m her slave anymore. She talks to me like I matter. I’m still getting used to it.)

  ‘Um, should be done today?’ I say, peering over Mum’s shoulder into one of the pots on the stove. Crunch meows hungrily.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ says Mum, squeezing some lemon juice into the purple mixture. ‘We need to get the formula right. Do you still want to give some to Zoe?’ Mum looks sideways at me and I say, ‘Definitely.’

  We’ve been working on this new mulberry-lemon hair masque that can brighten blonde hair. I’m hoping it might help Zoe – her hair is still purple. She wore a beanie to school for two weeks, but then she started letting it hang out and got new purple-framed glasses to match. The crazy thing is, two other girls showed up to school last week with purple streaks, and now Faye’s thinking of dying her ends purple.

  I still don’t get beauty.

  But I sure love making it.

  ‘Eight minutes to go, Boss,’ I say, tapping Faye’s well-worn copy of Be the Boss.

  She gives me a little salute and goes back to typing on her laptop. Faye and Ivy designed our new website, and Ivy does the artwork for all our labels, too. There’s a tiny green notebook hidden on every one. It’s pure Ivy genius.

  ‘Any updates on that idea you had for spray-on licorice shower jelly?’ asks Faye without looking up.

  ‘Still working on it.’ I pull my notebook out of my apron. ‘But getting there.’ I scribble down a few thoughts about ingredients, then run my pen down the list of other beauty product ideas Mum and I have been talking about. Like seaweed and sweetpea hand cream. And chocolate and crushed-violet body butter. I’m even thinking of making an all-natural red lipstick for Faye – one that uses beetroot powder instead of squished bugs.

  See, even though we still see Mrs D, Miss Sparrow, and a few customers here and there for a haircut or a manicure, our main business now is selling our own custom-made beauty products. And ever since the competition, I have not been able to stop thinking about what to make next. It’s just one sparkly idea after the other.

  Some of them I know will definitely work (coffee and tea-rose body scrub!) and some might not (kiwi fruit and clove-powder toothpaste?), but I figure I have to give it a try, because there is definitely no magic formula for making something great. It’s just practice.

  Five minutes left.

  I slip the notebook in my apron pocket and climb out the kitchen window onto the fire escape. Crunch follows me down, and soon we’re scrambling up the mulberry tree onto the back wall. I look for Rosa. She’s spritzing vinegar on a patch of weeds that are trying to overtake the glowing purple flowers.

  ‘Ready for your big day, Green Lily?’ she asks.

  ‘Not sure.’ I feel really nervous, but looking out over Rosa’s strange, beautiful garden calms me down a bit. ‘When it’s finished, I’ll come back and do the weeding like we agreed, OK?’

  Rosa throws me the bottle of vinegar. It’s Dad’s old bottle. We share it now. ‘Two months and five days of weeding to go, Green Lily,’ she reminds me.

  ‘Or longer,’ I shrug. The idea was that I’d do Rosa’s weeding to make up for all my mistakes, but I’ve started enjoying it. Ripping out evil weeds feels good.

  We don’t talk for a few minutes, just listen to the wind swaying through the Spanish moss. Eventually Rosa says, ‘He would be very proud of you for maki
ng things so much better.’

  ‘Thanks, Rosa.’ The words come out all squeaky because now I’m thinking of Dad and how I wish he was here.

  I could sit on this wall all day, but there’s no time left.

  The show’s about to start.

  Mum, Faye and I crowd around the little TV on the salon desk. An ad is on. We’ve been waiting days for this moment, but now that it’s about to happen I feel a bit pukey-nervous. Instinctively, I look out the window for Violet, but instead I see Ivy walking in with gold paint smeared on her green polka-dot jumpsuit. She has a paintbrush in one hand and her violin case in the other.

  ‘I’ve got practice later today,’ she says as she puts down her violin case, which she recently covered in drawings.

  ‘When do art classes start?’ I ask.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Ivy flourishes her paintbrush. ‘I’m thinking of painting a mural dedicated to the “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy”. And there’ll be lots of evil fairies setting violins on fire.’

  ‘Fire. I like it,’ nods Faye.

  Ivy flops into the seat next to mine and gives me a side hug. We see each other a lot now. She stops by most mornings to walk to school together, and sometimes Violet joins us too, although I don’t wait around for Violet the way I used to. She’s really busy with her filmmaking these days. Shut Up and Shoot! just got back to her and they’re running a profile on the success of her Happy Hair video. I get that she’s busy doing other things now, and I’m happy for her, but I might keep the wads of old bubblegum under the desk a little longer. It’s good to hang onto a few memories.

  ‘Shhhh, it’s starting,’ says Faye, turning up the TV volume.

  The Lab Girls appear on screen.

  ‘Hi everyone,’ smiles Mina.

  ‘Welcome to The Lab Girls,’ says Mai. ‘In last week’s episode, we met two clever girls, Bella and Saanvi, who invented quite the cupcake icing-gun.’

  ‘Wow. Those cupcakes were super sweet.’

  ‘And those girls were super smart.’

  ‘But for this very special DO IT YOURSELF!! segment, we thought we’d introduce you to two other inventors, whose quirky hair formula has been making waves in the beauty world.’

  ‘I think you mean untangling waves,’ says Mai.

  The shop door tinkles behind me. It’s Mrs Dougall.

  ‘Have I missed anything?’ she whispers.

  ‘Nope,’ I whisper back. ‘It’s just beginning.’

  Mrs D’s blue curls bob cheerfully around her face, and even though I know she’s here for her regular Monday afternoon appointment, I also know she’s here for me.

  The door tinkles again, and this time it’s Rosa.

  ‘Guys, hurry up already, I’m trying to listen,’ orders Faye. I guess there’s a reason why we all call her Boss.

  Rosa sneaks me a bunch of her caramel-scented polka-dot roses. ‘For a vase only,’ she says seriously. ‘No shampoo, comprendes?’

  I do a little cross sign on my heart, and shuffle over to make room for her.

  We all turn back to the TV, just in time to see the camera panning over to a mini-Ivy and mini-Lily. We’re standing at a lab table with the Happy Hair ingredients spread out in front of us.

  ‘Thanks, Mai,’ says TV-Lily, and I feel my eyes prickling as Mum pulls me closer. ‘A lot of people helped make Happy Hair a success, and it took a bit of, um …’ TV-Lily looks nervous.

  TV-Ivy takes over. ‘It took a bit of practise. But with the right ingredients, we managed to turned a bit of blurg into a lot of beautiful.’

  This makes everyone around me giggle.

  And as the TV voices keep talking, I look over at the Happy Hair shelf, where Crunch is sunning himself like he owns the world. I say a silent ‘thank you’ to him. When he knocked over that bottle of shampoo four weeks ago, I thought he’d ruined everything. But it turns out one (OK, maybe three) epic failures helped me find a way to make myself, and our little salon, so much better.

  ‘Lily, are you watching?’ whispers Ivy.

  I nod, but really I’m counting.

  I’m counting all the things I’ve made in the past four weeks:

  Three disastrous beauty products.

  One life-changing (and life-saving) hairspray.

  Four brand-new beauty products.

  A family business with a name that will always help me remember my dad.

  And one special friend.

  I feel good inside. Sparkly. And that’s how I know Mum was right all along – today really is going to be a beautiful day.

  So many ingredients went into making this book.

  I’ll be forever grateful to the wonderful team at Hardie Grant Egmont, especially my publisher, Marisa Pintado, who was a constant source of inspiration and encouragement. And a huge debt of gratitude goes to my editor, Luna Soo – thank you for seeing everything and for all your brilliant, beautiful ideas.

  Special thanks to Maggie Cole for her magnificent cover illustration, and to all the proofreaders, designers and typesetters, whose hard work turned this story into a gorgeous thing to behold.

  Mum and Dad, thank you for finding me a sunny desk where I could write uninterrupted.

  And hugs and kisses to my niece Claudia – you were my very first reader, and I loved all of our chats about the story.

  The truth is, Lily Green might not have happened if it weren’t for my children, Gus and June, who kept asking, ‘What next?’ Thank you, my lovelies.

  And Jeff, thank you for everything, always.

  Lisa Siberry is a freelance writer and content producer who spent many years working at the ABC. She lives in Sydney with her husband and two children. Her debut middle-grade novel, The Brilliant Ideas of Lily Green, won the 2017 Ampersand Prize, the premier award for debut authors in Australia and New Zealand. Like Lily Green, she made lots of things when she was a kid, including a very dreadful squashed-jasmine-flower perfume.

  The Brilliant Ideas of Lily Green

  first published in 2019 by

  Hardie Grant Egmont

  Ground Floor, Building 1, 658 Church Street

  Richmond, Victoria 3121, Australia

  www.hardiegrantegmont.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers and copyright holders.

  Text copyright © 2019 Lisa Siberry

  Design copyright © 2019 Hardie Grant Egmont

  Cover illustration by Maggie Cole

  Cover design by Pooja Desai

  We welcome feedback from our readers. All our ebooks are edited and proofread vigorously, but we know that mistakes sometimes get through. If you spot any errors, please email info@hardiegrantegmont.com so that we can fix them for your fellow ebook readers.

  eISBN 9781743586341