Bling It On! (6 page)

A little while later, AP Amari came out with his bullhorn again.

“New numbers to report! The boys are now at five hundred seventy-eight dollars and the girls at five hundred twenty-one!”

Aly was not happy with this latest tally. Would her Suzy Davis plan turn things around? Where
was
Suzy, any—

“We're here!” Suzy suddenly appeared out of nowhere with her sister behind her. “Heather's going to help too,” she announced. “Since you have two braiders and two polishers, it makes sense to have two makeup-ers. We'll set up over there.” She pointed toward a corner of the booth next to the manicure stations, where a little bit of counter space was available.

“Great,” Aly said.

Brooke rolled her eyes but agreed.

As soon as Suzy set up, she asked to borrow Sophie's chair. She stood up on it and started to yell, even louder than AP Amari with his bullhorn. “Attention! Attention! The Sparkle Spa Celebration now includes Suzy's Spectacular Makeup! If you want fairy dust or shimmer lip gloss, it costs one dollar! I would've had perfume, too, if Principal Rogers let me do my own booth. But now it's just fairy dust and lip gloss, so you can blame her.”

Aly had to bite her bottom lip to keep from laughing at that last bit.

Before Suzy could even jump off the chair, girls came running. Suzy and Heather started applying makeup—well, Suzy did and yelled at Heather for not doing it right. Aly and Charlotte continued braiding, and Brooke and Sophie kept on manicuring.

The afternoon flew by, and before the girls knew it, it was time for Lily to hand money over to Principal Rogers again, and for Mr. Amari to read the results. “This is going to be a close race!” he said. “The boys have earned seven hundred ninety-nine dollars and the girls seven hundred fifty-five. The girls are closing the gap!”

“Just forty-four dollars from a tie. I think it's because of my makeup,” Suzy said.

Brooke rolled her eyes again, but Aly smiled. She didn't care why the girls won, she just wanted them to win. She was still worried about the cookie bet and getting into trouble with her mom and Joan. If Suzy Davis was the reason the girls raised the most money, that was fine by her! She just hoped they could keep it up.

T
wo hours later, broken hair elastics lay on the ground, cotton balls overflowed the trash, and Suzy Davis had a thick smear of fairy dust on her white T-shirt. It looked a little like Tie-Dye Tango, a polish Mom had ordered last week.

The girls had been inching closer to the boys with each measurement, and last time Aly had checked the giant thermometer, the girls were at $1,744 and the boys at $1,756.

“Twelve dollars!” Lily kept saying. “They're only beating us by twelve dollars!”

Throughout the day, even though the Sparkle Spa booth was super busy, the girls had taken short breaks so that they could go to the carnival themselves—on the girls' side. They had gotten married to each other and decorated more cookies and played the Wheel of Fortune and took pictures at the Be a Super-Model booth, which Aly had to admit
was
a better photo booth than the one she and the girls would have made.

“Can we play balloon darts?” Brooke had asked right after she and Aly had taken pictures together wearing green alien headbands and blue boas.

Aly checked her pocket. “We've spent all our money!” she giggled.

Walking around the field, the girls saw lots of kids—and even some grown-ups—with tattoos, mainly the glow-in-the-dark ones, which they kept cupping their hands around their arms to see. The other boy booths were pretty busy too, especially Win a Fish.

“Do you think the girls are going to win?” Sophie asked when Aly and Brooke returned. She had just finished a Cotton Candyland polish job on Keisha, a second grader, and now Keisha was getting her makeup done.

“It's possible,” Lily said, trying to count the wad of money in her hand. Every time she got halfway through, someone would hand her more money, and she would get mixed up and have to start counting all over again.

“Fifteen minutes until the end of the carnival!” boomed Mr. Amari.

Suzy Davis pushed Sophie off her chair and climbed up on it. “If you haven't gotten your makeup done yet, come now!” she yelled. “And get braided, too!”

Aly was impressed that Suzy remembered to talk about the braiding.

“What about manicures?” Brooke reminded her.

“And manicures, too!” Suzy shouted.

Brooke seemed satisfied, especially when a third grader came over and asked for purple fingernails, and then Daisy's little sister, Violet, requested blue ones. Aly flexed her fingers when Maisie came to the braid side of the booth and asked for three braids braided together. Aly got to work.

At 3:30 on the dot, AP Arami informed everyone that the carnival booths were closed. “Please deliver your last round of money to me and Principal Rogers and clean up your areas.”

Charlotte held out a giant bag as one by one the girls threw out the day's garbage. Heather Davis was very happy with herself. “I did so much makeup today,” she said. “Does that mean I get to be part of your business forever, Suzy?”

“I'll think about it,” Suzy told her sister.

Aly turned to Brooke and gave her a Secret Sister Eye Message:
I'm glad we're Sparkle Spa partners
.

Brooke smiled and started packing polishes into the wheelie suitcase they had brought them in.

“I wonder what's taking so long,” Lily said, checking her watch. “It shouldn't take this long to count the money.”

“Maybe they want to be extra sure,” Charlotte said. “There
is
a day at Water World on the line here.”

And a batch of Joan's cookies,
Aly thought.

Sophie nodded as she tied up a trash bag. “They do need to be sure.”

Brooke had just finished rolling up the Sparkle Spa Celebration sign when AP Amari blew his whistle into the bullhorn. The shrill sound was deafening.

“I'm sorry it's taken us so long,” he said, “but Principal Rogers and I counted, and counted again, and then recounted
all
of the money for each team.
We now have the official totals. The girls have made one thousand, nine hundred ninety-six dollars—”

Lily whooped. Aly and Charlotte cheered. And Sophie and Brooke jumped up and down. Heather jumped with them.

“It's not worth cheering until we hear how much the boys made,” Suzy said, her arms crossed. Aly didn't like admitting it, but Suzy was right.

AP Amari continued. “And the boys have made one thousand, nine hundred ninety-seven dollars. Congratulations, boys, you won by one dollar!”

“One dollar!” Lily groaned.

Brooke looked like she was about to cry. “It's Dad's dollar,” she said to Aly. “For the Sports Trivia. If he hadn't played Sports Trivia, they wouldn't have won.”

Aly tried to think of something comforting to say, but Brooke was right. If Dad hadn't spent that dollar, the girls would've tied.

Charlotte looked dejected. Lily had collapsed onto a manicure chair. Sophie's head was in her hands. But Suzy Davis was crawling around on the ground.

“Suzy,
what
are you doing?” Aly asked.

Suzy looked up. “When Lily was counting money before, I thought I saw a dollar fall out of her hands. But then I wasn't sure, and I had to finish putting fairy dust on Keisha's cheeks. After that I didn't see it anymore. But maybe it got pushed to the side of the booth.”

Aly got down on her hands and knees too. “And if a dollar really did fall . . . ,” she started.

“Then we'd tie!” she and Suzy both said together.

“It's over,” Lily said. “Besides, I don't think I dropped any money.”

Even though Lily was upset, Charlotte had perked up. “Maybe Suzy did see you drop something. You never know, it might still be there.”

Soon Charlotte was on the ground next to Aly. And then Brooke, Sophie, and Heather.

Then Heather gasped. “I found it!” she said. “I found it!” She tugged the corner of a dollar out from underneath one of the manicure chairs.

“Wait!” Suzy Davis yelled in her loudest voice, pulling her sister next to her. The Davis sisters ran over to Principal Rogers and AP Amari. Heather was gripping the dollar tightly in her hand. “We forgot a dollar! It was stuck to the bottom of a chair. The girls have one more dollar!”

Principal Rogers and AP Amari looked at each other.

“I'm not sure we can count this,” Principal Rogers said. “It wasn't in by the deadline.”

“But it was our dollar!” Suzy explained. “We made it fair and square. It just fell out of Lily's hands. Look, it even has fairy dust on it. That's how you
know it's from our booth. Heather found it. Please let it count.”

Aly and Brooke had followed Suzy and Heather. Aly was surprised at how reasonable and nice Suzy sounded.

“I'm not sure we can,” Principal Rogers said again.

Just then a man with white hair and a white moustache walked over to Principal Rogers. He was wearing a sweatshirt that said
WATER WORLD.

“Excuse me,” he said, looking right at Suzy. He gestured to Principal Rogers and AP Amari to follow him. The three talked quietly.
Who is that?
wondered Aly.

“Thanks for sticking up for our booth,” Aly said to Suzy while they waited.

Suzy shrugged. “Whatever,” she said. “I just wanted to go to the water park.”

Aly smiled. “Well,” she said, “thank you anyway, no matter what your reason was.”

A minute or so later, the white-haired man, AP Amari, and Principal Rogers walked back to the crowd that had formed around the Tanner and Davis girls. AP Amari spoke. “For those of you who don't know, this is Mr. Molina, the owner of Water World. We've just talked over the last-minute dollar with him, and Mr. Molina has said it will count.”

At this, the girls on the field cheered and the boys booed.

“Which means,” AP Amari said over the noise, “this competition ends in a tie. Mr. Molina will provide a free day at Water World for the entire school!”

Instead of booing this time, the boys cheered too.

Aly and Brooke looked at each other and started screaming as loudly as they could. Lily put two fingers in her mouth and whistled. And the Auden Angels broke out in their soccer cheer. “Go, Auden! Go, Angels! Go, Auden! Go, Angels!” they shouted.

“And what's more,” AP Amari yelled, “Mr. Molina will be matching the three thousand, nine hundred ninety-four dollars we've raised for the Community Chest.”

Everyone kept cheering.

“I'm so proud of all of you,” Principal Rogers said, taking the bullhorn from AP Amari. “And I want everyone to thank Mr. Molina for everything he's done for us and for our community.”

“Thank you, Mr. Molina!” everyone chorused.

“But really I think this happened because of you,” Aly whispered to Suzy.

Suzy looked surprised. And then she surprised Aly by smiling at her. For the very first time since Aly had known Suzy Davis, she wondered if maybe there was a nice person underneath all Suzy's meanness. Just maybe.

N
ot quite a week later, on Friday morning, Aly and Brooke were packing their backpacks for school. But instead of homework and lunches, it was bathing suits and towels and—at Mom's insistence—sunscreen.

“Are you girls ready?” Mom asked, jingling her car keys.

“So ready!” Brooke said, skipping out the door. “Sophie and I have a plan. First we're going to go down all the slides. Then the lazy river, and finally, the tide pool.”

Aly smiled and slipped on her backpack. Brooke and Sophie had been talking about their plan all week—at school, at the Sparkle Spa, on the phone after dinner.

“Do you want to know the order of the slides?” Brooke asked as they all got into Mom's car. “Because we made an order.” Brooke chattered the whole way to school, but Aly was thinking of one last thing she had to do before they went to Water World.