All That Glitters (2 page)

“Certain,” Brooke answered. She left her napkin and cup on the table and ran over to one of the old pedicure chairs in the corner. The blue-green leather on the chairs was worn out in some places, so Mom had them moved to the back. Brooke hopped into the chair on the right and slipped off her sandals, and Aly got started.

Aly had been practicing her polishing skills since she was in kindergarten. Brooke had been practicing too, but Aly was the expert. Aly had taught Brooke:

• Keep the side of your hand resting on something steady for wobble-free polishing.

• Wipe extra polish off on the side of the bottle before you paint a nail.

• People's feet are very ticklish.

• Red polish stains white shorts.

• So does purple.

And Brooke had taught herself how to stay super still while she was getting her toes painted—even if Aly tickled her or dripped polish on her shorts.

One by one, Aly applied the glittery colors. “They look so beautiful,” Brooke whispered. “I love the sparkles. They are so . . . so . . .”

“Sparkly?” Aly said, and they both started laughing.

Aly tucked her hair behind her ears. It had been cut too short to pull into a ponytail, perhaps not the best hairstyle for a manicurist. She kept worrying that
it would fall in front of her eyes and that she'd paint Brooke's skin instead of her nails. Maybe she should ask Mom to buy her some headbands.

After she'd applied a second coat, Aly admired Brooke's toes herself. She had to admit, the rainbow look was awesome, especially with the sparkles.

“Let's go see if there's a spot at the drying station, Brookester.”

Brooke stood up and hobbled on her heels, following Aly out of the back room and into the main salon.

“I am the Princess of Sparkles,” Brooke announced. Brooke would say or do anything, Aly thought, to make people pay attention to her. Mostly Aly didn't mind, but sometimes it could get annoying.

“Come over here and show me your royal toes,” Mom said. She was by the door, helping Miss Nina get her car keys out of her bag so she wouldn't smudge her new manicure.

“Nice color choices, Brookie. And nice job, Aly.”

“Maybe you could do my nails next week.” Miss Nina winked at Aly. “You're just as good as your mom.”

Aly smiled as Miss Nina left the salon. She was
so
ready to be a real manicurist, but Mom said she had to wait until she was eighteen. School had to be her main job until then. After that, she could paint nails. Or go to college. Or do both. Aly wasn't sure what she would choose.

“Do you like the rainbow?” Aly asked.

“Very much,” said Mom.

“What rainbow?”

Aly looked up. Sitting on one of the chairs in the waiting area was Jenica Posner.
The
Jenica Posner—a sixth grader who was the very best soccer player on the girls' team.

And this was the first time she had ever spoken to Aly.

A
ly couldn't answer. Her mouth opened, but no words came out. She just stared at Jenica. But Brooke chattered away like Jenica was her very best friend.

“There's a rainbow of sparkle polish on my toes,” Brooke told her. Brooke wasn't shy around anyone. Not even sixth graders. Not even Jenica Posner.

Jenica got up and walked across the nail salon. “These are totally cool!” She kneeled down and inspected Brooke's toes.

“Can I get mine done like that, Nana?” she asked. Jenica turned her head toward a woman with a long white ponytail sitting at station number two.

“If they have time for you, honey. You'll have to ask,” the woman answered.

Aly and Brooke's mom flipped through the pages of the salon's appointment book. She looked at the people in the waiting area. There were now more people waiting than there were chairs for them to sit on.

“I'm so sorry, sweetie,” she said to Jenica, “but we're all booked up. Maybe tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow I have a soccer game,” Jenica said. “Too bad.”

Brooke looked at Aly. She winked once with her left eye, then twice with her right, trying to send a Secret Sister Eye Message. But Aly was having trouble understanding it. Finally, Brooke blurted out, “Aly, Mom! Aly could do it!”

Aly felt a rush of excitement. But she knew the rules. Brooke must have forgotten. “I can't,” Aly whispered to her sister. “Not till I'm eighteen.”

But Jenica didn't hear Aly's whispers. “Could she?” Jenica asked Aly's mom.

Aly held her breath. What would Mom say?

“Well . . .” Mom looked at the crowded shop and then at Aly. “Maybe just this once. As long as it's okay with you, Aly. Same rules as when you do Brooke's nails—no clippers, no cuticle cutters, just emery boards and polish.”

“It's okay with me,” Aly said as calmly as she could. But her stomach was flipping around like it was doing somersaults off a diving board.

“This one's on the house,” Aly heard her mom say to Jenica's nana.

Since all the pedicure chairs were full, Aly and Brooke took Jenica to the back room.

“Brooke, please turn on the water at pedicure station one,” Aly said, pretending that she and Brooke gave pedicures every day. “Jenica, sit over there, please.”

“Okay, but which is station one?” Brooke asked.

Aly rolled her eyes. “You know . . . the left one.”

Brooke turned on the faucet, and as the basin filled with water, Aly removed Jenica's old—and very chipped—toenail polish.

“Soccer's rough on toenail polish,” Jenica said, flexing her big toes.

“I know what you mean,” Aly answered, even though she really didn't. Weren't Jenica's toes protected by cleats while she played soccer?

“I think the water's ready!” Brooke chirped, slipping under Aly's arm to turn off the faucet. “Do you play soccer a lot? What about other sports? Do you play them, too?”

“Just soccer,” Jenica said to Brooke. “Do I put my feet in now?”

Aly nodded as she added a drop of special skin-softening oil to the water. “It should be nice and warm and feel—”

“YIKES!” Jenica yelled. She yanked her feet out of the water. “That's
freezing
! I can't put my feet in there!”

Aly dipped her hand in the water. It felt like the tub of melted ice that her dad stored drinks in at barbecues.

“Brooke! Did you adjust the temperature?”

Brooke shrugged. “I thought I did. Sorry!”

Didn't Brooke understand that this was Jenica Posner? And that they couldn't mess up her pedicure?

Aly let the water drain, adjusted the temperature, and refilled the basin.

Finally, when Jenica's feet were clean and dry—and warm!—Aly gripped the bottom of her foot, just
like she held Brooke's when she painted her toenails. But Jenica apparently hadn't practiced sitting still the way Brooke had.

She started laughing. “I'm really ticklish!” she said. “You can't touch my foot like that!”

Aly took a deep breath. She wasn't sure how to fix this, and if Jenica kept laughing, there was no way this pedicure could ever happen. Even though she was still sort of annoyed at Brooke about the cold water, Aly looked at her sister and opened her eyes as wide as possible. Code for
Help!

“I know how you can stop feeling tickly,” Brooke said to Jenica. “It's the trick I use when Aly paints my nails.” She paused for a second. “Bite on your tongue. Not so hard that it bleeds or anything, but just so you feel it. Then you think about your tongue and you don't think about your feet being ticklish. And the tickle feeling goes away. Like magic.”
Brooke smiled. “I came up with that myself.”

Jenica looked horrified. “You want me to bite my tongue?”

“Not
hard
,” Brooke said. “Just a little bit. I promise it works.”

Jenica looked at Aly. Aly shrugged. “She never laughs when I polish her toes.”

“This is weird,” Jenica said. “But I'll try it.”

Jenica bit down on her tongue, and slowly and carefully, Aly lifted Jenica's foot and started painting her toes with two coats of rainbow-colored sparkles.

After two toes were done, Jenica said, “You're right, Brooke. It works—it doesn't tickle anymore.” She held out her hand, and Brooke high-fived it.

Aly was just thankful that the trick had worked as she concentrated on the job in front of her. She'd gotten two more nails done when her hair slipped in front of her right eye. Dumb haircut.

“Did you just get that red on my actual toe?” Jenica asked, wiggling her foot.

Aly rested the polish brush on the floor and tucked her hair back behind her ear. Then she looked down. Oops!

“Sorry about that,” she said. She grabbed a little wooden stick, dipped it in polish remover, and wiped the polish off Jenica's toe. “I think I need a headband to keep my hair back.”

“You totally do,” Brooke said. Then she turned to Jenica. “She totally does.”

Jenica pulled an elastic out of her own hair and handed it to Aly. “Why don't you do a half-up with this? It'll keep it out of your eyes.”

Jenica Posner, the superstar sixth-grade soccer player, was giving Aly an elastic right off her own head? Aly couldn't believe it, but she did what Jenica said, putting half of her hair up on top of her head.

Then she took a deep breath and kept painting. This was more nerve-wracking than being in the district-wide spelling bee, and that had been one of the most nerve-wracking days of Aly's life!

“You're actually good at this,” Jenica said as, stroke by stroke, Aly transformed Jenica's toes into a sparkly rainbow. No more polish got on Jenica's skin. Not even a drop. And thanks to Brooke's tongue trick, Jenica didn't laugh or wriggle anymore.

“Aly's not just regular good,” Brooke said, “she's especially, fabulously good. She polishes my nails all the time. And sometimes, at home, she polishes my cousins' nails, and once my grandma's, and when we were little, she polished our stuffed animals' nails, but she got in trouble for that.”

Aly cringed. Why oh why did Brooke have to tell Jenica about the stuffed animals?

Jenica laughed. “I bet your mom wasn't too happy with that one.”

“Nope, not at all. For her punishment—”

“Brooke, do we have clear polish back here?” Aly asked. She knew they did, but she
had
to do something to get Brooke to stop telling Jenica Posner such embarrassing things about her.

Brooke got the clear polish. Then she started talking about Arnold and how he delivered all the polish to True Colors.

Feeling much calmer, Aly added a clear coat on top of the colors—something she didn't do for Brooke. It was what the real manicurists did, though.

“All done!” Aly said, and smiled.

Jenica lifted her feet out in front of her. “I can't wait to show the girls on the soccer team. They're going to flip.”

“Well, if you tell them to call for appointments,
my mom can schedule them for rainbow sparkle pedicures too,” Aly said as she opened the basin's drain.

“Good idea,” Jenica said, standing up. “Can I walk?”

“Really carefully,” Aly told her. “Mostly on your heels. To the toe-drying station out front. Brooke, can you bring Jenica's flip-flops, please?”

After Jenica's polish was dry, she said to Aly, “I'm going to tell the team to ask for you. This is the prettiest pedicure I've ever had.”

Aly couldn't stop a huge smile from spreading across her face. Out of all of the days she'd spent at True Colors—even with Jenica almost freezing her feet off, and Brooke's humiliating stories, and Strawberry Sunday just about sticking Jenica's toes together—Aly was pretty sure this was the best one yet.

T
he next morning Aly, Brooke, and two Pop-Tarts—chocolate for Aly and strawberry for Brooke—were in the backseat of their mom's car. It was so early that Brooke had finished braiding only one side of her hair. The other side hung down almost to her waist.