I So Don't Do Makeup (11 page)

“About five,” I say.

“How many did you give out?” she asks.

“Ten? Maybe twelve? I don't know.” I'm in such
pain I'm having trouble staying with the conversation. “It's hard to know how many rolled away.”

Lacey's eyebrows jump up to her beautiful blond hairline.

“Think, Sherry,” Amber snaps.

“Well, basically my feet were racing in opposite directions—”

Junie jumps in and explains how she was coming through the doors and saw me fall and the lotions go skittering all over the floor. I'm sounding decidedly unprofessional in this story. “Even thought she hit the floor hard,” Junie says, “she still worked at giving out samples.”

With a paper towel, Amber scrubs at my hand.

“Ouch! Ouch!” I say. “What're ya using? Sandpaper?”

“Sherry, don't be such a baby,” she says. “I'm just cleaning the lotion off.”

I close my eyes and grit my teeth in the hopes this will reduce the hot poking pain. Not working. When she stops scouring, I crack an eye. Yikes.

Amber's holding tweezers like she's going into battle. And my poor tortured hand is the enemy. “Close your eyes,” she orders, then proceeds to attack my palm.

I jerk away. “Ow!”

She waves the tweezers and smiles. “Got one.”

I seize the tweezers and stare at a light-colored,
needle-sharp sliver. Up close, I can see that my hands are filled with them. They're under my skin, poking through my skin, some shallow, some deeper. “Junie!” I wail.

She brings my hands up to her glasses and really scrutinizes. “They're from a cactus. I think.”

I swing my hip toward her. “Call The Ruler. Speed-dial two. She's a gardening expert.”

Junie pulls my cell from my pocket, presses two, then holds the phone up to my ear.

“Help! Spiny things are stuck in my hands. Help! Help!” I'm hysterical. And itchy. Itchy like I was stung by a billion mosquitoes.

Junie grabs my phone and speaks with The Ruler. When she clicks off, she says, “Glochids. They're very fine bristles found on cacti like the prickly pear. Apparently, there are some prickly pears by the south doors of the mall.”

I'm flapping my hands in the air.

“She said you need white glue,” Junie says. “Squirt it all over your hands, let it harden, then peel it off. That'll pull out the glochids.”

“White glue? No hospital visit? No painful shots?” I feel better already.

“She said you'll be fine.” Junie slips the phone back in my pocket. “But she's worried because you were freaking out.”

“I'll call her back after we do the glue.”

“Sherry, let me get this straight.” Lacey squints an eye, concentrating. “You stopped giving out samples the second this happened?”

I nod.

“You asked for the samples back from the customers still standing around?” She's counting bottles, grouping them in little families of five.

I nod.

“We're short three bottles.” Her arms fall to her sides. “Three bottles. They could be on the floor where you fell, right?”

I gulp. “I guess.”

“Or with shoppers,” Amber says.

“Hopefully, on the floor.” Lacey looks like she's going to cry. “If we don't locate the missing bottles in half an hour, I'll have the mall make an announcement.”

“I'll help you look,” Junie says.

“I'm going to the drugstore to pick up glue,” I say. “Then I'll meet you guys.”

Amber stretches out an arm, “The lab coat, Sherry?”

I rip it off, glad to be back in my own comfortable clothes.

Amber stays behind to man the kiosk, check the bottles of lotion to see if they all contain glochids and check the rest of the product.

I limp to the drugstore, my hands tingling.

Lacey and Junie take off at a run.

A
fter leaving the drugstore, I stagger to a bench, pull the red cap off the glue with my teeth and saturate my left palm. The glue is actually somewhat soothing.

Yes, people are looking at me like maybe they should call security. But there comes a point with pain where you just don't care what society's saying.

I stumble to the main entrance. The shopping bag's slung over my right arm, while I hold my left hand up like it's balancing an imaginary tray.

Junie and Lacey are coming toward me.

“Guess what?” Junie calls out.

“What? What'd you guys find?”

“All the bottles are accounted for.” Lacey's swinging
her arms and smiling. She's carrying two bottles of lotion. Junie's got the third.

“Guess what else?” Junie says. “These three bottles don't even have glochids in them. So not all the lotions are contaminated. That's gotta mean something.”

I'm still holding out my left arm, gluey palm facing the ceiling. I shake my poor stinging right hand. “Yeah, like maybe someone was shoving in the prickles and got interrupted.”

“We checked out the prickly pear cacti.” Lacey takes the third bottle from Junie. “The bristles on them look exactly like the pokey things in your hand. It's impossible to tell if yours came from those same cacti, because the plants are covered in the things.”

“But, still,” I say, “the habanero juice in the gloss
could've
come from Wacko Will's kiosk. The bristles in the lotion
could've
come from the mall garden. So, both those items are potentially local.”

“Maybe the ingredient in the night cream is from close by too,” Junie says. “And we just don't know yet.”

We're back at the kiosk, waiting for Amber to finish up with a customer before continuing our conversation.

Lacey plunks the three lotion bottles on the counter.

Amber makes a fist in the air. “You found them all.
I checked the rest of the lotion samples. Five more bottles were filled with those pointy things.”

Lacey's face falls.

“But,” Amber continues, “I went through all the opened product in the kiosk. Nothing.”

“Amber, what time were you done making up the samples?” I ask.

“Yesterday afternoon,” she says.

“So the glochids were added between yesterday afternoon and today after school,” Junie says. “Who was working at the kiosk then?”

“We both were, sometimes together, sometimes alone.” Lacey's voice falters. “I'm really grateful for all the help, guys, but I'm totally creeped out that someone hates me enough to be doing this.” And the wrinkle crosses her forehead again.

“Depending on the suspect”—Junie squeezes Lacey's arm—“it might not be personal at all. More about money.”

The glue's dry and cracking on my palm. Junie pulls it off. Miracle of miracles, the slivers really do peel right off with it. And without pain. All that remains is a little tingle. The Ruler knows her gardening.

“Was there anyone strange around the kiosk between yesterday afternoon and when I arrived today?” I squirt glue over my long-suffering right palm.

Amber bounces the tips of her fake nails off each
other, thinking. “I can't remember anyone strange, can you, Lacey?”

Lacey shakes her head. “It was busy, so there were lots of customers.”

“Any shockingly plain customers? Like the Janes?” I ask.

“We often sell to girls who are buying makeup for the first time,” Amber says. “So it's not unusual to have people hanging around with no makeup on.”

I describe Kim, with her perfect oval face. “She's a Jane who was at my slumber party and refused to use the Nite Sprite Creme. Maybe because she'd secretly doctored it up when the rest of us weren't paying attention. Or maybe a bunch of Janes were here and distracted you guys while one of them messed with the cream.”

Lacey's as white as the glue on my hand.

“How about Will?” Junie asks.

“Will's always here,” Lacey says. “He eats at the food court every day.”

“It's not just Will either,” Amber says. “Lots of mall employees stop by to say hi or buy something when they're on break or at lunch. Almost everyone hits the food court at some point during the day.”

“Well, it seems to me that we have five possible suspects so far.” I hold up a white finger. “Wacko Will, who might be next in line for your kiosk.” I hold up two white fingers. “Kim or even a gang of Janes with
their ridiculous hatred for makeup.” I wiggle three white fingers. “Someone we haven't even thought of yet.” And then I raise four fingers. “Eve, an ex-employee who left in a bad frame of mind.” I wiggle all five fingers. “Someone in shipping and receiving at Discount Mart.” My white hand's in the air like a creepy clown's glove. “I know you don't want to include anyone at Discount Mart, Lacey, but we have to cover all the bases.”

“What happens at night here?” Junie asks.

“We lock up,” Lacey says.

I pick at the flaky glue on my hand. “As in, secure?” I get an edge and pull. Yay. This white glue is the best medical invention since bubble-gum-flavored antibiotics.

“Yeah, it's secure. Like everybody's. Watch, I'll show you.” Lacey points to where a thin metal wall rolls down from the top of the kiosk. “See this lock? I have a key for that. And the product stays behind the barrier.”

Junie jiggles the barrier.

We exchange looks. “Someone could break in pretty easily,” I say.

“They lock up the mall about an hour after closing time,” Lacey says.

“So we need to add that hour to the potential tampering time,” Junie says.

A couple of guys in oversized Chaparral High
School T-shirts saunter up. Hands in the pockets of their sagging shorts, they stand, shuffling their feet. His eyes fixed on a row of packages of fake lashes and nails, one of them says, “Hey, like, it's our girlfriends' birthdays. And they, like, sorta want some makeup from here.”

Lacey and Amber morph into selling mode with questions about hair and eye color and clothing choices. You couldn't tell by watching them that they're in the middle of a cosmetics crisis with an investigation that's going round and round like a Halloween corn maze. Well, maybe you could tell if you looked closely at Lacey, who's paler and less focused than usual, with a wrinkle that's starting to make itself at home on her forehead.

I finish stripping the dregs of glue from between my fingers, then retrieve my backpack and denim purse. “Wanna go see what Crystal has to say about Eve?” Junie never did get to check out Eve earlier, thanks to my disaster with the basket of lotion + a pair of wedge sandals.

“Sure, but I don't have long. Nick and his mom are meeting me at the food court. She's going to drive us to the Upscale Coffee Shop to catch the Detours playing.”

Nick likes the Detours? Very weird. They're one of my favorite bands.

Arm in arm, Junie and I tramp up the stairs to the department store.

At the department store, Crystal's in charge of four different counters, each featuring a different brand of makeup. All the girls who work there are parttime, except for Crystal. The part-time girls handle sales at a couple of the counters, but Crystal allowed Amber to work all the counters. Because Amber is
that
good; she can sell to anyone.

When we get there, Crystal's on the phone with her back to us. But Suze, who works part-time at the Guy Mardi counter, spots us and waves us over.

Everything about Suze is short: her height, her hair, her skirt. According to Amber, Suze was pretty devastated when Amber quit to work at Naked Makeup. Even though they can easily meet in the food court for lunch. Anyway, Suze's always friendly to Junie and me and generous with samples. “Hi, guys, how's Amber doing?”

“Good,” we say.

Probably she's asking because Crystal told her about Naked Makeup's sad scenario. Given how tight the makeup world is and all.

From beneath her counter, Suze pulls out a bunch of little packets. “The Guy Mardi rep came by yesterday. We have a brand-new line, Automne, coming out in the fall. Gorgeous colors. Here's some eye
shadow and gloss.” She scoots the packets toward us.

Junie and I look at each other. Normally we would've jumped on those samples like a half-off sale at Sequin's, but we're both sort of spooked by cosmetics at the moment. Yikes. We're becoming Janes by default.

“Oh, uh, thanks,” I say, sweeping them into my purse, where they'll disappear into the black hole of blue denim.

“We want to talk with Crystal,” Junie says.

“She should be off the phone soon. She's been talking to the head office in Montreal for a while. Sounds like she's trying to arrange a trip up there.”

“Ooh la la.” I like to toss out a little French whenever I can.

“Montreal's in Canada,” Suze says. “Where they speak Eskimo.”

“French Canada.” Junie rocks at geography.

Junie taps her watch and raises her eyebrows at me. To Suze, she says, “We're looking for a girl named Eve. She came for a job interview today.”

Suze's leaning on the glass counter, filing her thumbnail.

“She didn't end up coming in.” Suze blows nail dust into the air. “She got a job at Pets Galore.”

Junie and I gallop out of Crystal's makeup department before she even realizes we were there.

Junie skips off merrily to the food court to meet up with Nick and his mom.

I give The Ruler a quick call to let her know I'm okay. Then I'm headed to Pets Galore to track down the mysterious Eve.

P
ushing open the heavy glass door, I exit the fateful main entrance of the mall, take the sidewalk to the street, cross at the light, then wend my way through the parking lot to one of my fave stores of all time, Pets Galore.

Ahhh. I inhale deeply. Pets Galore is a happy place, filled with a delightful smell of fish food + dog grooming + birds. I could spend hours here.