I’m still working on the final third of book four. I’m excited about how it is turning out and wanted to share a little bit. This is my favorite scene so far.

Trisha pulled a chest from under her bed and opened it. Inside were dresses and scarves, shoes and purses. One at a time, she lifted dresses from the chest and held them up for the other girls to see. “This is my favorite.” It was a purple dress with a V neck and a narrow skirt. “I’m going to wear this on my date.”

“I have a date too,” Molly said. “I’m going to wear this dress and these shoes.” She picked up a red dress with tiny beads around the neckline and red high-heeled shoes. “Oh, there’s a purse too!”

The other two girls looked at Rachel. “What do you want to wear on your date?” Trisha asked.

“Can I wear anything I want?”

“Of course, but you want to look nice don’t you? How about this rufflely dress with blue flowers on it?”

“Okay,” Rachel hung her head.

“I’m just kidding,” Trisha laughed. “You should wear this black dress on a date. You’ll look totally hot!”

“Hot?” Rachel looked worried.

“Hot’s a good thing when you’re on a date,” Molly assured her, “and you’ll look hot in that dress.”

The girls helped each other into their dresses and shoes. Then they stood in front of the long mirror on Trisha’s wall. “We all look hot,” Trisha said.

“Yeah,” Molly agreed, “but we’d look hotter if we had on makeup. Where’s your makeup?”

“I had some play makeup, but I used it up. I guess we’ll just have to pretend we’re putting on makeup.”

Rachel watched in wonder as Trisha and Molly went through the motions of dusting powder on their faces and put on lipstick. “Aren’t you going to put on makeup?” Molly asked her.

“I don’t know how,” Rachel sighed. “I’m not sure what makeup is.”

“Didn’t you ever watch your mom put on makeup?” Trisha asked.

“My mom died when I was a baby.”

“Oh, sorry.” Trisha put her arm around Rachel. “I forgot.”

“I wish we had some real makeup so we could show Rachel how to put it on,” Molly said.

“Actually, I do know where we can get some makeup. My sister Melissa has some hidden in her closet.”

“Won’t she get mad if we use it?” Molly asked.

“She’s not s’posed to have it, so she can’t say anything or she’ll get in trouble too.”

Trisha peeked around the corner to check the hallway. No one was there. She put her fingers up to her lips to tell the other girls to be quiet. Then they all tip-toed down the hall to Melissa’s room. The door was closed and locked, but Trisha had a key and quickly opened it. When all three girls were in the room, Trisha closed and locked the door. Then she led them to Melissa’s walk-in closet and took down a box from the shelf. Removing some winter sweaters from the box, Trisha revealed compacts with face powder, blush, eye shadow and two tubes of lipstick.

The girls sat in a circle on the closet floor, the makeup lying on the carpet in the middle of the circle. Trisha opened the face powder and dusted some on Rachel’s face. “Now you put some on me.” She handed the powder to Molly. When Molly had finished with Trisha’s face, she handed the powder to Rachel who did her best to dust it on Molly.

“Next we need blush.” Trisha picked up the small compact with bright pink powder and used the brush to apply it to Rachel’s cheeks. “You’re putting on too much!” Molly gasped.

Rachel was concerned, but Trisha assured her that it looked fine. Next came the eye shadow—in tiny cases of blue, pink and purple. “You look so lovely,” Molly told Rachel as she brushed on an ample amount of purple shadow.

“I want blue,” Trisha said, “because it will go with my eyes.

“But your dress is purple,” Molly reminded her.

“That would be too much purple,” Trisha pointed out.

“That’s true,” Molly nodded. “The blue will look better.”

“Can you put on your own lipstick?” Trisha asked Rachel.

“I’ll try,” Rachel said, taking the tube that Trisha had turned until the lipstick was all the way out. As Rachel pressed it against her lips, the lipstick broke and fell onto the carpet. Trisha grabbed for it, but Rachel, shocked by what happened, stood up quickly, stepping on the lipstick and smearing it into the carpet.

“Oh, no!” Molly witnessed the catastrophe. “What are you going to do now?”

Just then the closet door opened. There stood Fran and Molly’s mother, Emma.

“What are you girls doing in here?” Fran asked.

“We’ve been looking for you everywhere!” Emma said, upset.

“Trisha, you know better than to go in Melissa’s room. What have you got there? It’s all over the carpet. That looks like makeup.”

“We were playing dress-up and we didn’t have any play makeup,” Trisha said, innocently.

“Whose makeup is that?” Fran asked

“It’s Melissa’s,” Trisha admitted.

“How did you know it was in here?” Fran demanded.

“I accidentally found it.”

“Accidentally. You accidentally went snooping in Melissa’s closet?”

“I was just looking for some . . . some . . . some colored pencils.”

Gus stretched to see over the ladies’ bent heads at what was going on in the closet. There sat Rachel in the black dress, her cheeks painted red. “What happened to you?” Gus asked. “You look like a raccoon.” Rachel lowered her head as purple tears ran down her cheeks. “That’s okay,” Gus said, soothingly, “but we’d better clean you up before I take you home. Jeremiah’ll be angry with both of us if he sees you like this!”

The Handy Helpers book series is available at Amazon