Final Touches

On Saturday morning, Veronica was dying to call Sylvie, but she knew it was too early. She distracted herself by working on the doll uniforms. She took her blouse from Cadbury’s shiva and a jumper from her closet and examined them inside and out. The jumper only had three pieces: a front and two back pieces with a zipper in the middle. She could make the doll jumpers without the zipper and use just two pieces. There were no sleeves, so that was easy. The blouse was a lot more complicated. The collar, the sleeves, the buttonholes—she wished Mary was here. Mary was a much better sewer. She put the Barbie down on a piece of loose-leaf paper and outlined it to make a pattern. Next she would cut her actual uniform and use the fabric. There was probably some Randolf rule about defacing your school uniform and a punishment to fit the crime. But too bad.

At nine o’clock, she couldn’t stand it anymore and called Sylvie.

“I had an idea about how to show the Barbies,” Veronica said. “Let’s plant them. Do you think you can get some more pots? And more dirt?”

“That is so genius,” Sylvie said. “Did you find a Barbie?”

“I did! I’m already sewing.”

Veronica holed up in her room all day to make the tiny outfits. Mary would have done a much better job—but having real Randolf uniform fabric to work with helped a lot. Halfway through the first blouse she gave up on the needle and thread and used glue. It was much easier that way. She also didn’t have tiny buttons so she used actual Randolf ones, but only one for each blouse.

On Sunday morning, Sylvie called. “I got the extra pots,” she said. “How is the sewing going?”

“Good-ish,” Veronica said. “I think we should use the same data we did for the plants, but substitute unfriendliness for chemicals, and basically copy the plant’s deterioration for the Barbies.”

“Is your hypothesis that the lack of nourishment, clean water, and sunlight killed the doll, or unkindness? Because I agree, we should make the Barbie part of our report as official-looking as possible so Mr. Bower will take it seriously. But I wonder if you think the dolls reflect the effect of emotions or of being fed toxic chemicals.”

“Hmm, good question,” Veronica said. “I guess both. Physical and mental.”

“I agree.”

“This is becoming very psychological. My parents will be so proud. We could leave an arm that fell off lying in the pot, like the leaves that fell off the plant,” Veronica said.

“Yes!” Sylvie said. “Maybe I can try to make the whole Barbie kind of yellow and brown at the edges.”

Veronica was so excited she didn’t know how she would get through the rest of the day.