The Mystery of the Birthday Basher

by Amirah Kassem

  Mrs. Maria was one of Amirah’s best friends and quite possibly her favorite neighbor. She lived just down the street and was always happy to have a visit from Amirah. She loved to cook just as much as Mama and Amirah did, and the smell of spices in her kitchen—oregano and chilis, cinnamon and anise—was such a familiar and friendly smell that it always made Amirah feel right at home.

  Rap-rap-thud-thud-tap-tap-tap! Mrs. Maria had told Amirah many times that she could stop by anytime—no need to call first—but Amirah’s special knock always told her she was there.

  Sure enough, Mrs. Maria was already grinning when she opened the door.

  “What a special surprise on such a steamy day!” Mrs. Maria cried. “Come in out of the heat!”

  “And here’s another surprise!” Amirah said as she held out the little cake. It didn’t seem possible, but Mrs. Maria’s smile grew even bigger.

  “Mmm, how beautiful! You’ll split it with me, I hope,” Mrs. Maria told her.

  “I’ll just have a bite . . . or three,” Amirah replied with a grin.

  “And how about some nice cold horchata?” Mrs. Maria suggested.

  “Perfect!” Amirah replied.

  A few minutes later, Amirah and Mrs. Maria sat across from each other with plates of cake and glasses of horchata. The sweet, creamy horchata was flecked with cinnamon. It was cool and refreshing, the perfect drink to accompany the cake Amirah had made.

  “Mmm,” Amirah said happily, wiping her mouth after she took a big sip of her horchata.

  Mrs. Maria smiled. “Some people only like to have cinnamon during the cooler months, but I like it every day of the year,” she said in a voice that sounded like she was telling Amirah a big secret.

  “Me too,” Amirah replied.

  “And cake, of course,” Mrs. Maria continued, her eyes twinkling. “I could eat cake every day of the year too. Especially one as delicious as this one. Tell me, my dear, where did you get this recipe? From one of your cookbooks?”

  “Not exactly,” Amirah replied. “It’s our favorite vanilla cake recipe. But, speaking of cookbooks . . .”

  “Go on,” Mrs. Maria encouraged her.

  Amirah sighed. She didn’t know where to begin. So she jumped right in and hoped that Mrs. Maria wouldn’t laugh. “It’s about The Power of Sprinkles,” she said. And with just those words, the whole story tumbled out—from the missing invitations to the empty shelves at the store to the way the words seemed to fade on the page to Amirah’s troubling dream.

  “It’s almost—like—like—there’s something wrong in the birthday universe,” Amirah struggled to explain. “I feel like I have to fix it, but I don’t know how.”

  Mrs. Maria didn’t laugh. As Amirah looked at her friend’s face, all wrinkled with concern, she knew that that was something she didn’t need to worry about. Not ever.

  “I can tell that your heart is troubled,” Mrs. Maria finally said. “I could tell it from the moment I opened the door and saw you standing there with this pretty little cake.”

  Amirah nodded as she took another sip of horchata. Of course Mrs. Maria already knew something was bothering her. Sometimes she just seemed to know things like that—even before Amirah could tell her.

  “What do you think I should do?” Amirah asked. “I feel like I have to go back.”

  “Go back?” Mrs. Maria asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “To the Magical Land of Birthdays,” Amirah tried to explain. “Something’s wrong, and I need to make it right. My birthday’s not for six whole months, though. And I don’t want to wait that long! I don’t know if I can!”

  “No,” Mrs. Maria said thoughtfully. “When there are troubles weighing on your heart, every minute that passes feels like an eternity.”

  Amirah smiled gratefully. Somehow, some way, Mrs. Maria always understood. And she always knew just what to say.

  “So what should I do?” Amirah asked again.

  “You must trust your heart, of course,” Mrs. Maria told her. “You’re already listening to it—that’s why you feel these troubles so intensely. But here is the secret . . .”

  As Mrs. Maria’s voice dropped to a hush, Amirah leaned forward until she was sitting on the edge of her chair.

  “You have to believe,” Mrs. Maria continued. “You still believe in the magic of birthdays, yes?”

  “Of course!” Amirah replied. “I’ll always believe in it.”

  Mrs. Maria nodded, satisfied. “Then if you believe in birthday magic, and you follow your heart, you will figure out what to do,” she promised Amirah.

  Amirah was so lost in thought that initially, she didn’t answer. Then an idea came to her . . . shadowy and half formed at first, but the more she thought about it, the more she understood.

  Amirah stood up so fast that her chair screeched as it slid across the floor. “Thank you,” she said breathlessly. She started to pick up her plate to take it to the kitchen, but Mrs. Maria rested her hand on Amirah’s wrist.

  “Leave it,” Mrs. Maria said gently. “You do what you need to do.”

  Impulsively, Amirah gave Mrs. Maria a fast hug. Then she hurried out the door and ran down the sidewalk, not even noticing the blistering heat of the midafternoon sun.

  She knew that she needed to get back to the Magical Land of Birthdays—there wasn’t a shred of doubt in her mind about that—and she knew that she needed to go right now. Today! She couldn’t wait six more months for her birthday. She didn’t want to wait even one more day.

  Back at home, Amirah slipped through the door so quietly that Mama and Amir didn’t even hear her. She could hear Mama’s voice as she read to Amir and the clinking of the ice cubes in their glasses of lemonade.

  Amirah pressed her hand over her pocket. The vial of sprinkles that she carried with her—everywhere, always—was there, just as she expected. And that was a good thing, because Amirah had a feeling that it was going to take all the birthday magic she could muster and the power of sprinkles to transport herself back to the Magical Land of Birthdays when it definitely wasn’t her birthday.

  In the quiet of the kitchen, Amirah shook a rainbow of sprinkles into her hand. Then she picked just the ones she needed: pink for herself, purple for Mei, green for Elvis, blue for Olivia . . . What about yellow and orange, though? The rainbow wouldn’t be complete without them.

  And neither, Amirah thought, would birthday magic.

  She carefully lined the sprinkles, one of each color, on the counter. She thought of her B-Buds and wished that she could see them.

  Then Amirah closed her eyes, made a wish, and popped the sprinkles into her mouth.

  Almost immediately, Amirah could feel the room spinning and the floor falling from beneath her feet. Her hands gripped the counter as she opened her eyes. Colors—colors everywhere—swirling in kaleidoscope patterns, shimmering and glimmering with magical light.

  Amirah threw back her head and laughed with glee. As the colors sparkled and became almost blindingly bright, she closed her eyes again.

  She knew where she’d be when she opened them.

  And Amirah couldn’t wait!

  Soon the spinning began to slow, the swirling stopped, and the rainbow sparkles scattered, clearing the way for Amirah to see that she had, at last, returned to the Magical Land of Birthdays. She was so grateful to be back, even though the land was shadowed like it had been in her dream.

  Suddenly, Amirah heard her name. She looked up with a start. It was Olivia!

  “You’re here!” Amirah cried as she ran across the clearing to give Olivia a big hug.

  “Can you believe it? Back in the Magical Land of Birthdays—and it’s not even our birthday,” Olivia said, giggling. “Is it just us? Have you seen any of the other B-Buds?”

  “Like me?” a new voice said.

  Olivia and Amirah exchanged a grin. They would’ve known that voice anywhere.

  “Elvis!” they yelled at the same time.

  He stepped out of the grove with a great big gr
in on his face. “Happy almost-half birthday!” he exclaimed. Then he glanced around. “Where’s Mei? She’s got to be here somewhere.”

  “I’m sure of it,” Amirah replied confidently. After all, she’d chosen a special sprinkle for each one of her B-Buds. She was certain that birthday magic would make sure no one had been left behind.

  “Then . . . where is she?” Olivia asked slowly.

  The B-Buds glanced around the clearing. There was no sign of anyone else, which made Amirah start to wonder if something had gone wrong.

  No, she told herself firmly. Birthday magic wouldn’t fail them. Not like this.

  “I’m up here!” Mei’s voice floated down from overhead. The B-Buds immediately looked up—and spotted Mei peeking at them through the streamers that decorated a nearby tree.

  Mei used her gymnastics abilities to climb down the tree, as nimble and light-footed as a cat. When she was only a few feet off the ground, Mei dismounted and landed soundly on her feet. With a sly smile, she flung her arms into the air as if she were at the end of a gymnastics routine, making all the B-Buds laugh.

  “How’d you end up in a tree?” Elvis finally asked, staring at the branches in astonishment.

  “Birthday magic?” Mei said, making such a funny face that everyone laughed again. “No, honestly, I was having a snack before I went to gymnastics practice and I was thinking about the balance beam routine I need to practice and I guess the circuits got a little scrambled or something.”

  Amirah’s smile faltered for a moment as she remembered her dream, when so much had seemed so wrong in the Magical Land of Birthdays. She looked at each B-Bud’s face to see if they had noticed yet. But they all seemed so happy and excited to be together again. Amirah hated to ruin their reunion with her worries.

  “Hello?” a new voice said.

  The B-Buds froze. They were all here—Amirah, Mei, Olivia, Elvis. So who was this?

  A tall girl, her hair braided with hundreds of orange beads, approached them. A boy walking beside her was wearing a yellow hoodie. As the sun peeked around a cloud, he shrugged off the hoodie, neatly folded it, and carried it over his arm.

  Orange, Amirah thought. Yellow. She remembered the extra sprinkles she’d been compelled to add and grinned. “Hi!” she said. “We’re the B-Buds. We all have the same birthday—”

  “Is today your birthday?” Mei asked the new kids, so excited to meet them that she didn’t even notice she was interrupting.

  The boy and the girl exchanged a glance, then shook their heads.

  “No, no—not today,” the boy replied in a crisp British accent. “We do have the same birthday, though, but it’s in January.”

  “Let me guess,” Amirah said. “January 8?” The boy’s eyes widened. “Exactly right,” he said.

  “How did you know that?” the girl asked. Her voice had a musical quality, the words lilting and blending together.

  “Our birthday is on January 8 too,” Amirah explained. “That’s what makes us B-Buds. I just had a funny feeling that you two were also B-Buds! I’m Amirah, and that’s Mei, and that’s Olivia, and over there—that’s Elvis.”

  “Cool. Thanks,” the boy replied. “My name’s Ziggy, and this is Lacey, but I gotta ask you—what is a B-Bud, exactly?”

  “It’s short for ‘birthday buddy,’” Amirah explained. “We all met here on our eleventh birthday last January. I don’t know why you weren’t here. We always felt like someone was missing. The carousel had space for six . . .”

  Lacey and Ziggy exchanged another glance. “But we were here,” Lacey said. “Not”—she paused to hold out her arms—“right here. But here, in the Magical Land of Birthdays. Ziggy and I celebrated together in Sparkle City.”

  Sparkle City? Amirah gasped, recognizing the name and the place from her dream. She also remembered seeing Sparkle City on the map she and her B-Buds had found during their last visit.

  “That’s right,” Ziggy added, nodding his head. “We spent the whole day exploring it. It was wild! Our only regret was that we never made it out of the city to see what else is in the Magical Land of Birthdays.”

  “Well, it looks like it’s your lucky day,” Elvis joked. “We can take you on a grand tour—the Rainbow Forest, Celebration Shore, Candle Cave, the Party Hat Mountains . . .”

  “Yes, yes, yes, and yes!” Ziggy said enthusiastically. “Lead the way!”

  Elvis set off with all the B-Buds following along behind him. Mei wrinkled up her face. “Look at all that trash!” she said, pointing at some scraps of faded red paper. “Yuck! I hate litterbugs.”

  “Maybe it blew away from somebody’s party and they didn’t notice,” Amirah said. “Or maybe it was confetti! I love confetti but it goes everywhere. One time I had all this confetti at my birthday party, and even though I cleaned up afterward, I was still finding confetti for months and months!”

  She paused to pick up the trash, then shoved it in her pockets. The other B-Buds helped too.

  “Better already,” Amirah said, smiling.

  “So how did you all get here?” Lacey asked. “For us, it was our birthday cakes.”

  “You have birthday cake even when it’s not your birthday?” Olivia asked in surprise. “What a great idea!”

  Lacey laughed as she shook her head. “No, I meant last January,” she explained. “It was magical! One bite of my special coconut birthday cake and poof! I found myself in the most wonderful city I’d ever seen in my life!”

  “That’s how it happened for me too,” Ziggy spoke up. “Except my cake was a caterpillar cake. Best birthday cake I’ve ever had!”

  As soon as Ziggy said the words caterpillar cake, a memory popped into Amirah’s head. The very first time she dreamed of the Magical Land of Birthdays, before she met her B-Buds, Amirah had seen a caterpillar cake rush past her. She was almost positive that she’d heard the cake mumble something about how it was looking for someone named Ziggy.

  “Was your caterpillar cake fudge on the inside, with tiny chocolate shoes and a white chocolate face?” Amirah asked.

  “How did you know that?” Ziggy gasped. “Is your special birthday cake a caterpillar cake too?”

  Amirah explained how she had encountered Ziggy’s cake on her last visit.

  “It sounds like this place might be even more magical than we realized!” Olivia commented.

  “So how did everyone get here today?” Amirah asked.

  “I had just taken a bite of a sugar cookie,” Olivia said. “With blue frosting and plenty of hundreds and thousands, of course.”

  Amirah grinned at Olivia. It didn’t matter that Amirah called them sprinkles or that Olivia called them hundreds and thousands: They were definitely magical!

  “I had a donut,” Elvis said. “You know that bad boy was loaded up with sprinkles. It had so many sprinkles on it I couldn’t even see if the frosting was chocolate or vanilla!”

  “I had ice cream!” Mei said excitedly. “And the cone had been dipped in chocolate and rolled in rainbow sprinkles. How about you, Amirah?”

  “Sprinkles, of course,” she replied. “I made sure to choose one in each color—pink, yellow, orange, green, blue, and purple.”

  “The rainbow!” Olivia suddenly exclaimed.

  Everyone turned to look at her.

  “Put us together, and our favorite colors make the rainbow,” she explained. “See?”

  And now that she’d mentioned it, it was unmistakable. Even in their regular clothes, the B-Bud’s favorite colors shone through. There was a completeness to their group that had been missing last January—even though Amirah hadn’t known what was missing until they were finally all together.

  “Yes,” she said, nodding. “One special color, one special sprinkle, for each of us . . . even though I didn’t know you yet, Ziggy and Lacey. I’m not surprised it was sprinkles that brought us all together. That’s just the power of sprinkles at work, I guess!”

  “The power of sprinkles?” Lacey asked, her eyes wide. �
�I’ve never heard of that before. I thought it was just birthday magic.”

  “You’re not wrong,” Amirah said, trying to find the right words. “They’re definitely connected. I’m just not sure how.”

  “I don’t need to know how,” Lacey said with a warm smile. “Sometimes you just have to believe.”

  You just have to believe.

  Amirah shivered. Weren’t those the exact words that Mrs. Maria had said to her?

  The connection that Amirah had always felt with her B-Buds had only grown stronger.

  “ Here’s what I can’t figure out, though,”Ziggy said. “How come we celebrated our birthdays in the city while you celebrated yours in the countryside?”

  As Ziggy spoke, Amirah’s mind continued to churn:

  The power of sprinkles.

  Birthday magic.

  They’re definitely connected.

  Amirah held up one hand. “Wait a second,” she said, her voice low and urgent.

  Everyone turned to look at her.

  “Has anyone noticed . . . something wrong with birthday magic?” she began. “Back home there are some things that just—they just aren’t right.”

  Everyone listened quietly as Amirah told them what she’d noticed since her phone call with Paulina.

  “Now that you mention it . . .” Mei said. “Every year, my oba-chan—who loves birthdays as much as I do—plans a special dinner for the whole family to celebrate her birthday. But last month, when it was her birthday, she just didn’t feel like a big celebration—or any celebration,” Mei finally finished with a sad shrug. “She said, ‘maybe next year.’”

  Amirah shook her head in sorrow. Imagine taking a year off from celebrating your birthday—the most special day of your life, the day when you were born! It was unthinkable.

  “It must be an epidemic,” Elvis said, his voice sounding quieter than usual.

  Everyone turned to look at him.

  “In my town, we had a restaurant that’s all about birthdays. It’s called the Birthday Cakery,” he explained. “Every single room had a different party theme. You could have a dinosaur party or an art party or a princess party or a pirate party or a music party or—”