Find Cara the Unicorn
The message in the sprinkles—and the map in the rock—hadn’t led Amirah and the B-Buds to the mysterious girl. They’d sent them on a search for this enchanting creature. Then, almost by accident, the B-Buds had freed Cara from her piñata form.
Why, though?
Why?
Suddenly an idea sparked in Amirah’s mind. “Cara!” she cried. Even the unicorn was hard to see now through the mist. “Where is she? Where is the mysterious girl?”
The mist swirled. The silence stretched.
Then Cara the Unicorn dipped her head and pointed her horn across the clearing.
A sparkling rainbow sprang from her horn, evaporating the mist and illuminating the forest.
Not just the forest.
Amirah blinked in disbelief. There, standing in the beam of light, was the mysterious girl she’d spotted by the candy-apple tree. The very same one from her dream.
How long has she been there? Amirah wondered.
Remembering how the girl had run away from them before, Amirah knew that she had to act fast. She rushed across the clearing, with Mei and Elvis right behind her.
“Please don’t go!” Amirah cried. “We’ve been looking for you everywhere. Everywhere!”
The girl blinked in surprise. “Me?” she asked. “You’ve been looking for me?” Her voice was soft, with an accent that Amirah recognized as Australian.
“Yes! Since we saw you back at the strawberry field,” Amirah said. “Didn’t you see us?”
There was a long pause.
“Yes,” the girl finally said, her voice barely more than a whisper. She stared at the ground. “But I didn’t want to ruin your day.”
The B-Buds exchanged a troubled glance.
“Ruin our day?” Amirah asked. “What do you mean?”
“Yeah, how could you ruin our day?” Elvis asked, perplexed.
The girl held out her hand near one of the trees. Astonishingly, the chocolate-brown trunk faded to pale tan; the bright green leaves grew withered and gray. “Everywhere I go, the color fades away,” she said. “It’s like the whole world gets as sad as I am. And when I saw the three of you . . .”
As her voice trailed off, Cara stepped forward and nuzzled her arm. The act of kindness seemed to encourage the girl.
“You seemed so happy. Like you were having so much fun together,” the girl said sadly. “And I just . . . I didn’t want to ruin it.”
Amirah’s heart swelled with sympathy. They’d been so worried about this girl—whoever she was—and at the same time she’d been worrying about them.
“We were just talking about our birthdays,” Elvis spoke up. “See, this is so crazy, but we all have the same birthday—today . . .”
His voice trailed off as the girl’s eyes widened. “But today is my birthday,” she said.
“Really?” Mei exclaimed. “That means you’re one of us—one of the B-Buds! You were right, Amirah!”
“That stands for Birthday Buds,” Elvis added. He stuck out his hand. “Nice to meet you, B-Bud! I’m Elvis!”
“I’m Mei.”
“And I’m Amirah,” Amirah offered.
A small, soft smile flickered across the girl’s face. “I’m Olivia,” she replied.
Amirah impulsively gave her a hug. “Happy birthday, Olivia,” she said.
Olivia hugged her back, but her smile wavered.
“Since we’re officially B-Buds now, do you want to tell us what’s wrong?” Amirah asked.
Olivia looked away. “I don’t want to trouble you on your birthdays,” she said shyly.
“Are you kidding?” Amirah asked. “That’s what B-Buds are for!”
“Yeah!” Mei chimed in. “We want to help! However we can!”
Olivia tried to smile at her new friends. “It’s just—today’s my birthday,” she began. “I mean, you already know that. I’ve been planning my birthday party for months. A mermaid party on the beach—”
“The beach?” Elvis asked in surprise. “In January?”
Olivia nodded. “In Australia, where I live, it’s summertime,” she explained.
“No way!” Elvis exclaimed.
“Of course,” Mei said. “The seasons are opposite in the southern hemisphere.”
“Tell us all about your party plans,” Amirah encouraged. “I love hearing about birthdays almost as much as I love celebrating them!”
“We were going to put a big table on the beach and cover it with seashells and glitter,” Olivia said sadly. “And make seashell tiaras and sea wands . . . We were going to have a sandcastle-building contest and a seashell scavenger hunt. Then, when the sun set, we were going to hang up all these jellyfish lanterns my mum and I made, and my dad was going to build a bonfire of driftwood. And I painted a treasure chest and put all the party favors in it—soap shaped like seahorses and sandcastle snow globes and chocolate starfish.”
“It sounds amazing!” Amirah cried, totally captivated.
“Thanks,” Olivia mumbled. “I think it would’ve been. But now it’s going to rain, and not just a little drizzly rain, but buckets and buckets of rain! There’s no way we can have my party on the beach. Not with the kind of storm that’s brewing.”
The B-Buds sat in silence for a moment.
“Well . . . can you move your party inside?” Elvis finally asked.
Olivia shrugged. “That’s what my mum said. But our living room isn’t nearly as right for a mermaid party at the beach,” she said. “No sandcastle contest, no seashell scavenger hunt, no driftwood bonfire. Just a lot of pretending at being mermaids in a living room, like we’re little kids. I don’t even have a proper party dress and I’m not wearing my bathing suit in the house; that would be ridiculous! It’s going to be the most un-magical birthday ever. It almost . . . it almost makes me want to skip it altogether and cancel my party.”
Amirah sucked in her breath sharply. “Skip your birthday and cancel your party?” she exclaimed. “Nuh-uh. No way. Not on our watch. Right, B-Buds?”
“Right!” Mei and Elvis said at the same time.
Then Elvis cleared his throat. “Uh . . . what exactly did you have in mind?” he asked Amirah.
The truth was that Amirah hadn’t quite figured that out yet. But she wasn’t worried. She snacked on a few sprinkles as she thought it over.
“Olivia,” Amirah began. “A birthday is important. A birthday matters. It’s the most
