But as Amirah watched, the invitations didn’t split up to travel to Billy’s B-Buds around the globe. Instead, they flew, almost in formation, up into the sky, past the clouds, past the sun, until all the stars of deep space swirled into a kaleidoscope of colors . . .
When the film came into focus again, Amirah realized that the special invitations hadn’t been delivered to Billy’s B-Buds after all.
“The sprinkles,” Amirah whispered to herself. Somehow Billy had made a terrible mistake. The sprinkles he’d added to the envelopes hadn’t helped his invitations get to his B-Buds.
They’d transported the invitations to the Magical Land of Birthdays instead!
Amirah watched in horror as the invitations sat, untouched, on a rock. Then a breeze kicked up, blowing them onto the dirt. One of the invitations got stuck in the crook of a tree. The wind grew stronger and stronger until it tore part of the envelope, which fluttered away like a speck of confetti.
Amirah gasped. She suddenly realized why the invitations had looked familiar: It wasn’t litter or confetti that Amirah and her B-Buds had been gathering all over the Magical Land of Birthdays.
It was the shredded remains of Billy’s lost invitations!
Before Amirah could fully grasp the seriousness of the situation, the image on the screen dissolved, and a new image appeared: a beautiful room that was all decorated for a party, with a long table that was filled with party favors, cookies, and a gorgeous sheet cake with gold frosting.
“Where is everybody?” Amirah asked. From what she could see, there was only one guest at this party: Billy, who was wearing his birthday crown.
He turned around in his chair, and that’s when Amirah saw his face. It was twisted into a terrible grimace of disappointment, rage, and despair. Billy’s joyful smile was gone, and his eyes looked small and mean. He sat completely still, staring at the empty chairs all around him.
Without warning, Billy stood up. He lifted the entire cake—candles and all—and threw the whole thing into the trash with one fast movement.
Amirah gasped in shock.
But what happened next was even worse.
“Stupid birthdays,” Billy muttered to himself. “Worthless, pointless, stupid birthdays!”
Then he took off his crown—his perfect present—and threw it at the wall so hard that it cracked.
There was a sudden whoosh, and Amirah found herself jerked from the velvet throne into a dark, windy tunnel. She might have been afraid, but she still had faith in birthday magic—and especially the power of sprinkles. As her fingers curled around the vial of sprinkles in her pocket, she saw the familiar bright streaks of colorful light. Her shoulders relaxed as she sighed with relief. Amirah knew where she was going now.
Home.
She found herself back in the kitchen, holding on to the counter to steady herself as she tried to make sense of everything she’d seen. So that was how the prince of the Magical Land of Birthdays had lost his birthday magic and turned into the Birthday Basher. It had seemed like such an impossible transformation before, but now that she’d seen Billy’s heartbreak, Amirah could understand . . . sort of. She thought of her own birthday parties with a pang of sorrow. Amirah loved a big party—the bigger the better! She invited everyone in her town, from the mayor to the principal of her school. She tried to imagine what it would feel like if no one showed up.
She’d be devastated.
I wonder if Billy even knows that he’s the Birthday Basher, Amirah thought. If he has any idea of what is happening in the Magical Land of Birthdays. What if his birthday magic is so powerful that when it turned into a force for darkness, it became unstoppable?
Then she stopped.
The trouble wasn’t just in the Magical Land of Birthdays.
It was in her very own neighborhood.
On her street.
Perhaps, even, in her mailbox.
Billy’s party invitations never arrived where they needed to go, Amirah thought slowly. Neither did some of Paulina’s invitations. And Mom mentioned Amir missing a party because of a lost invitation.
Everything was starting to make sense, in the worst way. Billy was the neighborhood dog walker. He took long walks in the neighborhood twice a day. He had plenty of opportunities to peek into his neighbors’ mailboxes. And if he spotted a colorful birthday party invitation . . .
And took it . . .
And—what did he do next? Throw it away? Tear it to shreds?
Amirah didn’t really want to know.
With a sigh, she stood up and walked over to the fridge. She opened the door and stared at Billy’s special birthday cake. The golden frosting gleamed in the light of the fridge. A small, sad smile crossed Amirah’s face as she remembered the kind of cake Billy had tossed in the trash at his lonely birthday party.
It was a carrot cake, of course. His favorite.
Will a special birthday cake be enough to fix everything? Amirah wondered.
She shook her head, as if to shake away all her doubts. You just have to believe, Amirah reminded herself.
Then a new idea struck her. What if she left Billy’s cake in his mailbox? He’d been taking things from other people’s mailboxes. Maybe finding a special surprise in his own mailbox would help make things right.
Amirah pulled Billy’s cake out of the fridge and studied it. The flat sheet cake was way too big to fit in a mailbox. But Amirah knew how to fix that.
First, she whipped up a new batch of frosting. Then she sliced the cake into two equal halves and used the extra frosting to stack one half on top of the other. Making steady, careful cuts, Amirah trimmed the edges of the cake. Now, instead of a large, flat rectangle, it had more height. Using the gold paint, Amirah touched up the edges and sides of the cake. When she was finished, it looked like a solid-gold bar. It was truly fit for a prince.
Amirah tucked Billy’s cake back in the fridge, then put the cake scraps on a
