The Mystery of the Birthday Basher

scramble to keep up. Cara didn’t slow down until she’d reached an airy tent made of colorful, gauzy panels that fluttered in the breeze.
For a moment, the B-Buds stood in stunned silence. They’d never seen anything like it. The enormous tent was filled, filled to the brim, with—
“Presents!” Elvis finally yelled. He turned to face his friends with wild joy in his eyes. “Have you ever in your whole entire life seen so many presents?”
Tall presents, long presents, short presents, small presents, presents so big they’d need a ladder to reach the bow on the very top. Presents wrapped in boxes, presents tucked in bags, odd-shaped presents draped with golden cloth.
When Amirah glanced at the B-Buds, they were all grinning.
“Sorry,” Ziggy suddenly said. “I can’t resist!”
He grabbed the nearest present, gave it a gleeful shake, and ripped off the star-covered wrapping paper to reveal a telescope.
“Huh,” Ziggy said. “I wonder what the rest of the presents have insi—”
His words stopped abruptly as the telescope began to crumble in his hands. A look of panic crossed Ziggy’s face as he tried to hold the present together. But it was too late. The telescope dissolved into powdery ash that slipped through his fingers, no matter how hard he tried to contain it. It formed a small, shimmering pile on the floor before a gust of wind blew through the tent, scattering the remains of the present until there was no trace of it.
None of the B-Buds were smiling anymore.
“What—what just happened?” Mei asked.
“I don’t know,” Ziggy said miserably. “I was just holding it—I didn’t mean to—”
“I think,” Amirah began, “that it wasn’t your present.”
Everyone turned to look at her.
“Look at all these gifts,” she continued. “I bet there’s one for everybody in the whole wide world. One perfect present for every person. But if you try to take one that doesn’t belong to you . . .”
Amirah didn’t need to finish her sentence. Everyone knew what she meant.
“I’m sorry,” Ziggy said. “I’ m so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Amirah told him. “You didn’t know.”
“We can’t open any more gifts, though,” Lacey spoke up. “It’s not worth the risk.”
“Definitely not,” Olivia added. She glanced around warily. “I think we should get out of here. We shouldn’t mess around with birthday magic that we don’t understand.”
“And Sparkle City is huge. There have to be plenty of other places to explore,” Mei chimed in.
“But Cara brought us here for a reason,” Amirah said. “Right, Cara?”
The unicorn tossed her mane and pawed at the ground, a clear yes.
“We’re not just sightseeing,” Amirah said. “Something is going seriously wrong in the Magical Land of Birthdays and it’s spilling over into our world too. If this tent holds the answer—or even just a clue—we’ve got to find it!”
“We can’t just tear open presents until we find the right one,” Lacey pointed out.
“I agree,” Amirah said, nodding. “That would be wrong in every way. But . . . if I could find my own present . . .”
“There are so many of them, though,” Lacey said with a worried look. “Where would you even begin?”
Amirah wasn’t sure. Deep in thought, she stroked Cara’s rainbow-tinged mane. And then the answer occurred to her in a flash of intuition that was as brilliant as a stroke of lighting in a storm-dark sky.
Trust your heart.
“I will,” Amirah whispered, so quietly that only Cara could hear her.
Amirah took a deep breath and began to walk through the tent. She was secretly relieved when the B-Buds didn’t follow her. It was almost as if they knew that Amirah would need all her concentration to succeed. It was almost as if they knew that this was a task she had to complete on her own.
What would my perfect present look like? Amirah wondered. It was a hard question to answer. When she thought about “perfect,” she imagined a gorgeous cake . . . a fun afternoon with her B-Buds . . . a happy vacation with her family. Presents weren’t the most important part of birthdays to Amirah. They never had been.
One perfect present for every person, she thought. If there was one thing in the whole wide world that would represent Amirah . . .
“The power of sprinkles!” she whispered.
She started roaming the aisles through the tent, moving faster and faster, knowing in her heart that she would recognize her present as soon as she spotted it.
And then she saw it: a box, big enough that she needed to hold it with both hands, wrapped in sparkly pink paper.
The large bow, which was as big as Amirah’s head, was made of sprinkle-covered ribbon.
It wasn’t just the sprinkles on the ribbon that told Amirah this was the perfect present for her. It was the way she felt drawn to it, as though the box contained some sort of magnet that pulled her closer . . . and closer . . . and closer . . .
When Amirah reached the box, she hesitated for just a moment. The stakes were so high. What if she was wrong? What if she accidentally opened the wrong gift . . . and made someone else’s perfect present disappear forever?
Just then, Amirah felt something soft brush against her arm. She jumped in surprise, then spun around to see Cara the Unicorn standing there.
“Hi,” Amirah whispered as she stroked Cara’s forehead. “Did I find it? Is this the one?”
As Amirah stared into Cara’s eyes, she knew the answer.
Amirah took a deep breath and picked up the present.
Her present.
It was surprisingly heavy in her hands.
Amirah slipped off the sprinkle-covered bow and unwrapped the heavy pink paper carefully so that it wouldn’t tear. At last, her perfect present was revealed. It didn’t crumble or turn to dust or disappear.
“My present,” Amirah whispered. She looked up at Cara, her eyes shining with happiness. “It’s real!”

“B-Buds!” Amirah cried. “I found it! I found my present!”
Their footsteps clattered through the tent as Elvis, Mei, Olivia, Lacey, and Ziggy raced to meet her.
“What is it?” they asked, all at the same time.
“It’s a book,” Amirah said, her voice filled with wonder as she stared at