The Mystery of the Birthday Basher

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 grin 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