11 Birthdays Read online

  2nd Birthday: Leo is holding a tambourine, and his arm is a blur as he brings it down on his hip. I’m holding two drumsticks and smiling madly. Even back then I loved the drums. Dad told me they kept handing me other instruments at our Musical Babies party, but I wouldn’t let go of those sticks.

  3rd Birthday: Leo and I are kneeling on either side of a baby goat, our hands resting on its back. This day is one of my earliest memories. One of the baby bunnies went missing, and I cried, but then Leo found it curled up asleep inside a blue plastic ice-cream bowl. Later he wrote his first poem about it. I once heard Mom call his parents “overgrown hippies” because they grow their own vegetables and encourage their son to write poetry.

  4th Birthday: Marvin the Magnificent is pulling a magic wand out of Leo’s ear. Leo’s mouth is frozen in a “wow.” I’m next to him, clapping and staring. Right before Leo’s mom cut our cake, a dove flew out of Marvin’s top hat. I can recognize most of the guests in the photo. Willow Falls is such a small town that the same kids came to our parties each year. Now, of course, that’s all changing.

  5th Birthday: Leo is smiling and holding up a hand-painted flowerpot. My face is starting to crumple because I don’t like the way mine turned out. The woman who owned the Creative Kids Pottery Studio hadn’t yet filled them with dirt or the little seed that I was sure would never grow. But the seed did grow. It thrived, in fact, for another five years until the night of my tenth birthday. I quickly turn the page.

  6th Birthday: Bowling! Leo and I proudly hold up our balls. Mine is pink, his is green. They can’t weigh much more than beach balls. Behind us I can see those bumpers that they stuck in the lanes so we never got gutter balls. Stephanie had moved to town the month before, so this was her first appearance at our party. From then on, the three of us did everything together.

  7th Birthday: Gymnastics, of all things! Leo and I are hanging off the balance beam, pretending we’re falling. Back then I was actually pretty good at that stuff. Together the two of us were fearless — swinging around the uneven bars, jumping up onto the horse-thingy, and flying off. In the background of the picture I can see Stephanie and Ruby Gordon with their arms up, ready to do backflips. If I didn’t need so much help now, Stephanie would have been practicing with Ruby tonight, instead of me.

  8th Birthday: Disco party! I’m wearing a big multicolored wig, and Leo has on mirrored sunglasses and a rainbow headband. According to our parents, this is how people dressed in the seventies. We’re on the dance floor of the Willow Falls Community Center party room, boogying to the beat of KC and the Sunshine Band.

  9th Birthday: The beach! It was warm that year for the beginning of June so our parents took us all to the beach, about an hour away. The picture shows me and Stephanie burying Leo up to his neck in the sand. He’s really lying down, but it looks like he’s standing up. He’s wearing that corny beach hat of his that says “Keep On Keeping On.”

  I don’t need to turn the page to know there isn’t a photo of our tenth birthday.

  Our party was held at Leo’s house. His mom had decorated it like the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. She set up this whole spooky maze through the house where you had to use hidden clues to find your way out. Before going through it I ran upstairs to use the bathroom. When I passed Leo’s room I heard him in there with a bunch of his guy friends. I stopped when I heard my name, and pressed up against the wall to listen.

  “Yeah, why do you still have your party with a girl, man?” Vinnie Prinz asked. “It’s really lame.”

  I held my breath.

  Leo said, “Yeah, I know it’s stupid. My mom makes me.”

  Another boy chimed in. “Can’t you just tell her you don’t want to? I mean, dude, it’s your birthday.”

  Normally I’d have rolled my eyes at “man” and “dude,” but I was too shocked.

  “Nah,” Leo said, his voice flat. “Plus, I wouldn’t want Amanda to get all upset. She doesn’t, you know, have that many other friends.”

  That was all I needed to hear. I ran downstairs and out the door so fast that at first, no one knew I’d left. My parents found me crying on our front steps. That night I took everything that reminded me of Leo out of my room. The hand-painted flowerpot was the first to go. Out the window, in fact. I heard it crash into the bushes below. Then I gathered up all the sweatshirts I’d borrowed, the mix CDs he had burned for me, the comic books he gave me because he joked that the superheroes looked like the two of us, and put them all in a box which I pushed out to the hall. I was about to throw the photo album out the window, too, but my mom came in at that point and convinced me to lock it away instead.

  Leo didn’t know at first why I had left or why I was so upset. My mom eventually told his mother what I’d heard. I haven’t spoken one word to him since that night.

  Feeling even worse now after that trip down memory lane, I close the album and place it back in the drawer. Maybe I’ll look at it again in another eleven years. Maybe by then it won’t hurt so much.

  I throw on my pajamas and head to the bathroom to brush my teeth. I pass Kylie’s room and hear her on the phone. Her voice sounds sort of choked up. But when she comes out of the room she just breezes by me and flips her hair like she doesn’t have a care in the world.

  After the fastest teeth brushing in history, I turn off the light and climb into bed without even reading first. In a few hours I’m going to be eleven. That’s a whole new decade. I stare up at the flowers Mom and I painted on my ceiling a few years ago. The moonlight illuminates them, and they make me smile. I have fifteen kids coming here tomorrow night. That’s fifteen friends who chose to come to my party instead of Leo’s. Even if I’ll be stuck wearing a Dorothy costume, I’m going to try to have a good time. After all, like Mom said, I’m only going to turn eleven once.

  I just wish I wasn’t doing it alone.

  Chapter Four

  I reach out to turn off my alarm, open my eyes, and scream! Someone’s standing in the middle of my room. He’s short and squat, and his arms and legs are waving wildly. It’s too dark to see anything clearly. Safety tips run through my head. Stop, drop, and roll? That doesn’t seem helpful. Duck and cover? That one’s better. I throw the covers over my head and lie still. Why isn’t the intruder saying anything? After a few heart-pounding minutes, I force myself to peek out from the top of the blanket. With one swift move, I flick on my lamp.

  Huh. Okay, so it’s not a person. It’s a SpongeBob SquarePants happy birthday balloon with streamers for arms and legs. My parents must have snuck him in while I was sleeping. That’s a heck of a thing to do to someone!

  Once my heart rate returns to normal, I throw on jeans, my favorite red T-shirt, and the beaded necklace I made at Stephanie’s birthday party a few months ago. I run a comb through my thick hair, which only makes it more poofy. I look like I’m wearing a helmet.

  Everyone knows that teeth brushing and face washing are things that birthday girls don’t have to do, so my bathroom routine is very fast today. I step into the hall and am surprised to find Kylie’s door wide open. It’s always closed and locked, whether she’s in there or not. She must have left it open by mistake when she went to run. No one was more surprised than me when she suddenly took up running first thing in the mornings. This was the same girl who used to make me sign Mom’s name to her “get-out-of-gym” slips because she hated breaking a sweat. I glance around to make sure she’s not about to run up the stairs, and then stick my head into her room. It looks like a tornado swept through it. Clothes are everywhere. I can’t imagine how she finds anything. But the most interesting thing is the purple notebook on the floor by the bed. The one marked KYLIE’S DIARY: KEEP OUT OR SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES.

  I certainly don’t want to suffer any consequences, so I hurry on down the stairs. After all, what could it say that would be interesting? Kylie’s life is so perfect. Her biggest fear is chipping a nail before homeroom and not having the right color polish to fix it.

  Dad is the o