Piper Morgan Plans a Party

by Stephanie Faris

  For Jennifer, the best little sister a girl could have

  CHAPTER

  1

  We were in the middle of nowhere. In the middle of the middle of nowhere. We were so far away from “anywhere” that my mom’s cell phone didn’t even work.

  “Are we lost?” I asked Mom as she slowed the car and looked down a street we were about to pass.

  “What do the directions say?” Mom asked.

  Oh yeah. Directions. There was this sheet that had a list of weird things like “1.5 miles turn right on Montvale Lane.” I didn’t understand what that meant, but I just read them to Mom when she asked.

  We were on our way to a ranch. A middle-of-nowhere ranch. There would be real horses, and Mom said I could maybe ride them later if I was really good. It was up to my mom’s new client, who had asked us to this ranch. We hadn’t met her yet. Just talked to her on the phone.

  The ranch is my mom’s new job. Well, sort of. My mom’s a temp worker, which means she does temporary jobs in lots of different places. This time her job is as an event planner. The event is a birthday party for a girl who lived on a ranch at this place in the mountains. Mom says the people having the party are what you call “loaded.” I think that means “really rich.”

  The hard black road turned into a dirt road when we got closer. Then there was a super-long fence, and that’s when I saw them.

  “Horses!” I shrieked.

  “Piper,” Mom said, making a funny face. “Pipe down.”

  I don’t know what that saying means, except “be quiet” for people named Piper. Because it’s similar to my name, you see.

  I tried to turn all the way around in my seat to see the horses, but it was hard in the booster seat I had to sit on. That was okay, though, because there were more horses there. And there. And there.

  Horses everywhere!

  I was so busy looking at the horses, I almost missed the big, ginormous house up ahead. It was the biggest house I’d ever seen. It was probably even bigger than the school I used to go to before we started moving around. I wondered what it would be like to live in a house that huge.

  “The little girl’s name is Emmy,” Mom said. “She’s just a little older than you.”

  “She’s going to be nine!” I guessed. Because I’m seven years old. I kind of wished she was younger than me, because sometimes that meant I got to be boss, which was really awesome. It hadn’t happened for a long, long time, though.

  I got to carry Mom’s folder on the way to the door. I had to hold it carefully so that it wouldn’t bend. There were important papers in there that she had gotten from her new boss. Her new client was named Amie with an “ie.” I saw her name on Mom’s folder full of party-planning ideas.

  Mom rang a doorbell, but I didn’t hear anything through that huge wooden door. There were windows on either side, but you couldn’t see through the glass because it was so pretty and colorful, like glass in a church.

  After the longest wait ever, the door opened. The fanciest woman I’d seen in my entire life was standing there, holding a small puppy. It looked almost as cute as my nanna’s dog, Oreo.

  “Yes?” the woman asked, looking over the top of my mom’s head.

  “Julie Morgan,” my mom said. “My boss sent me over to get information about your event.”

  “Of course,” she said. “Come in.”

  I followed Mom inside the house, staring up at the tall ceilings. There was one of those big chandelier things hanging above us. The floor was marble and there were pretty marble stairs on both sides of the room. I felt like I was in a celebrity’s house or something.

  “Are you a star?” I asked the woman with the dog.

  It was a good question, I thought. Mom hadn’t told me who this woman was, just that she had a daughter. Celebrities could have kids too, I was pretty sure.

  “Excuse me?” the woman asked.

  She looked at me for the first time. I wondered if she’d even noticed me there. I was pretty short.

  “Maybe Piper would like to play with Emmy,” Mom suggested.

  “Of course,” the woman said, pointing to the backyard. “She’s out there . . . somewhere.”

  I waited for someone to take me, but nobody did. Mom gave me a look that said, Go on, so that’s exactly what I did. I walked out the back doors and that’s where I found Emmy.

  Confetti Fact #1

  Birthday parties as we know them today started in the 1700s in Germany. Kids got a cake and one candle for each year, plus one “to grow on.” Grown-ups told the kids to make a wish and blow out the candles—something we still do today.

  Some think putting candles on a cake actually started in ancient Greece. The Greeks made a round cake, topped it with lit candles, and offered it to Artemis, the moon goddess. Legend says that the smoke from the candles took the wishes of anyone offering the cake to the gods in the sky.

  CHAPTER

  2

  Emmy was talking to her tablet.

  Only when I got closer did I see there was a face on that tablet. I couldn’t see much, though. It was too sunny out there and she was sitting in a lounge chair.

  “My mom’s meeting with the stupid party planner about my stupid party,” Emmy was saying to the screen. “It’s all just—”

  “You’re not supposed to say ‘stupid.’ ” I interrupted before she could say it again. “It’s not a nice word.”

  Emmy didn’t look surprised to see me back there at all. I could see her eyeballs as she looked at me over the top of her sunglasses. Wait. Maybe I shouldn’t start off like this.

  “I’m Piper Morgan,” I said proudly.

  “So?” Emmy asked.

  “Emmy!” the girl on the screen said. “Be nice.”

  “She’s just the party planner’s kid,” Emmy said, saying the word “kid” like she wasn’t one. “I don’t have to be nice to her.”

  “You should be nice to everyone,” I said.

  There I went again. This wasn’t how you made friends.

  “Hi,” I said, waving to the girl in the tablet. Emmy had turned the screen and I could kind of see the face better. She had bangs. I didn’t know anyone with bangs.

  “Hi,” the girl said, waving. “I’m Kylie.”

  “I’m Piper,” I said, even though I’d already said that to Emmy.

  “I’m having a birthday party too,” Kylie said. “It’s going to be at the roller-skating rink.”

  A roller-skating party sounded like more fun than a backyard party. I wondered why Emmy hadn’t done one of those.

  “Are you going to be at Emmy’s party?” Kylie asked.

  “I hope,” I said. “My mom said it depends.”

  “The guest list is full,” Emmy said, sounding more annoyed than ever. She looked at me with a fake smile. “Sorry.”

  “I won’t be a guest,” I said. “I’ll be working.”

  Emmy laughed, but it came out like a snort. “You’re too young to work.”

  “No, I’m not!” I protested. “I’ve worked in a circus and a principal’s office and at a pet-rescue shelter. I was even in a TV commercial for a pool store.”

  “Good,” Emmy said. “Maybe you can fix our pool filter. It’s clogged.”

  “Emmy!” Kylie said.

  Emmy sighed. “Gotta go,” she said to the face on her screen. “Text me later.”

  Without waiting for her friend to say good-bye, she pushed a button. And the tablet was just a black screen with no person’s picture in it. I wanted a tablet. But mostly I wanted a friend to appear in it. I haven’t had a best friend to talk to in a long time.

  “My parties are the best,” Emmy said, standing and turning to face me. “The best. Your mom hasn
’t thrown a birthday party like mine before.”

  She was right about that. But my mom had the best birthday parties for me. She always got the cake I liked, and we always did something fun with my friends.

  “I’m going to help,” I said with a big smile.

  “No,” Emmy said. “Just no! Only your mom.”

  The smile went from my face. Poof, it was gone. I wanted to help. I wanted to help so, so much.

  “I can make sure you get everything you want,” I said quickly, before she could say more. “You tell me and I’ll help.”

  Her eyes narrowed as she looked at me. She was thinking about it. I could tell she was really, really thinking about it. Finally, she picked up her tablet and clutched it to her chest.

  “Come on,” Emmy said. “Let’s plan a party.”

  Confetti Fact #2

  If you’ve ever been to a birthday party, you’ve probably heard a song called “Happy Birthday to You.” It’s a song everyone knows, no matter how old they are. Here are a few fun facts about the birthday song.

  #1 Two teachers wrote the song in 1893. They were also sisters.

  #2 Until recently nobody could sing “Happy Birthday to You” in a movie without paying lots of money. But there was a lawsuit and now movies can use it for free.

  #3 “Happy Birthday to You” is one of the most sung English songs in the world.

  CHAPTER

  3

  “No clowns!”

  That was the first thing Emmy blurted when we sat down at their fancy, huge kitchen table to talk about the party. My mom actually wrote the words “No clowns” on her notepad.

  “Emmy is a bit afraid of clowns,” Emmy’s mom said with a big smile.

  “Am not!” Emmy shrieked. “I don’t like them.”

  “Okay, Emmy,” her mom said. “Let’s be nice.”

  Could Emmy be nice? I didn’t think so. But her face wasn’t as scrunchy when she looked at us.

  “And jelly beans,” she said. “Those are my favorite.”

  Mom added jelly beans to the list.

  “Preferably pink,” Amie told my mom. “She really only likes the pink ones.”

  “Only pink everything,” Emmy said. “You can have some white, but no other colors.”

  My mom didn’t write that down right away. I thought that might mean she’d say no. She didn’t.

  “And I want princesses,” Emmy said. “Not fake princesses, but real ones.”

  “Princesses aren’t real,” I said with a laugh.

  “Of course they are,” Emmy said back. She wasn’t making a nice face. It was all scrunched up again, like it had been before her mother told her to be nice.

  “You’re right, Emmy. Princesses are real,” Emmy’s mom said, smiling at her. “And we’re going to have real ones at this party.”

  “Of course, sounds great,” Mom said, writing “real princesses” on her notepad.

  I knew there were real princesses, of course. But real princesses didn’t go to birthday parties. They were in other places, living in castles and doing princessy things. I didn’t understand how my mother could get real princesses to go to a nine-year-old’s birthday party.

  “And I want a pink dress,” Emmy said. “Not just any dress, but the prettiest pink dress in the whole wide world.”

  I looked at Mom. Did party planners buy dresses, too? I thought they just planned the party.

  “Umm,” Mom said. She froze, pen above the paper.

  “We’ll find one!” I said.

  I could tell from my mom’s “umm” that this wasn’t something party planners were supposed to do. But I didn’t want her to get fired. If she got fired, Emmy would be right about me being “just the party planner’s kid” and not having to be nice to me. If we were the best party planners in the history of birthday parties, she’d have to be nice to me.

  “I’ll handle buying the dress,” Emmy’s mom said, giving her daughter a look. I could tell Emmy made her mom feel exasperated a lot. That’s a word I make my mom feel too.

  As we headed to our car, Emmy’s wish list on Mom’s notepad, I asked her about the dress. Not about Emmy’s dress. This was much more important than that.

  “Can I get a pretty new dress too?” I asked.

  “Of course,” Mom said. “We have to look our best for the party, even though we’ll be working.”

  “Can it be sparkly?” I asked. Since she was saying yes, may as well ask for everything.

  “We’ll see,” Mom said.

  I’d had dresses before in my life, but not too many. Most of the time I just wore jeans or shorts or leggings. I hoped I could get a princesslike dress, to match the real princesses Mom was going to find for the party.

  • • •

  “Thank you for your help with all this,” Mom said in the car on the way to the dress place the next morning. “You’ve been really good with Emmy.”

  I let out a big sigh. “It isn’t easy. She’s a handful.”

  Mom laughed at that. Probably because it wasn’t something a seven-year-old would normally say. When you worked around grown-ups, eventually you started to talk like them, that’s all.

  “I’m going to need you to help me at the party,” Mom said. “Emmy may get upset when she sees that we don’t have real princesses.”

  “Yeah, ’cause those would be expensive.”

  I’d love to meet a real-life princess, but Mom said real princesses didn’t go to little girls’ birthday parties. That’s what I thought she’d say. Plus, most princesses live far, far away, so they’d have to fly a bazillion hours to get here. That just isn’t going to happen, Mom said.

  “Help her see the good things, not the bad,” Mom said.

  “Okay, but I think it’ll be much easier to do if I’m wearing a sparkly dress,” I said.

  Mom looked at me quickly, then back at the road. I could see the smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, though. She thought I was funny and that was okay. As long as I got to buy a sparkly dress.

  Confetti Fact #3

  Have you ever seen the words “Please RSVP” on an invitation?

  It basically means, “Please let us know if you’re coming.”

  “RSVP” stands for a French phrase: “Répondez s’il vous plaît,” which translates as “Reply if you please.” People started using RSVP on invitations in the mid-1800s, but by the early 1900s, experts said it was going out of style. To this day, though, people will include RSVP on invitations to important events like weddings.

  CHAPTER

  4

  We’d had five days to put Emmy’s party together. Five days of cupcake tasting and jelly-bean searching and Mom calling every place in town to find a princess who wouldn’t wear the typical princess costumes. Something more like a princess you’d see today instead of what you’d see in a fairy tale or movie, she told them.

  By Saturday morning I was super tired. More tired than I’d ever been in my whole life. Mom said being a party planner was so, so fun, but very hard work. I’d figured out I agreed with that.

  I was running to keep up with my mom when I heard the scream. Mom was carrying a giant punch bowl and all the punch ingredients. We were late, so everything was moving really, really fast.

  “Uh-oh,” Mom said. “Someone’s throwing a fit.”

  It was probably Emmy. I don’t know why I thought that. There were probably a bazillion eight- and nine-year-olds at this birthday party. I just had a feeling it was Emmy.

  “No!”

  Another scream, this one much closer. Mom’s steps slowed a little. I slowed down too. I didn’t want to run ahead of her, even though I wanted everyone to see my super-sparkly dress. In the sunlight it was even sparklier than it was in our hotel room.

  I finally looked up. I’d been looking down at the napkins I was carrying because I could watch my sparkly dress. When I looked up, I saw where the screams had been coming from: Emmy, who was standing right in front of us.

  “No!” she yelled for a th
ird time.

  “Hi, Emmy!” Mom called out. “Don’t you look pretty.”

  Emmy didn’t answer. She was too busy staring at me. And the look on her face was not a happy one.

  “No pink!” she yelled. “You’re wearing pink?”

  I looked down at my sparkly dress. Yes, it was pink. It was the sparkliest one of all the dresses I’d seen at the store, and besides, I liked pink. Pink was a fun color for dresses.

  “Pink is my color!” Emmy said way too loudly. She was yelling like we were far, far away, but now we were close up.

  She was wearing pink. And everything behind her was pink. I’d helped Mom pick most of it out. It was a pink, pink party.

  I probably had pink on the brain. But now I was in trouble.

  “I like your dress,” I said. Maybe saying something nice would help. “We match!”

  Not really, except we were both pink.

  “You have to change!” Emmy said. “You have to.”

  Change? But I liked this dress. Besides, I didn’t have anything different to wear.

  “Moooom!” Emmy screeched at the top of her voice. It made my ears hurt it was so loud. It worked, though. Emmy’s mom came from somewhere behind Emmy. She ran straight toward us.

  “What?” she asked. “What’s going on? Oh, hi!”

  That last part was directed at me and my mom. Emmy’s mom’s face looked all scrunched, which probably meant she was stressed. My mom got that look sometimes too.

  “If you don’t mind, I’ll just go get started,” Mom told Emmy’s mom. Which meant she left me there alone. With Emmy and Emmy’s mom.

  Emmy’s mom put her hand on her shoulder. “Emmy, let’s go back to the party. Your friends are starting to arrive.”

  “No!” Emmy said again. And this time she added a foot stomp to her shout. “I’m not going back until she changes.”

  And with that, Emmy spun around and ran toward the house. Her pink, not-sparkly dress blew out as she ran, making it even prettier. Maybe I should have picked a not-sparkly dress.