Piper Morgan Plans a Party

by Stephanie Faris

  “Maybe you could wear a different dress?” Emmy’s mom asked. “I know she’s being . . . unreasonable, but I just want this party to go well.” She rubbed her eyes and leaned against a big table that had two pictures of Emmy on it, one as a baby and one now. There was a pretty sign with Emmy’s name spelled out, and there were some of what I figured were Emmy’s favorite things—some stuffed animals, a sparkly bow, a pair of ballet shoes.

  “I don’t have another dress,” I said. I mean, that should be obvious, right? Why would I carry an extra dress around with me?

  “Emmy probably has something you can wear,” her mom said. “Let’s go find her.”

  Confetti Fact #4

  Pink is a very popular color. But if you don’t call it your favorite, you aren’t alone. Blue is actually the most popular color in the world. But there are some fun facts about pink that make it a pretty cool color.

  #1 Although the color pink has been around for centuries, the word “pink” wasn’t assigned as a color name until the late seventeenth century.

  #2 The name came from flowers called “pinks.”

  #3 One story says that girls were born inside pink roses. Even today it’s still tradition for baby girls to be dressed in pink.

  CHAPTER

  5

  When we got to Emmy’s bedroom, the door was locked.

  “Emmy!” her mom said after knocking a bazillion times. “Open this door now!”

  “No!”

  She was still yelling that word. That was all she was yelling.

  “What’s going on?”

  That was Kylie. She must have heard the commotion and run upstairs. She was standing there with a frowny face. And she had on a pink dress too!

  “Hi, Kylie. She’s mad that I have a pink dress on,” I said.

  “Oh!” Kylie said.

  She nodded like she knew what that meant. Emmy hadn’t seen Kylie yet. Emmy was going to be really mad to see that two of us were in pink.

  “And now she won’t come out,” I added.

  “Let me try,” Kylie offered.

  Emmy’s mom stepped aside, and Kylie walked up to the door.

  “Emmy?” she asked. “It’s Kylie. Can I come in?”

  Silence. We waited for lots and lots of seconds for the door to unlock or for Emmy to say something. She said nothing.

  There was a party going outside. My mom had worked super hard to make it the best birthday party ever. And now Emmy was ruining it. I couldn’t let that happen.

  “I’ll change my dress,” I called out. “I just need another dress to wear. You can pick.”

  We waited. After a while Emmy’s mom sighed.

  “I need to go check and see if more people are here. Let me know if you girls need anything.” With that, she turned and walked downstairs. I wondered if maybe Kylie and I should go enjoy the party too, even if it was without the birthday girl!

  But then we heard a click. The door opened just a crack. I saw one of Emmy’s eyeballs and a strip of her face.

  “Only Kylie and Piper,” Emmy said.

  That made me feel special. Like I was her friend too, even though I knew that wasn’t true.

  “Don’t worry, it’s just me and Piper,” Kylie said.

  Emmy opened the door to let us in. As soon as we were inside, she slammed the door and locked it.

  “I’ll pick something out for you,” Emmy said to me. She marched to her closet.

  I looked at Kylie, who shrugged her pink-dress-covered shoulders. I wanted to ask why I had to change and Kylie didn’t, but that would make Emmy mad.

  While I waited for Emmy to come out with a dress, Kylie went to the window to look out at the party. After a few minutes she gasped.

  “What?” I asked.

  I didn’t wait for her to answer. I rushed over to the window to see what she was seeing.

  The first thing I noticed was the crowd. They formed a wide circle around two kids who were pulling on something. At first it looked like they were playing tug-of-war, but then I realized they were tugging on some kind of stuffed animal, one that I had seen on the table earlier.

  “Bugsy!” Emmy shrieked, causing both Kylie and me to jump. At some point she’d come out of the closet and was standing next to Kylie. “Here. I have to get down there.”

  She tossed something at me and ran. She didn’t even close the bedroom door after her, so we were staring into the empty hallway.

  I looked down at the dress I was wearing. It wasn’t sparkly at all. It was a plain gray color, but the color was the only thing plain. There were bows and puffy sleeves and all kinds of weird designs all over it. It was the ugliest dress I’d ever, ever seen. Ever.

  But I knew I had to wear it. We couldn’t go on with the party unless I did. If we messed up the party, Emmy would tell all her friends, “See? I was right about Piper. She’s no good at throwing parties.” I wanted everyone to see that I was the best party thrower in the whole wide world.

  “Excuse me,” I said, going to the walk-in closet and closing the door. Time to put on the ugliest dress any girl ever wore. Ever.

  Confetti Fact #5

  Dressing up in a fancy dress can be so much fun. Dresses have come a long way over the years, but some things are always the same. Silk and lace and bling have always been popular in party dresses. Here are a few facts you probably didn’t know about dresses.

  #1 Women once wore old gold coins on their dresses to add some bling. They were called “sequins.”

  #2 Wedding dresses haven’t always been white. Until the 1800s people thought a white dress would get dirty too easily. They were right about that.

  #3 Until the early 1900s, it was very common for young boys to wear dresses.

  CHAPTER

  6

  All the kids were playing hide-and-go-seek when I came out. I saw Emmy and Kylie and six other girls. I felt left out for a second, but then I remembered. I wasn’t part of the party. I was helping Mom.

  “Piper!” Mom said as I got closer. “What on earth?”

  I knew she was talking about my dress. I could tell her Emmy made me wear it, but she looked super stressed.

  “Isn’t it nice?” I asked, turning in a circle. “Emmy let me wear it.”

  “It’s certainly . . .” She looked all the way down at the bottom of the skirt part of the dress. It went almost to my ankles. “Different?”

  “It is! Nobody has a dress like mine anywhere.”

  I looked over at the other girls. Aside from Kylie, no pink at all. There was blue and white and even light purple. But no pink.

  I thought of something then. Kylie and Emmy were best friends. The kind of best friends that wore the same color together. Of course Emmy wouldn’t make Kylie change. Only me.

  “Ready?” Emmy yelled. “Set! Go!”

  Everyone jumped up and ran in different directions. I wanted to run too, but Mom needed me.

  I followed Mom to the car, where she had the rest of the food. We set it all up on the table while I tried not to look at the other kids, who were all hiding behind trees and stuff. Emmy’s friend Kylie was hiding under the table. Emmy was running around tagging people.

  I was helping my mom with the plastic knives and forks when I heard Emmy crying again. Her cry was loud.

  “I want a real princess!” she shouted in between sobs.

  Mom sighed. I knew that sigh well. She was exhausted. “Exhausted” is something that happens when moms get exasperated too much.

  “I guess the princess isn’t a hit,” she said.

  I turned around to look at the princess Mom had picked. She was wearing a crown. She looked super pretty, but not like a fairy-tale princess. She could have been a real princess. But she wasn’t.

  “I’ll go talk to her,” I said to my mom.

  I had no idea what I was going to say once I got there. All I wanted to do was make things better.

  “It’s okay,” I said to the princess, who was still smiling even though her eyes looked con
fused.

  I cleared my throat and spoke loudly so that Emmy could hear me over her crying.

  “Emmy doesn’t know that you’re better than a real princess,” I said.

  Emmy stopped making so much noise. She looked at us. She still looked mad, but she seemed like she’d listen to whatever I’d say next.

  “Real princesses don’t get to come to parties like this,” I said. “They live in palaces over in other countries. This princess gets to pick from all the birthday parties in all the whole world. And she picked Emmy’s. That makes her better than a real princess. She’s your princess, Emmy.”

  Emmy looked like she wasn’t sure whether she should believe me. But she didn’t cry. She just nodded and let the princess join the game.

  Smiling to myself, I walked back to the cake table. Mom was standing there watching me.

  “Wow!” she said. “You handled that really well. I’m proud of you.”

  I smiled. “I’m proud of you” were my favorite words. Especially when my mom said them.

  “I forgot the cake knife,” Mom said. “I’ll be right back. Keep an eye on things.”

  I’d been standing there just a few seconds when I heard Emmy behind me.

  “I don’t want to wait!” she yelled.

  I was staring at the pretty cake. It was white with big pink dots and three cakes stacked on top of one another. The top cake was shaped like a crown.

  I turned around to see Emmy’s mom looking down at her. She had a frown on her face. It didn’t look like things were going well.

  “You can play with the princess and eat cake after we eat some other food,” Emmy’s mom said. “This is the schedule and we’re sticking to it.”

  “But I don’t want to!” Emmy screamed. Kids started coming out of hiding. They looked like they didn’t know what to do.

  “We have food!” I shouted. “Look at your pretty cake.”

  Emmy looked at me. I held my breath. I knew she would tell me she’d already seen her cake. Or something like that.

  But her not-so-happy look changed. She actually smiled.

  “I want a piece of cake now,” Emmy said. “It’s my cake, so I get to choose when I eat it!”

  “My mom went to get the cake knife,” I told her. But Emmy was standing right in front of the cake now, eyeing it with a big smile on her face.

  “I think I want this piece,” she said, putting her hand near the bottom of the cake. There were two layers above it and I was pretty sure they’d fall if she wasn’t careful.

  “You should wait for my mom,” I told her. “She’ll be here in just a second.”

  I looked nervously to my right and saw my mom heading toward us. I thought about telling her to hurry up, but maybe I could talk Emmy out of this. Maybe my mom would never have to find out.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Emmy dig her right hand into the bottom layer of the cake and pull out a huge chunk. The top two layers fell downward to fill the big hole that had been left.

  The cake was collapsing!

  Before I could figure out what to do, my mom got to the table. I was in big, big trouble.

  Confetti Fact #6

  Hide-and-go-seek has been around for many years. People don’t know exactly when it started, but they think it comes from an ancient Greek game called apodidraskinda. One person closes his or her eyes and everyone else hides. The person has to find everyone before they get back to home base.

  In the game most kids play today, one person finds everyone. The last person found gets to be the finder for the next game.

  You can even make up your own version of hide-and-go-seek to play with your own friends. The rules change all the time.

  CHAPTER

  7

  My mom had that look on her face. It was a look I’d seen before when I’d messed up. But I wasn’t worried about that. I was too busy worrying that she was about to be fired.

  When she worked at the circus and pool shop, I didn’t want that to happen. I wanted her to work at those places forever and ever and ever. This time it was okay if we went somewhere else. Emmy was mean, and after this party, we would have to go do a different party anyway.

  This time I wanted to do a good job for other reasons. I wanted the people to see that we were good at throwing parties.

  “Emmy!” I heard a girl’s voice from behind me say. “You ruined your cake!”

  I turned around to see Kylie standing there, hands on her hips. She was making a major frowny face at Emmy. I made the same face.

  “I just wanted to taste it,” she said, holding up the handful of cake she’d grabbed from the bottom.

  “That’s bad manners,” I said. “My mom was going to cut it and give everyone a nice piece.”

  “Okay,” Mom said as she approached. “It’s okay. We’ll fix this. Help me, Piper.”

  My frown wanted to turn into a big smile, but I kept it from doing that. I still had to look annoyed. But I was so happy to be able to help my mom fix things. She shoved a bunch of napkins into the hole to prop the cake back up, then started carefully cutting slices. I held up each plate for a slice, then set them all out neatly on the table, side by side.

  By the time we were finished, girls were lining up for cake. I didn’t forget the most important thing, though. I asked Mom for the candles and put nine of them in a big slice of cake. Then Mom carried it over to Emmy while everyone sang the “Happy Birthday” song.

  “Hey, Piper!”

  Now I knew that voice. It was Kylie.

  “My birthday at the roller rink is next weekend,” Kylie said. “Can you come?”

  I smiled. I’d never been invited to a roller-skating party before. I looked at Mom, who nodded before returning to her cake slicing.

  “I might also need your help with a few things,” she said. “We have the cake already, but do you think you could help me decorate?”

  The best thing about this was that she was asking me, not my mom. I’d still have to get my mom’s help—and my mom’s boss would make them pay money—but I felt happy anyway. Somebody had asked me to help with something. That was the best thing ever.

  Confetti Fact #7

  Princesses are in a lot of the fairy tales we read and the movies we see, but there really are princesses in the world. Here are a few fun things to know about real-life princesses.

  #1 Princesses weren’t even called princesses until the late 1300s. Until then they were just called “Lady.”

  #2 To become a princess, you have to either have parents who are part of the royal family or marry a prince.

  #3 Of all the Disney princesses, Snow White is the youngest. She’s supposed to be only fourteen years old!

  CHAPTER

  8

  “This is going to be the best birthday party ever!”

  I said that because I knew it was true. You know why? I helped plan it. My mom helped too. Plus, it was the best place to have a birthday party for a nine-year-old. A roller-skating rink!

  I’d never had a party in a roller-skating rink, but I loved to skate, so I knew it would be super fun. Plus, the person I was talking to was Kylie. It was her party. And she looked excited too.

  “Let’s get our skates!” she said.

  “Can we go get our skates?” I asked Mom.

  Mom and I had been there for a whole half hour before Kylie got there. We’d unloaded everything from the car and set up the party room so it was ready. When Kylie saw it, she had a huge smile.

  “Sure,” Mom said. “Go have fun.”

  Kylie ran toward the skate-rental area and I ran too. I had to keep up. We put our skates on so fast, I barely had time to tie my laces. Then we skated as fast as we could through the snack area to get to the rink.

  There wasn’t even music, but we didn’t care. We had the whole floor to ourselves. That wouldn’t last long, so I knew we had to have fun while we could.

  Kylie grabbed my hand and we skated along. We were laughing and smiling and having the best time ever.r />
  Until we saw Emmy.

  Kylie saw her first. She slowed down a little and I couldn’t figure out why. Then I saw where she was looking. Emmy was standing at the side of the rink with her arms crossed over her chest. She did not look happy.

  “Come out and skate!” I called out. Because this was a party and I wanted everyone to have fun.

  “No!” Emmy said. Her favorite word.

  “Let’s go to her,” Kylie said.

  It was her birthday, so I had to do what she wanted. She let go of my hand and skated straight to Emmy, who was pouting.

  “You should have waited for me,” Emmy said. She was looking at Kylie. I was just invisible, I guess.

  “Hi, Emmy!” I said.

  She didn’t even look at me.

  “I’m sorry,” Kylie said. “We wanted to skate.”

  All of a sudden the music started. I looked up at the clock and saw it was time for the party. Everyone was late.

  “I’ll go get my skates,” Emmy said.

  “I’ll go with you,” Kylie said.

  They rushed off without waiting for me. I wondered if I was supposed to go with them. Emmy didn’t seem to want me to. I decided to go look out the window to see if there were people in the parking lot.

  “What are you doing, Piper?” Mom asked, coming over to the window. My face was pressed against it.

  “Nobody’s out there,” I said. “The parking lot is empty.”

  She looked, then glanced at her phone.

  “I’m sure they’re all riding together,” she said. “Come help me with something.”

  There wasn’t really anything she needed me to do. She just wanted to take my mind off the empty parking lot. We rearranged the place mats and messed with the party hats, and five whole minutes went by. Still no people.

  “Can we send them a text?” I asked.

  My mom had everyone’s mom’s number stored in her phone as a group text. It was part of the way she shared information about the party, since people didn’t always check their e-mail. She only texted them one or two times so they didn’t get mad, she told me.