Mallory's Super Sleepover Read Free Page B

hall and think about tonight. Just thinking about it makes me happy. I think if I blew my nose right now, the only thing that would come out would be happiness. It sounds gross, but thinking about it makes me laugh.
    “Someone looks happy,” Mom says when I walk into the kitchen.
    Dad plops a birthday hat on my head.
    I stick my finger into a bowl of icing and lick it. Then I take the phone from Mom and say hello into the receiver.
    I hear a familiar voice on the other end. “Happy birthday, Honey Bee! It’s Grandma.”
    I giggle into the phone. “I know it’s you, Grandma. You’re the only one who calls me Honey Bee.”
    “I wouldn’t miss the chance to wish you a happy tenth birthday.”
    “You know it’s not really my birthday,” I say.
    Grandma laughs like she knows and doesn’t care. “Your mom tells me you have a big birthday celebration planned for tonight.”
    I tell Grandma all about my sleepover.
    “It sounds like a lot of fun. I wish I could be one of the party guests.”

    The thought of Grandma in her pj’s at my sleepover makes me laugh.
    She laughs too. Then Grandma gets quiet for a minute. “Mallory, even though it’s not your real birthday, you’re celebrating tonight, and I want to tell you about something very important that my mother told me about celebrating a birthday. It’s something called birthday magic.”
    I scratch my head. “It sounds good,” I say to Grandma. “But I’m not sure what birthday magic is. Is there a birthday fairy in charge of birthday magic?”
    Grandma laughs again. “Birthday magic is something that we all get when we make a birthday wish,” she explains. “When you make a wish, birthday magic is what makes it come true.”
    I scratch my head one more time. I’m not sure that makes much sense.

    “Everyone knows that not all birthday wishes come true,” I say to Grandma.
    “You’re right about that,” she says. “But here’s the secret: birthday magic only works when you wish for something that’s really, truly important to you.”
    I think about the wish I made. I wished that my sleepover will be the most super sleepover ever. “I made my wish,” I tell Grandma. “It’s really, truly important to me, and I really, truly hope it comes true.”
    “Honey Bee, I hope whatever it is that you really, truly want and wish for is what you get,” she says in the nice grandma voice she always uses when she talks to me.
    I hear the doorbell ring. “I think my party guests are starting to arrive,” I tell Grandma.
    Grandma says
good-bye
and
happy unofficial birthday
.
    I hang up the phone and walk toward the door. I think about what Grandma told me about birthday magic. Maybe there is such a thing. There must be, because my party hasn’t even started, and I already feel like my wish is coming true.

PARTY CRASHERS
    When I open the front door, there are two things standing on the other side of it that I never expected to see.
    Thing #1: Arielle
    Thing #2: Danielle
    They both have on pj’s, and they’re carrying sleeping bags and pillows. “We heard everyone talking about your sleepover so we figured you must have forgotten to give us our invitations.”
    Even though today is my birthday and I don’t like doing math, I do some anyway. Mallory, Mary Ann, Pamela, April, Emma, and Zoe make six. Now Arielle and Danielle make eight. The last thing I expected at my party was crashers. I know it was the last thing Mom and Dad expected.
    They push past me while I’m busy counting. “We’ll put our things in your room,” says Arielle.

    Max shakes his head as they walk down the hall. “Mom’s going to kill you,” he says.
    “Your mom would never kill you, especially not on your birthday,” says Mary Ann as she walks inside with her things. She’s wearing her cupcake pajamas. Just like I am. She’s also wearing a confused look. “What are they doing here?” she asks pointing down the hall.
    I quickly explain. “Mom is going to kill me!” I