Pretend but Feels Like Real

by Karen Baumgart

Today was my six-years-old party day! Mum and Aunt May had got Frozen party hats and paper plates and made cupcakes with Elsa and Anna flags. I love Anna the best, even though Jeremy thinks Frozen is a stupid girls’ movie and teases me for liking it. But Mum said I could have any kind of birthday party, and Aunt May said she’d spit in Jeremy’s pink lemonade if he was a meanie. Aunt May isn’t my real aunt, just a pretend one, but we have a secret handshake so that means she’d really truly spit in someone’s drink for me.

I didn’t want Jeremy to come. When he’s around, it gets noisy and scratchy in my head, like a petting zoo with every animal sound all at once. But Mum said we’d invite the whole class, so nobody was left out. She said maybe Jeremy just needs a good friend and couldn’t that be me? But I said no way, Jeremy is mean – he never does the games I want to play, like the olden-days game I play with Lucy, where we make pretend jam to get through the pretend long winter. Jeremy says that’s stupid girls’ stuff, but I don’t care, and anyway, Aunt May says there’s no such thing as girls’ games and boys’ games, kids can play whatever they like. I love Aunt May almost as much as I love Anna.

It was my absolutely best party ever and I got to wear a rainbow Anna cape, and my tummy was fizzy with pink lemonade and fairy bread triangles!

And then Dad turned up and his clothes were different from the last time, so I didn’t remember him right away. And then he gave me a present with a big ribbon bow. The paper wasn’t blue like my other presents but maybe he didn’t know it was a Frozen party? And then I pulled off the wrapping and it was a Transformers quilt cover, so I looked down and wished so hard it was an Anna quilt cover, but it wasn’t. And then my eyes did that stinging thing from trying not to cry in front of people, which is much worser than having a Transformers quilt cover.

And then Aunt May came up behind me and squished me with a vanilla marshmallow hug, and when I turned around her blouse got soggy, but she didn’t mind, whispering that I was so brave and to just wait until I opened her present. And then Dad said he had to go and to keep growing up into a big, strong boy, and he pretend-punched my arm, but it hurt like real. And then there was a big heavy on my chest, maybe an elephant or a Transformer. And it was noisy like a petting zoo.