‘Happy Birthday Boo’
Boo was still a little sleepy, she rubbed her eyes, then opened them, a dragon was staring into her face and smiling. Dragon smiles are both wonderful and scary, you see they show a lot of teeth and the glint in their eyes tends to make humans worry that they are about to get eaten.
In this case, Boo was safe, her dragon loved her and she supplied him with snacks whenever she thought he was hungry.
The dragon was holding a small velvet covered box, with a pink ribbon tied around it. Boo took the package and opened it carefully. Inside there was a silver chain with a tiny silver dragon charm. She looked at it, then the dragon, she smiled and kissed him on the snout.
‘Thank you dragon’.
She hugged him, well as much as a small, but tall for her age, nine-year old girl can hug a 10 foot tall dragon.
She placed the chain around her neck and admired it in the mirror, smiling, ‘Its beautiful, thank you Dragon’.
Boo finally looked at her clock, it was just a few minutes before seven, in other words it was time to get up and get busy. Boo smiled at her dragon and he smiled his scary, toothy smile back. Quickly Boo reached under her bed and grabbed a couple of strawberry granola bars and a family sized bag of smokey bacon crisps. Her dragon, as usual, inhaled them in an instant. His smile, this time was considerably warmer.
Boo decided that as it was her birthday, mommy needed to be awake and cooking her pancakes, so she burst into her room and as usual woke her mommy up by throwing endless cushions at her. eventually she got the message. ‘Happy Birthday Sweetie’, let’s get some breakfast.
As they ate their pancakes, Boo’s mommy handed her an envelope. Boo took it and opened it, it was a lovely card with a beautiful dragon on the front. Boo was delighted and even squealed a little before kissing her mommy and thanking her.
Boo was, however a little bit confused, normally she would have at least a couple of presents, but there was no sign of any wrapping paper.
The morning was spent doing homework as usual, the maths homework was especially difficult, Miss Robinson seemed to be in an especially bad mood recently and the homework that she was setting had gone from merely difficult, all the way up to fiendishly difficult. Boo spent a couple of hours frowning and chewing the end of her pencil before mommy asked her to put on her party clothes.
Boo gave her mommy a sideways look, ‘oh, who’s party are we going to ?’
‘Why, yours of course’. Mommy smiled.
Boo grinned, her mommy had not mentioned her having a party and she was very aware that mommy did not have an awful lot of spare money, so she had not asked for anything extravagant. She did really want a new backpack as hers was looking a little frayed and some new pencils and sketch books and maybe some gummy bears, but really there was nothing she wanted.
‘Morning Short-stuff’. It was Mommy’s boyfriend, he was wandering around looking for tea and as usual dressed in his favourite black tee shirt and a pair of indescribably grungy jeans. He grinned at her and handed her a gift bag ‘Happy Birthday Boo’.
Boo smiled and hugged him, took the gift bag and dived, head first, onto the sofa. Boo did this a lot and every time she dived onto it, she slipped straight off the end, mommy had recently polished the leather and it was now completely useless as a sofa, because you slipped off, but awesome fun as a rather short slip-and-slide. She settled onto the rug rather than risk sliding onto her bottom again and opened the gift bag.
There were three books inside.
- Dragon Care for Beginners by Aithne MacCarthey
- A beginners guide to european cheese by Josyanne Chabrier
- 1001 Pizza Recipes by Flavio Maraldo
Boo giggled, these books were so typical of him, all really interesting, but all almost entirely useless. ‘Although’ she thought to herself, ‘dragons love cheese and pizza too, so maybe they are not that useless after-all’. She skimmed the dragon book, it was not very promising, she read out-loud, ‘Dragons are dangerous creatures, that are always bad tempered. You should under no circumstances try to keep one as a pet. If you choose to ignore this advice however, this book should save you from the worst of the inevitable burns….’
What a strange book.
She was just about to throw the gift bag away, when she noticed there was still a card in it. She ripped open the envelope. The card was beautiful, it was a picture of a little girl and a huge ferocious dragon with the words ‘Happy Birthday Princess’. Inside the card Mommy and her boyfriend had written a birthday note
To dear Sweet Boo,
We both adore you,
We want you to laugh and sing
With all that today will bring
Even at this silly
non-Rhyme.
Boo giggled, what silly people.
Stuck to the card was a party invite.
‘You are cordially invited to celebrate an important day
Time: 1PM Sharp
Where: Luigi’s Super Tasty Pizza and Pizza, Pizza Emporium and Tasty Pizza House.
Bring an appetite.
Boo carefully checked the date on the invite and found that it was today, she was having a party !
She ran into the kitchen, skidded on the floor and for the second time today found herself sitting on her slightly bruised bottom, giggling. ‘Mommy, Mommy, party !’ , Mommy grinned at her, well Boo, we thought that you might like to have a party, so we invited your entire class too.’
Boo thought about that for a moment, ‘Even Emma ?’.
‘Yes sweetie, even Emma, I know that she was not very nice to you at her party, but really you should make an effort not to worry about it’.
‘Ok Mommy, I need to go and find something to wear.’
Boo ran to her room, her dragon was sleeping on the floor as usual and she almost fell over him. Throwing open her wardrobe door she started to look for the perfect party dress. She had worn all of her dresses recently though, so the effort was a little futile.
‘How about this one?’
Mommy was at the door of her bedroom holding up a brand new party dress. The dress was the color of fire, yellow, orange, reds with trailing red/orange and yellow ribbons. In short the dress was amazing and beautiful. Attached to the hanger were red and orange ribbons for her plaits.
Boo hugged her mommy, they had seen the dress in the window of her favorite clothes shop ‘Cool threads for young ladies’. Every time they had passed the shop she had stopped to look at it and she had been really disappointed when a few days earlier it had been replaced by a dummy wearing a teeshirt and shorts.
‘Thank you Mommy, it is beautiful’.
She quickly changed into her dress, re-plaited her hair and included ribbons all the way to give them an extra special look, found her favorite pair of boots and did a couple of twirls in-front of the mirror.
‘Spectacular’ murmured the dragon, ‘you look like a fire maiden’ .
‘What is a fire maiden ?’ asked Boo.
‘A mythical woman that is made entirely from fire, she devours all that is in front of her’.
‘That is horrible’, said Boo, pulling a face.
‘Well yes and no, it is only horrible if it is malicious, you are a good young lady, you would not use your fire powers for bad’.
‘Well maybe I would melt horrible ice-cream, or maybe car tires, or maybe clear leaves’.
‘Good point, so perhaps it is a good thing that you only look like a fire maiden and you are not actually one, else we might have too much chaos at your party later’.
A short while later, Boo, Mommy and mommies boyfriend were all crammed in a taxi heading to Luigi’s Super Tasty Pizza and Pizza, Pizza Emporium and Tasty Pizza House, Boo was consulting hew new Pizza book ‘I really think that I should order a Bronx Pie. Its a pizza that has pastrami, pickles and mustard, it’s basically a pastrami sandwich on a pizza, which must be good.’
‘Sweetie I am not sure that Luigi’s has ever heard of The Bronx, let alone actually having pastrami available, maybe you should check out the menu when we get there ?’
Eventually they arrived, a large portion of the restaurant was roped off for Boo’s party and already several guests were seated and drinking root-beer floats. Boo thought that the idea of ice-cream in root beer was silly, but that it tasted fantastic. She also noticed that her dragon was hiding behind the curtains and every so often he would take a quick peek at what was going on.
Almost everyone had arrived by about 1:15, Emma had a new party dress on, it was blue with white stripes and lacy cuffs, Boo’s mommy said that she looked like ‘Andy Pandy’ and her boyfriend nearly choked in his drink. James was wearing a pair of tight skinny jeans and a tee-shirt from a band that ‘Were so bad in my day that the only reason anyone would buy their records was to use them as cheap frisbees’ according to mom’s boyfriend.
Boo’s best friend Penny was wearing a beautiful turquoise party dress, when she stood next to Boo her parents declared ‘oooh, look, fire and ice’. Boo and Penny looked at each other and rolled their eyes in sync.
Boo’s daddy arrived at about half-past one. Her parents had long gone past the shouting at each other stage and were now at least pleasant to each other. Strangely this arrangement did not seem to have been communicated to Daddies latest girlfriend despite this being their sixth date. She flounced in, stuck her nose in the air, air-kissed Boo and thrust a present into her hands, completely ignoring her Mommy, her daddy and Mommies Boyfriend, the latter of whom was trying to offer them drinks and being completely mind boggled that her daddy would want a diet water, when there were root-beer floats.
Boo looked at the present in her hand, it was a beautifully wrapped box of clown’s makeup and a bright red curly wig. Boo smiled as best she could and thanked her.
Once Daddy and his girlfriend had their diet waters they sat in a booth, kissing each other, pretty much unaware of their surroundings.
Boo snuck over to her dragon and fed him several packets of smoky bacon crisps and a strawberry granola bar and promised him some pizza as soon as it was served.
‘Oh goodie, can you make sure to get one with extra cheese please ?’
Boo smiled, her dragon loved his cheese and she had already planned on getting one with extra cheese, she just needed to lookup which cheese in her new book beforehand.
‘Ladies and gentlemen madame et monsieur’, came the crackly voice over the sound system,’ please be seated, its time to order your pizza’. All of the children found tables quickly, Emma and James sat together holding hands, Boo and Penny sat together planning their pizza (ham, pepperoni, extra-extra cheese and extra tomato on thick crust pizza), Daddy and his girlfriend were still kissing, but they had at least ordered their pizza, they had decided to get a small, extra thin crust, low sauce, low sodium low-fat cheese and tomato pizza.
Meanwhile Mommy and her boyfriend were still discussing theirs ‘But surely they can squeeze twelve extra toppings on it’.
All conversation was on Pizza, so nobody noticed that the dragon has slipped quietly into the kitchen…….
To be continued….