Crabby goes to Emma's Birthday Party
Crabby was bored. So when he heard Sofia was going to a birthday party he got very excited. The birthday was for Sofias best friend Emma, who was turning ten. Mummy had wrapped the present the night before. Sofia had chosen it herself – a craft kit with approximately four hundred small pieces inside. Crabby had watched all of this from his usual crevice in the Lego, and thought the craft kit looked excellent. He also thought the tissue paper looked like excellent nesting material, but that was beside the point.
Emma's house had a jumping castle in the backyard. Crabby saw it through the car window as they arrived and felt his claws tighten on the ponytail. It was enormous. It was inflatable. It was making a continuous low roaring sound from the generator, like a large, cheerful, bouncing volcano.
Inside the house, the party was already in full swing. There were children everywhere – running, shrieking, appearing suddenly from behind bushes, disappearing just as suddenly. Someone had a water pistol. Sofia spotted Emma's sister Sophie and ran towards her at full speed. Crabby experienced the ponytail becoming briefly horizontal.
The jumping castle, it turned out, was unavoidable. "Sofia come on!" shouted Sophie, already bouncing, her plaits flying upward with each jump. "Okay!" Sofia shouted back with enthusiasm. In an instant she hopped straight onto the castle.
She jumped. Crabby held on. She jumped again. Crabby held on harder. This is fine, he thought, as the world went up and down and then up again. This is completely fine. Crabs are naturally buoyant, we are built for dynamic environments. The ocean is essentially a very large jumping castle if you think about it. On the next jump, Sofia bounced into Sophie, and they both collapsed sideways in a heap of giggles.
The pass the parcel was easier. The children sat in a circle on the grass and Emma's dad played music from his phone while the parcel went around. When the music stopped, whoever was holding it unwrapped one layer. Sofia got a layer with a small packet of stickers inside. She was very pleased.
The cake was chocolate, which Emma had chosen, and it had ten candles and Sonic the hedgehog on top. Everyone sang happy birthday. Emma blew out all ten candles on the first try, which was received with enormous applause. Sofia ate her cake very fast and got chocolate icing on her nose and didn't notice for quite a long time.
In the ponytail, Crabby could smell the chocolate cake and felt, not for the first time, that being a secret stowaway had certain limitations. He could not eat cake. He could not sing happy birthday, obviously. But he could watch Sofia blow bubbles with Emma, iridescent spheres floating up into the afternoon sun and popping one by one. He could hear her laughter through the ponytail, a small constant vibration.
On the way home, Sofia clutched her party bag on her lap and told Mummy everything that happened, at considerable speed. The jumping castle. The water pistol. The bubbles. "Did you have a good time?" Mummy asked. "The best" Sofia said simply and completely. She reached up and fixed her ponytail, which had come a bit loose. Crabby tucked himself back into position. Yes, he thought, the best.
The End