Mr. King drove my sister, Penny, and me to Batts Confections after school instead of home, because that’s where Mom was waiting for us. Batts Confections is our family store, in case you forgot or you haven’t read my other books. And it’s not just any kind of store—it’s the best kind of store. A candy store.
Mom was waiting on the sidewalk for us. My baby brother, Marco, was in her arms. Penny and I said good-bye to everyone in the car and climbed out.
It was good to spend a little time with Marco, because he wouldn’t be coming to Los Angeles with us. That’s where we were going, because Aunt Laura was getting married there—she’s Mom’s younger sister. We were staying at a hotel, and Mom said it would be too many people with too many germs for such a little baby.
Mom gave me Purell to squirt on my hands and clean off all the germs from school, and then she let me hold Marco so I could show him some of my favorite Batts Confections things. “This is the candy circus that I helped set up,” I said.
“I helped too!” Penny added.
“And those are the candy lions and zebras, and the cotton-candy machine,” I told him. I know he’s just a baby, but he smiled and made his happy baby sounds, so maybe he understood a little bit.
“Now let’s go upstairs and show him the party room!” Penny said.
“There’s a leak upstairs,” Mom said. “I don’t want you girls up there. Besides, Dad has a surprise for you.”
“Ooh, goody! I love surprises!” Penny said. “Is it that we never have to clean our rooms again?”
Mom laughed. “Nope, not even close,” she said.
“Is it about us being in the wedding?” I asked.
Mom shook her head.
“We already knew about that anyway,” Penny told me. “Is it about our cousin?” she asked Mom.
Penny and I were getting a cousin at the wedding. That’s because Aunt Laura’s soon-to-be husband, our soon-to-be Uncle Rob, had been married before and he had a daughter named Lia. Penny and I had never had a cousin. Dad’s an only child, so we don’t have any uncles or aunts on his side of the family. Mom has Aunt Laura, but so far she hasn’t had any kids.
“But we already know about Lia, too,” I reminded Penny.
“Oh yeah,” said Penny.
“So what is it?” I asked.
“We’ll go downstairs so you can see,” Mom said. She took Marco back from me. They went down the stairs, because Mom hates elevators. But Penny likes elevators, and so do I. I pressed the button for it to come pick the two of us up. When the doors opened, we stepped inside. My finger was on the button marked “C.” C stands for cellar, which is another word for basement. Penny called out, “I claim getting to press the button for the floor!”
“Too late, I already pressed it,” I told her, pressing the button right at that second.
“That’s not fair!” Penny said. We rode down and the doors opened. “I’m telling!” Penny called, and she raced ahead of me.
Sometimes little sisters are SUPER annoying.
“Stella did a mean wrong thing!” Penny said, as soon as she walked through the office door. “She pressed the outside elevator button. Then she pressed the inside elevator button.”
“So?” I asked. “There’s no rule against that.”
“There is too, because it’s not fair,” Penny whined. “I didn’t get to press any button!”
“Are we going to keep talking about buttons, or are we going to check out the surprise?” Dad asked.
Dad always changes the subject when he wants to distract Penny, and it always works.
“Where is it?” Penny asked.
“Right here,” Dad said, moving toward a big brown box in the corner. He pulled down the front flap so we could all see. Penny and I breathed in deep at the exact same time, and let it out at the same time: “Oooooh.”
This is what was inside the box: a giant candy wedding cake.
“It’s for Aunt Laura,” Mom explained, even though she didn’t have to—I figured that out all by myself. It looked more delicious than any cake I’d ever seen, and it also looked taller than any cake I’d ever seen.
“How many floors are there?” Penny asked.
“Floors?” Dad asked.
“You know, floors of cake.”
“Oh, you mean tiers,” Dad said. “Count them up.”
I counted quickly in my head: five. But Penny counted slowly, out loud: “One, two, three, four, five. There are five!” she said.
“That’s right,” Dad told her.
Each tier was covered in vanilla frosting and had a different candy theme. Here, I’ll list them for you, from bottom to top.
The biggest tier was filled with Marco’s Minis. That’s a new thing Penny invented after Marco was born, so he’d have something named for him at the store. There were mini chocolate bars, itty-bitty peanut butter cups, tiny cookie dough balls, and a whole lot more.
The second tier was covered with dots—you know, those sugar dots that come on a big piece of paper and you eat them off. Well, these dots were stuck right onto the frosting—which I bet tastes even better.
The third tier was all jelly beans, in the same colors as the dots, wrapped around the middle tier like a big ribbon tying up the whole cake.
There were more jelly beans on the fourth tier, but these were white and looked like pearls.
Finally, the top tier was a cupcake, and at the tippy-top of the cupcake there were marzipan sculptures that I think were supposed to be Aunt Laura and her fiancé, Rob, but it didn’t look too much like them. The whole thing looked amazing anyhow. And I told Dad.
“It’s a pretty good present for the bride and groom, huh?” Dad asked.
“Yeah,” Penny said. “It looks tasty and delicious.”
“It looks perfect,” I said.
“How is it getting to Los Angeles?” Penny asked.
“Stuart and I are going to pack it up ourselves,” Dad said. “We’ll put extra bubble wrap around it. It’ll go in the backseat between you two on the drive down. That way you girls can make sure nothing happens to it.”
“I’ll put a seat belt around the box,” I said. “And I’ll make sure it doesn’t get bumped at all.”
“I knew I could count on you,” Dad said.
“I have to tell you something,” Penny told him.
“What’s that?”
“I don’t want to have a cake for my wedding present. Then I’d have to share it with everyone else, and then it will be all eaten up and I won’t have anything left to play with.”
“Are you getting married anytime soon?” Dad asked.
“Not yet,” Penny said. “But one day—Maverick and I are going to get married when we’re all grown up.” Maverick is our neighbor. He’s six and a half years old, and he gave Penny her very favorite stuffed animal ever, her duck-billed platypus, Belinda.
“So that gives us a little time to work on your sharing skills,” Mom told Penny. “But when it comes to Aunt Laura, we got her something from the registry in addition to making the wedding cake.”
“What’s a registry?” I asked.
“It’s a list you make when you’re getting married—a wish list of all the things you want for your new life together,” Mom said.
“Oh, I can’t wait to be a grown-up,” Penny said. “You get to use the sharp knives, and you don’t have a bedtime, and you get to tell people what to buy you!”
“But that’s a family present,” I said. “Everyone knows that a family present means it’s really from the grown-ups and not the kids. I want to get her something from me.”
“You’re going to be her flower girl,” Mom told me.
“And me too!” Penny interjected.
“Right, both of you girls. And your presence is your present.”
“What does that mean?” Penny asked.
“It means just being there is enough,” Mom told her.
But that didn’t seem like enough to me. “I have my allowance money at home,” I said. “I can get her something with that.”
“But, Stel,” Mom said, “I thought you were saving up for something for yourself.”
“I was saving up to get something,” I said. “I’m not sure what yet, so maybe this is it.”
“Oh, darling,” Dad said. “That is so generous of you. I’m really proud of you.”
“I’m proud of you, too,” Mom told me.
“I want to get something for Aunt Laura, too,” Penny said, which was totally copying me, by the way.
“Tell you what,” Mom said. “The registry is on the computer. We can pull it up right now—I’ll put it on my credit card, and you’ll pay me back when we get home. Okay?”
“Okay!” I said.
“Okay!” echoed Penny.
There’s a computer right on the desk in Mom and Dad’s office, so Mom turned it on and typed a few things to get to the registry Web site. Penny and I leaned over Mom’s shoulder. I read the items out loud, because Penny couldn’t read them herself: picture frames, vases, pots and pans. All kinds of boring stuff. And also, it was all pretty expensive. Like the vase cost a HUNDRED dollars. “There’s nothing I can get,” I told Mom. “Except for a fork. And who wants to get one fork as a present?”
“Penny can buy the knife,” Mom said. “Then it’s a set.”
“Actually I decided I don’t need to get Aunt Laura my own present,” Penny said. “Because I really don’t have any of my own money, and I’m going to sing Aunt Laura a song as a present.”
Dad said that was a great idea, but singing isn’t a real present either, which meant Penny wasn’t so good at sharing after all.
“I still want to buy something, but not on this list.” No offense to Aunt Laura, but if I was making a list of presents for people to get me, I wouldn’t pick any of the same things! In fact, I was surprised that Aunt Laura picked such boring stuff, because she’s not boring at all.
Want to know how not boring she is? Every time I see her, her ponytail is a different color! It’s one of the reasons why it’s so fun to see her, because it’s a surprise every time.
“Can we go to the mall and I can pick something out there?” I asked.
“I’m afraid we don’t have time, sweets,” Mom said. “We’ve got to get Marco settled with Mrs. Miller, and then get on the road.”
“You can share my song with me,” Penny said. She started to sing. “We’re going to be flower girls, flower girls. All three of us will be wearing pearls, wearing pearls.”
“We’re not wearing pearls,” I told her.
“I know,” she said. “But it’s a song so it’s okay if it’s not all true, right?”
“Oh, absolutely,” Dad said.
“Now your turn,” Penny told me.
“Okay,” I said. After all, a wrong song for a present is better than no present at all. I thought for just a second and then I sang: “Ooh, this weekend, the sun will shine. We’ll walk down the aisle in a straight line!”
