Nate felt his stomach clench and his throat tighten.

“Don’t worry if you don’t have time to buy a present,” Junie told everyone. “There’ll be plenty of other presents. Just come.”

When they climbed off the bus, Nate was relieved to see the police and the diver gone. They had found nothing in the farm pond, Poppa told him. “Waste of taxpayers’ money. What else is new?”

Junie raced ahead of Nate, toward the back door of the house. In the kitchen their mother had set out all the ingredients for baking Junie’s cake, just like she’d promised. Junie inspected the packages of food coloring and sprinkles, the different-colored candles, and the letters that spelled out BIRTHDAY GIRL and LUCKY SEVEN. At the bottom of one bag she found a pair of plastic clowns, each holding a bunch of tiny balloons.

“These are even cuter than I was dreaming they’d be,” she told her mother. “This is going to be the best birthday ever.”

They set to work on a Betty Crocker mix called Strawberry Swirl to make the birthday cake look like a tent, and then Junie added yellow coloring to the store-bought vanilla frosting they’d chosen for the roof. After the cake had cooled and they’d spread on the frosting, her mother let Junie hold the tubes of other colored frosting—green, blue, and purple—to make stripes.

As she squiggled them on, Junie chattered about the games she had planned: Pin the Tail on the Donkey, of course, only they would use a real cow instead—old Muriel, out in the barn, who hardly ever moved. The girls would try to find the spot on her to stick the fake tail, with the winner getting a container of bubble solution and a bubble wand.

“Then Duck Duck Goose, with a bouncy ball for the prize,” Junie explained. “Then Musical Chairs, with ‘Doe, a Deer’ for the music on account of that’s Janet’s favorite song. Then Grandmother’s Trunk, because you don’t have to run for that one, which is good for Evelyn.” Evelyn had broken her leg skating that winter and was still in a cast.

“And then we’ll open the presents. And even if I get something I don’t like very much, I’ll say I do.”

They would celebrate the family birthday tonight, with Grandma and Poppa and Aunt Sal and Uncle Harold.

“Sometimes,” Junie reflected, licking the spatula, “kids get a little wound up at parties. Like Debbie, for instance. At her birthday last summer, she had a tantrum after the presents were opened because she didn’t get the mosaic tile kit she wanted.”

“Debbie always struck me as a little spoiled,” their mother said.

“Well, anyway,” said Junie, “I’ve been thinking about that and planning out in my head how to stay calm, so I won’t have a tantrum like Debbie.”