Unhappy Birthday to You

Elliana Reickard

Lights bounced along the walls of the restaurant’s party room, reflecting onto the swollen silver balloons blanketing the ceiling. A Top 40 pop song filled the room, drawing half of the people there to the makeshift dance floor. The other half stood around talking or filling their plates with the food from the overindulgent catering table at one end of the room. A cheap banner was strung across one wall, reading ‘Happy Birthday!” in holographic letters.

Voices occasionally cut through the loud music, often talking about trivial subjects like school or the upcoming Homecoming game and subsequent dance. Most of the guests attended the same school and were in the same year—high school seniors.

Only one person sat alone at a table. On top of her long, blond hair sat a tiara, made with genuine crystals and sterling silver roses. She wore the blue dress she’d had fitted last week, and under the party lights, the soft tulle seemed to glow. She sighed, leaning against her hand as she watched her friends from across the room, her glossstained lips pressed together tightly.

She stared down at the blue tablecloth and shiny confetti. Blue was usually her favorite color, but in the dim light, the tablecloth seemed dull and lifeless. The room pulsed with too much sound and energy, giving her the beginning of a headache. And more than anything, she couldn’t ignore the pit building in her stomach, growing larger with every single second she spent at the party.

“Oh, Drew!” a girl called out, drawing the blond girl’s attention. One of her best friends—Lisa—was running up to her, a wrapped present clutched in her hands. She was similarly dressed up in a rose pink dress, her braids pulled up into a bun with a large matching bow. “Happy birthday! Oh my God, you look so pretty! Here, I’ve got your present—”

“Thanks.” Drew forced a smile and took the present from her. “You’re so sweet.”

“Soooo…” another girl—Carly—spoke up. She was another one of Drew’s best friends, and she’d worn a white blouse and long purple skirt to the party, her hair in soft curls down her back. “How’s it feel to be eighteen?”

Drew bit her lip, then internally cursed at herself. Probably smeared her lip gloss. “It’s fine, I guess. Not super exciting.” When both Lisa and Carly’s faces fell, Drew continued with, “I mean, there

isn’t that much I can do now. Vote, I guess.”

“You’re an adult!” Lisa exclaimed. “Isn’t that a big deal?”

An adult. That was the reason everyone looked forward to turning eighteen. And Drew’s parents had been planning her party for months. She was their only child, and they had the money to give her a huge party with everything she could’ve wanted. And at the time, she’d been ecstatic, choosing every decoration, every appetizer, every piece of jewelry she’d wear with the utmost care and precision. She was pretty popular at her highschool too, so she’d been able to invite her whole graduating year and assume that most of them would come.

But now that her birthday had arrived, Drew felt nothing but trepidation as she watched her classmates enjoy her party. Being eighteen was close to being nineteen, then twenty. And once she was twenty, she’d never be a teenager again. Then she’d be twenty-one and so on. Always getting older and moving further and further away from the simple life of being a highschool student. Being an adult carried so much pressure and baggage that Drew didn’t want to mentally prepare herself for.

Even now, talk of picking colleges filtered throughout the party, doing nothing to alleviate Drew’s growing dread. She didn’t know what she wanted to do after highschool, and her friends already had their majors chosen and their college tours scheduled. They were all ready to be adults, and she wasn’t.

The reality that she would never be a kid again had finally sunk in.

“Drew! Your cake!” Carly told her friend, tapping her tulle-covered arm lightly. “You said you helped pick the icing? It looks so good!”

One of the restaurant employees carried a platter bearing the cake into the room and set it down in front of Drew. It was a two-tiered strawberry cake with white icing and blue details, exactly as Drew had described to the baker they’d ordered from. Eighteen lit candles sat on top, slowly melting away.

Drew stared at the candles. Each one of them was a year of her life that was gone forever, a period of time lost to her past. There was no avoiding this day, no postponing the transition to adulthood, no matter how much she wanted to go back.

“Happy birthday to you…” the crowd sang.

Through the flickering candlelight, no one could see that Drew’s eyes had become glossy. They couldn’t even notice that her mascara had started to run. The thought of eating any of her once-desired strawberry cake made her stomach churn, and she hoped vainly that the song would last forever, that she’d never have to confront the reality of her life moving on without her.

“...happy birthday to Drew, happy birthday to you!”

No such luck.