Fern could only stare at the words on the letter. ‘Friends?’ she thought. ‘Is this a joke?’ As soon as that thought finished, another rushed in to take its place. ‘SOMEONE WAS IN MY ROOM.’

Fern gasped and griped the letter tightly, anxiety welling in her chest as that thought spun inside her head, whirling around until it was almost incoherent. Sure, they didn’t live in the best neighborhood, but Fern had always thought it was safe enough. At least, she never thought she’d be in danger of some weirdo crawling into her room at night.

She tossed the letter down onto the floor and ran to her bedroom window. She carefully checked the locks only to find that they were still firmly latched in place. The windowsill still had a coat of dust on it, seemingly undisturbed by an intruder.

The ball of dread vanished as the obvious occurred to her. ‘It must’ve been Dad.’

That’s right. Who else could it have been? She was certain there was no one else who knew about her sorrow over Kim’s moving that would care. She stalked back over to the letter and squinted at it. The writing was a fancy cursive script. Her dad could write in cursive, but his was so hastily scrawled it was little more than scribbles. This writing was too…legible to be her dad’s.

But, she rationalized, that doesn’t mean he wasn’t behind this. Perhaps he had gotten one of his friends from work to help him with this. She knew he had lots of lady friends in the upstairs offices that could help him write this.

She wondered if this was something that her dad would do and decided that yes, it was. George Bloter was the sort of dad that liked to make up stories to entertain his child. He was a smooth talker that could rope anyone into a story, which helped him immensely when he was on the sales floor, and in parenting. When Fern was very little, he would spin wild tales about rabbits going on dragon slaying adventures and penguins living in a giant pumpkin. Those stories would entertain her for hours on end, even after he was done telling them.

She recalled one time, when she was about four, when they were visiting the butterfly exhibit at a museum. It was a wonderful place, filled with lush plants where visitors could walk around and butterflies would flutter everywhere. One of them, a big blue one with blue wings and yellow streaks landed in her hair. It had flown away quickly, frightened by her toddler squeals of delight, but her Dad had managed to convince her that if a butterfly landed on you, you could read your future in it’s wing patterns. They had chased down the butterfly and carefully looked at it’s wings before it fluttered away to another tree.

When she had asked him what the wings said about her, he had smiled and said that they meant she was destined to be the prettiest dragon slayer in all the land. And being four, she had believed him.

But now she was the world-weary age of ten. She had learned that Santa wasn’t real at six, that dragons never existed at seven, and that butterfly wings had no prophetic properties at eight. And she was certainly old enough to know that the mysterious balloon that appeared in her room was not of mystic or supernatural origin.

So, her father was the sort to put this together. And considering her attitude over the past week, it was reasonable to assume that he was just trying to cheer her up.

She looked down at the fancy paper again, then to the unnecessarily elaborate envelope it came in, and then to the balloon. This looked…expensive. She didn’t doubt that her dad was the type to set up an elaborate magical pen pal story to try and cheer her up, but she wondered if he would have wasted money on fancy stationary. She supposed another one of his friends could’ve given it to him. It wasn’t silly to think that maybe someone her dad knew had some materials for making fancy invitations laying around.

Although Fern dimly appreciated the attempt, she wasn’t in the mood to indulge in this little game. She crumpled up the note, added the envelope it came in to the ball, and stuffed it into the trash. She looked up at the balloon on her ceiling. It had floated up to the ceiling and the ribbon was too short for her to grab it.

She clamored onto the bed and reached, but her fingers only brushed the silkiness of the ribbon for a moment before it slipped from her hand. Irritated, she kicked her comforter and pillow onto the ground to muffle the noise as she made a jump for it. Her hand clasped around the ribbon and the balloon floated down as she landed with a heavy thump.

It bobbed serenely as she rightened herself and wrinkled her nose at it. Upon closer inspection, it was a fancy balloon. It wasn’t a cheap party balloon that would deflate in a few days. It was the kind that would take months to deflate on its own, and Fern didn’t feel like looking at it for so long. It would just remind her of Kim.

She looked around before settling on the pencil on her desk. She picked it up, gripped the balloon by the base, and jabbed the pencil into it.

POP!

Fern flinched as she was stunned by the whoosh of escaping air and an explosion of different colors. She stared at the floor, aghast. GLITTER. The balloon had been filled with glitter and it was EVERYWHERE.

On her hands and arms, and there was a sizable pile of it sitting on her comforter. The pile sparkled its greens and silvers at her innocently as she stared at it, speechless. Now THIS was something her father would never do. Everyone knows that glitter is one of the messiest, hardest to remove substances known to man, and if it was one thing her dad truly hated, it was a mess.

Was…was he really that desperate to cheer her up? Fern grimaced. She appreciated the thought, but hadn’t been in the mood for a whimsical surprise and now she had to clean this mess up.

She sighed as she tried to shake the excess glitter off her hands, letting it float down into the pile below. She glanced over to the clock, seeing that it was around eight thirty. Her dad as already at work. She brushed over her arms a final time before leaving her room and hopping into the shower, scrubbing harshly to get the last of the glitter off.

After her shower, she waltzed into the kitchen to make some frozen waffles. As soon as the toaster pinged, she grabbed them up in a paper towel and started shoving them in her mouth as she struggled to move the heavy old vacuum cleaner into her room.

Once she actually got to cleaning, she was thankful she had pushed her comforter down earlier. It was a lot easier to suck up the glitter from the cloth than it would’ve been if it had tangled into the crusty brown carpet.

Once it seemed like the glitter had been mostly cleaned, she gave the blanket a final shake down before tossing it onto her bed. Finally done, she bounced into the living room and set up the PlayStation 2 before settling into her dad’s comfy chair with the controller. All this nonsense with balloons and cleaning were far too much activity for what was supposed to be a lazy summer Tuesday. At the very least, it had taken her mind off of Kim, and Fern wanted to keep it that way.

So she settled in to play some games, settling on Spyro 3, her favorite. What better to take her mind off of strange letters and lost friends than the fanciful adventures of a purple dragon?

Hours of collecting treasure and dragon eggs wore on, finally stopping when her dad arrived home at eight o’clock, like always. He seemed tired, but in a good enough mood. He made a quick dinner for the both of them out of mac n’ cheese before he settled into the same comfy seat to watch the news.

When she went to bed that night, she had all but forgotten about the letter and the balloon. But, she couldn’t help but make extra sure that the window was locked before she went to sleep.