The Happy Birthday Song ✓

Chapter One

Monday, May 19th 2003

Brisbane, Australia

2:03 P.M.

Today was Junie Bennett's tenth birthday.

She had a sour expression on her face as she trotted home from school with her hands tightly clutching the straps of her backpack. Junie cursed the day she was born. Two days ago during a tedious English lesson, Mrs David made the mistake of asking her what she thought about the pending event.

Truthfully, she'd told her birthdays were pointless. She was polite when she told the teacher that the purpose of a birthday was to celebrate the significance of a person. Although in her opinion, she continued, compared to the vast and endless universe in which they lived, people were insignificant. Therefore birthdays were futile. Birthdays only got a person closer to their death and death was certainly nothing to celebrate and neither was another ordinary day closer to it, cake or not.

Mrs David had commented on how dark Junie's outlook on life was for a nine-year-old and Junie had subsequently pointed out how naive Mrs David was for a forty-year-old woman. Junie was not surprised that this landed her an afterschool detention for two awfully boring hours.

School had dragged, the minutes had slowed, the hours had stretched for so long, she fear the day would never end. Mrs David knew very well how Junie felt about her birthdays. Even so, her teacher had still insisted on announcing to the class that it was Junie's birthday.

If that had not been aggravating enough, Mrs David had purposefully chosen the largest badge she could find and pinned it onto her shirt. IT'S MY BIRDTHDAY, was printed in large, highly noticeable letters. She glared down at it. As much and as often as she'd tried – countless times throughout the day – Junie was not able to remove the badge.

It was in that moment that Junie came to the conclusion that she rather and intensely disliked Mrs David. She heaved a sigh and with a loud grunt, she kicked a nearby tin can. It rattled and clanked its way to the main road. She paused to watch as passing cars rode over it, repeatedly crushing and deforming the can until it was part of the road. Junie sullenly continued walking. She wondered to herself, what had she been doing this time last year? Nothing important. That was her life, it seemed, she never did anything of any importance.

Junie heard the sobbing before she saw it. Up ahead, there was a small boy jumping and scurrying about as two other boys played with a bag, gleefully throwing it to each other.

It was Jake Ramsay and his weedy best friend Benja Pasternak. Every time she saw those two, they were either harassing some child or terrorising the neighbourhood. The smart thing to do, the coward's way, was to turn around and walk away. It wasn't any of her business. If she interfered, Jake and Benja would make sure her life was hell.  

Yes, the smart thing to do, would be to turn around and walk away. Forget the boy. He was an idiot.

Junie did exactly that, she turned around and walked away, she had gone several steps before she stopped and grimaced.

But she was never one to do the smart thing.

Junie grasped at whatever scraps of courage she had left and channelled the anger she felt for Mrs David. She stomped back towards Benja and Jake. Junie had had enough of the two hooligans, they needed to be stopped and if nobody was going to do that, then she would have to.

"Hey!" she yelled, "Stop!"

Benja Pasternak turned at the sound of her irate voice. Unaware of the bag Jake had thrown back to him, it smacked him right in the face. He yelped and stumbling back, he fell onto the concrete floor. Benja swore as he pushed himself back up. He rubbed the side of his head where the bag had hit him. Jake glared at Junie.