You're My Bestest Friend! (Lexi)

Becca skipped in a circle in her room. She was going to see her bestest friend, Lexi! Becca loved playing with Lexi! It was her favorite thing! Maybe they could play princesses! Or play dueling! Or play broomsticks! There were so many things they could play! Becca loved Lexi so much! And they always had so much fun!

She gathered up all her and Lexi's favorite toys. Her wand, and her dolls, and her tea set, and her toy unicorn, and her prettiest princess outfits. Then Becca frowned. There were too many toys in her bag. She couldn't fit them all! She took them out and packed again, but she kept finding more toys she wanted to take to share with Lexi. Maybe she'd take two bags. Yes, she would, she decided. Two bags of toys. Mummy had said she could stay all afternoon. That was a very long time, after all, and Becca and Lexi would need lots of toys.

When both bags were full, Becca ran down the stairs. "I'm going to see Lexi! I'm going to see Lexi!" she cried, jumping in place. "Mummy! Hurry up! I want to see Lexi!" She would need Mummy to take her there. She didn't know how to get there, after all. The second she stepped through the floo into Lexi's living room, she thought she would explode with excitement.

The moment she saw Lexi, she ran to her and hugged her tight. "Lexi, I missed you!" she cried. It hadn't been that long since she saw Lexi, but she missed her all the same. That was because Lexi was her bestest friend. "Look! I brought lots of toys!" Becca opened one of the bags to show Lexi. "What do you want to play?"

Lexi was very happy that Becca was here to play. She had missed her very best friend, and nobody else knew how to play quite like Becca did. But she wasn't happy about very much else right now. She had just recently been in trouble for not trying her vegetables at dinner. Her daddy had put her in time out, and he had said that if she had only just tried some, he would have let her out. But she didn't like anything green! He knew that! He was just trying to be mean.

She squealed and ran from her very pink bedroom to go meet Becca in the living room. She hugged her tight, then twirled around.

"YOU'RE HERE, YOU'RE HERE!"

But then before her daddy had a chance to come tell her it was still time for a time out, she took Becca's hand and led her to her bedroom.

"We hafta hide, the mean dragon is going to come try to kidnap princesses!"

She crawled under her bed and whispered loudly, "Come on, Becca! He won't find us here!"

Becca gasped and crawled under the bed. A dragon! Dragons were scary! She had a book about a dragon that breathed fire. "I bet it breathes fire," she whispered. Becca peeked out from under the bed. She didn't want to get kidnapped, but she kind of wanted to see a dragon. She'd never seen a real one before. Kevin, the dragon that lived under her bed, didn't count. She had talked to him, but never seen him. He always hid whenever she looked. Becca reached out and held Lexi's hand while she waited to see if the dragon was going to come, but when a long time passed and the dragon never came, she started to feel bored. She wondered if it would be safe to come out.

Becca decided to be brave and climbed out from under the bed and grabbed all the sheets and blankets and pillows and started draping them over the side of the bed. "We should make the under the bed into a cave, so we can really hide. We can pretend we're princesses and sisters and we got kicked out of the castle by our evil stepmother and she sent dragons after us and now we have to hide. We're tired and lonely and in a scary forest! But then we see a warm cave, and it doesn't even have any bears or dragons or anything inside!" Becca put the pillows down next to the bed to make a little opening like a cave. It looked dark and scary inside, but it was much less scary than her evil step-mother. She draped all the blankets over the bed so that no dragons would be able to see in.

"Now we should put on our princess dresses!" Becca wasn't dressed like a princess at all; she was wearing blue jeans. Princesses never wore blue jeans! She went to her bag and pulled out her two favorite princess dresses. One was pink and one was purple. The purple one was her favorite. She thought for a moment and looked at the dresses. She really wanted to wear the purple one. She looked so pretty in it, but Lexi would probably like that one best, too, because it was the prettiest. She offered it up. "Here, Lexi, you can wear the purple one. It's my favorite! And we should put on make-up! Mummy puts make-up on me sometimes, so I know how to do it. Does your mummy have any make-up?"

Lexi smiled and nodded as she put on the pretty purple dress. She felt like the prettiest princess! And she knew her mommy had piles and piles of make-up! If they could make it to her parents' bedroom before her daddy (aka the dragon) came to get them, they could be like real princesses! Lexi thought that they could maybe even use her mommy's special curlers, even though mommy said they got too hot. Princesses didn't care about silly things like that, they only needed to be pretty. And Lexi was almost pretty in the princess dress she had put on, but she wasn't all the way pretty yet. So she grabbed Becca's hand and looked very seriously into her eyes.

"The make-up is in the dragon's cave, so we have to be very careful. We have to be true princesses to get the make-up treasure."

She placed a finger to her lips so that they would remember to be so quiet, then she led Becca out into the hallway and forward to her daddy's bedroom. She carefully peeked inside and released a grateful breath.

"Dragon isn't here. He's probably taking care of the baby dragon."

Will did sometimes sound like a little dragon when he cried. Lexi loved her baby brother, but sometimes she got frustrated when he wouldn't stop being loud! At least he was keeping Daddy busy. She walked into the room and waited for her very best friend to come with her.

"This is where the dragon sleeps. And he roars very loud. But my mommy keeps her make-up in the bathroom."

She walked over to it and opened the cupboard door, then giggled softly.

"We'll be so pretty! You pick first, Becca. You let me wear your bestest purple dress," she smiled, then she started twirling.

Becca looked at all the make-up carefully. There were so many pretty colors! She looked at lipstick first. She opened several tubes, but she could find one she liked. She tossed the open tubes back in the cupboard because a princess should always clean up after herself. Finally, she found a color she liked. It was bright and pink and pretty. Becca puckered her lips and put some on. She looked so pretty! She handed the tube to Lexi. "Here, you should put some on, too, and you should wear purple eye stuff." Becca went back into the cupboard. She knew she saw some purple eye stuff. There it was! She gave it to Lexi. Lexi would look so pretty with purple eye stuff and a purple dress! They would look just like princesses!

Becca dived back in and found some blue eye stuff for herself. She stuck her finger in the eye stuff and rubbed it across her eyelids. Some of the stuff was still on her fingers, so she wiped it on the towels. Then she found some blush for her cheeks and rubbed it all over them. She looked in the mirror. Maybe it was too much. It didn't look like this when Mummy put make-up on her. She grabbed the towel and wiped some of it off. There, that was better. Now, she only needed to paint her fingernails. She found some red fingernail polish and opened it. It was stinky! She pulled out the brush and put it on her fingernails. It wasn't perfect, but that was okay. She took the towel again and wiped off what didn't get on her fingernails and looked at Lexi. "You want me to paint your nails, Lexi? Look! I did a good job!" She held up her fingers for Lexi to see. "Don't my fingers look pretty?"