A little red car stopped by the kerb while we were still laughing. Rosie’s mum waved to us from the driver’s seat, and then Rosie got out. She looked really cool in a long skirt and a matching top. And her hair was crimped.
Rosie looked at me and Kenny, and her face went pink.
“You’ve crimped your hair!” she gasped.
“I think we’ve already had this conversation,” said Kenny.
“We’re triplets now!” I said, and we all started to giggle.
Then I looked over Kenny’s shoulder, and saw Lyndz walking up the road with her brother Tom. Lyndz looked good in a pink skirt and a black top. But guess what she’d done to her hair?
“Oh-oh,” I said. “Crimped hair alert!”
“Oh!” Lyndz gasped when she saw the rest of us. “You’ve—”
“Crimped your hair!” we all chimed in. “Just like you!”
“Wow,” Tom said, grinning all over his face. “Looks like a hairdresser’s worst nightmare.”
Lyndz gave him a shove.
“Get lost, moron,” she said.
Still laughing, Tom went off, and we all stood outside Fliss’s house, and looked at each other and our crimped hair.
“Oh, well,” said Lyndz with a big grin, “I think we all look great.”
“Come on,” Kenny said, pushing open the gate. “I’m dying to get inside and get filmed!”
We all hurried up the path. I rang the bell, and Fliss opened the door. She was wearing a spotless, cream-coloured lacy dress with matching tights and shoes, and her hair was piled high on her head. It had been stuck with pins all over to keep it up, and it looked pretty uncomfortable. She took one look at our hair, and burst out laughing.
“You’ve all crimped your hair!”
“Yes, we had noticed,” I said.
“Is that the girls, Fliss?” Andy, Fliss’s mum’s boyfriend, came out of the living-room with a camcorder balanced on his shoulder. He stopped and moved it slowly in our direction. Immediately we all started squealing and giggling and shoving each other.
“Come on, girls, give us a smile!” Andy said.
We all began to wave and smile at the camera. This was certainly going to be one sleepover we would never forget.
So there we all were, sitting in a row on Mrs Sidebotham’s cream-coloured sofa, trying not to look bored out of our skulls. Which we were, actually.
“Oh, come on, girls.” Andy sighed from behind the camcorder. “Do something interesting, can’t you?”
We all looked down at our feet. Andy sighed again, and lowered the camcorder.
“What’s the matter with you?” he said, “You don’t usually sit here and do nothing when you come round for one of these sleepovers, do you?”
We all looked at each other. No, of course we didn’t usually sit there and do nothing when we had a sleepover. But today was different. Today we were being filmed, and although Andy wasn’t exactly Fliss’s real dad, he was still sort of like a parent. That meant that some of the things we might have done, we couldn’t do. So the safest thing was to sit on the sofa and do absolutely nothing. After all, as my grandma says, why go looking for trouble?
When we’d first arrived at Fliss’s, it had been fun being filmed. Fliss’s mum had made a great big tea, and we’d all sat down to eat, while Andy kept dodging around the table trying to film us all. It took us about ten minutes to get over the urge to wave and grin like an idiot every time he pointed the camera in our direction, and then after that we were OK.
It was after tea was over that things started to go wrong. If it had been a normal sleepover, there were lots of things we could have done. Sometimes we just used to sit and talk, until it was time to go to bed. But a lot of the things we talked about were Private and Top Secret, and we didn’t feel like talking about things like that with Andy and his camcorder sticking to us like glue.
One of the other things we do when we go to Fliss’s is think of ways to annoy her snobby neighbours. They’re called Charles and Jessica Watson-Wade (yes, really) and they have a baby called Bruno, which I thought was a dog’s name. The last time we slept over at Fliss’s, we had a killer of a time winding-up the Watson-Wades. Fliss’s mum went mad (and so did every other mum and dad), but it was worth it. The problem was, how could we play Winding-up the Watson-Wades when Andy and his camera were right behind us?
So Kenny had suggested that we played barging contests, one of our International Gladiators games. One person’s the horse, the other’s the rider, and you have to barge the other horse and rider off the lawn in the back garden. We always play barging contests when we sleepover at Fliss’s, because there’s not much else we can do. Fliss’s bedroom is too small for really tough stuff, and we can’t do anything inside because her mum is so house-proud. But the garden’s quite big, and we can play barging contests out there as much as we want to.
Not today, though. Fliss had gone pale at the very thought.
“I can’t, not with my hair up like this,” she’d said. “It’d drop down in one minute flat.”
“I don’t want to play either,” Lyndz said. “I’ve got to keep my new clothes clean.”
Rosie didn’t say anything, but she didn’t look too keen herself. That was probably because she was wearing a long skirt, and she’d have to hitch it up and tuck it into her knickers. I didn’t say anything either. I didn’t want to get my best ankle boots dirty. After all, it had taken me three months to persuade my parents to buy them.
Kenny had rolled her eyes, looking disgusted.
“What a bunch of wimps,” she said, but we wouldn’t give in. No barging contests. And that was why we were all sitting in a row of the sofa, bored out of our minds and twiddling our thumbs, which is definitely not what a sleepover is supposed to be about.
“Are you all having a good time, girls?” Fliss’s mum asked us brightly as she came into the living-room.
“Yes, thank you, Mrs Sidebotham,” we all said dutifully, lying through our teeth.
“If you hear me snoring, pinch me,” Kenny whispered in my ear. I bit my lip to stop myself from laughing, but Andy was still onto us like a shot.
“What did you say to Frankie, Kenny?” he asked eagerly. “Come on, say it again and I can video it.”
Kenny shook her head.
“I can’t,” she said solemnly. “It was secret sleepover business.”
“Oh.” Andy looked really disappointed. “Well, you girls must want to do something?”
There was a note of desperation in his voice, which made me feel quite sorry for him.
“Why don’t you play Monopoly?” suggested Fliss’s mum.
“Oh, great big fat hairy deal,” I heard Kenny mutter. It’s not that we don’t like Monopoly, we do. It was just that we thought our sleepover video would be a bit more radical than this.
Fliss went off to get the Monopoly box, but by this time Andy had had enough, and said he was off to the pub. So Fliss’s mum took over the camera. She didn’t film the whole game, which was lucky because it went on for hours. She filmed the beginning, then she stopped to watch Brookside, and then she filmed the end, when Rosie won. Rosie had Mayfair and Park Lane, and she cleaned the rest of us out.
“Right, time for you girls to go up to bed,” Fliss’s mum said when we’d finished the game. “I thought it might be nice if I filmed you going up the stairs, and waving goodnight. Then you can watch the video in the morning before you go home.”
By this time I was sick of being filmed, and I think the others were too, but we couldn’t very well say so, could we? So we trailed out into the hall, and followed each other up the stairs. Fliss’s mum stood at the bottom, shouting instructions at us.
“Come on, girls, turn around and wave at me. Nice big smiles. No, Kenny, we don’t want to see your tongue, thank you.”
“Aren’t you coming upstairs with us, Mrs Sidebotham?” asked Lyndz. “You could film us putting on our new pyjamas.”
Fliss’s mum looked shocked
. “Oh no, Lyndsey. I don’t think that would be very nice at all.”
“But you don’t get to see anything,” said Kenny. “We change inside our sleeping bags. It’s a great laugh.”
Fliss’s mum shook her head firmly. “No, I don’t think so. Now off you go. It’s getting late.”
We all trailed upstairs, and into Fliss’s bedroom. I honestly couldn’t remember a more boring sleepover. And to think we’d all been so excited… Even Fliss looked miserable.
No one said anything in front of Fliss, but when she’d gone to the bathroom, Kenny flopped onto one of the beds, and groaned.
“I hope no-one ever watches that video, or they’ll think that sleepovers are some kind of punishment,” she said.
“Tonight was the pits,” I said. “I’ve had more fun at the dentist’s.”
“Don’t say anything to Fliss,” Lyndz said. “It wasn’t her fault. We all wanted to be filmed too.”
We all nodded, and trailed gloomily over to our bags to get our pyjamas. Sleepovers were supposed to be fun, and this one definitely wasn’t. For just about the first time ever at a sleepover, I wished I was back at home in my bedroom, on my own. Oh well, I told myself, the best part of the sleepover hadn’t happened yet.
I cheered up a bit when I opened my bag, and saw my brand-new orange pyjamas.
“Wow, they’re really wild,” said Lyndz, who was looking over my shoulder. “Look at mine.” Lyndz’s new jim-jams were yellow with big pink flowers all over them.
“They’re not as cool as mine,” said Kenny. She took her pyjamas out of her bag, and we all burst out laughing. They were black, with white skulls all over them.
“They’re a killer, aren’t they?” said Kenny. “I got them from a boy’s shop. I had to nag my mum like crazy to get them. She said they’d give me nightmares.”
Rosie grabbed her bag, and pulled out her own pyjamas, which had teddy-bears all over them.
“Bet you I’m changed first!” she yelled, diving into her sleeping bag. We all squealed, and leapt into our own sleeping-bags, pulling off our clothes as fast as we could. I joined in, although I always lose. I’m just too tall and my arms and legs are too long. I didn’t mind not winning though, because it was a good laugh. And, boy, it was the first good laugh we’d had all evening.
Fliss came back from the bathroom just as we all finished changing. She still looked a bit miserable.
“Oh, come on, Fliss, cheer up,” said Rosie. “I’ve brought toffee popcorn for the midnight feast, and you can have it all if you want.”
Fliss loves toffee popcorn. Her face lit up.
“Thanks, Rosie,” she said, but she didn’t have time to say anything else because just then Lyndz hit Kenny right on the behind with a squishy-poo (that’s a sleeping bag filled with clothes, in case you didn’t know). Kenny went flying, and landed on one of the beds with her bottom in the air. We all screamed with laughter, and started belting each other with our own squishy-poos. This sleepover was getting better by the minute.
By the time Fliss’s mum put her head round the door twenty minutes later, we were all tucked up. Fliss and Rosie were in the two beds, and Kenny, Lyndz and I were in our sleeping bags between them on the floor.
“Goodnight, girls,” she said. “Sleep tight.”
“Goodnight.”
She closed the door. We lay there in the dark and counted up to twenty-five, then we switched our torches on.
“What shall we do first?” Fliss asked.
“Eat!” the rest of us said.
I don’t know why we bother calling them midnight feasts, because we never make it to midnight. We always seem to be starving the moment we switch our torches on.
“This is the best bit of sleepovers,” said Lyndz, handing round some chocolate biscuits.
“Yeah, this is the real sleepover, what’s happening now. It’s a pity we can’t film it,” said Kenny.
And of course, that’s where the disaster really started…
So there we were having our midnight feast, and Kenny had just said that it was a shame we couldn’t film the stuff we did after lights out. Everybody agreed with her, but nobody really thought much about it at the time. Instead, we ate all the crisps and chocolates we’d brought (and Fliss ate most of Rosie’s popcorn), and then we wrote in our diaries.
“What shall we do now?” Lyndz asked, when we’d finished writing.
“We could tell jokes,” I suggested.
“No, let’s have stories,” said Kenny. “Horror stories.”
“No,” Fliss wailed. “They give me nightmares.”
“I think we should do what Fliss wants,” said Rosie. “After all, it’s her sleepover.”
“I want to practise our dance routine for next Friday,” Fliss said firmly.
We’re always working out dance routines. It’s one of our best skives because we get to practise them in the school hall when all the other kids have been chucked out to play in the cold. Mrs Poole, our headteacher, lets us do the routines in Friday assembly, which is always a great laugh.
“Good idea,” said Lyndz.
So we all got out of our beds and sleeping bags, and lined up in the space between the two beds. Fliss’s bedroom isn’t very big, so we had to stand on top of the sleeping bags. When we were all standing next to each other, there wasn’t room to move our arms, never mind our legs, but we had a go. Then we got bored with trying to dance in such a tiny space, and instead we started pushing each other off the floor and onto the beds. Once you were bounced onto a bed, you were out. Eventually there was just me and Rosie left, and I really had to give her a mighty shove to get her off the floor. She bounced onto Fliss’s bed, and landed right on top of Kenny.
“Oi!” Kenny spluttered. “Do you mind!” She picked up the nearest pillow, and hit out at her. Rosie ducked smartly, and the pillow thwacked Lyndz round the head instead. It was like something out of a silent movie.
By this time we were all laughing so hard, my sides really hurt.
“Sssh!” Fliss pleaded between giggles. “You’ll wake my mum up!”
“Oh, that was excellent,” I said, flopping down on the bed next to Kenny. “I wish I had a picture of Lyndz’s face when Kenny hit her with that pillow!”
“We would have had a picture of it if we were filming with the camcorder,” said Kenny.
“OK, OK,” said Fliss impatiently. “But I don’t know what you expect me to do about it.”
I could see Kenny’s eyes glinting wickedly in the light of my torch.
“Well, we could film ourselves…”
Fliss turned so white, she looked like a ghost. So did Rosie. Even I was a bit taken aback, and I’m used to Kenny’s mad ideas.
“What?” said Lyndz, who’s sometimes a bit slow on the uptake. “How could we do that?”
“Simple,” said Kenny. “Fliss borrows the camcorder, and then we can film ourselves doing real Sleepover Club things.”
“NO,” said Fliss.
“OK, OK, don’t get in a razz,” said Kenny. “If you don’t know how to work the camcorder, just say so.”
“It’s not that,” said Fliss quickly. She hates us to think that she can’t do anything and everything. “Andy showed me how to use it when he wanted me to film him and mum doing the garden.”
Kenny shrugged.
“So what’s the problem then?”
Fliss opened her mouth, then closed it again. I guessed that what she’d been about to say was that she wasn’t allowed to touch the camcorder unless her mum or Andy were around to supervise.
“Camcorders are really expensive,” said Rosie. “I don’t think Fliss’s mum would be too pleased if we used it without her permission.”
Fliss shrugged. “I can do it, no problem,” she said airily. “I’ll fetch it now.”
“Nice one, Fliss!” Kenny began applauding, and so did Lyndz. I was pleased too. After all, the official sleepover video had been about as interesting as watching paint dry so far. But I couldn
’t help hearing my mum’s voice faintly in the back of my mind. “Remember if anything happens to that camcorder, you and your friends will be paying for it out of your pocket-money for years to come…”
I pushed the thought away.
“Come with me, Frankie,” Fliss was saying nervously. “I don’t want to go on my own.”
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“To the spare bedroom. That’s where my mum keeps the camcorder.” Fliss picked up her torch, and gave the others a warning look. “The rest of you be quiet until we get back.”
Fliss and I went out onto the dark landing. Fliss’s mum and Andy were in bed, and so was her brother Callum. I have to say, it gave me a really funny feeling to be creeping about someone else’s house in the dark in the middle of the night. I felt like a burglar.
“This is the spare room.” Fliss stopped so suddenly that I bumped right into her.“We’ve got to be careful. The door squeaks like mad.”
I reached for the handle and pushed the door open a little way. It gave a loud, frightening creak, the kind of noise you’d expect if you were entering a haunted house. My heart began to bump, and my hands felt clammy.
“Sssh!” Fliss whispered.
“I couldn’t help it,” I hissed back. I gave the door one more tiny shove, so that it was just open wide enough for us to squeeze in. It gave another ear-splitting creak, and we held our breath. But no-one came to see what was going on.
We slipped inside.
“Hold the torch while I get the camcorder out of the cupboard,” Fliss said in my ear.
Curiously I played the torch around the room while Fliss was getting the camcorder. I’d never been in the spare bedroom before, and it didn’t look anything like our spare bedroom at home. Our spare room is full of junk and bits and pieces like headless Sindy dolls, old newspapers and cookery books no-one uses. But Fliss’s spare room was done up like a house in a magazine. There were flouncy blinds at the windows which matched the cover on the bed, and there were cupboards built all along one wall. There was also a headless person standing in the corner.
Starring the Sleepover Club Page 2