“Is there a problem, girls?” Mrs Weaver asked with a frown, as she got on the bus.
“No, Miss,” we all said quickly.
“Well, I hope no one’s forgotten their sun cream!” Mrs Weaver said with a smile, as the driver climbed in and we moved off. “We’re going to be at the beach for most of the day.”
“Oh, I can’t wait to get to the sea!” Fliss squealed excitedly. “I’m going to lie in the sun and get a brilliant tan!”
“You’ll be lucky,” Kenny retorted. “Didn’t you see that list of activities Mrs W had on her clipboard? We’ve got to choose one to do.”
“What?” Fliss asked, looking dismayed.
“Yeah, volleyball, cricket, Frisbee, surfing.” Kenny ticked them off on her fingers. “Oh, and five-a-side football.”
“NO!” the rest of us said loudly.
“Oh, all right,” Kenny grumbled. “But what about surfing? That looks pretty cool.”
“Hey, Fliss!” Ryan Scott called from the back seat. “You haven’t forgotten your underwear, have you?” And he and his mate Danny McCloud fell about laughing.
Fliss turned the colour of a ripe tomato. “I could kill those girls!” she muttered.
“Oh, let’s forget about them and have a good time,” Lyndz suggested cheerfully. “That’s why we’re here, remember?”
We all got more and more excited as the minibus headed out of the holiday complex, and down to the sea. As we drove through the town, we saw loads of cafés and restaurants, and all kinds of souvenir shops.
“I hope we get a chance to do some shopping,” Rosie said. “I want to buy a donkey in a straw hat!”
“How gross!” Kenny remarked. “Hey, that’d be the perfect present for Molly the Monster!”
We all leapt out of our seats at the first glimpse of the sea. As the minibus drew to a halt, my eyes were almost falling out of my head because I’d never seen a beach like this one. It was long and winding, the sand was clean and golden, and the water was a clear, deep green. It was a whole lot better than some of the grungy beaches I’d been to in England!
“Ace!” I said happily, as we all pulled off our shoes and followed Mrs Weaver across the sand. “I hope it’s chucking it down with rain back home, and the M&Ms are getting soaked!”
“Talking of the M&Ms,” Rosie said in a low voice, “they’d probably get on really well with them!”
We all looked down the beach. Maria and her friends were a little way off with the rest of the group of Spanish kids, standing round their teacher, Miss Moreno.
“They’ve got it coming!” Kenny muttered, giving them the evil eye. “Nobody ruins my footy shirt and gets away with it!”
“Oh, ignore them,” I said. “We don’t want them spoiling our day!”
“Yeah, Frankie’s right,” Lyndz agreed. “Let’s just keep away from them!”
Yeah, right. When Mrs Weaver asked us what activities we wanted to do, we decided on surfing, and she sent us over to our instructor, who was an Australian called Jo. Guess who was already standing there with surfboards in their hands?
“G’day, girls!” said Jo, who sounded like she ought to be in Neighbours. “Great to meet you all. This is Maria, and this is Pilar” – she pointed to the tallest girl – “And this is Isabella, and the twins Anna and Elena.”
Isabella, Anna and Elena hadn’t said much so far, but they were making up for that by staring at us extra-snootily. Isabella was small and thin and had long hair in a ponytail, and Anna and Elena were taller with short, dark curly hair, although for twins they didn’t look that much alike.
“Well, we’re going to have a ripper time this morning, girls,” Jo said cheerfully, as Kenny pulled a cross-eyed face at Maria.
“And you’re all going to be great mates at the end of it!”
We all stood there silently, eyeballing each other grimly.
“Er – let’s get started then.” Jo looked a bit flustered as she passed us each a surfboard. “Have any of you guys ever surfed before?”
“Yes,” Pilar said immediately.
“No,” I said, and the Spanish girls all started grinning.
“It’s cool,” Kenny cut in quickly. “We’ll be able to do it, no probs.”
“It’s not quite as easy as it might look.” Jo was beginning to get even more flustered as she spotted Maria sticking her tongue out at Kenny. “But the waves here are pretty gentle, so you’ll be quite safe.”
“They would be able to surf,” I muttered to Fliss, as we took off our T-shirts and shorts. “Now we’re going to look right idiots next to them.”
“I know,” Fliss began. Then she let out a scream. “Look!”
“What’s up, Fliss?” Kenny asked. “Seen a shark?”
“That – that Isabella’s got the same swimsuit on as me!” Fliss spluttered.
We all looked at Isabella, who’d just taken her shorts off. She was wearing exactly the same hot-pink bikini with white spots on as Fliss was.
“I’m not wearing this again!” Fliss grumbled, stuffing her clothes into her beach bag.
“Could be embarrassing when you’re sunbathing then,” Kenny remarked.
“Don’t be daft,” Fliss retorted, “I’ve brought six other swimsuits with me!”
“All ready, girls?” Jo hurried over to us. “Let’s go down to the water.”
Maria, Pilar and the others had already waded out into the sea, and were lying on their fronts on their surfboards, riding in on the waves.
“Hey, that’s not proper surfing!” Kenny scoffed. “You’re supposed to stand up!”
“Yeah, we can do that, no problem!” Rosie agreed.
Just then a really big wave came in, and all five of the Spanish girls jumped upright on their surfboards, and rode the wave into the shore like experts. We all looked at each other in dismay.
“Right, put your boards down in the water, and lie on them,” Jo instructed us. “The first thing we’re going to practise is paddling out.”
Jo showed us how to move ourselves into the water by paddling with our arms. Then we had to turn round on the boards so that we were facing the beach, and let the waves shoot us back in. It wasn’t as easy as it looked. The first big wave sent me tumbling off my board, and under the water. When I came up spluttering, Rosie, Kenny, Fliss and Lyndz were all doing the same thing, and Maria and the others were killing themselves laughing, and calling out things in Spanish, which we couldn’t understand.
“Go with the wave, don’t try to fight it,” Jo told us. “And when you feel confident, you can start moving the board around a bit, and try coming in at an angle.”
After we’d been practising for a while, we started to get pretty good, so, of course, Kenny began to get a bit cocky.
“I’m gonna stand up for this one!” she yelled, as we saw a huge wave beginning to break.
“No, Kenny!” the rest of us screamed, but she ignored us. As the wave crashed down, she jumped up on her board – and disappeared completely. She reappeared a moment later, coughing and spluttering and looking half-drowned.
“Oi, Kenny!” Maria called, helpless with laughter. “You want to do this, yes?” And she stood up on her board and surfed into the shore.
“OK, that’s it!” Kenny gasped, coughing up about ten pints of sea water. “It’s payback time. They’re gonna get what’s coming to them right now!”
“What’re we going to do?” Lyndz asked, as we paddled over to them.
“Watch me!” Kenny replied. She went right up to Maria, who didn’t see her coming because she was swimming out to catch the next wave, and tipped her off her surfboard. We all screamed with laughter, and paddled off. Jo started calling us from the beach, but we ignored her.
“Aargh!”
We all heard Fliss scream, and turned round. We were just in time to see Isabella grab hold of Fliss’s board, and tip her into the water with a splash.
“Right! You’re dead!” Kenny yelled. “Come on, let’s get them!”
“STOP THAT AT ONCE!” she roared, wading out into the water. “AND GET BACK HERE RIGHT NOW!”
We all paddled sulkily back to the shore.
“What on earth do you think you were doing?” Jo shouted furiously at us. “You could have hurt each other!”
“That was the idea!” Kenny muttered.
After the battle of the surfboards, Jo sent us off in disgrace. Luckily Mrs Weaver didn’t notice because she was teaching a group of kids to play volleyball, so we grabbed a spare Frisbee and messed about with that for a while. Then it was time for lunch.
“I reckon we got a result, anyway,” Kenny said as we sat under a parasol, unpacking our sandwiches. “We knocked three of those nerds off their boards, and they only got Fliss.”
“I just wish I’d got Pilar,” I remarked, as I towelled my hair dry. “I reckon she’s the leader of that gang, even though Maria’s got the biggest mouth!”
Rosie’s eyes widened. “Hey, that’s just like you and Kenny!”
“What?” Kenny and I stared at her.
“Well, Pilar’s really tall, and Maria likes football…” Rosie’s voice trailed away.
“We’re nothing like them!” Kenny said indignantly, and Rosie turned pink.
“I’m not surfing again this afternoon,” Fliss said firmly. “I just want to lie here and get brown.”
“I want to ring my mum,” Rosie said.
“Get out of it!” Kenny scoffed. “We’ve only been here a day!”
“I know,” Rosie looked a bit embarrassed, “I just want to check how everyone is.”
That started me thinking about my mum and dad and Pepsi, my dog, back home in Cuddington. Suddenly England seemed a very long way away.
“I haven’t been away from home on my own this long before,” Fliss muttered tearfully.
So there we were, munching our sandwiches, on a beautiful, hot day, watching the sea roll in, and looking like really sad cases. Even Kenny was looking a bit down. I decided it was time for some action.
“Hey, why don’t we have our Spanish sleepover tonight?” I suggested.
“I thought we were going to wait till the end of the holiday,” Lyndz said.
I shrugged. “So what? We can have more than one, can’t we?”
Everyone nodded eagerly. Just thinking about having a sleepover made us all feel a lot more cheerful.
“We’ll have to buy some food for the midnight feast,” Rosie pointed out.
“We can get that from the shop at the holiday complex, no problem,” I said. “Kenny and me’ll sneak over to your room tonight as soon as Alana Banana’s asleep.”
“What if she wakes up and sees you’re gone?” Fliss asked anxiously.
Kenny shook her head. “She won’t!” she said confidently. “Alana Banana’s so dozy, she’d sleep through an earthquake!”
“Isn’t she asleep yet?” Kenny whispered, leaning across the narrow gap between our beds, so that Alana wouldn’t hear.
“Nope, I can still hear her moving around.”
“She’s a real pain in the neck!” Kenny groaned, flopping back onto her pillow. “Look, it’s after midnight already!”
When we’d got back from the beach earlier that afternoon, we’d played tennis and gone bowling. We were both so wiped out from all the exercise and sea air, we could hardly keep our eyes open. Maybe arranging a sleepover for tonight hadn’t been such a good idea…
“Ow! My nose is sore!” Kenny complained. “I think I’ve burnt it. Does it look red?”
“Yeah, it’s glowing in the dark like Rudolf’s,” I told her.
“Oh, ha ha.” Kenny said, then she went quiet. Somehow I managed to keep my eyes open, and as soon as I heard Alana Banana snoring, I reached over and poked Kenny.
“Ow! Wassat?” Kenny mumbled dozily.
“Alana Banana’s asleep at last,” I said, swinging my legs out of bed. “And so were you, by the sound of it!”
“No, I wasn’t.” Kenny rolled out of bed, yawning. “Come on, let’s go. And don’t forget the food.”
I picked up the carrier bag. We’d had a Spanish thing called tapas for our dinner, which was brilliant. There were loads and loads of little dishes, all containing different things like olives, potato omelette, stuffed mushrooms, sausages and salads. So while we were eating we’d all been busy pocketing stuff that we could keep for our midnight feast.
We took our torches and tiptoed over to the door. Kenny pulled it open cautiously, and we looked out into the brightly-lit corridor.
“I’m going to turn the light off,” Kenny whispered, “so we’ve got a better chance of getting away if either of the teachers hear us.”
“Well, I hope we don’t barge into Mrs Weaver’s room by mistake!” I said anxiously. Mrs W had given us a long talk the night before about how we were not to sneak into each other’s rooms at night under any circumstances. Of course, we weren’t going to take any notice of that. We were just going to do our best not to get found out.
Kenny hurried across to the light switch on the opposite wall, and flipped it off. Immediately it went so dark, we couldn’t make out our hands in front of our faces. We didn’t have time to turn on our torches though, because the next moment the lights came back on.
Kenny, who was coming towards me, froze. “Someone’s used one of the other switches!” she hissed. “Quick, shut the door – they might be coming this way!”
Kenny dashed back into our room, just as Pilar came round the corner. Quickly we pushed the door to, and waited, our hearts pounding. Then we looked out cautiously again, just in time to see her go into the bathroom.
“She must be going to the loo,” Kenny whispered. “D’you think she saw us?”
“I don’t think so.” I pulled the door open. “Come on, we’d better get to the others before she comes back. Leave the light on this time, or she might get suspicious!”
We ran down the corridor to room number seven. But when I turned the handle, the door wouldn’t budge.
“It won’t open!” I gasped.
“What!” Kenny nearly had a fit. “They must’ve locked it on the inside! We’ll have to knock.”
“Don’t be an idiot!” I hissed. “If we do that we’ll wake up Mrs Weaver!”
“Well, what d’you suggest then? We’ve got to do something!” Kenny hissed back. “Pilar’ll be out in a minute, and she’d just love to drop us right in it!”
Suddenly we heard the noise of a bolt being pulled back, and the door opened. Fliss was standing there, blinking at us sleepily, and we nearly knocked her over as we barged in. Rosie and Lyndz sat up in bed, yawning and rubbing their eyes.
“Sorry,” Fliss said. “We fell asleep, and forgot we’d bolted the door.”
“Thanks a bunch!” Kenny said. “We nearly got caught by Pilar. She’s in the bathroom.”
The others looked alarmed.
“Did she see you?” Rosie asked.
“Nope.” Kenny shook her head. “Good job too, because she’d probably tell Mrs Weaver like a shot.”
I got under the duvet at the bottom of Lyndz’s bed, and Kenny got into Fliss’s.
“What shall we do first?” Lyndz asked in a low voice.
“Something quiet,” Fliss begged. “I’ll die if Mrs Weaver wakes up.”
“We could write in our diaries,” Rosie suggested. “That’s pretty quiet.”
“Good idea,” I agreed.
“Yeah, OK, but we ought to do something special first,” Kenny added.
“Like what?” Fliss frowned.
“Well, it’s our first sleepover in a foreign country,” Kenny explained, “so maybe we ought to make a speech or something.”
I grinned.
“Go on, then.”
“OK.” Kenny jumped out from under the duvet, and stood up on Fliss’s bed. “Welcome to our very first dormir sobre!”
We all blinked.
“You what?” I said blankly.
“Dormir sobre – it’s Spanish for sleep-over!” Kenny grinned. “I looked it up in Frankie’s dictionary. Well, I looked up sleep and I looked up over, and then I just put them together!”
“Nice one!” Lyndz said, and we were all going to applaud, but then we remembered Mrs Weaver was just next door, so luckily we didn’t.
“You know what?” Kenny went on. “I reckon we should try to have a sleepover in every single country in the world – then we’d get into the Guinness Book of Records!’
“What, even Iceland?” Fliss shivered.
“Yeah, a sleepover in an igloo!” Rosie suggested, and we all put our hands over our mouths to stop the giggles.
We were still laughing when, without warning, the door flew open and Mrs Weaver stormed in.
Kenny was so shocked at the sight of Mrs Weaver, she fell backwards and landed on top of Fliss, who squealed.
“What on earth is going on in here?” Mrs Weaver said furiously, looking round at us with her worst, beady-eyed stare. “You were told not to leave your rooms at night unless you needed to go to the bathroom!”
“Yes, Miss. Sorry, Miss,” we all said miserably.
Suddenly I noticed Pilar standing in the corridor, peeping in through the open door. She saw me looking at her, and grinned wickedly before walking off.
“I’m very disappointed with your behaviour,” Mrs Weaver went on sternly, making us all feel about five centimetres tall. “These rules were made for a reason – we have to know exactly where everyone is in case there’s a fire drill, or some other emergency.”
We all sat there silently, not daring to say anything.
“Francesca and Laura, go back to your room immediately. We won’t say anything more about this, but” – Mrs Weaver stared round at us, her face grim – “if it happens again, Miss Simpson and myself will have to move into the same rooms as you. Now off you go.”
“That was close,” Kenny muttered, as we hurried back to our room under the stern eye of Mrs Weaver. “I don’t fancy bunking in with the teachers!”
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