Sleepover Club Goes For Goal!

by Fiona Cummings

  “Then can we be cheerleaders?” begged Fliss.

  “Sure!” I agreed. “When we’ve finished our games.”

  We piled on to the makeshift pitch in the garden. The grass is a bit bare from where I run around on it so much, but we’ve got a proper set of goalposts and everything.

  To start with, the football went really well. Fliss was hopeless, but then, what’s new? But Rosie wasn’t too bad at all. In fact, the more she played, the better she got. She even tried some pretty daring shots and that’s really where the trouble started.

  She did this one amazing shot which looped way up in the air and sort of did a banana bend at the last minute. Ping! It flew into the back of the net.

  “That was amazing, Rosie!” I flung my arms round her. “To think I was worried about you playing in the team! If you play like that, we’ll definitely walk off with the trophy!”

  The others all stopped hugging and turned to stare at me. It was like a cross between a film and a bad dream – everything seemed to be happening in slow motion.

  “What did you say?” asked Rosie at last.

  I took a deep breath.

  “I just said that when we enter that five-a-side competition, we’ll have a good chance of winning it. Now that you’re playing so well.”

  “Five-a-side team?” screamed Fliss. “That’s why we’re having this stupid football sleepover, isn’t it? You were only thinking of yourself, as usual. You’re a selfish cheat, Laura McKenzie! You dropped us for all that time just to play football, and now you’re expecting us to help you out again. Well I’ve had enough!”

  She stormed across the lawn and picked up her sleepover kit, which she’d dumped there earlier. Rosie ran after her and they both headed for the door.

  This was supposed to be a fun sleepover, and it was turning into a disaster! Just as Frankie had predicted it would.

  “Hey you guys, wait!” I flew across the lawn after them with Lyndz and Frankie in hot pursuit.

  I reached the front door at the same time as Fliss and managed to lean my full weight against it so that it was impossible to open.

  “What on earth’s going on?” asked Mum, who had come out of the kitchen to investigate what all the noise was. “You’re not going, are you Felicity? Rosie?”

  “It’s nothing Mum, just a misunderstanding,” I reassured her. “We’ll sort it out, don’t worry.”

  “Well, if you’re sure.” She looked reluctant to leave us. “Call me if you need me.”

  She went back into the kitchen, and as soon as we heard the door close, all hell let loose again.

  “You should have told us about the five-a-side team,” Rosie accused me. “Especially as we’d already told you that we weren’t interested.”

  “But Kenny was only trying to show you how much fun it can be,” Frankie tried to explain.

  “Yeah, well, it’s one thing having a kick-around in Kenny’s garden, and quite another showing ourselves up in front of everyone else,” Fliss muttered, but she didn’t look quite so cross.

  “I’m sorry, I was being selfish,” I admitted. “I just wanted to play in that competition so badly. I guess I just assumed that as we’re all friends, you wouldn’t mind helping me out. I’ve always helped you out in the past, haven’t I?”

  The others looked at each other.

  “We don’t mind helping out, Kenny,” Rosie explained. “It’s just that we’re not very good at football.”

  “But you are!” I assured them. “And all Fliss needs is a bit of practice and a lot more confidence. Besides, she could work to our advantage. If we stick her in goal, the guys on the other teams will probably take one look at her, fall in love and forget that we’re playing football!”

  Fliss blushed and went all giggly which started the rest of us off. Fliss is such a total sucker for flattery. I swear to you, if ever you want a favour from her, just tell her she looks wonderful and she’ll do whatever you ask! Easy!

  “So Fliss, can we count you in?” asked Frankie.

  Fliss looked round the others.

  “I guess so,” she said slowly. The rest of us cheered. “But if anyone laughs at me. I’m off. OK?”

  “And is the sleepover back on?” I asked anxiously.

  “Yesss!”

  I thought that under the circumstances, it might be pushing it a bit if I made the others play football again, so you’ll never guess what we did… We pretended to be cheerleaders! I know, I know – it was my idea of a nightmare, but it seems that Fliss had got it into her head that that’s what she wanted to do. She sort of bribed me actually.

  “If we can’t be cheerleaders, I’m not playing in your stupid team,” she pouted. You see, Fliss isn’t as dumb as she looks. She’s not above a bit of blackmail when it suits her.

  I just felt such an idiot prancing about shouting:

  “Cuddington five-a-side,

  We’re going to sweep the rest aside!

  Give me a C, give me a U, give me a D…”

  Well, you get the picture don’t you? At least it kept Fliss happy. But I was relieved when Mum called us in for supper.

  That was well cool too because we had lots of football-type food – hotdogs with onions (vegetarian for Frankie of course), those cheesy footballs and loads of crisps. Mum had iced some buns so that they looked like footballs, and she’d made some gingerbread footballers too. It was class!

  After supper we went for a runabout in the garden again. Which was great until Molly the Monster turned up. She’d been out with her friend, and I’d expected her to stay out longer, but no such luck. Her friend probably got sick of her too. Anyway, she stormed out into the garden.

  “I heard you lot screaming a mile away,” she fumed. “It sounds like a kindergarten here.”

  “So?” I yelled back. “We’re just having fun. But then you don’t know what that is, do you?”

  “Ha ha!” Molly stormed right up to me and started wagging her finger in front of my face. “You’re pathetic, do you know that? You think you’re this great big superstar. Well you live in a dream world. You’ll never get anywhere playing football. You’ll end up a nobody. I’m glad you can’t play in that stupid competition. It would only make you even more big-headed.”

  I was just so mad. There was no way that I was going to let her get away with that. I lunged into her and wrestled her to the ground. You could tell that the others didn’t know whether to join in or not, but I think they figured it was a family thing so they just hung back. I grabbed handfuls of Molly’s hair and tugged as hard as I could until she was screaming, but as she had hold of my shoulders I couldn’t do much else.

  “What a display!” Dad stormed out and wrestled us apart. “I thought that you would have known better, especially when we have visitors. Whatever will they think?”

  “She started it!” I muttered, but Dad was having none of it.

  “I think you’d better go to your rooms. Sorry girls,” he apologised to my friends, “but I think it’s time for the sleeping part of this sleepover.”

  We headed for the door.

  “Was that a demonstration of football hooliganism then?” Rosie whispered to me with a grin.

  Molly walked past us, rubbing her head. “Loser!” she muttered.

  “I don’t think you’ll be saying that when Kenny wins that football competition,” Fliss called out ever so sweetly. “Because you see, we’re going to be playing in a team with her after all!”

  Now I’m not too big on hugging, as you know, but Fliss deserved a big bear hug for that.

  “Gitoutofit!” She pretended to fight me off, but she had this huge grin on her face.

  “Thanks Fliss. Thanks all of you!” I squealed when we got into my room. “I really do appreciate this.”

  “You’d better!” laughed Frankie.

  “Yeah, we’ll never let you forget it!” agreed Lyndz.

  “But shouldn’t we decide what we’re going to wear?” asked Fliss. “I mean we can’t turn up
in just any old football kit, can we? We need something to get us noticed and hey…”

  We all started bashing her with our pillows. I mean what is she like, bothering about our kits for goodness sake! She gave us the chance to have a really good squishy poo fight anyway. We hadn’t done that for ages. We stuffed all our spare clothes in Lyndz’s sleeping bag and tried to knock each other off the bed with it. Molly nearly had a fit when she came in to collect some of her stuff.

  “Get off my bed… NOW!” she yelled at the top of her lungs.

  “All right, keep your hair on!” I yelled back. “Your bed’s not bouncy enough anyway, Miss Prissy-Pants!”

  “Well just leave all my stuff alone, OK?” she spat menacingly, tidying up her side of the bedside table. We all sat quietly on my bed until she’d left, then exploded with laughter.

  “Talk about control freak!” I shrieked. “It would serve her right if we spilt our midnight feast all over her precious things!”

  The mention of food was all we needed to spur us on to get ready for bed. We wriggled out of our clothes inside our sleeping bags and did our pyjama shuffle into our jimjams. Then we raced to the bathroom to get there before stupid Molly the Monster. We had a great time preventing her from getting in. We usually wash and brush our teeth in about three minutes flat, but we managed to spin it out to about forty minutes just so she had to hang around. We would have been longer, but we heard her complaining to Dad downstairs. So we hurried back to my room as fast as we could and pretended to be tucked up in bed when he knocked on my door. I don’t think he was fooled, but it was wicked just knowing how mad we’d made Molly!

  Our midnight feast was class too. We were all really hyper, especially as everybody had brought those little chocolate footballs to eat. There was this huge mountain of them piled up on Frankie’s sleeping bag. Every time someone took another bag of them out, the rest of us got hysterical. It was just so funny! When I’d calmed down a bit I tried to dribble one round the room, but I kept losing it and Fliss got really mad when I kept throwing one at her shouting:

  “Here Fliss, save this!”

  When we’d munched our way through most of them, Frankie suddenly moaned:

  “I feel really sick now. I didn’t think it was possible to eat too much chocolate.”

  “I know,” groaned Fliss. “I’m going to have to lie down.”

  That kind of seemed like a good idea to all of us. I had planned to tell loads of football jokes, but I was feeling so icky I couldn’t even think of one.

  That must have been our quietest end to a sleepover ever. It was just a relief that no-one actually threw up. In the morning we were still feeling a bit green though, so we didn’t even feel up to a practice game of football before the others left. I just hoped they realised that the five-a-side practice was on Wednesday, and that they’d have to hone their skills a bit before then.

  It was certainly no good trying to make them practise at school the following week.

  “Everybody will be watching us,” moaned Fliss.

  “But you’ll have to play in front of other people in the competition,” I told her. “We can’t have a private room, you know!”

  “I know!” snapped Fliss. “I’ve been practising at home with Callum and Andy if you must know!”

  I hoped Fliss was right because she certainly needed the practice. And of course Wednesday afternoon was the big moment of truth…

  It had become a bit sort of obvious as Wednesday went on that Fliss was not looking forward to the practice at all.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll all be there together,” we’d tried to reassure her, but it didn’t seem to work. Every time we looked at her she seemed to be getting greener and greener.

  “Come on Fliss,” I told her when the home-time bell finally went. “It’s not as bad as all that. The boys will be fine, you’ll see. And Mr Pownall’s great.”

  “I… I don’t care. I… I… I’m not going!” she stammered.

  “Oh yes you are, my girl!” I shouted.

  “Am not!”

  “Come on Fliss,” reasoned Rosie. “I’m worse than you and I’m going. If I hate it, well, I won’t be going again.” She flashed me a look. “But we won’t know until we get there, will we?”

  That sort of calmed Fliss down.

  “OK, but if anyone laughs….”

  “… you’re out of there,” the rest of us finished for her. “Yes, we know!”

  When we got to the changing room I must admit that I was really excited. I couldn’t wait to be playing football again, but I tried not to look too eager in front of the others.

  “I hope Ryan Scott’s not going to be a pain,” Frankie whispered to me as we made our way into the gym. “Because Fliss means it, you know? One peep out of him and we won’t see her for dust.”

  “He’ll be fine!” I said confidently.

  Why did I open my big mouth? As soon as we got into the gym, I kind of sensed that we’d made a big mistake. The boys were already warming up, but they stopped as soon as they saw us come in. One minute there was silence, the next the gym was echoing with the sound of loud guffawing.

  “I know McKenzie can play a bit, but the rest of you girls…?” Ryan Scott was shrieking with laughter. “Do me a favour! You’re having a laugh, aren’t you?”

  “Ignore them Fliss,” I hissed. “Fliss?”

  I looked round, but Fliss was nowhere to be seen. She’d done a disappearing act before we’d even started!

  “Silence!” Mr Pownall yelled at the top of his voice. “How dare you be so rude!”

  He went to stand in front of Ryan Scott, who had gone squashed-tomato red and was quivering in his boots.

  “I take it you still want to play for the five-a-side team?” Mr Pownall asked him.

  Scotty-chops nodded.

  “Well then, I suggest that you apologise to these girls – now.”

  “Sorry,” he muttered.

  “We didn’t quite hear that, did we girls?” Mr Pownall smiled over to us.

  “No sir!”

  “I’m very sorry that I was rude,” Ryan said very slowly and clearly.

  “Rude about what?” asked a voice.

  “Fliss? Where’ve you been?” I shrieked.

  “I had to go back to put my hair up again,” she explained. “What have I missed?”

  “Nothing Fliss, believe me!” I said, and breathed a big sigh of relief. Fliss hadn’t walked out at all, and after Mr Pownall’s speech the boys wouldn’t dare laugh at us again. Re-sult!

  Well, it wasn’t quite as easy as that. As soon as we started our exercises it became pretty obvious that both Fliss and Rosie were strangers to football. Instead of dribbling with the ball, they spent most of their time chasing it round the gym because they had no control over it. Talk about embarrassing! To make matters worse, all the boys kept sort of spluttering whenever they saw them. Fliss and Rosie’s confidence, fragile as it was, looked to be disappearing fast.

  “Right girls!” smiled Mr Pownall eventually. “You’re doing really well considering that you haven’t played before. Let’s leave those boys to their own devices for a while and get you sorted.”

  He was just great. He showed Fliss and Rosie how to control the ball and how to stop a shot. Then they practised passing to each other whilst Frankie, Lyndz and I did the same. Then the five of us got together and passed a football between ourselves. You couldn’t believe that Fliss was the same person. I mean, she still did the odd dodgy pass and missed the ball a couple of times, but so what? You couldn’t expect her to be as good as me after one lesson, now could you?! She was so much more confident anyway, and you know what? She actually looked as though she was enjoying herself.

  The big challenge was the practice five-a-side match against the boys at the end of the session. It was the first time that Fliss had played in goal, and amazingly she wasn’t bad at all. She’s used to catching and throwing balls in netball you see, so that sort of helped her out. And besides, she di
dn’t have any idea about the rules for normal football, so she picked up the ones for five-a-side in no time. I have to admit that I was well impressed. Rosie got stuck in too – talk about a mean tackier, she certainly didn’t mess around!

  We lost the match 3–2. I hate losing, especially to the boys, but Frankie did remind me that it was only a practice match.

  “Well, what do you think?” I asked the others in the changing room afterwards.

  “Great!”

  “Cool!”

  “When can we play again?” asked Fliss.

  Well, I didn’t need asking twice. Every lunchtime we went into the gym, and if Mr Pownall was around he gave us some more coaching, which was cool. So as the five-a-side practices came round each week, we were getting better and better and more and more confident.

  Of course, the more we played, the more the boys were rude to us.

  “You’re not seriously going in for the competition, are you McKenzie?” Ryan Scott asked during our last practice. “You’re going to embarrass yourselves. Why don’t you stay at home and do some knitting or something?”

  Of course his cronies cracked up about that.

  “Don’t worry about him,” I told the others very loudly. “He can’t even pass wind, never mind the ball!”

  Everybody just creased up, even Danny McCloud. Scotty-chops turned bright pink and looked dead embarrassed. Fliss gave me a filthy look.

  “You shouldn’t embarrass him in front of his mates like that!” she scolded.

  To sort of make up for it, she went all gooey in the goal whenever Ryan Scott took a shot. She let in every single one. I mean, she didn’t even try to save them.

  “Promise me you won’t do that in the competition on Saturday,” I warned her after the practice. “Because if you do, I swear that I’ll chop off that precious blonde hair of yours with a knife and fork!”

  “Give her a break.” Frankie came to her rescue. “She’s doing her best. The rest of us haven’t been playing as long as you, remember.”

  “Yes, and the competition’s on Saturday,” squealed Lyndz. “Are you sure we’re going to be ready for it?”