Mega Sleepover 2
Page 2
Kenny started to unfold it.
“What does it say?” Fliss squeaked.
“Give me a chance.” She smoothed it out and read it aloud to us. “To our enemies. We are watching you. Don’t think you’ll get away with this. We have put a spell on you. Goodbye forever, Horrible Stinkers.”
“What a cheek!” said Lyndz. “We don’t stink.”
“Right,” I said, “after the spelling test we’ll ask to go on the computer.”
While Mrs Weaver was busy hearing readers, we wrote back to them:
Dear Ugly Mugs,
We hope you both slip down a drain or
fall in a bowl of sick. There’s no way
you will win tomorrow. We’ll make sure
of that. Have a horrible day, Poshfaces.
It’s funny really, because that is what happened. Not the bit about them falling down the drain or in a bowl of sick, but about them not winning. When we wrote it we didn’t have a plan or anything. It was just one of those things you say. And then, when we met them on the way home from school, we said it again. Afterwards we wished we hadn’t, because it all turned out to be true.
But hang on, before I tell you about that, let’s look for Pepsi in the park, there’s a few bushes she likes digging around. I can’t see her anywhere yet, can you?
Oh, blow. Not a sign. Now where can we try?
I know: the other place she likes is the canal. I’m not allowed to go there on my own, but Dad and I often walk her there. We could go as far as the bridge next to the pub, you can see a long way down on to the towpath from there.
Come on and I’ll tell you what happened next.
By the time we’d collected up all Gazza’s bits and pieces, we were a bit late leaving school. Rosie put Gazza into his carrying cage and then we helped her carry everything round to her house. We were already loaded down with PE kit, lunchboxes, and school bags. So we must have looked like a travelling circus when we came round the corner of Mostyn Avenue, which is a couple of roads away from Welby Drive, where Rosie lives. Walking towards us were the gruesome M&Ms and who do you think was with them? Only Ryan Scott and Danny McCloud, two horrible boys from our class. That was all we needed.
“Oh, look, it’s the Famous Five,” said Emma Hughes.
“Which one’s the dog?” said Ryan Scott. He thinks he’s so funny.
“Ruff, ruff. Here, girls,” shouted Danny McCloud, “fetch a stick.” And he broke a whole branch off a tree by the side of the road and threw it at us. Good job for him he missed.
“Oh, very clever,” I said. But they’d both started now, whistling and calling us good dogs and silly things like that. Fliss looked like a boiled beetroot with embarrassment. Fliss actually likes Ryan Scott; she says she wants to marry him! She is so weird.
We just kept on walking, pretending we couldn’t hear them, but they followed us.
“Dogs are supposed to be kept on a lead,” shouted Ryan Scott.
“I’ve got a good idea,” said Emma Hughes, “they could enter each other for the Pet Show. That way they might win.”
“Well, you’re not gonna win, that’s for sure,” said Kenny.
“That’s what you think,” said The Goblin.
“That’s what we know,” said Rosie.
“And how are you going to stop us?” said The Queen.
“Don’t you worry, we have our ways,” I said, mysteriously.
We all smiled at each other, as if we’d got this big secret that they knew nothing about. We walked off down the road.
“What ways?” Emma Hughes shouted after us.
“You’ll find out,” Kenny called back to her. Then we carried on down the road trying to ignore the fact that those two stupid dodos were still whistling us to come and the gruesome M&Ms were giggling at them as if they were the funniest things on legs.
Fliss turned to Kenny, “How are we going to stop them?”
Kenny shrugged. “Don’t ask me,” she said, “ask Frankie.”
I shrugged too. I had no idea either. But, we’d got them worried and that was almost as good.
When we reached Rosie’s, she was right, her mum didn’t mind about Gazza.
“What difference can a hamster make?” she said. “It’ll be enough of a madhouse with all you girls round.” But she smiled, so we knew she was only kidding.
We were all so excited to be sleeping over at a different house, we raced off home to get our things packed. “See you at seven,” Rosie called after us. “Don’t be late.”
When I got home I gave Pepsi an extra good brush and clean up and told Mum and Dad they’d better keep her like that.
“Don’t let her roll in anything on her walk tonight,” I warned them.
“Yes, boss,” said Dad. “Any more orders while you’re away?”
“Yes,” I said. “Kindly collect me at eleven in the morning. And don’t be late!”
When we arrived at Rosie’s we went straight upstairs and dumped our sleepover kits on her bedroom floor. She’s right, her room does look a bit funny with no wallpaper, just plaster on the walls, but her mum lets her put posters up, so it doesn’t look boring; it’s dead colourful in fact. She’s got Oasis, Blur and Leicester City football team, loads of pictures of dogs and people out of the soaps on her walls. Rosie’s soppy about soaps.
Her dad’s promised to come round soon and decorate, so her mum says she’s allowed to write on the walls, which none of the rest of us are allowed to do in our bedrooms.
Rosie said we could help her if we wanted to. It was so cool. We wrote loads of jokes, like What did the spaceman see in his frying pan? An unidentified frying object. And What do you do if you find a blue banana? Try to cheer it up.
Rosie said it would certainly cheer her up, when she was lying in bed at night, to read those jokes.
“Just think,” I said, “in about a zillion years…”
“When the aliens come,” said Lyndz.
“…they might take this wallpaper off and find these jokes.”
So then we got into writing messages to Martians and it all got a bit silly. One of them was a bit rude. We had to scribble it out before Rosie’s mum saw it. It’s a good job we did because just then she came in to tell us to come down for tea.
“Great,” said Kenny, “I’m ravishing.”
“Don’t you mean ravenous?” said Rosie’s mum
“I’m ravishing, too,” said Kenny, pulling one of her silly faces.
“You’re weird, you mean,” I said. Then she chased me downstairs to the kitchen. Rosie’s mum had laid out a great spread for us with paper cups and plates and fancy serviettes, just like a party. She’s dead nice. She’s going to college to learn to be a nursery nurse. Rosie has an older sister, Tiffany, but she’s always out with her boyfriend, Spud. Her brother Adam was there, though. We’re really getting used to Adam now. It was strange at first, talking to someone who can’t talk back to you, but Rosie’s mum can tell us what he wants to say because he sort of spells it out with his head and she can understand him. So can Rosie some of the time, if he does it slowly.
We had pizza and salad and oven chips, and ice cream for afters. The pizza was OK, but it wasn’t a patch on my dad’s. The ice cream was heavenly, though: pecan and toffee fudge. Mmm, mmm. Rosie’s mum sat and fed Adam, because he can’t feed himself, and then she sat him on her knee to give him a drink through one of those baby feeder cups. All the time we were eating he was watching us and listening to what we were saying.
“What are you grinning at?” Rosie said.
Adam stopped drinking because he was choking a bit.
“That’s what comes of trying to drink and grin at the same time,” said his mum. Then Adam started shaking his head. He was trying to spell something. It was a poem he’d made up, while he’d been watching us have tea. Rosie says he’s always making up poems…and jokes. Rosie’s mum started spelling it out.
“F-I-V…Five?” she said. Adam nodded then spelt out some more.
Her mum grinned. “OK, young man, that’s enough. Remember your manners.”
“You’re the little piggy,” Rosie told Adam.
“That’s about right,” their mum said, wiping his chin.
After we’d eaten Rosie said we could explore her house. There are five bedrooms on the first floor, then a staircase which leads to two more rooms, right up in the roof. In places, I could only just stand up straight without banging my head on the ceiling. The rooms were full of packing cases, cardboard boxes and old bits of furniture. There were no light bulbs up there, so when it started to get dark we couldn’t turn on the lights and that made it really spooky.
We played Hide and Seek and Murder in the Dark all over the upstairs and in the attic rooms, squealing and rushing around. There were no light-bulbs up there so we had to use our torches and that made it really spooky. But in no time it was nine o’clock and Rosie’s mum came to tell us to get ready for bed. We didn’t argue. Actually, we were looking forward to going to bed. That’s the best bit.
Rosie’s room only has one bed in it but it’s a double bed. It’s coo-ell. None of the rest of us has a doule bed. She’s so lucky. We all tried to fit into it, like playing Sardines; we just piled on top of each other. But there was no way we could sleep like that.
“Give me some room,” yelled Kenny who was right in the middle. “It’s too hot in here.”
“I’m falling out,” yelled Lyndz.
“Can’t you breathe in?” yelled Rosie.
“All night?” I said. “Get real.”
So in the end we decided two of us would have to sleep in sleeping bags on the floor. We tossed for it. Oh, great. Guess who lost? Me, of course. And Fliss, who moaned on and on about how it wasn’t fair, even though it really was.
After we’d been in the bathroom we sat up in our sleeping bags with our sleepover diaries. At least the rest of us did; Fliss was too busy playing with Gazza.
Kenny was scribbling away like mad, she’d finished before I’d even thought about mine. She slammed her diary shut, “That’s me done,” she said.
“Read us what you’ve put,” said Lyndz.
“What’s it worth?” she said, which is Kenny’s favourite question.
“If you do, I’ll let you hold Gazza while I write mine,” said Fliss.
“Oh, great big hairy deal,” said Kenny. But then she said, “OK.”
She started to read hers out: “Today is Friday. We are sleeping over at Rosie’s house for the first time and it is awesome. I wish I lived here. It’s the best.” Rosie started to smile; she was dead pleased with that. “Tomorrow, we are going to the Pet Show at the Village Hall and if Merlin wins a rosette I will tie it to his tail. We are at war with the M&Ms…again. They had better look out.” She slammed her diary shut and said. “Now, give, give, give, give, give.” She held out her hands for the hamster.
“You promised you weren’t going to talk about that,” complained Fliss. But she passed Gazza over while she wrote hers.
Then everyone wanted a turn, so we played Pass the Hamster for a bit. When Rosie went to the bathroom she brought back a toilet roll which was just about used up. She tossed it onto the bed and Kenny put Gazza down so he could wriggle through it, like a tunnel but he seemed more interested in filling his pouches with it.
Next Fliss read us what she’d written: “I haven’t got a pet to take to the you-know-what so Rosie is letting me keep Gazza at her house. It is very kind of her. She is my best friend. She can take him out and play with him whenever she likes – as long as she is careful.”
Kenny looked at me and rolled her eyes. Sometimes Fliss is unreal. It was then that Rosie came up with her other idea. To tell you the truth, it wasn’t such a good idea, but at first we thought it was.
“Why not take Gazza tomorrow?” she said to Fliss. “You can pretend he’s yours. No one’ll know.”
“Yeah, why not?” said Kenny.
I nodded too. I thought it was a great idea, because, if Fliss had a pet to take, it would mean we could talk about the Pet Show, without her moaning on.
“I don’t know,” said Fliss, doubtfully, “what if someone recognises him?”
“How would they?” said Rosie. “One hamster looks much like another.”
“What if there’s anyone from school there?”
We thought about that. It was unlikely our teacher, Mrs Weaver, would be there, but what about other people from our class? And then, as if it had dawned on us all at once, I said, “Oh, no…” and everyone joined in, “The M&Ms.”
They’d be sure to recognise Gazza. Those two didn’t miss a thing.
“Oh, well, it was a good idea while it lasted,” I said.
“Hang on,” said Kenny, “You could keep him in a box, or something, until they do the judging. The M&Ms’ll be too busy with their own pets. They’ll probably be in different rooms. I doubt if they’ll put the cats and dogs together with the small pets.”
“Yeah. Good thinking, Batman,” I said.
You could see Fliss was tempted, but she was still worried about it. Fliss always gets her knickers in a twist if she does anything wrong in case she gets found out. But she really wanted to join in with the rest of us, so in the end she said, “OK, but you’ve all got to promise not to tell anyone, though.”
We all made the Brownie promise and just then Rosie’s mum came in and told us to turn off the lights and settle down. I was sure she hadn’t heard us but Fliss went bright pink, as if Rosie’s mum could read her mind. When she got up to put Gazza in his cage, she dropped him twice. Fortunately both times he landed on the bed. At last she put him in his cage, but she was so nervous she didn’t fasten the cage door properly. It was nearly an hour before we realised and by then Gazza had completely disappeared.
After Rosie’s mum went out we lay in bed and counted to twenty-five before we sat up. Sitting up in the dark, with our torches turned on, whispering, is the best thing about sleepovers, I think. Sometimes we tell stories or sing songs or tell jokes. Sometimes we pretend we can talk to ghosts but that can get a bit too scary. Later on, when it’s really quiet and we know the grown-ups aren’t coming back in, we get out our midnight feast. But it was too early so we decided to finish off our Sleepover Club membership cards.
We’d got some old ones we’d made right at the beginning, but now Rosie’s joined we decided we’d make some new ones with photos and everything.
Do you want to see mine? Isn’t it excellent? Not as good as Fliss’s, though. Hers looks dead posh. She got her mum to take her into Leicester to get a proper passport photo done. The rest of us had to cut up old photographs. I had to cut my face out of a picture at my Uncle Alan’s wedding when I was little. Everybody started laughing at it, so I told them what my gran always says, “Small things amuse small minds!”
On the back of the cards we wrote our names, ages, addresses and hobbies. When we’d finished them we signed them. Well, the rest of us did. Kenny did this weird squiggle that looked as if someone had nudged her elbow. Then we passed them round and read each others’.
“I didn’t know your hobby was stamp collecting,” I said to Fliss.
She went a bit red. “It isn’t but I didn’t know what else to put. I don’t really have a hobby.”
“Course you do,” said Lyndz. “You go to Brownies, don’t you? You go to dancing classes and gymnastics. You’re interested in fashion.” She reeled off a few more.
“Oh, I didn’t realise they were hobbies,” said Fliss, grabbing her card back. She’s so dozy. She scribbled away and soon ran out of space.
For my hobbies I wrote: Reading, Brownies, Pop Music, Collecting Teddies and Acting. I just lurv being in plays. It’s the best.
Kenny had written: Football, Swimming, Gymnastics, Snooker, Brownies.
Rosie had put: Netball, (I’d forgotten that), Soaps (s
he’s mad about them), Pop Music and Brownies.
Next I read Lyndz’s. She’d written: Horses, Painting, Horses, Brownies, Horses, Cooking Horses.
“Cooking horses?” I said.
“Let me see that.” She grabbed it back from me. She’d just missed out the comma. “Oh, very funny, I don’t think.”
I thought it was very funny, actually, and so did Kenny. We creased up.
Later on, when we were sure Rosie’s mum wasn’t coming back, we got out the food, put it in a big bowl and passed it round. I’ll tell you what there was: sherbet dabs, Black Jacks, Love Hearts, a Snickers bar, six marshmallows and a packet of Original Pringles. We all tucked in straight away.
“D’you think we should give Gazza something?” said Fliss.
“It doesn’t seem fair leaving him out,” Rosie agreed.
But really there was nothing apart from Pringles we thought a hamster might eat and we weren’t really sure about those. We decided we’d try him just with a couple of crumbs to see. Fliss got out of her sleeping bag and went to get him.
That’s when we realised he’d gone.
“He’s not here,” she wailed. “Oh, help, where is he?”
I jumped up as well, just to check, because Fliss is always losing things, even when they’re staring her in the face, but this time she was right: he wasn’t there. And when we turned on the lights he wasn’t anywhere else we could see either.
We stripped everything off the bed and searched all five sleeping bags. We looked under the bed. We emptied all our sleepover kits out in a pile in the middle of the floor. There were leggings and T-shirts and socks and knickers and slippers and toilet bags and torches and hairbrushes and teddies and sweet packets from the midnight feast. And we still couldn’t find him.
Fliss was nearly wetting herself. She kept saying over and over, “I’m going to be in such trouble with Mrs Weaver. I’m going to be in doom forever.”