Mega Sleepover 2

by Rose Impey

  “Mmmm. Me too.”

  This conversation was not helping at all. It was a bit like talking into a black hole. What we needed here was some action.

  I said, “So! What are we going to do?”

  “Rob a bank?”

  “Oh, Kenny, be serious. We need to find some way of making money where we won’t end up in jail.”

  “OK. Let’s both make a list. I’ll ring you back.”

  I sat down with a pen and a pad and tried to come up with some ideas, but the more I thought about it the madder I got. There are a few things about my family which I don’t think are at all fair. For example, I am an only child, which I think is completely unfair. I keep telling my parents how much I’d like a brother or sister, but they don’t take any notice. Although, come to think of it, if I had, it would mean an extra present to buy!

  Another thing is that I already do all sorts of jobs which other people could get extra pocket money for, like walking the dog for instance. Yes, I know she’s my dog, but even so…And like washing up, or drying and putting away. Other people get extra money for doing that, but I’m expected to do it anyway. Mum and Dad are always telling me, “We’re a team, Frankie. We all do our share. That’s fair, isn’t it?”

  I suppose it is, but it doesn’t help me make any money, does it? The other thing is, my mum and dad don’t give me as much pocket money as other people get, even though they could afford to, because they don’t believe in spoiling me! Huh! I wish. They think all the adverts on TV make children want lots of things they don’t really need, and I suppose they do. But this is different. This is to buy presents for other people, for them even.

  But they have an answer to that too. My mum and dad would be happy if I just made them something out of egg boxes, because, yeah, yeah, I know – it’s the thought that counts. I just wish all my friends knew that!

  At least Kenny did. And, however broke I was, I knew that Kenny was more broke. She’s a disaster area where money’s concerned.

  Kenny can’t earn extra pocket money washing up or drying the pots either, because they’ve got a dishwasher. She used to be able to earn a bit extra if she loaded it for her mum, but not any more. Last summer they had this big birthday barbecue and Kenny loaded it with paper plates which disintegrated and blocked up the outlet and they had to call a plumber.

  “How was I to know?” she said. “They were dead cute plates, with shells and fish on. I thought you’d want to use them again.”

  “Not much chance of that, now they’re sandblasted onto the sides of the dishwasher,” her dad yelled at her.

  Anyway since then she hasn’t been allowed to do any jobs in the kitchen.

  Helping out in the garden was another idea, but there’s not much to do in December. And Kenny’s dad said he had no intention of spring cleaning their garage at this time of year just to please us. So that was that. Back to the drawing board, as my dad says.

  “What about washing cars?” Kenny suggested at last.

  “That’s the first sensible idea you’ve had,” I said. “Whose shall we start on?”

  We started on my mum’s VW and we were just in the middle of doing it when Lyndz came round on her mountain bike. We’re usually dead pleased to see Lyndz but this time we weren’t, for obvious reasons.

  “Hiya. What’re you doing?” she said.

  “Crocheting a pair of mittens for the dog!” I said. “What does it look like?”

  Lyndz grinned. “Can I help?”

  Kenny and I looked down at our feet and sighed. We were both hoping she wouldn’t ask that. My mum had agreed to pay Kenny and me 50p each, if we did a good job and didn’t leave too much mess. We’d been really sensible and we’d nearly finished, so we didn’t want to have to share it with Lyndz. But we both felt really mean leaving her out.

  “OK,” I said. “But no water fights, or else.” I don’t know why I even bothered saying that. When Kenny and Lyndz get together they always go bananas. Like that time they had a shopping trolley race in the supermarket and knocked down a humungous stack of bottles of mineral water.

  Fortunately, this time Mum didn’t go too mad because it was only soapy water they were throwing around and they got most of it over themselves. In fact she gave us all 50p and an ice lolly each.

  After that we all cycled round to Kenny’s house and persuaded her mum to let us clean her Fiesta. And then Kenny’s next-door neighbour, Bert, who’s really nice, said we could do his. We didn’t charge him as much because he’s a pensioner. But by the end of the afternoon we’d each made £1.25.

  “This is great,” said Kenny. “We’ll soon be rich.”

  “How do you make that out?” I said. “My mum won’t have her car cleaned again for months.” And I knew my dad wouldn’t let us loose on his BMW, he’s too proud of it.

  “We’ll ask the other neighbours,” she said. “Down your road and in our close.”

  “What? You mean knock on people’s doors?”

  “We’ll put a note through their letter boxes, like a proper business.”

  “Are you mad?” I said.

  “I think it’s a great idea,” said Lyndz. So that was it. I was outvoted, which was a bit off since I was the one who’d started it all. But that was only the beginning. On Monday morning, when old Bossyboots Fliss heard about it, she took over straight away.

  “Listen, I’ve got a great idea: we can print the notices out on Frankie’s computer,” she said, “so we look really professional.”

  “We?” I said. “Since when did you need to earn any money? You’re loaded already.”

  “Well, I’m not,” said Rosie. “I could do with earning some money before Christmas. Adam wants a new game for his computer and I said I’d give Tiff something towards it.” Adam is Rosie’s brother, he’s computer-mad. And Tiff is Rosie’s older sister. She’s fifteen and she works after school in the local supermarket, so she could afford it on her own really.

  “Listen,” said Kenny. “If we do it together and get properly organised, we’ll be much quicker, so we’ll do more cars, so we’ll earn more money, so there’ll be enough for all of us.”

  “Yeah,” said Lyndz. “And it’ll be more fun, if it’s all five of us.”

  I nodded. I supposed she was right. But I had a funny feeling that things were already getting out of hand. It felt like another of those times when, as my gran says, it would all end in tears.

  After school everyone came round to my house and we went up to my bedroom. I’m not supposed to have friends round after school, I’m supposed to go next door to Auntie Joan’s until my mum and dad get home from work, and watch TV with the gruesome Nathan. He’s not my cousin, thank goodness. And Joan’s not my real auntie, I just call her that. But she’s a good sport and she said that just this once we could go up and play on my computer, and she’d look in on us and bring us some cookies, when they came out of the oven.

  “You’re the best,” I said and gave her a hug.

  “Make sure you’re sensible,” she warned us and she gave me our front door key.

  We threw our coats on my bed and I turned on my computer.

  “OK. What shall we call ourselves?” said Fliss.

  “Call ourselves?”

  “Yeah. You need a catchy name, so people remember it.”

  “What about, Sleepover Club Car Wash,” said Lyndz.

  “That’s no good,” said Kenny. “It sounds as if we’ll be going to sleep on the job.”

  “I know,” said Fliss, “Al Car Cleaners. That way we’ll get to be first in the phone book. Andy told me lots of businesses do that.” Andy is sort of Fliss’s step-dad and he’s a plumber so I suppose he should know.

  “Get a life,” I said. “We’re never going to get in the phone book.”

  “We’ve got to think big,” said Kenny. But even she could see that was a stoopid idea.

  In the end, we called ourselves: Five Star Car Wash which was much better, because there are five of us and five star means
the best. You can probably guess whose idea that was! No, it wasn’t Fliss’s, actually. It was mine, thank you very much.

  This is what our notice looked like:

  At first we couldn’t agree how much we should charge. We finally settled on £1.50, which seemed a lot, but we had to share it between five. Still, as Kenny had said, we’d be able to clean more cars so we’d earn more in the long run.

  Then we printed off half the notices for Kenny’s close, with her name and address on the bottom and the other half for my road with my name on the bottom.

  “We can start on Fliss’s street later,” I said.

  “If we’re not too busy,” said Kenny.

  We were really excited. Before they left, everyone helped me post the notices through all the doors in my road. We rushed to get them done, before my mum and dad came home.

  I know! You needn’t look like that. I wasn’t going to keep it a secret forever; I did intend telling them. I just thought I’d wait for the right moment…when they were both in a good mood…tomorrow, perhaps…or the next day.

  And it wasn’t easy, not to tell them, because that night I was nearly bursting to. I lay in bed planning all the things I’d buy when I was rich. And I probably would have been, if Molly the Monster hadn’t stuck her nose in where it didn’t belong.

  Have I told you before about Kenny’s sister Molly? She’s gruesome. Poor old Kenny has to share a bedroom with her and she hates it. It’s not a very big room and there are two beds in it with a dressing table between them. There isn’t even room for a wardrobe, that’s out on the landing. Molly is so bossy she’s always making rules about what Kenny can and can’t do in her own bedroom.

  For example, Kenny has a pet rat, called Merlin. He has to live in the garage. Molly won’t allow her to have him in the bedroom. Kenny has to go outside if she wants to play with him.

  The other thing she does is to draw a line with chalk down the middle of the dressing table and if anything of Kenny’s slides over onto her side she throws it away! I mean it. That’s really hard for Kenny, because she’s a bit untidy at the best of times. She’s always finding her things chucked in the waste basket. All Molly says is, “Well, you’d better keep them on your own side, then, hadn’t you?” Honestly!

  Kenny and Molly have always fallen out, ever since Kenny was little. She’s almost lost count of the horrible things Molly has done. Once, when they were on holiday, she pushed Kenny out of bed and nearly broke her arm. And another time, when Kenny was really small, Molly cut off her hair, all of it, except a little sprout which stuck out at the front. Kenny’s still got a photo of it. She looks like a Cabbage Patch doll.

  And then the worst time was when their dad was digging a pond in the garden; while he was mixing the cement to lay the base, Molly buried all Kenny’s Playpeople in the hole. She only told her after the pond was finished and filled with water and it had fish in it. That’s what she’s like, gruesome with a capital GRRR!

  Molly hates it when we have a sleepover at their house, because she has to move out and sleep on the camp bed in Emma’s room. Emma is their other sister, she’s sixteen, which is the reason she has a room to herself while Kenny and Molly have to share. So, whenever we sleepover at Kenny’s, we can’t get rid of Molly. She hangs around, telling us all the things we’re not allowed to do, like touching her jewellery, as if we’d want to, or getting on her bed with our shoes on, as if we would, and looking at her make-up.

  “How does looking at it wear it out?” I said.

  Kenny pulled a being sick face. “She certainly needs make-up,” she said. “She could do with a complete mask.”

  “I heard that,” said Molly. She was hiding behind the door. That’s the other thing, she’s always ear-wigging on our conversations and it really gets on our nerves.

  But sometimes Kenny gets her own back. Molly’s twelve and she’s got one or two tiny spots starting. She peers at them in the mirror so Kenny tells her how they’re getting bigger and one day they’ll cover her whole face. Last time we were there we made this mixture of salt and pepper in water and told her it was a secret recipe Lyndz’s grandma had given her for spot lotion and we’d made it specially for her.

  “I haven’t got spots,” she shrieked. “I have not got spots!” She nearly went ballistic!

  We hadn’t had a sleepover at Kenny’s for ages, because of Molly. Poor old Kenny’s tried complaining to her mum and dad but they always say the same thing. Kenny knows it off by heart: “We’ve only got three bedrooms. Emma’s the oldest; she’s got GCSEs this year; she needs a room of her own to study in. Anyway, we both shared bedrooms with our brothers and sisters when we were your age. It’s good for you to share.”

  “Good for me?” Kenny screamed at us. “How can it be good for me? I’ll be lucky if I live to be twelve. I’d rather sleep out in the garage with Merlin.”

  “Why don’t your family move?” said Rosie. “Get a bigger house.”

  “We’ve been trying to for ages, but we can’t find one Mum likes. Dad doesn’t care; he’s never there.” Kenny’s dad’s a doctor, he works all the time. “But Mum is so fussy. The house has got to be exactly what she wants and it never is.”

  Kenny was telling us about it while we were waiting for netball practice. She was even more steamed up than usual with Molly because that morning she’d found her Girl Talk comic screwed up in the waste basket and she’d only read half of it.

  “How was I to know?” said Molly. “It was on the floor. You should put your things away.”

  “I’d flatten her,” I said.

  “You probably could,” said Kenny. “But she’s bigger than me.”

  “Why don’t you tell your mum and dad?” asked Fliss.

  “I already did, but what’s the point? They don’t do anything.”

  “I thought you had a caravan,” said Rosie. “Why not ask if you can sleep in that?”

  Everyone went quiet and looked at their feet. “It’s haunted,” said Kenny.

  “Haunted?”

  Kenny nodded. “Poltergeist.”

  Rosie’s eyes nearly popped out of her head, but Kenny didn’t want to get started on that story. None of us like that story, it’s too creepy. So we got back to the important subject.

  “Anyway,” said Kenny, “it’s my turn for you all to sleepover at my house next, so we need to start thinking of some juicy revenges for Monster-face. Anybody got any good ideas?”

  Ideas? We had loads. It was pay back time for Molly The Monster and we were really looking forward to it.

  But before I tell you about that, let’s get back to the car wash business, which was not going too well. Before we even had a chance to get started my mum and dad found out what we were up to and they were not pleased. It was Auntie Joan’s fault.

  On Tuesday and Wednesday, when I got in from school, I kept waiting for our first customer to ring or knock on the door. Kenny was phoning every five minutes to check whether I’d heard anything, because she still hadn’t, so I had to tell her to get off the phone in case anyone was trying to ring us. But there was nothing. Not a sausage.

  Then, on Wednesday night, Mum and Dad saw the notice. They were having a cup of coffee in Auntie Joan’s kitchen and they saw it stuck on her notice board.

  “Five Star Car Wash! What’s all that about?”

  “Frankie!”

  Thank goodness they didn’t go too mad. They just had a medium-sized wobbly. But they said I should have told them first; then they could have saved me the trouble of doing the notices. Which they said were very good. But, grrrrr, they still wouldn’t let me do it. And shall I tell you why? Because I wasn’t old enough. I’m never old enough for anything, according to them.

  “The law’s quite clear about it,” said Dad. “Children under thirteen are not allowed to do paid work, so that’s that.”

  “But all my friends do,” I said. “Other people get extra pocket money for picking the newspaper up off the floor.”

  “Pocket
money’s different,” said Mum. “Parents can give as much or as little pocket money as they like. We’re talking about people outside the family paying children to work. It’s against the law.”

  “But it’s only car washing,” I said. “Everybody does it.”

  “Not lawyers’ daughters,” said Mum.

  “Especially this lawyer’s daughter,” said Dad. “Case closed. No room for appeal.”

  So, I was right, wasn’t I? I knew if I told them, they’d say no. I guess that’s why Kenny didn’t tell her mum and dad either. But they still found out – thanks to Molly.

  Monster-face is in the same class at school as Howard Jinks. He’s a boy who lives down their road. He’s gross. He’s always thumping people. He took one of our notices into school and showed it to people in their class. Then everyone started calling Molly ‘Five Star Car Wash’ all day, and asking her where her bucket and sponge were. When she came home she was fizzing like an unexploded bomb.

  She stuffed the note in Kenny’s face. “If this is your idea of a joke, it isn’t funny.”

  “It wasn’t meant to be funny. We were trying to earn some money, that’s all.”

  “Well, you can forget it,” said Molly. “You’re in big trouble.” And she rushed into the kitchen, yelling her head off, to find their mum.

  Kenny’s mum was cross because she was in the middle of cutting someone’s hair at the time. Kenny’s mum does some hairdressing at home and she said Molly had shown her up in front of the lady. So she got a good telling off, hah! But later, when their dad came home and saw the notice, they both gave Kenny a serious talking to.

  They said she definitely should have asked their permission; which Kenny knew. They said she certainly shouldn’t have been wandering up and down the street, knocking on people’s doors, because it wasn’t safe to do that nowadays. Kenny told them we hadn’t knocked on any doors, we’d just posted our notices through the letter boxes. And they said, she wasn’t anything like old enough (yawn, yawn) to be washing other people’s cars, it was too much responsibility. If she did any damage they’d have to pay the bill. Kenny tried to point out that you can’t do much damage with a sponge and a plastic bucket, but they said that wasn’t the point.