Mega Sleepover 2

by Rose Impey

My mum shrugged. “That’s life, Frankie.”

  Parents. They’re so unreasonable. But I wasn’t finished yet. I went out of the kitchen, and into the living-room where my dad was laying the table and watching the news on the telly at the same time.

  “Guess what, Dad?” I gave him my Best-Behaved Daughter of the Year smile. “Fliss’s mum’s bought a camcorder, and she’s going to video our sleepover tomorrow.”

  “Really,” my dad said absently, his eyes fixed on the TV.

  “So I was hoping I could get a new pair of pyjamas. Could you pick me up after school tomorrow and drive me into Leicester?”

  “Sure, sweetheart.”

  Like taking sweets from a baby.

  “Thanks, Dad!” I said, just as my mum came in with the plates.

  “Thanks for what?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Er – yes, thanks for what?” The news had finished now, and my dad was looking bewildered.

  “Dad says he’ll drive me into town after school tomorrow to buy some new pyjamas for the sleepover,” I said.

  My mum put the plates down on the table with a thump.

  “Francesca Theresa Thomas, you are the most cunning and devious child I’ve ever met.”

  “That’s what comes of having lawyers for parents,” I said. “By the way, my sleeping bag’s looking a bit gross too.”

  “Don’t push your luck, Frankie,” said my dad.

  “OK, OK. But I really do need new jim-jams. I want to look good in our video.”

  “So,” said my dad, “we’re finally going to see what goes on at these famous sleepovers, are we?”

  “I already know what goes on,” my mum said, dishing up the lasagne. “Chaos, trouble and lots of junk food.”

  “There’s a bit more to it than that,” I said, picking up my fork. “And anyway, we aren’t going to let just anyone watch the video. Sleepovers are supposed to be a secret.”

  Especially from parents. I wasn’t quite sure how we were going to get away with keeping what we did at our sleepovers a secret if Fliss’s mum was going to be filming us. But I’d worry about that later.

  First of all, though, we had to get through Friday at school. It was pretty difficult because we were all hyper-excited about the sleepover that night, and by the end of the day, we’d turned Miss Jenkins into a nervous wreck. Kenny had managed a record eleven trips to the pencil sharpener without being spotted, and we’d played Pass the Sniff in silent reading until our noses hurt.

  As soon as the home bell rang, the Sleepover Club were first out of the classroom door.

  “My dad’s taking me shopping,” I told the others. “I’m going to get some new pyjamas for tonight.”

  “I’ve already got some,” said Kenny. “They’re so cool. They’re going to be the coolest pyjamas ever seen on video.’”

  “What are they like?” asked Lyndz, but Kenny shook her head.

  “You’ll have to wait and see!”

  “Oh, I can’t wait for tonight!” Fliss squealed, and we all grinned. Tonight was going to be really special.

  I got a wicked pair of pyjamas in Leicester. They were bright orange – I mean really bright, the colour of an ice lolly – and they had apples and bananas printed all over them. There was a matching pair of fluffy orange slippers too, although I had to promise to wash up the dinner plates for two weeks to get my hands on those. By the time we got back home, I had an hour to get ready for the sleepover.

  First I packed my sleepover kit. In went my new pyjamas and slippers, my diary, my toothbrush, my teddy bear, Stanley, a big bag of fun-size Mars bars, a family-size pack of cheese and onion crisps, my torch and personal stuff like a hairbrush and deodorant. Next I had to decide what I was going to wear. Usually we just wear jeans and tee-shirts, so that we can slob out and do exactly what we like, but tonight was different. Tonight I was going to wear my black hipster flares and my new lime-green shirt. And I was going to crimp my hair.

  I don’t crimp my hair very often, because it takes ages, but I really wanted to look good in our sleepover video. After I’d done my hair, I painted my nails silver. I love silver nail varnish, and I’m allowed to wear it sometimes at weekends, if The Oldies are in a good mood. I was hoping that tonight I could get away without them noticing.

  Wait a minute, the man at the video shop desk is giving us funny looks. Maybe we ought to pretend we’re looking at the films. Come on, Nathan’s over the other side of the shop now, so we should be OK. Just keep an eye out for him, that’s all.

  Well, when I finally made it downstairs, carrying my sleepover kit and my sleeping bag, my dad raised his eyebrows.

  “What happened to that scruffy little girl who used to be our daughter?” he said to my mum.

  “Oh, zip it, Dad,” I said. “I just threw on the first things I could find.”

  “It looks like you just threw on some silver nail varnish too,” said my mum.

  “This is a special occasion, Mum,” I said. “When I’m a famous actress, people will be paying thousands of pounds to get their hands on this video.”

  Did I mention to you that I want to be an actress when I grow up? That’s why I was really looking forward to tonight. It was going to be my very first chance to see myself on film.

  “Come on then, Michelle Pfeiffer,” said my mum, “I’ll run you over to Fliss’s.”

  “OK,” I said. Fliss doesn’t live that far away from us, but I had all my sleepover stuff to carry, and besides, it looked like it was going to rain, which would wash all the crimping out of my hair quicker than you can say “Bad Hair Day”.

  “Mum,” I said when we were in the car and on our way, “can we—?”

  “No,” said my mum.

  “What do you mean, no?” I glared at her. “You didn’t even know what I was going to say.”

  “Oh, yes I do.” My mum turned into Fliss’s road. “You were going to say, ‘Can we get a camcorder?’”

  I was speechless. Parents can really make you mad sometimes, can’t they?

  “Well, why can’t we?”

  “Because they’re too expensive, that’s why,” my mum said. “Do you know how much they cost, Frankie? Six or seven hundred pounds. Which reminds me.” We stopped at some traffic lights, and she turned to look hard at me. “No fooling around tonight. Do exactly what Fliss’s mum tells you. Because if anything happens to that camcorder, you and your friends are going to be paying for it out of your pocket money for a very, very long time.”

  “Oh, Mum,” I groaned as we pulled up outside Fliss’s house. “Have I ever let you down before?”

  “Yes, you have.”

  “Bye, then,” I said quickly, and dived out of the car before she could get launched on a list of sleepover disasters.

  I was just about to open Fliss’s gate when Kenny’s dad’s car pulled up, and Kenny jumped out. I stared at her. She was still wearing her Leicester City top because that’s all she ever wore when she wasn’t at school. But she wasn’t wearing her favourite pair of jeans with holes in the knees or her Timberland boots. Instead she was wearing brand-new jeans and proper shoes. With heels. And she’d only gone and crimped her hair.

  “You’ve crimped your hair!” I said.

  “So have you!” Kenny stared back at me, and we both started to laugh. “We’re going to look like twins on this video!”

  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 s
he’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 vid
eo, 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.