“We’d better get started,” Lyndz said. “We’ve wasted loads of time already.”
“D’you think we’ll finish it all tonight?” I asked doubtfully. My bedroom’s really big, and I was beginning to wonder if we’d bitten off more than we could chew.
“Yeah, ’course!” said Kenny, at exactly the same moment as Frankie and Lyndz said, “No chance!”
“We’ll finish it!” Kenny insisted, ripping the cellophane off the wallpaper. “Hey, look at this, guys!” She held up the wallpaper, and let it unroll down to the floor really fast. Unfortunately, Fliss’s foot was in the way.
“Ow! Ow! My toe!” Fliss squealed, hopping round the room, doubled up in agony. “I’m going to kill you, Kenny!”
“Well, I don’t care if we don’t finish it,” I said, glancing round at the mess. “It can’t look any worse than it does now!”
You know what? I was dead wrong.
“So what do we do first then?” I asked. No-one answered. Instead, everyone stared at Lyndz, who turned pink.
“What are you all looking at?”
“You! You’re the expert!” Kenny told her.
“Oh. Well…” Lyndz frowned and looked round the room. “First we’ve got to paint the woodwork, and let that dry before we start the wallpapering.”
Kenny pulled a face. “Oh, knickers to that! I want to wallpaper – I’m not into boring old paint!”
“Why don’t Lyndz and Frankie paint one side of the room, and me, you and Fliss can start papering on the other?” I suggested.
“Good one!” Kenny said immediately. “That OK with you, Flissy?”
“What?” Fliss hadn’t heard a word because she was too busy admiring her dress and wig in my mirror.
“I said, do you want to help me and Rosie with the wallpapering?” Kenny repeated loudly, rolling her eyes at me.
“Yeah, OK,” Fliss nodded, parading up and down like a supermodel. “I think I look good with black hair, what do you reckon?”
Kenny groaned, and picked up a bucket and a packet of wallpaper paste. “This isn’t a fashion show, Fliss! Come and help me mix up the paste.”
While Kenny and Fliss went to the bathroom to get some water, Lyndz and Frankie found some brushes, and began to lever the lid off the tin of purple paint. Meanwhile, I set up the pasting table. I was beginning to get pretty excited – things were really starting to happen!
You could say that again. When Kenny and Fliss came back from the bathroom carrying the bucket, Kenny had bits of paste in her hair, and Fliss’s wig was looking pretty sticky too.
“I told you not to stir it so hard!” Fliss was saying crossly.
“Well, I had to mix it up properly, didn’t I?” Kenny retorted, putting the bucket of paste down on the floor. “Hey, look! Frankie and Lyndz have already started painting!”
Lyndz and Frankie were getting on with it, slapping the paint on to the skirting-boards and doing pretty well. The colour looked even better out of the tin than in it.
“Right, Rosie, you can cut and paste,” Kenny said, shoving the roll of wallpaper into my hand. “Fliss can help me hang it.”
“You’ve got paste in my wig, Kenny, you dork!” Fliss grumbled, walking backwards so that she could see herself in the mirror. Big mistake. She didn’t notice the bucket of paste on the floor behind her.
“Aargh!” Fliss stepped right into the bucket, and her left foot disappeared into the thick paste with a loud squelching noise. It was like something out of a comedy film, I can tell you. “Help!” she squealed frantically. “Get me out of here!”
Kenny and I rushed over to her, but we weren’t much use because we were killing ourselves laughing, and so were Lyndz and Frankie. Fliss managed to pull herself free, and glared at us, her face red.
“Which stupid idiot put that bucket there?”
“You did,” Kenny said quickly. “Come on, Rosie, cut a piece of wallpaper and we can get started.”
I unrolled the wallpaper and cut off a really long piece, to make sure it would fit. Then I pasted it all over.
“OK – here goes!” Kenny said confidently. She picked up the sticky wallpaper at one end and tried to lift it off the table. But it was so long, she couldn’t hold it up. It dropped right over her, and covered her from head to foot.
“Help!” Kenny yelled, trying to pull it off but getting more and more tangled up, “I can’t see!”
Fliss and I hurried over to her, but we couldn’t do much because Kenny was dancing round madly, trying to get the wallpaper off herself. She managed it at last – by ripping it in half.
“Oh, great!” I said, looking at the torn bits of paper. “We can’t use that now!”
“Never mind, there’s plenty more,” Kenny gasped, pink in the face. “Cut another piece, will you, Rosie?”
“You should’ve stuck to painting, Kenny!” Frankie said smugly, and she and Lyndz started to giggle. They were getting on really fast – and I was glad to see that at least something was going right.
I cut another piece of paper, and this time I made sure it was a lot shorter than the last one. I pasted it and gave it to Kenny, who climbed up the ladder and stuck it against the wall. Guess what? It wasn’t long enough.
“You’ve cut it too short, Rosie!” Fliss groaned, picking bits of paste out of her wig.
“Well, I didn’t know!” I said defensively.
It was third time lucky. The next piece of wallpaper I cut and pasted was the right size. Kenny put it on the wall and Fliss smoothed it down, and the three of us stood back and admired it.
“OK, now we’re really going for it!” Kenny announced confidently. “And the next piece, please!”
After that, we got on quite fast. We put up seven pieces of wallpaper and almost covered one long wall, so we were feeling pretty pleased with ourselves.
Then Fliss suddenly frowned. “That’s funny…”
“What is?” I asked.
“Well, on the first piece we put up, the leaves on the flowers point downwards,” Fliss said slowly. “And then on that piece, they point upwards, but on that one they point downwards again…”
“Kenny, you complete and total lamebrain!” I yelled. “You’ve put half the pieces on upside-down!”
“What? You’re joking!” Kenny’s mouth fell open.
Lyndz and Frankie were laughing their heads off across the room. “You’ll have to peel them off, and do them again,” Lyndz said between giggles.
“Nah, no-one’ll notice—” Kenny began.
“Fliss already did!” I said pointedly. My heart sank as I looked at the upside-down wallpaper. It had taken ages to do, and now we were going to have to peel most of the pieces off again. You know what? I was definitely beginning to wonder if this had been such a good idea after all. Still, at least the painting was going OK. Lyndz and Frankie had finished the skirting-board on their side of the room, and were about to paint the radiator to match.
“Hey, Rosie, Lyndz and I thought we might try out some of the paint effects that they use in Designer Rooms,” Frankie said. “What do you reckon?”
I cheered up a bit. “That sounds cool. What are you going to do?”
“We could try sponging,” Lyndz suggested.
“No, spattering’s better,” said Frankie.
“What?” I said. I’d never heard of that one.
“Oh, it’s pretty wicked.” Frankie stuck her brush in the paint tin, and then aimed it at the radiator as we all gathered round. She flicked the brush smartly with her fingers, and specks of paint flew everywhere – and not just over the radiator either.
“Ow – my eye!” Lyndz shouted, clapping her hand over her face. “Frankie, you complete twit!”
“I think I swallowed some!” Fliss squealed in horror. “Is it poisonous?”
I glanced round at everyone. We all had very faint purple speckles all over our faces. We looked as though we had some horrible contagious disease.
“Spattering’s out,” I said firmly
, and tried to grab the paintbrush off Frankie.
“Oh, don’t be a wimp, Rosie!” Frankie retorted, an evil gleam in her eye as she avoided me and dunked the paintbrush in the tin again. “Look, it’s great!” She deliberately flicked the paintbrush at the rest of us this time instead of at the radiator, and, again, paint flew everywhere.
“Yeah, you’re right!” Lyndz said, scooping up some paint on her own brush. She aimed it at Frankie, and let fly. “It’s great fun!”
“Aargh!” Frankie let out a yelp of protest as the paint spattered all over her face, and the rest of us burst out laughing.
“Right, you lot are dead!” Frankie announced, lunging towards the paint tin again.
“Oh, no you don’t, Francesca Thomas!” Kenny shouted, rushing over to try and grab the brush from her. But she tripped over the flapping bottoms of her dungarees, and kicked the paint tin. The next second a thick stream of purple paint was flowing across the bare floorboards, and we were all paddling in it.
“Oh no!” I wailed, trying to get out of the way of the paint, and leaving purple footprints behind me. “Kenny, look what you’ve done!”
And right at that moment the bedroom door opened.
“What’s going on?” My mum put her head in with a smile. “You’re making an awful lot of—”
She stopped. I don’t know what she noticed first. I guess it was probably the river of purple paint which was slopping round our ankles. But there were plenty of other things for her to look at. The upside-down wallpaper. The purple footprints. The paste in our hair and the paint spattered on our faces. Oh, and Fliss’s wig…
We were in big trouble. And I mean BIG.
“Rosie! Are you awake?”
“I am now!” I said crossly as Kenny poked me in the back. We’d had to move into Tiffany’s bedroom last night, because my room wasn’t in a fit state to sleep in. Me and Kenny were in Tiff’s bed, and the others were in their sleeping-bags on the floor. “What time is it?”
“Seven o’clock.” Kenny sat up and looked at her watch. “Do you reckon steam has stopped coming out of your mum’s ears yet?”
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” I said grimly.
My mum’s usually pretty laid back about most things. But I’d never heard her shout as loudly as she did last night when she walked in on us doing the ‘decorating'. It made my ears hurt just thinking about it.
Kenny stared at me, and started giggling. “You’ve still got purple paint on your face, and paste in your hair!”
“So’ve you!” I retorted. “You look like you’ve got the measles!”
“What are you two laughing about?” Frankie said sleepily. “You do realise that we’re in doom forever after this?”
“Maybe our parents will see the funny side,” Kenny suggested.
“What funny side?” Fliss demanded, sitting up in her sleeping-bag. “We’re going to get shredded.” Then she took one look at me and Kenny with our purple-spattered faces, and burst out laughing.
“See?” Kenny said hopefully.
The door opened then, and my mum looked in. “Time to get up, girls,” she said very calmly and coolly, and went out again.
“I don’t think your mum sees the funny side, Rosie,” said Lyndz. “Yuk! I’ve got paint in my fringe!”
“You should’ve worn a wig like me,” Fliss remarked smugly, running a hand through her hair. She was the only one who hadn’t got paste and paint in it.
“Did you see my mum’s face when she clocked Fliss in that wig?” I said with a grin. “I thought she was going to faint!”
We all fell about laughing. We couldn’t help it, even though we knew we were going to get it big-time.
We did. After breakfast, which we ate in silence, the others’ parents started arriving to pick them up. The first to arrive was Frankie’s mum. Straightaway my mum took her upstairs to show her what we’d done, and they stayed up there talking for about ten minutes. Meanwhile, we were all sitting in the living-room, nearly wetting ourselves. We weren’t laughing then.
Frankie’s mum didn’t say much when she came back downstairs, but she looked pretty mad.
“Time to go, Francesca,” was all she said. Frankie pulled a face at us – being called Francesca was not a good sign – and went. Lyndz’s dad was next, and then Fliss’s mum. Fliss was nearly crying by the time her mum came downstairs, and Mrs Sidebotham looked really angry, although that might have been because she’d got a smudge of purple paint on her posh jacket. Last of all was Dr McKenzie, Kenny’s dad. As he was marching Kenny out of the door, his face grim, Kenny turned round, drew a finger across her throat and winked at me.
And that was that. Now I was left on my own with my mum.
“Well, Rosie?” She looked at me. “Have you got anything to say about all this?”
I stared down at my feet. “I wanted to have a nice bedroom, just for once,” I muttered.
“And have you got one now?” My mum raised her eyebrows at me.
“No,” I admitted.
“Exactly.” My mum shook her head. “The room looks worse than when you started. You’ve ruined all the paint and paper your dad bought, and half his tools.”
“Well, if Dad had done it for me when he said he would, I wouldn’t have tried to do it myself!” I retorted.
“Yes, well…” My mum’s voice softened a bit, and I began to wonder hopefully if maybe we’d got away with it this time. “I blame your father as well, and I’m definitely going to have a word with him when he gets back from Majorca. But” – she’d started to sound angry again, which wasn’t good – “you still shouldn’t have done it. Do you realise how difficult it’s going to be to get your room cleaned up?”
“Yes,” I said dismally.
“Well, I’ve spoken to the other girls’ parents,” my mum went on, “and we’ve decided that instead of having a sleepover next week, the five of you can spend Friday evening and all day Saturday here, cleaning up the mess you made.”
“OK,” I agreed quickly. But there was more to come…
“And we’ve also decided that there’ll be no more sleepovers for a while—”
“No more sleepovers!” I gasped, outraged. “But, Mum—”
“No buts, Rosie!” My mum held up her hand. “There’s not going to be another sleepover until you’ve proved to all of us that you won’t do something as stupid as this ever again. Is that clear?”
I nodded miserably. No more sleepovers! How could we call ourselves the Sleepover Club if we couldn’t even have a sleepover? This was the most gruesome thing which had ever happened to us! And in a way, it was all my fault. If I hadn’t got so wound up about my bedroom being such a mess, none of this would have happened.
“Hey, Rosie! Have you got the measles or something?”
I gritted my teeth, and pushed my way past Ryan Scott and his stupid mate Danny McCloud into the school playground. It was Monday morning, and I still hadn’t quite managed to get all the specks of paint off my face or out of my hair. I still had purple paint all over my hands too. I looked like something out of a horror film.
“Better keep away from her, Ryan!” I heard Danny McCloud shout. “You might catch something!”
“Oh, get a life!” I yelled crossly at the two sniggering idiots, but they just stood there laughing their heads off. I looked around for the others, but I couldn’t see them. All I could see were the gruesome M&Ms and Alana Banana Palmer, giggling and pointing at me. You’ve got to remember the M&Ms, Emma Hughes and Emily Berryman. We call them the Queen and the Goblin because Emma’s a snooty snob, and Emily’s small, with a really gruff voice. They’re so sad, it just isn’t true. Alana Banana’s sort of a friend of theirs too, but she’s so dim, she doesn’t bother us that much.
“Oh, how sweet!” said Emma Hughes sarcastically. “Look, Rosie’s been learning how to paint!”
“You’re in the wrong playground!” Emily shouted at me. “This is the Juniors, the Infants is over there – that’s where they
do face-painting!”
“Oh, very funny!” I snapped.
“Maybe she’ll learn how to use a knife and fork soon!” Emma trilled.
“And she won’t have to wear nappies any more!” Emily added, and the two of them started roaring their heads off.
“What?” Alana Banana asked, looking puzzled. “I don’t get it!”
I glared at them all and stomped off. I’d spotted Fliss, Kenny, Lyndz and Frankie sitting on a wall at the far end of the playground, their heads bent over a copy of Cool! magazine, and I hurried over to them. My mum hadn’t let me phone any of the others yesterday, so I didn’t know how they felt about not having any more sleepovers. I knew they’d be gutted. I just hoped they didn’t blame me…
“Hi,” I called, with a wave. Immediately Fliss rolled up the magazine and shoved it in her bag, and they all started shooting funny looks at each other.
“What’s up with you lot?” I asked with a frown.
“Nothing,” Frankie said quickly. Too quickly.
“Did your mum chew your ear off? Mine did.”
“Yeah…” I looked round at Fliss, Kenny, Lyndz and Frankie suspiciously. There was definitely something odd going on. “Did your parents tell you we’re not allowed to have any more sleepovers?”
They all nodded, and looked at each other again in a really strange way. I already felt pretty guilty, and that made me feel even worse.
“Why don’t you just come right out and say it!” I shouted.
“Say what?” Fliss asked, trying to look innocent.
“You blame me!” I blurted out furiously. “You think it’s my fault that we can’t have any more sleepovers!”
I couldn’t say anything else. I was so mad, I just turned round and walked off. No more sleepovers, and now it looked as if there was no more Sleepover Club as well…
OK, I know I shouldn’t have done that. But I was just so wound up, I couldn’t help it. I knew the others blamed me for going on and on about my bedroom, and getting them all involved. And I did feel guilty about it. But they were supposed to be my friends, weren’t they? We should all stick together.
Sleepover Girls Go Designer Page 2