by Ginny Deals
“Girls, girls!” implored Mum, cradling a shrieking Izzy and hurrying towards us down the corridor. “Stop this racket at once! At once, do you hear? What on earth is going on, Gwyn?”
Dad had managed to grab Pepsi, and was trying to stop her barking.
“The girls saw a mouse,” he said helplessly. “Pepsi must have smelt it.”
Mum glared at us all. “Honestly! Scared of a little mouse! And look at poor Izzy – she’s terrified with all this racket! Go straight back to your room, and stop this nonsense immediately!”
Pepsi had finally stopped barking, although Izzy was howling louder than ever. Dad dragged Pepsi off downstairs, Mum rushed off with Izzy, and we were left alone.
We walked back to my room in silence. I reckon we were all thinking about what a close shave we’d just had.
Fliss wouldn’t go into my room at first.
“What if the mouse is still there?” she asked fearfully.
“Fliss, you wombat, there IS no mouse!” I said. “Don’t you get it? It’s called a diversion.”
“Derr!” said Lyndz, tapping the side of her head.
We all flopped straight into our sleeping bags, suddenly feeling so zonked that we could hardly move. It was like, we’d all been super-awake, and now that disaster had been avoided, all we wanted to do was SLEEP.
“I… can… hardly keep… my eyes open,” said Kenny, in between the most gigantic yawns you’ve ever seen.
Rosie stretched sleepily. “Don’t forget to…”
But whatever she was going to say, no one heard.
I found myself in the middle of the weirdest dream. Soggy marshmallow aliens were floating down from the sky, and landing on my face with a wet, flopping noise.
I opened my eyes, to see Sausage’s shiny wet snout snuffling around my face.
In a flash, the whole of yesterday came flooding back to me. Animal World – Sausage – our plan to hide him in the shed! We’d forgotten to set the alarm!
“Hey!” I hissed. “Is anyone awake?”
Groaning noises spread out from everyone’s sleeping bags.
I leant out of bed, and prodded the sleeping bag on the floor. “Hey, Kenny! Wake up!”
“Hmph?” Kenny sat upright, her hair looking like a bird’s nest.
“We’ve got to go and hide Sausage in the shed!” I whispered. “Quick, wake up the others!”
Within moments, everyone was awake.
“Sausage must have got out of the cupboard all by himself!” Lyndz was saying. “He’s like Houdini! Maybe we should have called him Houdini?”
“What time is it?” whispered Fliss, rubbing her eyes.
I shot a quick glance at my rocket clock. Its luminous hands said ten to two.
“It’s a perfect time, that’s what!” I whispered back. “Come on, let’s get this over with!”
We tiptoed out of my room in a long line. There were no lights on, and the darkness was pressing down on us like a big blanket. Gradually, our eyes got used to it, and we could see shapes. The banisters, the stairs, the hall.
“Coast’s clear,” I whispered, beckoning everyone behind me. “Lyndz, have you got hold of Sausage?”
“Yeah,” she whispered back. “He’s wriggling a bit, but…”
“Whatever you do, don’t let go of him!” said Kenny. “And don’t let him wake up Pepsi either!”
We stole down the stairs, past Dad’s study, and into the kitchen. There was no sign of Pepsi, thank goodness – Dad must have shut her in his study for the night.
The moonlight made the garden look beautiful. Honestly, if you believed in fairies, you could just imagine them out there, having a groovy moonlight party.
“Kenny, grab Pepsi’s lead, will you?” I whispered, pointing at the lead on top of the fridge. “We’ll tie Sausage up with it. Dad’s gardening coat is out in the shed – Sausage can use it for a bed.”
“What about water, and food?” Kenny whispered back.
Rosie opened the fridge. There was some old salad and a bag of carrots in the bottom, which she grabbed. Fliss got a bowl and filled it with water. Then we gathered round the back door. So far, so good.
The door unlocked easily, but it squeaked like crazy.
“SSSSHH!” hissed Fliss, making much more noise than the door.
“Shhh yourself!” snapped Rosie.
And finally, we were in the garden. The grass was very cold and dewy – I don’t think any of us had put on our shoes, in case we made a noise creeping through the house. My feet were wet and numb before we’d gone ten paces.
The shed loomed up like a huge haunted castle, black and scary-looking in the night. The shed door squeaked even worse than the kitchen door, and everyone held their breath – but there wasn’t a sound from the house.
Lyndz fixed the lead round Sausage’s neck, and Kenny and I took Dad’s coat off its peg and made a bed with it. Rosie put down the food, and Fliss put down the water. Last of all, we tied Sausage’s lead to a rake leaning against the shed wall, patted him on the head (Lyndz patted him about a hundred times), and returned to the house.
We’d done it! No one had woken up, and Sausage was safe – for now…
I woke up reeeally slowly the next morning, like I was swimming up from the bottom of some huge lagoon.
There was a ssccrrrip sound as the curtains were pulled right back. I opened one bleary eye, and saw Mum opening the window. Peering at the rocket clock, I realised that it was half past ten already! How come we’d slept so late?
“Come along everyone, wake up,” said Mum, moving briskly around the room. “I’ve got better things to do today than chase you lot out of bed.”
And she marched out of my room and into the corridor, with this look about her shoulders that said “don’t mess with me”. Uh-oh. I guessed she was still mad at us for waking up Izzy last night.
What else had we been doing last night? My half-asleep brain was trying to tell me something, but it had a whole lot of snooze layers to break through first. Then suddenly, I remembered…
“Sausage!” cried Lyndz, sitting bolt upright in her sleeping bag.
Mum stuck her head back round the door. “You’ll be lucky,” she said sharply. “Toast and marmalade, and that’s your final offer.” And off she stomped again.
Sausage! Sausage the piglet was still in the shed! Suddenly, everyone was wide awake, staring at each other. Last night was like a weird dream – and suddenly, here was reality.
“Any ideas on how to get out of this little problem this morning, oh Kenny ‘Superbrain’ McKenzie?” I said sarcastically, wriggling into my jeans and brushing my hair at the same time (which is pretty difficult).
“We could tell your parents, Frankie,” Fliss suggested nervously, fiddling with the folds of her top so they hung just so. Fliss really hates having to tell lies, so her suggestion was no great surprise.
“Yeah, right!” said Lyndz, as she packed her sleeping bag away with a determined bash-bash-bash kind of action. “Like they won’t take Sausage straight back to his death!”
I hopped around the room, squeezing my feet into my trainers. “Look, let’s go and have breakfast, OK?” I said wearily. “Then we’ll have a proper conference back up here.”
“Our parents are coming to get us at twelve,” Rosie pointed out.
“Then we’ll make it a quick conference,” I snapped, heading out of my bedroom and down the stairs. I was totally sick of the whole business, to tell you the truth.
The others silently followed me down to the kitchen. I tell you, it was like a funeral procession or something. I mean, I know we aren’t at our liveliest first thing in the morning, but this was like, morguesville.
Anyway, it was just as well we were silent, because we overheard something which put a whole new light on the situation.
Mum was on the phone.
“… escaped, did you say?” she was asking someone on the other end, a small frown on her forehead. “On the local news? No, I haven’t
heard anything. You’re right, the girls were there yesterday, yes…”
We all totally froze in the kitchen doorway, like we were playing musical statues.
“Ginger? Really?” Mum continued. “Sounds quite unusual. I suppose they’ll be asking everyone who was at Animal World yesterday to go back there and help with their enquiries… And there’s a reward? Oh, hold on a second, Janet…”
Mum was beckoning us into the kitchen. We moved forward blankly, like we had concrete boots on. I kept expecting the durn-durn-DURN music to strike up at any moment.
“I don’t suppose any of you girls saw a small piglet yesterday?” Mum asked, cradling the phone receiver under her chin. “Only a rare one has escaped from Animal World, according to Janet down the road. They are offering a reward of a hundred pounds to the person who helps them find it.”
“A what?” said Kenny.
“A p…p…p…” stuttered Fliss.
“Piglet?” finished Lyndz quickly. “Er…”
Rosie and I just shook our heads dumbly.
Mum waved us over to the breakfast table and carried on chatting. “No, it doesn’t ring any bells here. It was only a few weeks old, you say? It’ll be missing its mother then, poor little thing! Right you are then, Janet – see you later.”
CLUNK went the receiver. CLUNK went our hearts. Now what? This was a serious twist in proceedings.
“I think we should pay a little return visit to Animal World this afternoon, don’t you, girls?” said Mum.
My heart stopped completely. Everyone else looked as panicked as I felt. Did she suspect? Did she, in fact, know? Mums can be telepathic like that, sometimes.
“To help with any enquiries, you know,” continued Mum, turning her attention to the washing machine and pulling out sheets and socks. “Going back there might trigger a memory or two, which could help. What do you think?”
“Yeah, great idea, Mrs Thomas!” said Kenny suddenly. “We’re on for that, aren’t we guys?”
Fliss, Rosie, Lyndz and I all swivelled round to glare at Kenny. What was she thinking of? Did she want us to get into even more trouble?
One look at my best mate’s face told me that she was up to something. She’d suddenly got this fiery look of excitement in her eyes – the kind of look Pepsi gets when we start rattling her lead before we take her for a walk. It could only mean one thing. Kenny had a plan!
I could see that the others had figured out the same thing. So we ate our breakfast as quickly as we could, and then sprinted upstairs like we didn’t have a second to lose.
“Right, what’s the plan, Kenz?” I said breathlessly as I slammed the door behind us.
“It better be good,” warned Fliss.
Everyone looked expectantly at Kenny.
Kenny shrugged, and did a handstand up against the wall. “Who says I’ve got a plan?”
“Come on, Kenny, we’ve seen that look a million times!” begged Lyndz. “Tell us!”
“Tell us, or we’ll tickle you to death,” threatened Rosie.
Kenny came down from her handstand so slowly, I could have screamed! She loves spinning out stuff like this.
“Well,” she said, looking round at our expectant faces. “We go back to Animal World, right?”
“We do?” said Rosie with a frown.
“And we take Sausage with us, right?” I said, suddenly realising what Kenny’s plan was.
“Right!” said Kenny. “We smuggle Sausage back in, and let him go!”
“But—” began Lyndz.
“That snake won’t eat him, Lyndz,” said Fliss, suddenly figuring it out. “Frankie’s mum said he was rare. They wouldn’t feed a rare pig to a python, would they?”
Rosie gave a sudden whoop. “We’re in the clear!”
“Not yet we’re not,” I cautioned. “We’ve still got to get Sausage out of the shed, into a bag, into the car and back to Animal World, haven’t we?”
“Oh, don’t be such a killjoy, Frankie!” Kenny scoffed. “You’re just jealous ’cos you didn’t think of it first!”
“Don’t be stupid, Kenny,” snapped Rosie. “It’s your fault we got into this mess in the first place, so don’t you forget that!”
“Humph,” said Kenny, and did a sulky forward roll. She always hates it when she’s in the wrong.
“OK, so we’ll have to get Sausage out of the shed just before we leave, right?” I said.
Rosie tugged on my jumper.
“Then – yeah, I’ll be with you in a sec, Rosie – then we’ll put him back in Lyndz’s bag,” I continued.
“I’ll do that,” said Lyndz. “He trusts me.”
Rosie tugged on my jumper again, only harder this time. “Er, Frankie…” she began.
“Just a second, Rosie,” I said impatiently. “We’re just getting to the complicated bit of the plan. So Lyndz puts Sausage in the bag, and she gets into the car last, so no one notices anything suspicious. Kenny, you—Rosie, stop pulling my sleeve, will you? Can’t you wait a second or two?”
“That depends,” said Rosie carefully.
“You’ve gone white!” said Fliss, looking concerned. “Are you OK?”
“Not really,” said Rosie. Lifting her hand like some ghoulish kind of spook, she pointed slowly out of the window.
Like we were all in slow motion, we turned our heads to look out of the window.
The first thing I noticed was that the shed door was open. The second thing, and by FAR the most important thing, was that Sausage was happily snuffling his way through my dad’s vegetable patch.
You know how they say your life flashes past your eyes just before you die? Well, I got some serious flashbacks of all the awful things we’d done in the past, and all the trouble we’d got into. But something told me that nothing, absolutely zilch zero rien, was going to compare to the trouble we were in now.
I don’t think my feet touched the stairs. I literally flew down, sliding my hand down the banister for balance. The others zoomed after me, like it was some kind of Formula One race. And then, to make things even worse, I suddenly remembered that Mum was about to put out the washing! Sausage was going to be discovered at any moment!
Swerving round the corner, I cannoned straight into Dad, coming out of his study.
“Whoa…” he began.
But then – bump, bump, bump – everyone else bumped straight into me. It was a miracle we didn’t all end up in a heap on the floor, to be honest.
“Hey!” protested Dad angrily. “This is not a race track, Francesca! You are going dangerously fast – Izzy could have—”
“Sorrysorrysorry!” I said breathlessly. “Sorry Dad, got to rush!”
And I put on a final burst of speed into the kitchen.
Mum was just picking up the washing basket as we shot through the door. We gave her such a fright that she dropped the basket. There was a horrible clatter, and socks and pants and a few of Dad’s shirts rolled out on to the floor.
“Girls!” said Mum furiously. “Whatever’s got into you, stampeding into my kitchen like that?”
“Just got to go into the garden, Mum,” I panted, trying to edge past her.
“Won’t be long, Mrs T,” said Kenny, trying to get round the other side of her.
But when Mum gets cross, she swells into a kind of elephant, and is reeeally tough to squeeze past.
“Just one second, young ladies…” she began.
Cue: my baby sister. When the washing basket hit the kitchen floor, iron-lungs Izzy had got a horrible fright. And – I don’t know if you have baby brothers or sisters, but have you noticed the way they screw themselves up for a massive screaming fit? Their faces go red, their mouths get huge, and they go dead quiet as they suck in all the air they can manage. And then, oh boy. Then, they…
“WAAAAHH!” screeched Izzy.
Mum’s attention was instantly diverted. “Shush, shush, shush!” she crooned, scooping up Izzy and cuddling her tight.
“Now!” hissed Kenny, shoving me
towards the kitchen door.
“Run for it, Frankie!” whispered Rosie encouragingly.
But Mum swivelled round again and glared at us all, joggling a shrieking Izzy on her hip.
“Now look what you’ve done!” she snapped. “Is there no end to this disturbance? Your poor sister will be a bag of nerves when she grows up, Francesca.”
I’m always in serious trouble when Mum calls me Francesca. And she hadn’t even seen the pig in the garden yet.
Mum’s next words nearly made me faint.
“I’m going to take Izzy out for a breath of fresh air and see if I can calm her down,” said Mum severely. “When I come back in, I expect all that washing to be back in the basket, and you lot ready with the clothes pegs to hang it out. Do I make myself clear?”
“No!” squeaked Rosie, leaping for the kitchen door.
“I’ll take her, Mrs Thomas,” Fliss volunteered quickly, holding out her hands. “My mum says I’m ever so good with babies.”
“Er, I think there’s someone at the door, Mrs Thomas,” said Lyndz hopefully.
But I could see that another Frankie stunt was required to get us out of this one. Oh well, here goes, I sighed. I was in plenty of trouble already, so what difference would one more little incident make?
“MOUSE!” I yelled.
OK, I know we’d done that one before. But it had worked last time, so…
Pepsi shot into the kitchen in a blur of black fur. I guess she recognised the word from the night before. Now we had Pepsi’s barking, Izzy’s howls and Mum’s furious “Not again!”s to deal with. We all had to cover our ears, or we’d have gone deaf. It was crazy in there, even by Sleepover Club standards.
But it was worth it. This time, Lyndz managed to get past Mum and out into the garden. We were safe! Lyndz would catch Sausage, stick him back in the shed, and we’d be sorted!
Mum was pretty much speechless by the time we’d caught Pepsi and I’d confessed that I’d mistaken a bit of fluff in the corner for a mouse. She hadn’t even noticed Lyndz slinking out of the kitchen door. Izzy had tired herself out so much that she suddenly fell asleep mid-scream. The silence was wonderful.