Читать книгу The 24 Hour Sleepover Club - Fiona Cummings, Louis Catt - Страница 4

I hope I haven’t kept you waiting. It’s a miracle that I’m here at all. With the strop that my parents are in, I never thought I’d see daylight again! Well, I suppose we did go a bit far this time. Quick! Keep your head down and we’ll just hurry past the park gates. Phew! Right let’s sit down and catch our breath and I’ll tell you all about it.

Thanks to our 24-hour sleepover, I’m banned from that park. We all are. All the members of the Sleepover Club that is. The Fearless Five my dad calls us, or at least he used to. Now it’s the Flipping Stupid Five! OK, what we did was a bit OTT. But we were only trying to get even with our deadly rivals Emma Hughes and Emily Berryman, or as we call them, the M&Ms. How were we to know that flinging a few jellies and spraying a bit of Silly String would cause so much chaos? Still, it was worth it to see the look on their faces. Wicked!

It all started with us planning our 24-hour sleepover. That is probably the most important date on our calendar because it’s kind of where the whole Sleepover Club began.

You remember Kenny, don’t you? You know, the crazy one. Well, we’ve been best friends for ever. When we were both about five or six and the funfair came to Abbey Park in Leicester, I went to it with her family. Then I stayed the night at her house. I hadn’t really slept away from home before and I thought it was pretty cool. The next year we went to the fair with my parents and Kenny stayed at my house. Well, then we started hanging around with Lyndz at school. She’s such a scream, although she’s kind with it. And Fliss kind of tagged along. You couldn’t possibly forget Fliss, she’s so tidy and organised. She’s probably the only person in the world who matches the colour of her knickers to the rest of her clothes!

The first sleepover we all had together was after we’d been to the funfair. It was class! That’s when we decided we ought to form the Sleepover Club. We have heaps of sleepovers now, but this one is our anniversary. That’s why we have a 24-hour sleepover, to make it special. We go to the funfair in Leicester on Saturday night, then on Sunday we have a picnic by ourselves in the local park.

This will be Rosie’s first 24-hour sleepover. Of course you remember Rosie. She’s new and she seemed like a bit of a wet weekend at first. She’s actually pretty smart. And sensible too, which makes a change from the others!

“Francesca, you’re straying from the point!” my teacher, Mrs Weaver, would say. People only ever call me Francesca when they’re cross with me. You can call me Frankie.

Anyway, you want to know why we’re banned from the park, don’t you? And the funfair as well, actually. You might as well make yourself comfortable because we’ll be here for a while.

We always know roughly when we’re going to have our 24-hour sleepover because the fair comes around the same week every year. But as soon as we find out the exact dates we get a bit wild. The thing is, we’re a bit hyper anyway because it’s towards the end of the summer term and we know we’ve got the summer holidays to look forward to. Bliss!

This year, Kenny rushed up to us in the playground before school all red in the face and grinning from ear to ear. She shoved a crumpled poster of the fair at me. She said it just happened to have fallen off a fence as she walked past.

“The sleepover’s on for Saturday the 6th,” she shrieked, jumping up and down on the spot. Lyndz, Fliss and me screamed and did high fives.

“I don’t see what’s so special,” said Rosie, looking at the rest of us as though we’d just escaped from a zoo. “We’re always having sleepovers.”

“Yeah, but this one isn’t just a case of come in, stay the night, go home again,” said Kenny. “We’ve got a whole day together doing exactly what we want to do.”

“Oh right, so you get to be a doctor and Fliss gets married to Ryan Scott, does she?” asked Rosie innocently.

“But I’m not old enough to get married,” said Fliss.

“Derr!” said the rest of us together, tapping our heads. Fliss, as you probably remember, had her sense of humour removed at birth.

“No, it’s just cool hanging out together. Like Friends,” I said.

“With no boys,” added Lyndz. She has four brothers and, as far as she is concerned, boys are a serious waste of space.

“Just Molly The Monster instead,” said Fliss.

We all groaned. Molly is Kenny’s sister from hell. She’s only a year or so older than Kenny but they’re about as different as Oasis and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. The worst thing is that they share a bedroom so she always has to be part of our sleepovers there. It’s like having a huge tub of Cookie Dough ice-cream and finding a maggot in the middle of it.

“Look, my pathetic sister is NOT going to spoil things for us,” said Kenny loudly. “We’ll strap her on to the Wheel of Fear at the fair, lock her in the bathroom when we have our midnight feast, and she is absolutely NOT coming to our picnic in the park on Sunday.”

Just then, Emily Berryman walked past with her nose in the air as usual. Emma Hughes was right behind her. I swear that those two must be joined by a piece of elastic, because one never goes anywhere without the other.

“Sounds like the babies have another of their exciting sleepovers planned. And going for a picnic in the park, too. How childish!” snorted one M&M, just loud enough for us to hear.

“It’s time they grew up and did more mature things like us, isn’t it?” sneered the other one.

“Yeah, sure, like prancing about in front of a mirror and telling each other how wonderful we are,” snarled Kenny. “Get a life!”

As they were walking away, a group of little girls came pirouetting around the corner and bumped straight into the M&Ms, nearly knocking them over.

“Oh, it’s you!” snapped Emma Hughes to one poor girl. “If you were as good at dancing as you think you are, you would be able to see where you were going!” The little girl went bright red, her eyes filled with tears and she hurried away.

“Are you all right?” Fliss called after her.

“That’s one of my brother’s friends,” she explained to the rest of us. “I think it’s a bit much when the M&Ms are so nasty to a six-year-old. What has she ever done to them?”

Emma Hughes ignored Fliss and said to Emily Berryman, “There are just too many babies round here, aren’t there?” And they both sniggered as they walked away.

When they had gone, Kenny said, “One day I swear that I’m going to teach those two a lesson.”

Of course, we believed her. We just didn’t realise how soon that day would come!

I was so excited when I got home that evening. I was just planning what to wear for the 24-hour sleepover when the phone rang.

“It’s that crazy friend of yours, Frankie,” Dad called upstairs. That had to be Kenny. “Try not to hog the phone all night, will you?”

My dad thinks he’s so funny, but I guess I do spend a long time gossiping on the phone.

I was going to ring you, Kenny. Do you think jeans and a crop top will be all right for the fair? And what are you going to wear for the picnic?

All I could hear at the other end of the line was a sort of sniffing.

That is you, isn’t it, Kenny?

This time there were a few gulps among the sniffs.

Have you got some kind of disease?

I can’t have the 24-hour sleepover, she sobbed.

What? Why?

Dad’s going to be away at some stupid conference and mum has promised to go and see my Aunty Mary in Norwich that weekend. I told Mum that we’d all stay here without them, but she went ballistic.

I wonder why? I laughed; then I had one of my brainwaves.

Hang on, Kenny. You can’t have it at your house, but what’s to stop me having the sleepover here?

Your parents?

Don’t be daft, Kenny. This is Frankie you’re speaking to, not Fliss. I’ll talk my parents round. Easy-peasy.

Frankie, you’re the best. See you tomorrow. And good luck!

Am I clever or am I clever?

Of course, once I’d promised I had to come up with the goods, didn’t I? So I went into the lounge where Mum and Dad were watching some boring television programme. I settled down on the settee between them and pretended that I was really interested in it, too.

“All right, Frankie, what do you want?” asked Dad.

“Well, I was just thinking,” I said, very innocently. “If you had a friend who had invited you and some of his mates round for a weekend… ”

“Y-es,” said my dad, suspiciously.

“And then he found that for some reason he couldn’t use his own home that particular weekend, I wouldn’t mind a bit if you all came here instead.”

Mum let out a loud laugh.

“I’m sure you wouldn’t,” she said.

“And I was wondering… ” I continued.

“You were wondering if you could invite your friends round here for your next sleepover. Right?” He’s very quick, my dad.

“It’s the 24-hour sleepover, actually,” I reminded them.

They both groaned.

“Not the fair, anything but the fair,” gasped Mum, pretending to collapse on the settee.

She loves it really, so does Dad. They went on more rides than we did last year.

“OK, OK. I think we can cope with the Fearless Five for 24 hours, don’t you?” my dad said.

“Thanks, Dad, you’re the greatest,” I said, planting a big kiss on his forehead. I gave Mum a big hug and a kiss too and danced up to my room. I still had to decide what to wear for the picnic.