Читать книгу The 24 Hour Sleepover Club - Fiona Cummings, Louis Catt - Страница 5

I never actually got round to choosing my clothes for the picnic. Instead I made cute little Change of Sleepover Venue cards for the others.

Pretty neat or what?

We have so many sleepovers at each other’s houses now that we never mind where we go. But having this one at my place did have one major advantage.

“No Molly The Monster!” shouted Lyndz and Fliss together when I handed them their change of venue cards.

“Yeah, she’s in a real mood!” laughed Kenny. “It’s wicked!”

“I didn’t think she liked us coming to stay at your place,” said Rosie.

“No, she doesn’t, but she was looking forward to going to the fair. And now she can’t because she’s got to go to Norwich with Mum. One-nil!” shouted Kenny, leaping about as though Leicester City had just won the FA Cup!

“I see the babies are getting excited again,” said Emma Hughes, who just happened to be stalking past us. “Have their mummies promised to take them to the fair, then?” She put on a really stupid, babyish voice.

“They’ll have to remember to take some spare nappies,” laughed her side-kick, Emily Berryman. “We all know what happens to babies when they get over-excited.” They cackled like two constipated hyenas and ran away. It took me all my time to stop Kenny rushing after them. I hate to think what she would have done if I’d let her go.

“They’re not worth it, Kenny,” said Lyndz. “Try not to let them get to you.”

“I can’t help it,” seethed Kenny, who was bright red in the face. “They just wind me up. I swear that I’m going to get even with them.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said putting my arm round her shoulder. I’d heard the same thing since we were five and we hadn’t exactly managed to get one over them yet.

Still, Kenny was my best friend and it was always wise to humour her.

“We’ll think of something really gruesome,” I said. “And then they’ll be sorry they were born.”

The whistle went for the start of school. We tried to hop all the way inside but Mrs Poole, the headmistress, screwed up her face and frowned at us. One of her looks could turn milk sour at ten paces. As soon as we saw her we walked normally into our classroom, then exploded into laughter. Apart from Fliss, of course. She was the colour of boiled beetroot. She just hates being told off, or, in this case, just looked at!

At break time we went to the studio to practise one of our dance routines. But when we got there, a group of young girls were already clustered outside watching someone dancing. They were the same girls who we’d seen dancing in the playground the day before. We looked into the studio to see who they were watching. Wouldn’t you know it, the stupid M&Ms had got there first.

“I don’t believe it!” shouted Rosie. “They’re starting to spoil all our fun.”

“And they can’t even dance properly!” smirked Lyndz.

“Somebody told me that the last time they took their dancing exams, a six-year-old got better grades than they did!” laughed Fliss. “Maybe those little girls are coaching them!”

We all laughed.

Inside the studio, Emma Hughes and Emily Berryman were thrashing about like flies caught in a cobweb. The music they were dancing to was some seriously gruesome classical number. Mum and Dad listen to a lot of classical stuff, and I actually quite like some of it, but this sounded like a couple of cats in a liquidiser!

“Do you suppose they’re trying to do something from Swan Lake?” asked Rosie. “You know, dying swans and all that.”

“I don’t know about dying swans,” snorted Kenny. “They look like dead ducks to me!”

The M&Ms must have heard us screaming with laughter, because they suddenly stopped dancing and started to stare at us.

“Uh-oh!” said Fliss. “I think it’s time we went.”

“No way!” snorted Kenny. “We’ve as much right to be here as they have.”

Emma Hughes came over to the door. “Are you picking up a few tips?” she asked in her sickly-sweet voice. She was talking to us and the young girls. “I don’t think there’s any hope of any of you ever making the Royal Ballet School. The zoo might be interested in some fairy elephants though!”

We just laughed, but the little girls looked a bit upset.

“Well,” sneered Kenny. “I’d rather be with some intelligent animals in a zoo than with sad no-hopers like you!”

“You’re only jealous!” spat out Emily Berryman, who had come to join her friend at the studio door.

“Get a life!” we all shouted, and ran down the corridor.

After that, Get a life! became our way of greeting the M&Ms. And boy did they hate it! The joke did wear a bit thin after a while though. Then we turned our attention to the 24-hour sleepover again. I just couldn’t wait!

You know when you’re really, really looking forward to something, you just wish it was happening right now, don’t you? The more you think about it, the more you want to close your eyes and sleep through all the days in between, and wake up and just start enjoying yourself. My gran says you shouldn’t wish your life away and I suppose she’s right. I do enjoy school and everything, but I was looking forward to the 24-hour sleepover so much, I just wanted it to be here, like NOW!

There were only ten days to go, anyway. We all made a sort of countdown in the back of our jotters. We wrote 10, 9, 8, 7, etc. down one side of the page and as each day went by we crossed off that number so we could see how many days we had left before the sleepover.

Rosie said that we really ought to write down something that had happened on each of the days we crossed off. A sort of miniature diary. This is what I wrote: