The 24 Hour Sleepover Club

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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:

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The worst thing about our sleepovers is the hanging around waiting for them to start. It’s all right for the others, they all have brothers and sisters. Don’t get me started on that one, you must already know how I feel about being an only one. That’s probably why I’m so bossy with the others in the Sleepover Club. I’m making up for all the times I should have been ordering people about at home! The others think I’m dead lucky having all the attention and stuff. I guess the grass is always greener on the other side, as my grandma says.

Anyway, this time the sleepover was going to start early for me and Kenny. With her mum going away and everything, she was going to come to my house at lunchtime. Kenny always plays badminton on Saturday mornings, so her mum dropped her off at the badminton club on the way to her sister’s in Norwich. Then she had arranged for my mum to collect Kenny from the club at twelve o’clock.

Mum and I waited inside the club and watched for a few minutes before they finished playing. Kenny was certainly thwacking the shuttlecocks around the court.

“You should do something like this, Frankie,” said Mum looking on in admiration. “It might stop you moping around so much.”

“Thanks, Mum, I do not mope around,” I said crossly. “I play netball at school, anyway.”

“Yes, but maybe you should do something like this on Saturdays. Ooh, good shot, Kenny!”

Once my mum gets something like that into her head, there’s no stopping her. But she has obviously never seen me trying to hit something with a racket. Pathetic is not the word!

Kenny came flying off the court towards us.

“Kenny, I’m impressed!” said Mum. “What do you think about to get all that power behind your shots?”

Good old Mum, she always has to delve into these things. I think that’s what being a lawyer does for you.

“Oh, that’s easy,” replied Kenny. “I just imagine that the shuttlecocks are the M&Ms’ heads!”

That shut Mum up.

I couldn’t believe it when it was almost five o’clock. I’d promised Mum that I would get my bedroom ready for the others as soon as we got back from collecting Kenny. But somehow we had got sidetracked. So we had a mad dash round, setting up the camp-bed and dusting down the bunk-beds.

Because there are five of us in the Sleepover Club now and only four beds, two of us usually have to share my bed. As Kenny is my best friend, and I’m used to her fidgeting about, it is usually her. Last time her feet were so freezing that I hardly got any sleep, so this time I insisted that we both sleep in our sleeping bags on the bed. And we decided that Lyndz might be safest in the bottom bunk, (after the camp-bed collapsed underneath her last time) with Fliss in the top one. Rosie is very sensible and I didn’t think she’d mind being on the camp-bed.

We’d just about finished rearranging my room for the sleepover when the doorbell went.

“It’s F-Time!” Kenny and I shouted together. That is sleepover-speak for Fun Time, or the start of our sleepover!

We dashed downstairs.

“You sound like a herd of elephants,” shouted my dad. “I think I might charge people to come round and look at you. Especially when the rest of those wild animals you call friends arrive.”

We opened the door to find Fliss standing there. She looked nothing at all like a wild animal, more like a small mouse. She wiped her feet about a million times, even though it wasn’t wet outside. Fliss’s mum is very hot on dirt. Getting rid of it that is. If she went on Mastermind, her specialist subject would be cleaning. And Fliss is going the same way.

“Fliss, for goodness’ sake stop wiping your feet and come in,” I moaned. Kenny and I both grabbed hold of one of her arms and almost carried her upstairs. Even Fliss was laughing by the time we had got to my room. We all flopped down on my bed.

“Oh no!” gasped Fliss, delving into her rucksack. “I think this lemonade’s going to explode!”

She pulled out a plastic bottle which was mainly full of cloudy bubbles. Kenny rushed over to the window with it, flung it open and unscrewed the bottle top. A fountain of liquid shot out.

“Oi! Watch it!” shouted a voice below. Fliss, Kenny and I all peeped out of the window. The lemonade had shot out all over Lyndz who was just walking up to the front door! I thought I was going to wet myself laughing. Lyndz just creased up, too. She was in a sort of crumpled heap on the doorstep when Dad opened it.

“I might have known it was you, Lyndsey,” said Dad in his mock-headmaster’s voice. “Oh no, not the hiccups. Please tell me you haven’t got the hiccups already!”

Lyndsey is famous for her hiccups, but she doesn’t usually get them so early in the sleepover. She gulped a few times and shook her head. We were spared them – for the moment.

“Thank goodness for that!” said my dad, patting his heart in fake relief. “OK, I think you’d all better give me your goodies for the midnight feast and tomorrow’s picnic. I’m not sure that I can cope with any more edible explosions. Frankie’s room is a big enough tip as it is!”