The Sleepover Club Surfs the Net

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“Will there be anything on Boyzone?” asked Rosie.

“No, Leicester City!” shouted Kenny.

“What about horses?” asked Lyndz.

“I thought we were supposed to be finding out about Vikings!” said Fliss. “Mum told me that this would happen. She said that the Internet is just a big time-waster. I mean what can it tell you about Boyzone that you can’t read in a magazine?”

Sometimes Fliss really annoys me. She was only putting the Internet down because she didn’t know anything about it. And I don’t suppose her mum did either. I was determined to prove them wrong, so I angrily typed ‘Boyzone’ in the ‘search’ box. After a few seconds, a list of web sites devoted to the band popped up. There were loads of them. I pointed the mouse, and clicked on the first one. A picture of Boyzone appeared on the screen. Lots of other boxes surrounded it, so I chose the ‘interview’ box and then clicked on the ‘audio’ box next to it. Suddenly the room was filled with their lovely voices.

“Isn’t this just great!” I squeaked with excitement.

“It’s totally wicked!” giggled Rosie.

“And you certainly don’t get that in a magazine!” laughed Lyndz.

Fliss looked kind of fascinated, but I knew that she wouldn’t say anything. If Fliss has made a stand about something, she doesn’t back down easily.

“What about Leicester City now?” Kenny pleaded.

“OK, OK, I’ll see what I can do,” I said.

Sure enough, there was a web site devoted to Leicester City which Kenny thought was really great. It had a section for young supporters and everything.

It looked as though Kenny was going to hog the computer all night, so I said, “Well I guess we ought to look up those Vikings. We don’t want to disappoint Mrs Weaver and the M&Ms now, do we?”

I promised Lyndz that we’d look up horses another time, and typed ‘Vikings’ into the ‘search’ box on the screen. I held my breath. I mean, it would be just my luck if I’d been raving to Mrs Weaver about how much information I’d found about Vikings on the Internet, and there really wasn’t anything at all. Well, let me tell you – I needn’t have worried about that. There were just so many sites about them, we didn’t know where to start.

We went into some of the web sites, but we knew that they weren’t for us. They looked kind of boring with too many long words and no pictures. Fliss looked very smug when she saw them. But then we hit gold. There was this really brilliant web site that told you loads of stuff about what Vikings ate and wore. But better than that, it also had loads of pictures and – get this – an audio track too. It was like a soundtrack of the stuff Vikings would have heard in their everyday lives. Kind of spooky, huh? Even Fliss had to admit that it was pretty awesome.

“I’ve got to write some of this stuff down!” shrieked Rosie, reaching for her bag.

“Me too!” yelled Lyndz.

“I’ll remember it all, no problem,” said Kenny, her eyes glued to the screen. But even she jotted down a few notes when she thought no one was looking.

“Hey you guys,” I laughed. “You do realise that we’re doing homework without anyone breathing down our necks about it? It’s a bit worrying!”

“Maybe the Internet’s turning us into little swots!” shrieked Kenny. “Ah no, anything but that!”

She pretended to start shaking. Then, clutching her head, she collapsed on to the floor. That was our cue to dive on top of her and create a human sandwich.

“I thought it was too good to be true!” said Mum, coming into the room. “I knew all that silence couldn’t last!”

She went over to the computer and checked that the Internet had switched itself off.

“Well was that any help then?” she asked. “I mean surfing the Net, NOT the human pile-up!”

“Totally!”

“It was excellent!”

“So cool!”

“Really brilliant!” That was Fliss. I couldn’t help smiling when she said that. And it was Fliss who reminded Mrs Weaver the next morning that she’d asked me to report back about Vikings on the Internet.

I explained about the web site and the noises and everything, and the others chipped in. Before we knew where we were, we’d been talking for about ten minutes. And all the rest of the class seemed to be listening to us too. I’m not sure about the M&Ms though because I didn’t look at them. When we’d finished, Mrs Weaver asked everybody to give us a clap.

“Well girls, you’ve just solved a problem for me. As you know, it’s our class assembly next week and we’re doing it on the Vikings,” Mrs Weaver explained. “I was wondering who should have the major speaking parts. But as you five have shown so much enthusiasm by finding out about the topic yourselves, it seems only fair that you should be the ones to share your knowledge with the rest of the school!”

To be honest, I didn’t know what to think about that. I like to feel important, but I’m just not sure whether I like feeling important in front of the whole school. One great thing though was that the M&Ms looked absolutely furious!

I don’t know what your teacher’s like about class assemblies. I know some of them get really wound up, don’t they? Well, Mrs Weaver is actually quite cool. She let me, Kenny, Rosie, Lyndz and Fliss help her to write this one. We came up with some really great ideas to use and you could tell that she was dead impressed. The M&Ms were very freaked though. They’re so used to being the stars all the time; they couldn’t bear us getting all the attention. So of course we milked it for all we were worth! I kept bringing in things that I’d printed from the Viking web sites, and you should have seen their faces – MAD wasn’t in it!

We decided that we’d start the assembly with Vikings in a longship ready to land in Britain. We’d show them raiding a village, and then move on to how they lived their lives: the food they ate, the clothes they wore, general things like that. It seemed pretty straightforward at the time. But then we hadn’t bargained for our dumb classmates, had we?

Everything went really well right up to the day of the performance. I suppose we should have known that it was too good to last.

We’d had a rehearsal where Ryan Scott had got a bit carried away with the oar he was carrying from the pretend longship. He’d poked it up Fliss’s dress without her knowing. It was only when everyone started laughing that she realised that her knickers were on show to the whole class. I thought she was going to die of embarrassment. As punishment, Mrs Weaver told Scotty-chops that he couldn’t be a Viking any more. Major sulk-fest!

Anyway, on the morning of the assembly we were all really nervous. Me especially, because I had to introduce it to the whole school. I stood up and I could hear my voice trembling. It was awful.

The first thing that went wrong was that the model of the longship fell over. All the boys looked really stupid sitting on the PE benches pretending to row. So, in order to restore their street cred in front of their mates, they went absolutely berserk when they pretended to raid the town. It’s a good thing that Mrs Weaver had insisted on using flimsy paper swords or else there would have been blood all over the stage. Ryan Scott was still angry about not being a Viking, so he did his bit as a brave villager trying to prevent their raid. Only he did it a bit too well and refused to surrender. When it looked as though his fight with Danny McCloud was getting out of control, Kenny calmly walked on to the stage and bopped him one. He certainly didn’t expect that.

After that, everything seemed to go wrong. The M&Ms left grain scattered on the floor after their demonstration of Viking cooking. I’m sure they did that on purpose. Poor Fliss didn’t stand a chance when she was doing her supermodel impersonation demonstrating Viking fashion. She skidded and fell right over, taking Lyndz, who was narrating, with her.

By then the whole school was in an uproar, and Mrs Poole the headmistress had to step in to calm things down. It was dead embarrassing and Mrs Weaver looked furious.

“I wish I’d never heard about the stupid Vikings!” I whispered to Kenny as we were making our way back to our classroom.

“You and me both!” agreed Kenny.

“I wish we’d never been on the Internet,” hissed Fliss behind us. “If you hadn’t swanked about it so much, we wouldn’t have been so involved in the assembly in the first place. I’m sure that Mrs Weaver’s going to blame us for everything.”

Looking at Mrs Weaver’s face, I thought that Fliss was probably right.

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We were all really subdued as we trooped back into the classroom. We looked pretty funny still dressed in our Viking costumes, but nobody laughed. Even stupid Ryan Scott, who usually has a joke about everything, was silent.

When Mrs Weaver came in she just sat at her desk for five minutes not saying anything, just staring at us. It was awful. When she finally spoke her voice was very, very quiet, but we knew by the tone of it that she was very, very cross.

“I have been teaching for a very long time,” she told us. “And I have never been as ashamed of a class as I was of you just now. I do not expect World War Three to break out when we are trying to present an assembly about the Vikings. And I will not tolerate being made to look a laughing stock in front of the whole school.”

Big red blotches had begun to spread on her cheeks. I looked at Kenny and Rosie who both pulled faces at me. Lyndz had her head down and Fliss looked as though she was about to cry.

“I want you to take your maths books out and get on with your work quietly,” Mrs Weaver said. “And if I hear one peep out of any of you, I will not be responsible for my actions.”

Well, that was the worst morning at school ever. It didn’t get any better either. At break time we had to put up with stupid kids pointing and laughing at us. But it was worse at lunchtime when the dreaded M&Ms sidled over to us.

“I hope you’re happy,” hissed Emma Hughes. “It’s your fault that everything went wrong this morning. If you hadn’t been so la-di-da about the stupid Internet, Mrs Weaver would never have let you take over the assembly. Emily and I would have made a much better job of it.”

“At least now she knows that you’re not capable of doing anything properly,” said Emily Berryman in her gruff voice. “And she’ll never trust you with anything again!”

Then they both tossed their blonde hair and stalked away.

“They are joking, aren’t they?” whispered Fliss. “Mrs Weaver can’t treat us like this for ever, can she?”

“It’s Ryan Scott she should be cross with, acting like a mad axeman for no reason,” said Lyndz. “Although you did flatten him Kenny, which I don’t suppose looked very good.”

“He deserved it, he was ruining everything,” explained Kenny. “I should have flattened those stupid M&Ms as well, for turning the stage into a skating rink.”

“Yes, I really hurt myself when I fell,” moaned Fliss, rubbing her back.

“None of us came out of it very well, did we?” I asked. “I think we should prove to Mrs Weaver that we do know how to behave properly. Then she just might forget about the assembly.”

That afternoon we were extra good. We worked in total silence and we tidied up everywhere without being asked. Mrs Weaver was still angry though and it was a relief when the bell rang for home time.

“Thank goodness that’s over!” sighed Rosie. We were just getting all our stuff together when Kenny cartwheeled past us down the playground.

“Phew, that’s better!” she said when she was upright again. “I needed that. I’m sure all that keeping quiet isn’t good for you!”

Lyndz and Fliss were already at the school gates with Fliss’s brother Callum.

“What a bunch of losers!” he laughed when Kenny, Rosie and I joined them. “That assembly was funnier than the stuff you see on the telly. Only it wasn’t meant to be, was it? Ha, ha!”