Kitabı oku: «Mega Sleepover 3»

I laid the news on Mum as soon as I got home.

“No way. You can’t have all your friends round tonight,” she said.

“But why not?” I wailed. “I’ve invited them now. It’s not fair!”

“I’ve got some of my friends coming this evening. I might be an old wrinkly, but I do have friends, you know, and I’m going to be far too busy entertaining them to cater for you lot as well,” she insisted.

“I thought it was your yoga night and we wouldn’t be in the way,” I said.

“It’s been cancelled. The teacher’s on holiday.”

I put on my sweetest, most pleading face. “Please, Mum… They’ll have eaten already by the time they get here. And we won’t take up any space. We’ll go straight up to my room and disappear. We’re having a summit conference,” I told her importantly.

“The summit of stupidity, if you ask me!” snorted Tom, who would happen to walk into the kitchen right then.

“It is not!” I said angrily.

“Tis.”

“‘Tisn’t!”

“Oh, stop being babyish, you two,” said Mum. “Look, if you want to see your friends tonight, Lyndsey, just make sure they bring their own crisps and biscuits, and keep out of the lounge at all costs. Okay?”

“Thanks, Mum!” I said, giving her a hug.

Frankie’s dad brought her, Kenny and Rosie over. Shortly afterwards, Andy, Fliss’s mum’s boyfriend, dropped Fliss off.

I’d already done a phone around about the food situation, and raided some of the emergency rations Mum keeps in the spare fridge, which sits next to the huge freezer in the garage.

I’d found a big tub of my favourite ice-cream, two packets of chocolate biscuits and a bumper crisp selection pack. Don’t ask me why there were crisps in the fridge. I guess Mum was being hassled by Ben and Spike and just shoved them anywhere to get rid of them. The crisps, I mean, not my little brothers.

Frankie’s dad brought in a six-pack of Cokes. Fliss had some bananas and a bottle of diet lemonade so I knew she had to be on one of her healthy eating kicks again. Rosie had some Jaffa Cakes. Kenny was carrying a weird looking cake. It was sort of pinky orange.

“Ugh! What’s that?” I asked her.

“Molly made it at school. It’s supposed to be carrot cake,” she explained. Molly is Kenny’s twelve-year-old sister.

“It’s bound to be horrible,” Fliss said. “She wouldn’t have let you have it if it hadn’t been. You know how much she hates us. She’s probably trying to poison us so she’ll never have to move out of the bedroom again.”

Molly and Kenny share a room and every time we spend the night there, she has to move in with Emma, Kenny’s oldest sister. Both of them hate having to share, and Molly’s always nasty about which of her possessions we mustn’t touch or go anywhere near. Last time we had a sleepover at Kenny’s, Molly was so strict about her precious Spanish costume doll that, after she’d gone, I took its knickers off and made it a little nappy out of some pieces of toilet paper held together with a safety pin.

She can’t have discovered it yet, otherwise she’d have gone ballistic and I’d have heard all about it from Kenny.

I made everyone take off their shoes before going in my room. We always kick our shoes off, anyway, and my room’s too small for loads of shoes. There’s no space to put anything and Dad still hasn’t made me the new bedroom in the attic he’s been promising me for over a year.

I took the cake off Kenny and looked for somewhere to put it, where it wouldn’t get damaged. My dressing table was far too full of stuff, so in the end I put the cake down on the floor, between the bottom of the bed and the window. Big mistake.

Meanwhile, everyone was cramming themselves on to my bed and on the carpet. There was no room for Rosie till we’d closed the door and she could sit with her back to it. That was great, because it meant no nosy brothers could get in.

Frankie remained standing. It was obvious she wanted to organise everything as usual.

“I’ve got this great idea,” she announced.

We all groaned. This was one of Frankie’s stock phrases, and it always led to trouble of some sort.

She ignored us. “How many Spice Girls are there?” she asked.

“Five, of course,” said Rosie.

“How many of us are there?”

“Five,” said Kenny, frowning.

Frankie grinned. Then she ripped open a crisp packet noisily and started cramming the contents into her mouth.

I sighed. Frankie loved ‘keeping us in suspenders’, as she put it.

“Come on,” I said. “Give us a clue.”

“Mm-mm-mm-mm,” she muttered through her munching.

“What?” we asked her.

She gave a big gulp and licked her crumby lips.

“Stars in Their Eyes,” she replied. “School version, of course. Why don’t we go in for it as the Spice Girls?”

“Yeah! Fantastic! Can I be Baby Spice?” yelled Fliss.

She took a flying leap off the end of the bed. There was a squelchy sound. Then silence. Then an awful scream. She’d landed right in Molly’s carrot cake and squashed it all over the carpet. Fliss is very fussy, just like her mother. She absolutely hates getting in a mess. When we saw bits of creamy orange sponge squidging between her bare toes, we all collapsed.

“Oh no, oh no, I think I’m going to wet myself,” giggled Rosie, which made us all laugh even more.

Then I heard Mum coming up the stairs.

“Girls, girls, what’s going on up here? Is everything all right?” she called out.

“Yes, yes,” I panted, between hoots of laughter. “Fliss just put her foot in it, that’s all!”

Luckily for us, the doorbell rang. Mum dashed down the stairs to answer it, giving me a chance to get a sponge from the bathroom and do some cleaning up.

When we’d all calmed down, we got down to some serious snacking and talking.

“Who’s going to be who, then?” asked Kenny.

“I think you should be Sporty Spice,” Frankie told her.

Although we all like sports and all play netball, Kenny is seriously sports mad. She never wears anything but jeans and sportswear. Tonight, she was wearing jeans and a Leicester City Football Club sweatshirt. They’re her favourite team. My dad and grandad are mad about them, too, and sometimes we all go to matches together.

We all agreed that Kenny was perfect for Sporty Spice and, to save arguments, we agreed that Fliss could be Baby Spice. She has the right colour of hair, after all.

It was a bit difficult choosing Ginger Spice, because none of us has got ginger hair. But my mum has a big trunk full of dressing up clothes, amongst which is a red wig she bought to wear at a fancy dress party. I felt sure she’d let me borrow it. So I became Ginger Spice.

We all thought Frankie was perfect for Scary Spice, because she’s such an extrovert. Although she doesn’t wear glasses, she’s got some sunglasses that the lenses keep falling out of. So she said she could just wear the frames.

“Don’t think I’m going to get my tongue pierced, though,” she said, with a shudder.

“You could stick a blob of chewing gum on it, to look as if it was,” suggested Kenny.

“Yes but when I sang, it would go flying out into the audience,” Frankie said.

“It might hit one of the M&Ms,” said Rosie, giggling at the thought.

“Right in the eye, with any luck,” I said.

Frankie laughed and spluttered crisps everywhere. As usual, we were all getting covered in crumbs. It’s as if, when we get into a room together, we become grot magnets and pick up every crumb, foodstain and drip going. It’s like magic. I think every bit of dropped food and spilt drink in the universe looks around and says, “Oh look, it’s the Sleepover Club, let’s go get ‘em!” and they all come whirling in our direction and go splot, all over us.

Four Spice Girls were decided. That left Rosie to be Posh Spice.

“But I’m not posh!” she protested.

“Your hair’s the right colour, though,” Fliss pointed out.

“Okay. Now, how about our clothes?” Frankie said. She was being the boss, as usual. None of us really minded, though. At least she got things done, so the rest of us could be lazy.

“Kenny’s all right, she can just wear what she normally wears,” said Fliss.

“And so can you, Fliss,” Rosie said. “That silver dress of yours is a bit like one that Emma wears.”

By ‘Emma’, she meant Baby Spice, of course, not Emma of the dreaded M&Ms, my very worst and dreadest enemy!

“There’s always Mum’s dressing-up box,” I said. “Anything we haven’t got, we’re bound to find in there. She’s even got some genuine stripy T-shirts from last time they were in fashion.”

“Cool,” said Frankie.

“Now that we’ve decided who we all are, how are we going to do our show? Mime to one of their records?” I asked.

“No way. I want to sing!” insisted Fliss.

The rest of us glared at her. We didn’t want to sing and get laughed at by all the boys in our school. Of course, she hoped Ryan Scott would hear her wonderful voice and fall madly in love with her. I tell you, Fliss is saddest of the sad!

“We’ve got to sing. They do on Stars in Their Eyes,” said Rosie. “Besides, I want to sing Say You’ll Be There.”

“No, we’ve got to do Wannabe!” yelled Frankie.

“Mama,” begged Fliss.

“Okay, okay,” Kenny said. “Tell you what we’ll do. We’ll put the CD on and try them all out and see which one we do the best.”

We soon found we had a mega problem. The louder we sang, the louder we had to turn the volume up in order to hear the Spice Girls. And the more we turned it up, the louder we had to sing, until we were screeching at the tops of our voices.

I switched the machine off in the middle of Mama.

“It’s no good,” I said. “We’ll just have to mime.”

“No, no!” Fliss wailed.

“Or else get hold of a karaoke tape with just the music on,” suggested Frankie.

That was the best idea anyone had had all day. In fact, we were so happy about it that we decided to eat our tub of ice cream, which was busy melting.

Before we could even pick up a spoon, doom struck in the shape of my oldest brother, Stuart. He hammered on my door and yelled, “Hey, Lyndz, you haven’t seen the food that was in the fridge in the garage, have you?”

My hand shot to my mouth and I felt quite ill.

Fliss let out a squeak like an electrocuted mouse.

Frankie groaned, “Oh, no,” then we all tried to be as quiet as anything.

But it was no good. Stu came barging in, totally ignoring my Keep Out notice on the door.

“Aha! Thought as much!” he said, swooping on the ice cream. Luckily, we hadn’t even got the lid off yet.

“I’ll have those chocolate biscuits, please. And the big bag of crisps,” he demanded.

“Er…” I went. The others had gone bright pink and were starting to giggle. “Shut up!” I hissed at them.

I saw Kenny trying to push the remains of one of the biscuit packets under the bed, but I had so much junk over there that it wouldn’t go.

“Don’t tell me you’ve scoffed the lot?” Stu said. “I’ve got Tony and Mick here for band practice. That food was for us. I bought it and hid it specially so that greedy pigs like you and Tom wouldn’t find it.”

I looked at my feet, wishing they’d disappear through a hole in the ground, with me following them. But no such luck.

“Sorry,” I said. “How was I expected to know that stuff was yours? Put your name on it next time.”

“Two pound fifty, that lot cost me. You can jolly well pay me back!” he said.

He went out, going, “Piglets. Oink, oink.”

I could hear his foul friends laughing. Foul fiends, I should say. Who’d have brothers?