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Dedication
For Blakeley and Keaton
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Have you been Invited to all these Sleepovers?
Sleepover Kit List
Copyright
About the Publisher
Come in, quick. Sit down. I’ve got something to ask you, and it’s dead serious.
Have you got a sister? A crummy big sister? The kind who hates to see you having fun and always tries to ruin things for you? Have you ever wanted to put a spell on that jealous sister? You know, make her disappear, grow warts, or turn into smelly frog-slime and slither off down some deep well? I have, ’cos my sister Molly really messed up things for the Sleepover Club at Hallowe’en. And it wasn’t funny (not at first, anyway). Mind you, when Frankie did her witchy thing and scared everyone half to death it was killing. The best. And when Rosie went haywire with the Curse of the Nerd’s Nose, that was something else.
But that wasn’t all.
There was Merlin (my pet rat) and his sneaky trail of rat’s droppings. There was the candlelight and the secret chants and all the dark, dark, mysterious goings-on. Then there was the trouble I got into for stealing bits of Molly…
Why she had to make such a fuss about a teeny weeny bit of belly-button fluff, goodness only knows! But that’s Molly for you. Always making a big deal. If only she was like my other sister, Emma. Emma’s my oldest sister and she’s all right, she is. Molly is different. Gruesome. Is it any wonder we call her Molly the Monster?
Look, I know I’m going on about Molly, but she nearly ruined our Sleepover Club, and that’s the most important thing in the world to me and my mates, as anyone knows.
Wait. D’you want to hear everything that happened? I bet you do. Okay, here goes… It started on a Friday night. (That’s our regular sleepover night, in case you don’t know.) It was right before Hallowe’en and the Sleepover Club was getting in the mood for a specially spellbinding time (spellbinding… get it? spells, potions, witches and stuff). See, my four friends were due at my house any minute. We wanted to work on our trick-or-treat stuff before the dreaded M&Ms, Emma Hughes and Emily Berryman, beat us to it. The M&Ms are our biggest enemies at school and they were sure to have nasty tricks up their sleeves. The gang had some great sleepover things planned: costumes, tricks, witchy games and creepy ghost stories all topped off with the most wicked midnight feast of black sweets. We had liquorice, Black Jacks, Wine Gums, Fruit Pastilles, jellybeans, Black Imps and best of all, black Jelly Babies! It was going to be the most coo-ell sleepover in history! But of course, Molly the Monster didn’t like that. Oh no. She had to create a scene the minute she heard about it.
“But Mu-um!” she whinged, stamping her silly foot. “Mum, you promised Jilly could sleep over next time we had swimming practice and it’s swimming practice tomorrow!”
Mum clapped her hand to her forehead. “Oh no!”
Of course Molly had to take advantage of the look on Mum’s face, by whining, “Kenny can’t have our bedroom tonight, Mum. You promised!”
“I just didn’t realise it fell on Kenny’s sleepover night.”
“She can have her baby sleepover tomorrow,” said Molly. “Saturday.”
“Saturdays are out while the Cuddington Ballroom Contests are on,” sighed Mum. “I’ve got customers booked up for the next four weeks.” (Mum does hairdressing at home, and while the Ballroom Contests were on she had glamorous grannies lining up to get their purple rinses and perms.)
“Our sleepover’s tonight. The gang’s already on their way,” I protested.
“Mum promised me,” Molly said in that annoying singsong voice she always gets when she thinks she’s got one over me. “And anyway Jilly’s on her way too… with her mum.”
“Too bad the Sleepover Club got in first!” I retorted.
“Too bad for you, Laura McKenzie.” Molly made a face at me. But she waited for Mum to leave the kitchen before she gave me one of her big, fat pokes. “Too bad ’cos I’m having my friend over to stay tonight no matter what. So you can forget your soppy Sleepover Club.”
That did it.
How dare she call the Sleepover Club soppy? Our Sleepover Club is the best, the most brilliant fun in the world, and nobody calls it names. For a start it’s got me, Kenny, in it (Laura McKenzie to people who want to get on the wrong side of me). But it’s also got my best mate Frankie (Francesca Thomas) in it, so that makes it fantabulous, ’cos Frankie’s a real laugh. Then there’s Lyndz (Lyndsey Collins) the soft-hearted giggly one, Fliss (Felicity Proudlove) the sugar-and-spice one and Rosie Cartwright the most down-to-earth grown-up one, altogether the five most coo-ell girls in Cuddington School.
And we are not soppy!
That’s why when Molly called us that, I had to get my own back by pretending to sigh a huge great sigh. “What a shame there won’t be room for your dear little friend to sleep over…” I went. “I s’pose the only thing you can do is camp out in the garage.
’Course, you’ll have to share your sleeping bag with Merlin…” Molly hates my rat more than a double dose of poison. “I’m sure Merlin would love to nibble your toes.”
That put the King in the cake.
Molly went for me. I went for her. And in no time we were rolling about on the floor like those mad wrestlers you get on telly.
“Ooof!”
“Ouch!”
“Aaargggh!”
It was well good. And I was winning too, when Mum had to spoil it by coming back into the kitchen.
“Stop it you two! Stop it right now!”
“She started it…”
“You started it!”
“I don’t care who started it. Just stop it, or else!”
So because Mum sounded like she meant business this time, my dear sister and I did what she said, although Molly had to carry on making dorky faces at me behind Mum’s back.
“Now listen to me,” Mum ordered. “I’ve just been on the phone to Mrs Thomas, and she says since it’s an emergency the Sleepover Club can decamp over at Frankie’s tonight.”
“But everyone’s coming here!” I couldn’t bear to think of my spider and web decorations upstairs going to waste. “Mum, I’ve been decorating my room all afternoon.”
“I’m sorry, Kenny,” said Mum.
“So-rry,” mimicked Molly, being her usual super-annoying self. But before I had a chance to thump her, I saw something that would shut her up good and proper.
I saw it loom up out of the dark and float eerily up to the kitchen window, like something out of a horror movie. A sight so gruesome, so horrible, that it sent shivers all the way down to my size three trainers. It was big. It was green. And it had wicked red-rimmed eyes.
“Aaaargh!” screamed Molly, seeing it for herself. “It’s a witch!”
“A what?”
“A witch at the window!”
Sure it was a witch. But I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t shocked. Not me. I just opened my mouth and yelled at the top of my voice:
“Frankie!”
I raced to the front door, and yanked it open. And, with the force of a jet-propelled broomstick, the wicked witch herself fell across our hall floor in a heap.
“Come in!” I laughed as the rest of the Sleepover Club tumbled in on top of her. “Oh, I see you already did!”
“Heh, heh, heh…” cackled Frankie-the-witch, looking up at me from the pile of my friends. “Want a bite of my poisoned apple?”
“Save it for Molly,” I said. “She deserves it.” I helped Frankie with her pointed hat while the rest of the Sleepover Club tried to untangle themselves from the heap of sleeping bags, sweets, cuddly toys, pillows, bags and Hallowe’en costumes strewn across the floor.
“You look well ugly!” I told her, dead admiring.
“I know.”
“Molly’s face!” giggled Lyndz, crawling about the hall floor, collecting all the scattered sweets. “She thought it was a real witch come to cast a spell on her.”
“No such thing,” said Fliss in her usual bossy way, as she folded up her sleepover kit ultra neatly. Fliss is a bit scared of supernatural things and she tries to cover it up by acting superior. She’s also a total neatness freak, in case you didn’t know. “Hope you’ve not squashed my cake, Rosie,” she fussed.
“Oops.” Rosie, who’s known for being a bit of a klutz, went red. “Let me check…”
“Don’t bother, Rosie,” I told her glumly. “The Sleepover Club’s not stopping.”
“What!”
“But it’s sleepover night!”
“I know. It’s over at Frankie’s instead.”
“Mine?” Frankie’s voice sounded muffled behind her green plastic mask. “But we had it at mine last time.”
“I know. Molly’s messed everything up, as usual.”
There were moans of “typical” and “what a Monster”. But before we had a chance to think up any worse names for my meddling sister, the doorbell rang and the monster herself flounced out of the kitchen and pushed past me.
“Out the way, little kids,” she said, shoving Frankie-the-witch rudely. “I’m having my friend to stay over now. So your baby sleepovers are numbered…”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah!”
“What d’you mean?”
Molly looked smug as she delivered her killer blow. “Jilly’s staying here Fridays now. So the Sleepover Club’s out!”
We all gaped at her. Then Frankie piped up:
“That’s what you think! Our Sleepover Club has rights!” Frankie will always stand up for herself in a fight, especially if she’s wearing witch’s talons and a pointy hat.
“Rights for you load of babies? You must be joking!” sneered Molly.
“We’re not babies!”
“Yes you are!”
“No we’re not!”
As you can see, things were getting out of hand, and Total War probably would’ve broken out if Jilly’s mum herself hadn’t peeped through the letterbox.
“Hello,” she said, in a friendly voice. “Anyone going to let us in?”
This was definitely not the moment to start fighting. So, still boiling, we decided to cool it and plot our revenge over at Frankie’s instead.
Because something Had To Be Done.
It’s not that we minded sleeping over at Frankie’s for the second week running. Frankie’s got a huge bedroom with extra bunk beds, so it’s well nice having our sleepovers there. (And as Rosie said, a sleepover is a sleepover.) No, we didn’t mind so much about staying at Frankie’s. It’s just that, as Frankie said, “It’s the principle of the thing. If Molly starts messing up our sleepovers, who knows what will happen next?”
And the gang agreed.
That’s why I did what I did. The horrible, hairy deed itself. I mean, no point in letting a fat, juicy spider go to waste is there?
Carting our stuff through the streets was brilliantly creepy. It was so dark and silent that Frankie-the-witch kept cackling and pretending to put a spell on the houses.
“Eye of newt, toe of bat,
Light of the full moon,
Get lots of sweets for Trick-or-treat…
’Cos we are coming soon!”
“Ooo, ooo…” I chanted, waving my hands.
“We’ll put a spell on you, if you don’t!”
But Fliss, whose mum doesn’t approve of spells and stuff, was not having any of this. “Why don’t we practise our 5ive routine?” she said, ignoring our class act.
“Not now!”
“Why? We’ve got loads of room out here…”
“NO!”
’Course, in the end Lyndz, seeing that Fliss was desperate to get off the scary subject of spells and witches, saved her, as usual. Lindz loves to rescue things. If there was a flea drowning in her tea, she’d probably fish it out and give it The Kiss of Life. “Come on, you two,” she said, doing a 5ive-type kick. “Fliss is right. We’ve got loads of room to practise our routine here.”
So we gave in.
At least, we tried. We tried five times to dance down the street and sing like our current favourite boy band, but we were so loaded up with stuff it was impossible to do the movements properly. Frankie of course was determined to put some witchy bits into our routine, so she stuffed her rolled-up sleeping bag between her legs and pretended to fly on it down the street. She made us laugh so much our singing went warbly. It was well funny.
Rosie kept dropping things too. She couldn’t dance two steps without offloading something. While she was picking up one thing she’d drop two, then three…In the end she just threw everything down in a pile and plonked herself on top. “I give up.”
“Me too,” said Frankie, unrolling her sleeping bag right there on the pavement as if it was the most normal thing in the world. “It’s way past my bedtime.” Then, cool as a cucumber, she climbed into her sleeping bag, pulled her pointy hat down to her nose, and pretended to go to sleep.
I told you Frankie was a laugh, didn’t I?
Everyone cracked up and poor Lyndz was almost wetting herself. “Oh, stop, stop…” she gasped, clutching her stomach.
“Hey!” Frankie-the-witch stuck her long nose over the edge of her sleeping bag. “Can’t a person get some sleep round here?”
That did it. On a silent signal, we unrolled our sleeping bags and laid them out, on the pavement, alongside Frankie. All of us except Fliss, Chief Inspector of the Dirt Patrol, that is.
“You’ll catch a disease,” she predicted darkly.
“Good. Then Molly will be in deep doom forever,” I said, pretending to wash my face and brush my teeth before settling down for the night. “It’s Molly’s fault we’ve been thrown out on to the streets, anyway. I think we should get the papers to come and take a photo, then she’d really get it.”
“Yeah,” giggled Lyndz. “I can see the headlines now: “Sleepover Club Is Streets Ahead.”
We laughed, but Fliss was still in a flap, going on about us ruining our clothes. She’s the only one in our gang who’s into clothes and icky romantic stuff, probably because of her Barbie-doll looks. “Get up, ple-ease,” she cried in the end. “I bet dogs have weed on that pavement…”
“Not at this luxury hotel,” said Rosie, who was making a night table out of her flattened bag by neatly laying out her hairbrush, headband, toilet bag and diary.
“It’s not a hotel.”
“’Tis to us.”
“Well, I’m not stopping,” announced Fliss. “And you’ll be sorry if you do!” And with that she grabbed her sleepover kit, and marched off down the street with her nose in the air.
“She’ll be back,” said Frankie without moving. Actually Frankie hadn’t moved since she’d rolled over and pretended sleep. “Fliss can’t bear to miss a sleepover.”
“Maybe she’s gone to tell the papers,” I offered hopefully.
“Tell her mum, more like.”
But Fliss wasn’t doing either. In fact, she hadn’t gone very far at all.
We went on wondering where she was for a bit, but there’s only so much time you can waste worrying at a sleepover. So soon we were telling jokes and sharing black sweets, there on the pavement, as if it was the most normal sleepover in the world. And we got so carried away by our street camp-out that by the time the ghost appeared, Fliss was the last thing on our minds.
“Whhhhoooo-ooooo…”
“Omigosh it’s…!”
“Hooo-whhooooo…”
“Quick!”
“Run!”
And in a crazy jumble of sleeping bags, trapped feet and panic, the four of us did the Sack Race of the Century right up to Frankie’s front doorstep, screaming loud enough to wake the dead.
Which only goes to prove, you can’t keep a Sleepover girl down.
Fliss may be the world’s most finicky fusspot but she can still play a wicked ghost when she wants. Frankie said it was the moans that made her so spooky, but I reckon it was the sleeping bag over the head. You should’ve heard our screams as we tried to bunny-hop our way over to Frankie’s. Reckon the whole of Cuddington did. All the dogs in the neighbourhood went mad, barking and howling, especially Pepsi, Frankie’s dog. Frankie’s mum said we nearly gave her a heart attack.
Hey, have you ever noticed how screaming makes you starving hungry? It does, you know, because after the Sack Race of the Century everyone was ready for Round Two of the sleepover feast.
Luckily we had masses of stuff.
As well as all the sweets, we had almost-black sausages on sticks, Marmite sandwiches, black grape squash and Fliss’s Black Forest cake. We laid everything out in the middle of Frankie’s bedroom floor and made a magic circle round the edge of it with her stone collection. It looked dead good. Then we did a little witch dance around it, holding hands and chanting, “Feast, Feast, Feast…”
Pepsi went barmy, especially when Frankie held her paws so she could dance with us on her back legs.
“Ta-daa!” went Rosie. “It’s Pepsi the doggie dance star!”
“Woof, woof!”
“Take a bow, Pepsi,” said Frankie and Pepsi actually bent her daft black head.
“Woof! Woof, woof!” She loved it.
After that we got down to some serious eating. When we’d demolished the lot, we flopped on the floor, stuffed, and told each other Hallowe’en jokes. They were daft, but they made you laugh. Here are some of my favourites:
Question: Why does a witch ride a broomstick?
Answer: Because a vacuum cleaner’s too heavy.
Question: What’s a witch’s favourite computer programme?
Answer: Spellcheck
Question: What big, green and smells?
Answer: A witch’s nose.
Good, aren’t they? My very very best, favourite was:
Lovestruck witch to handsome prince: What do I have to give you to make you kiss me?
Prince: Chloroform!
That one cracked us all up.
Lyndz laughed so much she got the hiccups. “Hic! What a lovely surprise for the handsome prince when he came round!”
“Talking of surprises…” I said. “That reminds me.”
“What?”
“Molly’s in for a massive surprise tonight.”
“What is it?”
“Tell us!”
I giggled. “A huge hairy spider, hiding in her pyjamas.”
“Wicked!”
“Serves her right!”
Frankie put her witch mask back on. (She’d only taken it off so she could eat.) “Heh, heh heh. There came a big spider, that sat down beside her…” she cackled.
“A spider in your bed is so creepy,” shuddered Fliss dramatically. “I’d just die!”
“A spider won’t stop Molly messing up our sleepovers,” Rosie pointed out. Told you Rosie was dead practical and down-to-earth. “We’ve got to do more than that to stop her.”
“Rosie’s right. Molly’s got swimming practice every Saturday ’til the school gala. We’ve got to stop her.”
“We could snip the straps off her swimming costume,” giggled Lyndz, who wouldn’t really hurt a fly.
“Or drain the school pool,” laughed Rosie.
But Frankie was deadly serious. “Why don’t we put a spell on Molly?”
We all stared at her.
“Like what?”
“We could make her so allergic to water she comes out in boils!”
“Er…” I think Frankie was getting a bit carried away with that spooky mask.
“We have to do something, Kenny! Molly’s trying to mess up our whole Sleepover Club.”
Frankie was right about that, and I could see the others agreed. This was serious. If we didn’t put a stop to Molly’s tricks the whole club was in danger.
“We-ell…” I said in the end, “I could gatecrash her swimming session tomorrow.”
“And do what?”
“Just swim.” (Secretly I was hoping to find a way out of putting nasty spells on my sister, even if she did deserve it.) “I’m a better swimmer than Molly and that really gets her goat.”
“Hmmm…” said Frankie.
“I can tell her I’ll be there every Saturday unless she stops trying to ruin our sleepovers.”
“Maybe…”
“They’ll let me into the school pool ’cos I’m Molly’s sister.”
Frankie thought for a moment longer. “Okay, go to the swimming pool tomorrow… And Kenny?”
“Yeah?”
“Make sure you show Molly who’s boss.”
“Right.”
Next morning I got to Molly’s school bright and early.
Outside it was cold and foggy, but inside the pool had that lovely warm, fuggy, chlorine smell. Mind you, I wasn’t warm enough to jump in yet. Besides, it was so fogged with steam, I couldn’t see Molly at all. So I just stood by the edge, covered in goose pimples, trying to make out one school swimming costume from another.
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