by Fiona Cummings

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Sleepover Kit List

Copyright

About the Publisher

I hope I haven’t kept you waiting. It’s a miracle that I’m here at all. With the strop that my parents are in, I never thought I’d see daylight again! Well, I suppose we did go a bit far this time. Quick! Keep your head down and we’ll just hurry past the park gates. Phew! Right let’s sit down and catch our breath and I’ll tell you all about it.

Thanks to our 24-hour sleepover, I’m banned from that park. We all are. All the members of the Sleepover Club that is. The Fearless Five my dad calls us, or at least he used to. Now it’s the Flipping Stupid Five! OK, what we did was a bit OTT. But we were only trying to get even with our deadly rivals Emma Hughes and Emily Berryman, or as we call them, the M&Ms. How were we to know that flinging a few jellies and spraying a bit of Silly String would cause so much chaos? Still, it was worth it to see the look on their faces. Wicked!

It all started with us planning our 24-hour sleepover. That is probably the most important date on our calendar because it’s kind of where the whole Sleepover Club began.

You remember Kenny, don’t you? You know, the crazy one. Well, we’ve been best friends for ever. When we were both about five or six and the funfair came to Abbey Park in Leicester, I went to it with her family. Then I stayed the night at her house. I hadn’t really slept away from home before and I thought it was pretty cool. The next year we went to the fair with my parents and Kenny stayed at my house. Well, then we started hanging around with Lyndz at school. She’s such a scream, although she’s kind with it. And Fliss kind of tagged along. You couldn’t possibly forget Fliss, she’s so tidy and organised. She’s probably the only person in the world who matches the colour of her knickers to the rest of her clothes!

The first sleepover we all had together was after we’d been to the funfair. It was class! That’s when we decided we ought to form the Sleepover Club. We have heaps of sleepovers now, but this one is our anniversary. That’s why we have a 24-hour sleepover, to make it special. We go to the funfair in Leicester on Saturday night, then on Sunday we have a picnic by ourselves in the local park.

This will be Rosie’s first 24-hour sleepover. Of course you remember Rosie. She’s new and she seemed like a bit of a wet weekend at first. She’s actually pretty smart. And sensible too, which makes a change from the others!

“Francesca, you’re straying from the point!” my teacher, Mrs Weaver, would say. People only ever call me Francesca when they’re cross with me. You can call me Frankie.

Anyway, you want to know why we’re banned from the park, don’t you? And the funfair as well, actually. You might as well make yourself comfortable because we’ll be here for a while.

We always know roughly when we’re going to have our 24-hour sleepover because the fair comes around the same week every year. But as soon as we find out the exact dates we get a bit wild. The thing is, we’re a bit hyper anyway because it’s towards the end of the summer term and we know we’ve got the summer holidays to look forward to. Bliss!

This year, Kenny rushed up to us in the playground before school all red in the face and grinning from ear to ear. She shoved a crumpled poster of the fair at me. She said it just happened to have fallen off a fence as she walked past.

“The sleepover’s on for Saturday the 6th,” she shrieked, jumping up and down on the spot. Lyndz, Fliss and me screamed and did high fives.

“I don’t see what’s so special,” said Rosie, looking at the rest of us as though we’d just escaped from a zoo. “We’re always having sleepovers.”

“Yeah, but this one isn’t just a case of come in, stay the night, go home again,” said Kenny. “We’ve got a whole day together doing exactly what we want to do.”

“Oh right, so you get to be a doctor and Fliss gets married to Ryan Scott, does she?” asked Rosie innocently.

“But I’m not old enough to get married,” said Fliss.

“Derr!” said the rest of us together, tapping our heads. Fliss, as you probably remember, had her sense of humour removed at birth.

“No, it’s just cool hanging out together. Like Friends,” I said.

“With no boys,” added Lyndz. She has four brothers and, as far as she is concerned, boys are a serious waste of space.

“Just Molly The Monster instead,” said Fliss.

We all groaned. Molly is Kenny’s sister from hell. She’s only a year or so older than Kenny but they’re about as different as Oasis and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. The worst thing is that they share a bedroom so she always has to be part of our sleepovers there. It’s like having a huge tub of Cookie Dough ice-cream and finding a maggot in the middle of it.

“Look, my pathetic sister is NOT going to spoil things for us,” said Kenny loudly. “We’ll strap her on to the Wheel of Fear at the fair, lock her in the bathroom when we have our midnight feast, and she is absolutely NOT coming to our picnic in the park on Sunday.”

Just then, Emily Berryman walked past with her nose in the air as usual. Emma Hughes was right behind her. I swear that those two must be joined by a piece of elastic, because one never goes anywhere without the other.

“Sounds like the babies have another of their exciting sleepovers planned. And going for a picnic in the park, too. How childish!” snorted one M&M, just loud enough for us to hear.

“It’s time they grew up and did more mature things like us, isn’t it?” sneered the other one.

“Yeah, sure, like prancing about in front of a mirror and telling each other how wonderful we are,” snarled Kenny. “Get a life!”

As they were walking away, a group of little girls came pirouetting around the corner and bumped straight into the M&Ms, nearly knocking them over.

“Oh, it’s you!” snapped Emma Hughes to one poor girl. “If you were as good at dancing as you think you are, you would be able to see where you were going!” The little girl went bright red, her eyes filled with tears and she hurried away.

“Are you all right?” Fliss called after her.

“That’s one of my brother’s friends,” she explained to the rest of us. “I think it’s a bit much when the M&Ms are so nasty to a six-year-old. What has she ever done to them?”

Emma Hughes ignored Fliss and said to Emily Berryman, “There are just too many babies round here, aren’t there?” And they both sniggered as they walked away.

When they had gone, Kenny said, “One day I swear that I’m going to teach those two a lesson.”

Of course, we believed her. We just didn’t realise how soon that day would come!

I was so excited when I got home that evening. I was just planning what to wear for the 24-hour sleepover when the phone rang.

“It’s that crazy friend of yours, Frankie,” Dad called upstairs. That had to be Kenny. “Try not to hog the phone all night, will you?”

My dad thinks he’s so funny, but I guess I do spend a long time gossiping on the phone.

I was going to ring you, Kenny. Do you think jeans and a crop top will be all right for the fair? And what are you going to wear for the picnic?

All I could hear at the other end of the line was a sort of sniffing.

That is you, isn’t it, Kenny?

This time there were a few gulps among the sniffs.

Have you got some kind of disease?

I can’t have the 24-hour sleepover, she sobbed.

What? Why?

Dad’s going to be away at some stupid conference and mum has promised to go and see my Aunty Mary in Norwich that weekend. I told Mum that we’d all stay here without them, but she went ballistic.

I wonder why? I laughed; then I had one of my brainwaves.

Hang on, Kenny. You can’t have it at your house, but what’s to stop me having the sleepover here?

Your parents?

Don’t be daft, Kenny. This is Frankie you’re speaking to, not Fliss. I’ll talk my parents round. Easy-peasy.

Frankie, you’re the best. See you tomorrow. And good luck!

Am I clever or am I clever?

Of course, once I’d promised I had to come up with the goods, didn’t I? So I went into the lounge where Mum and Dad were watching some boring television programme. I settled down on the settee between them and pretended that I was really interested in it, too.

“All right, Frankie, what do you want?” asked Dad.

“Well, I was just thinking,” I said, very innocently. “If you had a friend who had invited you and some of his mates round for a weekend… ”

“Y-es,” said my dad, suspiciously.

“And then he found that for some reason he couldn’t use his own home that particular weekend, I wouldn’t mind a bit if you all came here instead.”

Mum let out a loud laugh.

“I’m sure you wouldn’t,” she said.

“And I was wondering… ” I continued.

“You were wondering if you could invite your friends round here for your next sleepover. Right?” He’s very quick, my dad.

“It’s the 24-hour sleepover, actually,” I reminded them.

They both groaned.

“Not the fair, anything but the fair,” gasped Mum, pretending to collapse on the settee.

She loves it really, so does Dad. They went on more rides than we did last year.

“OK, OK. I think we can cope with the Fearless Five for 24 hours, don’t you?” my dad said.

“Thanks, Dad, you’re the greatest,” I said, planting a big kiss on his forehead. I gave Mum a big hug and a kiss too and danced up to my room. I still had to decide what to wear for the picnic.

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:

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!”

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