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

Have you been Invited to all these Sleepovers?

Sleepover Kit List

Copyright

About the Publisher

Did someone just call my name? I could have sworn that I heard someone shout “Lyndz”!

Oh hi! I didn’t see you there. I’m glad you’re here. Do you think you could give me a hand with this scenery? The Sleepover Club are putting on a play in my garden. It’s just for our parents but it should be pretty cool. We wrote it ourselves, so we could play exactly the parts we wanted.

Fliss is going to be a princess who ends up marrying a handsome prince – surprise, surprise! You know how she loves a good wedding! And of course dressing up is like her favourite thing in the whole world. Come to think of it, most of Fliss’s clothes are all frilly like a princess’s. And she acts like royalty too – most of the time she thinks that our Sleepover Club stuff is way too childish for her.

Kenny is going to play a footballing genius who scores the winning goal in the FA Cup. Don’t ask how that fits in with the princess, it just does. She said that she wouldn’t be in the play at all unless she could be a footballer. Kenny’s greatest love in life is Leicester City and she really thinks she’s going to play for them one day – as well as being a doctor like her dad. When she’s not being a footballer in the play, she’s lots of different monsters and villains as well, but we tell her that she can’t really call that acting! You know Kenny – she’s a bit wild at the best of times, so a lot of people think she’s a monster anyway. But it’s her sister who’s the real monster – Molly the Monster, as we call her.

Rosie plays sort of a Cinderella character who triumphs against the odds, and that’s kind of like Rosie too. When she came to Cuddington at first she was all sort of lost and didn’t really fit in. Her dad had just left and she was finding it quite hard to cope. Now she’s one of our best friends and is really sensible and gets things organised.

She doesn’t get things as organised as Frankie though – now she can be a real bossy britches. That’s why she fancies herself as the director of our play. She’s also its narrator, which is a really important role. She fills in as different characters too and sort of holds the whole thing together. I sometimes think it’s Frankie who holds the Sleepover Club together, because the rest of us would fall out too much if she wasn’t there.

What character am I playing? Well, I dash around on a horse a lot helping people out. I said I didn’t mind what role I played as long as it was something to do with horses. I live for horses! We haven’t got a real horse in the play of course. Sometimes Kenny pretends to be my horse and I ride on her back, but we usually end up collapsing in a heap on the floor.

Frankie said that I should be a kind of magical character who always does good things, because she says that I’m always nice to people in real life. I don’t know about that. She hasn’t seen some of the awful things I’ve done to my four horrible brothers!

You’re looking a bit confused. I know all this play stuff sounds a bit strange, but you see, we’ve caught the acting bug. Big time! It’s all Fliss’s fault really. I know, I know – poor Fliss seems to get the blame for everything. But this time, I mean it in a good way.

You know how she’s always going on about wanting to be a supermodel? For all those nice clothes, that fame and stuff? Well then, it shouldn’t surprise you that one day she announced that she wanted to become an actress instead. Actress, supermodel – it was all the same to Fliss.

“I’ll still be famous and earn pots of money,” she explained, “but there’s not the same pressure on you to be beautiful all the time, is there?”

The rest of us rolled our eyes. I mean, what is she like?

“I don’t think you can just decide to be a famous actress and wham – you’ve got the starring role in the next Titanic,” said Frankie. “You’ve got to go to drama school first.”

“And I’ve heard that most actresses are usually out of work,” continued Rosie. “There’s only a few who make it to the top.”

‘Well, I’m going to be one of those!” said Fliss firmly. And when Fliss is in one of those moods, there’s no arguing with her.

So for the next week or so we had to put up with her prancing about with her actress head on. Whenever Mrs Weaver asked her something in class, Fliss would take a deep breath, smile and speak v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y and very clearly. The first time she did it, Mrs Weaver said:

“Are you feeling quite all right, Felicity?”

The rest of us nearly wet ourselves laughing. But Fliss didn’t care. She just seemed to be acting all the time, as though her life was being filmed for one long soap opera.

Kenny thought it would be a laugh if we all started acting too – or maybe that should be overacting… So Frankie would say something like, “I say old beans, can I interest anyone in a game of rounders?” and Rosie would reply, “Oh super! A game of rounders would be simply spiffing on such a wonderful warm afternoon!” And we would all clap our hands and do really false laughs. It was like some really bad over-the-top crackly old movie. It was great fun though. Fliss got really cross with us at first.

“Acting’s not like that!” she snapped. “You’re supposed to be natural!”

“Oh like you, you mean!” snorted Kenny. She put on a really posh voice and started to speak really slowly. “Of course I know what five times six is, Mrs Weaver. It’s forty-six of course!”

The rest of us cracked up.

“I never said that!” said Fliss crossly. “I know that five times six is thirty!”

We laughed even harder.

“Oh Fliss, where’s your sense of humour?” giggled Frankie. “We’re just saying that you seem to be taking this actress thing a bit far. If you’re so keen, why don’t you go to a drama class? There’s got to be one somewhere near here.”

That sounded like a great idea. At least that way we wouldn’t have to suffer Fliss trying to be the next Kate Winslet. Or so we thought…

It was just our luck that when we went to Brownies a couple of days later, someone had put up a brand new poster on the notice board. It was luminous yellow so it sort of hit you right in the eyes. It said:

“Look at that!” said Fliss, hopping around from foot to foot as she read it. “Don’t you see? It’s a sign! I wanted to go to a drama class and suddenly there’s one right here on our doorstep! We’ve got to go to it! It’s going to make me a star!”

“Hang on a minute!” insisted Kenny. “What’s all this we business? It’s you who wants to be the actress. You’re on your own, sunshine!”

Fliss pouted and made her eyes all big and wide. She’s always doing stuff like that to make people feel sorry for her, but it doesn’t usually work with us.

“Actually, it might be a laugh,” admitted Frankie. “My gran’s always calling me a ‘little actress’. It might be kind of fun to go to a proper drama class.”

“Well I’ve always fancied being a TV presenter, and I guess a few drama lessons might help,” said Rosie. “Then I might get a big break myself and end up presenting Live and Kicking. That would be so cool!”

“The point is that going to drama class would be good for all of us,” said Fliss seriously. “Come on, let’s all go, it’ll be great! Please? Pretty, pretty per-lease?”

Before we had time to decide, Brown Owl came in and we had to get into our packs. The poster certainly gave us a lot to think about, though. Fliss, Frankie and Rosie all seemed really keen on the idea of going to drama classes, and I was certain that Kenny would go too – she’ll do anything for a laugh. I wasn’t sure that it was exactly my kind of thing, but was I going to miss out? No way!

After the Brownie meeting Fliss was still excited about the drama class.

“You will all be able to go, won’t you?” she kept asking.

“Oh Fliss, put a sock in it!” groaned Frankie. “We’ll ask when we get home. OK?”

I knew that Mum and Dad wouldn’t mind me going, as long as it didn’t affect my school work. As it was kind of near the end of term anyway, I couldn’t see that happening. Unfortunately my stupid brothers found out about the drama class too, and wouldn’t stop taking the mickey out of me.

“You might get a part in one of those vet programmes,” suggested Stuart my eldest brother, who helps out on the local farm whenever he can.

“Yeah, as one of the animals!” laughed Tom. He’s fourteen, so you’d think he might be a bit more mature than that. Listening to Ben and Spike laugh, you’d think he’d cracked the funniest joke ever. But I suppose when you’re four like Ben, anything’s funny – and Spike is only a baby, so he doesn’t know any better.

Still, their endless teasing about me trying to act really got on my nerves, and I’d a good mind to say that I couldn’t go to the drama class after all. Of course I didn’t, because when I saw the others the next day they were still all really keen on it and we always tend to do stuff together.

So the next week, on Wednesday 26th May, we found ourselves at St. Mark’s Church Hall in Cuddington, not really knowing what to expect. But you know what? It was the start of one of our craziest adventures yet!

To be honest with you, I didn’t really know what to expect from the drama class. I kind of hoped it would be like The Biz with loads of cool kids strutting about, but that kind of thing is never really going to happen in Cuddington!

“So what do you think we’ll be doing in this class?” asked Rosie, looking about her nervously. We were waiting outside the hall with a few other people. The doors were locked, which wasn’t a good sign.

“Never mind what we’re going to be doing, are you sure there is a class here?” said Kenny, looking a bit fidgety. “I’m going to give this another five minutes, then I’m off!”

“It’s only six o’clock now,” said Fliss. “There’s no need to be so impatient.”

“I hate waiting around,” Kenny replied through gritted teeth, and went to climb the tree behind the hall.

“Well that’s not going to impress the drama teacher very much, is it?” sniffed Fliss. “I don’t know why Kenny always has to be so aggressive.”

It’s true that Kenny is kind of impatient and wants everything done yesterday, but I guess we were all getting a bit twitchy. It’s the ‘fear of the unknown’, as Dad sometimes says.

I looked around at the other people waiting. Most of them were about our age and most of them were girls. I recognised quite a few of them from Brownies. There was a small group of older children who all seemed to know each other too. One of them looked very like one of Tom’s mates, Daniel. I kind of wanted to go up to him to say “Hi”, but I felt too nervous and wimped out.

Suddenly there was this enormous bang and a sort of spluttering sound. A really battered old car had come to a halt just outside the hall.

“Crikey, look at that!” whispered Rosie.

“It looks as though it’s going to fall to pieces at any minute!” breathed Frankie.

We were all busy staring at the car when this bright red shape stepped out of it and stood in the road, beaming at us. It was a woman with loads of purply-coloured hair piled on top of her head.

“That, my darlings, is known as making an entrance!” she laughed. She had this incredibly deep voice and the most fabulous earrings, which looked just like birds hovering above her shoulders. The group of older children burst out laughing and clapped really loudly. Fliss looked both embarrassed and annoyed with them at the same time.

“Ah thank you, my loyal fans!” The woman shrieked with laughter. “You know how I love an audience! Now Daniel, can you help me with my things? You too, Sophie. And the rest of us had better get inside.”

She marched up to the door and tried to push it open. It wouldn’t budge because it was locked. We all knew that, but she just didn’t seem to believe it. As she heaved her body against it, everybody had a good look at her. She was wearing all these floaty layers of clothes. Her skirt came to her ankles, and so did the long waistcoat she was wearing over the top of it. They were both bright red, but her top underneath was orange. I’d never seen anyone wear colours like that together before. When she turned round to smile at us we could see that her lipstick was a deep red, and she had painted black lines above her eyelashes. She looked kind of exotic.

“Do I have the key?” she asked, as if that was something we should know. I guess we all looked a bit blank, because she started to rummage in her enormous handbag.

“I suppose I must have, let me see now!”

All sorts of things started spilling on to the ground: a fat notebook with all its pages hanging out, a Mickey Mouse purse, three lipsticks (one without a top), a cheque-book covered in gooey red stuff (lipstick probably) and finally a fat bunch of keys.

“Ah, here we are!” she said triumphantly, holding them up for us all to see. “Now which do you suppose opens the door?”

“Crikey, we’ll be here all night!” muttered Kenny, who had reappeared at the sound of all the commotion.

Frankie and Rosie looked as though they could hardly believe their eyes. But they weren’t giggling or anything, which is what we normally do. They looked totally engrossed. Fliss was looking a bit apprehensive, but then when you have a mum who’s as organised and colour-coordinated as Fliss’s, I expect seeing someone so outrageous is a bit of a shock to the system.

By this time Daniel had stepped forward, found the right key and opened the door.

“In we go, in we go, in we go!” sang the woman.

When we were all finally in the hall she introduced herself.

“My name’s Angel, and it’s fab to see so many of you here. Some of you I know…” (she turned to smile at Daniel and his friends) “but lots of you I don’t. So let’s all introduce ourselves to each other.”

First of all we had to go round and say hello to everyone and tell them what we were called and how old we were. Then we had to sit in a circle and take it in turns to introduce ourselves to the whole group. Rosie got a bit panicked about that and her words wouldn’t come out at all. She sounded as though she’d swallowed a dishcloth. Angel was really brilliant though, she didn’t get angry or anything. She was really reassuring and told her that it was OK to be nervous. Besides, a few of the other kids clammed up too.

Kenny wasn’t nervous at all. When she introduced herself, she said that the most important thing in the world to her was football. You could tell by the way she said it that she thought drama classes were just a bit of a laugh.

“You know, that’s really interesting, Kenny,” said Angel when she’d finished, “because I always think that acting’s a lot like playing football.”

Kenny’s ears pricked up as soon as she said that!

“Footballers train all week for one match, don’t they? Well, actors rehearse for a play and then they’re on, in front of a crowd. It’s the same adrenalin buzz. Actors have to react quickly to situations, just as footballers have to know which shot to make when two defenders are haring towards them.”

Kenny was definitely interested now. As long as something’s similar to football, it’s all right with her!

After that, Angel split us up into smaller groups. We all made sure that we were together, and Juliet, one of the older girls, came to join us.

“How do you know Angel?” Frankie asked her.

“She did a drama workshop at school,” Juliet told us, “and it was so great that I started doing the courses she runs at weekends and in the holidays.”

“Do you go to Cuddington Comprehensive?” asked Rosie.

“Sure do!”

“Do you know Tom Collins then?” I asked.

“Oh don’t tell me that you like him too! Isn’t he gorgeous? I think he’d make a really good actor. He looks a bit like Leonardo DiCaprio, don’t you think? I keep trying to persuade him to come along to the workshops, but he won’t!” declared Juliet with a giggle.

Kenny and Frankie were both sniggering. I couldn’t believe that my stupid brother could have such an effect on women. I mean, Juliet looked normal enough, but there must be something seriously wrong with her if she fancied Tom.

But before I could say anything, Fliss shrieked, “Lyndz doesn’t like Tom – he’s her brother!”

You ought to have seen poor Juliet’s face. Talk about beetroot! She just didn’t know where to put herself. For the rest of the class she was sort of distracted and didn’t take much part in the role-playing we were doing.

When we left she came up to me and said, “Don’t tell Tom what I told you, will you? But try to persuade him to come along to the class next week.”

Yeah, right! Some hope! The last place he would want to be is somewhere with his kid sister. And I wouldn’t want him to come anyway. I was definitely going to go back though, because we’d had a totally cool time. Angel was great and everybody was really friendly. The others thought so too.

“That was so fab!” squealed Rosie, who had got over her dishcloth mouth.

“What did I tell you!” said Fliss smugly. “I knew it would be brilliant!”

“And Angel seems to know a lot about football too,” said Kenny admiringly. She started to speak like Angel, in a really deep voice. “If we go on like this we’ll be starring in the next blockbuster movie – no problem, darlings!”

For the next week we pretended to be Angel all the time. We even tried to perfect her laugh, which was sort of all thick like treacle.

The drama classes were our highlight of the week. We were doing something we were all interested in, and we were doing it all together. For once we were all happy and we didn’t fall out at all.

Well, surprise, surprise – that didn’t last for long!

For the first couple of weeks, everything we did at Angel’s drama class was completely new to us. I’d thought we might have to learn loads of lines for a play, and I’m no good at that. In school plays I always end up as a tree or something because I’m hopeless at remembering lots of words. Well, Angel’s class wasn’t like that at all. We did loads of improvisation exercises which were really great. Sometimes we split into twos, and one of us was a hairdresser and the other was the client who’d just been given a disastrous perm. Or we were in a big group and we had to act out an emotion, like being happy or sad, and everyone had to guess what it was and then copy what we’d done.

One class was so funny. Angel asked us to pretend that we were angry ducks. I know that it sounds weird, but Angel likes to make you look at the world a bit differently. Anyway, everyone in the class was waddling around the room quacking in people’s faces. It was a riot. Well, when I say everyone, what I mean is everyone except Kenny. She was making screeching noises and going “BEEP BEEP!” at the top of her voice. It was hil-arious.

Eventually Angel stopped the class and asked Kenny to show everyone her interpretation. Well there she was, screeching and beeping, and everyone just fell about laughing.

“That’s very interesting Kenny,” said Angel, trying not to laugh herself. “Can you just remind everybody what that was?”

Kenny looked kind of embarrassed. “An angry truck,” she said. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

Frankie and I just totally collapsed into fits of giggles. It’s a wonder I didn’t get hiccups.

“That’s what I thought she’d said,” explained Kenny, sounding a bit injured when she came to sit down next to us.

“Didn’t you realise that everyone else was pretending to be a duck?” gasped Rosie, still holding her sides and giggling.

“I was so into being a truck, I didn’t notice what anyone else was doing,” admitted Kenny. “But I was good, wasn’t I?”

We had to agree that she was the best angry truck that we’d ever seen!

It was after about the third drama class when Angel called us all together.

“I’ve got some very exciting news!” she said in her deep throaty voice. She was wearing a big beaded choker and it moved up and down on her neck as she spoke. “How would you fancy auditioning for a television advert?”

There was a stunned silence. Then the hall kind of exploded.

“Really?”

“Brill!”

“Fantastic!”

“What’s the advert for?” asked Frankie, who always gets down to the serious stuff first.

“Good question!” said Angel, smiling at her. “I’ll be able to give you more details next week. All you need to know at the moment is that the advertising company are looking for a ‘bright, sparky, girl who is approximately ten years old’.”

That description covered most of the drama class. I looked around and everybody was chattering eagerly with their friends about it. Juliet smiled at me and came over.

“You lucky thing, I wish I was ten again. Fancy being able to go up for a commercial when you’ve only been coming to drama classes for a few weeks,” she said. “You sound like just the kind of person they’re looking for too!”

She was just being kind to me because I was the wonderful Tom’s sister, but it was nice of her to say that anyway. When she’d gone back to her friends I joined the others.

“Just imagine,” Fliss was saying, “I’m going to my first audition!” She patted down her hair as though a casting director was watching her already.

“Well if it’s bright and sparky they want, they won’t have to look any further than me!” Kenny pranced up and down the hall.

“Not if they see me first!” Frankie bumped her out of the way.

Angel was getting ready to lock up so we all bundled out of the door.

“’Bye darlings, see you next week!” she called after us.

By the time we got outside, Fliss was totally hyper about the whole thing.

“Don’t you see? It’s another sign!” she shrieked. “First I tell you that I want to be an actress and Angel’s drama class pops up, and now she tells us about this audition. It’s like this part already has my name on it! What do you think?”

“I think you’ll have some competition from the rest of us,” said Kenny. She sounded quite serious too. I didn’t say anything.

Dad picked us up in the van and dropped everybody off. And all the time Fliss was twittering about the stupid audition for the advert. The more she went on about it, the more sure I was that I didn’t want to go for it. And what a big mistake that proved to be!

I guess I should explain why I didn’t want to audition for the commercial. I’ll try, but to be honest I’m not a hundred percent sure myself. It was more a sort of feeling I had, really. I know that I usually just go with the flow, but this time I didn’t want to. I suppose the problem was that I couldn’t face my brothers teasing me about the audition. You know what they’re like. They just go on and on about things and never let them drop. That’s OK sometimes, like when they tease me about spending so much time with horses. But with other things – like this TV commercial – well, it’s just not worth the hassle.

I didn’t mention anything about the audition to Mum or Dad because they’d have made me go for it. Even though I didn’t want to. They like me to stand up to my brothers you see. But it was one thing keeping my decision from my parents. It was quite another keeping it from my friends.

I was really panicking when I went to school the next morning. I knew that the commercial was all they would be talking about and I didn’t want to feel left out, but I didn’t want to lie to them either.

Sure enough, when I got into the playground Fliss was already in full flow.

“I’m going to smile at the advertising people like this…” (she did this big cheesy grin) “because Mum says that then they’ll be able to see that I’m bright and sparky, and that I have good teeth.”

“I bet they will!” muttered Frankie.

“They’ll probably barf up their breakfast, more like!” grinned Kenny.

Fliss ignored them. “This means a lot to me,” she said firmly. “You know how much I want to be an actress.”

We all rolled our eyes.

“I’m not sure how I’m going to approach it yet,” chimed in Kenny. “Should I do this?” She pulled down the corners of her eyes and stuck out her tongue. “Or what about this?” She curled back her top lip until it was touching the base of her nose.

“You’re so gross!” laughed Rosie. “I think being natural is probably best.”

“I’m sure Angel will tell us what the advertisers are looking for,” said Frankie. “We’ll probably practise in class anyway.”

I hoped that we wouldn’t… but at least I didn’t have to say anything to the others because the bell went for the start of school.

When we were in school we couldn’t talk about the audition, but as soon as break time came the others started up again.

“Can you imagine being on television every night?” asked Rosie. “Everybody would see you!”

“Yeah, even some big film producer! He might give you a part in his next movie.” Kenny whirled about as though she was in some big fight scene.

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