Mega Sleepover 3

“Can you sing?” Emma asked her.

You could have knocked me down with a King Cone when Regina began to sing Summer Nights from Grease, all perfectly in tune. She had an awesome voice.

My eyes met Frankie’s. Then I looked at Fliss, Kenny and Rosie. Everyone had the same look on their faces. Hate, pure hate.

“It’s not fair!” I said at break.

“We decided to be the Spice Girls first,” Frankie said crossly.

“They’re just pathetic copy-cats,” said Rosie, flicking her brown fringe.

“Yes, they are,” Fliss added.

“Reggie-Veggie’s got a good voice, though,” I said.

“Reggie-Veggie! That’s a good name for her,” said Frankie, with a loud snort that made us all laugh. “What kind of a vegetable do you think she is?”

“A carrot,” Fliss said promptly.

“Well, she is long and thin - and her hair is kind of reddish,” I agreed. Before today, we’d thought she was really pretty and she’d seemed quite nice, but she’d certainly turned into a carrot now that she’d become a friend of the M&Ms.

“You know what this means, don’t you?” Frankie said gloomily.

We looked at her and shook our heads. We’d never felt so depressed.

“If they’re going to sing, we can’t get away with only miming. We’ll jolly well have to sing, too.”

“Oh, no!” Kenny wailed.

“Oh good,” said Fliss. “I think I sing better than Reggie-Veggie!”

We knew she wanted us to pay her compliments, but we were all fed up so nobody did.

Fliss went into a sulk and got her Banana-In-Pyjamas toy out of her bag. Her aunt in America sent it to her. Bananas In Pyjamas are very popular in America, according to Fliss’s aunt. Personally, I think dressed up plastic bananas are stupid. Give me a toy pony any day. Better still, a real one.

Fliss started creating a little wedding veil for the banana, out of a piece of paper tissue. She’s mad on weddings. All her toys and stuffed animals have been married at least twenty times each, to different partners. It’s about time she started giving them divorces, not weddings.

I decided to cheer her up. “Of course you sing well, Fliss. We all know that.”

“Perhaps we ought to give up on being the Spice Girls and think of something else,” said Rosie.

“What? Give up? No way!” said Frankie. “We’re not going to let ourselves be beaten by the M&Ms, are we?”

Nobody answered.

Frankie sat down on the concrete of the playground. Her bottom just missed a piece of chewing gum. She pulled a notebook and pen out of her black nylon shoulderbag. We all sat round her as she wrote two headings on the page.

The first heading said, Us. The second said, The M&Ms.

“Right,” she said. “Now, think of all the reasons why our Spice Girls group is better than theirs.”

“We’re better than them at everything!” I said.

“We can sing,” said Fliss.

“We’re the greatest,” said Rosie.

“They’re ugly,” said Kenny, and we all fell about.

“Now tell me why they’re worse than us,” Kenny said.

“They’re ugly,” said Kenny again.

When we’d stopped laughing for the second time, I said, “And pathetic.”

“And copy-cats, weeds and nerds,” said Fliss.

“Is this war?” asked Frankie.

“This is WAR!” we all agreed.

That night I told my mum about it. Maybe I chose a wrong moment. At the time, she was battling with a curtain that had got stuck in one of the holes inside the washing machine.

“Mm, dear. Help me with this, could you?” was all she said.

I got my head inside the machine. A corner of the material was jammed. I had a hair grip in my pocket, from my last trip to the swimming baths. I always used grips to pin my hair under my swimming cap.

I poked the grip down the hole to loosen the bunched-up material, and promptly lost it.

“Oh, that’s just wonderful!” said Mum sarkily. “That’s going to rattle round in there forever, now. I’ll hear it every time I use the machine.”

“If I use one of the fridge magnets, I might be able to get it out,” I said.

I thought it was a brilliant suggestion.

Mum didn’t seem to agree. “Don’t you go magnetising my washing machine, Lyndsey. It’s all metal in there. Every zip will stick to the drum and I won’t be able to get anyone’s jeans out,” she said.

I had a mental image of Mum and me, each hauling on a jeans’ leg, trying to pull it out of the machine. I started laughing. Then my hiccups started.

“Oh, per-lease! Not those again,” said Mum.

She rolled her eyes up to the ceiling and looked so weird that I laughed and hicked even harder.

“Sor-hic-ry,” I apologised.

Mum was still tugging at the curtain. Suddenly, it came free and she fell over and landed on her bottom on the floor. I roared with laughter, it was so funny.

She gave me a hurt look. “How do you know I haven’t broken anything?” she said.