Mega Sleepover 3

Though she didn’t know it, she was going to regret saying that…

Next day was Saturday. We had all arranged to go to the library in the centre of Cuddington at the same time, eleven o’clock in the morning.

I’m the furthest away, as I live in Little Wearing, whereas the others live in Cuddington itself. So I had to ask if someone would drive me over.

Dad volunteered, as he wanted to go to the art shop and buy some paints. He probably needed more green, after his accident with the leaping panther. Why paint a panther green, anyway? I suppose that’s what you call ‘artistic licence’.

When Dad dropped me off at the library, saying he’d pick me up in an hour, I could see two familiar bicycles fastened to the rail outside - Kenny’s and Frankie’s. Frankie has a new one. It’s bright green, to go with her vegetarian nature. She eats so much salad that we kid her that she’ll turn green one day. All over, including her hair, just like Dad’s stupid panther.

We met in the music section, by the CD and tape selection.

“Look what I’ve found!” yelled Kenny, earning a warning frown from the man on the check-out desk.

It was a CD of football anthems. As you know, Kenny’s seriously football mad. But this pointed to her being just plain mad, as well.

“Ugh! You’re not actually thinking of listening to that, are you?” I said. “It’ll do your eardrums in.”

“I find football songs inspiring,” she said mysteriously.

“Oh, get her!” said Rosie.

“Haven’t they got a tape on teaching yourself to sing?” I said.

Frankie was looking very pleased with herself.

“I’ve gone one better than that,” she said.

She waved two books at me. One was called, The Piano: Learn To Play in a Week. The other was called Guitar Made Easy.

“One for you and one for me,” she said.

“I don’t need that,” I said, pointing to the guitar book. “You know I can play some chords.”

“Yes, we’ve heard you,” said Fliss.

She was referring to a time when we’d all been round at her place and Andy, had left his guitar lying around. He only ever got it out when Fliss’s mum was out, as she hated hearing him play and thought guitars made the room look untidy.

I’d picked it up and played my four chords. I thought I sounded brilliant, but when I looked round, they all had their fingers jammed in their ears and were making being sick noises. Call themselves friends? I ask you!

“Let’s get the books out, anyway,” said Frankie. “I certainly need to improve a bit.”

“Don’t forget to bring your keyboard next Friday,” I reminded her. It was only small, so it was easy to carry.

“Friday’s nearly a week off. Couldn’t we have a practice tomorrow?” Kenny said desperately.

Our parents would only ever let us have sleepovers at weekends, so there was no chance at all of us having a proper get-together before then, if Sunday was out.

It looked as if it was, worse luck.

“I can’t,” Rosie said. “We’re going out for the day with my gran and grandad.”

“And I’m going to Alton Towers for Carl and Colin’s birthday,” Fliss said, then waited for our reaction.

A chorus of “You lucky thing!” came from the rest of us.

Then I thought about Carl and Colin, Fliss’s twin cousins. They were a gruesome twosome, the male equivalent of the M&Ms, as they were always poking fun at Fliss and being horrid to her. Maybe she wasn’t so lucky, after all!

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You’re in school with me now. It’s dinnertime. Come down the corridor with me. Ssh! Don’t make any noise. Careful, your shoes are squeaking! We don’t want anyone to hear.

Stop! We’re right outside the door of the studio. Can you hear the the din that’s going on in there? How could you miss it? It’s like a load of groaning hippopotamuses - or should that be hippopotami? It’s the M&Ms practising their Spice Girls routine. They’re doing Wannabe and it’s really pathetic.

Let’s push the door open a crack and watch them dancing. They look like hippos, don’t they, as well as sounding like them! Just look at them galumphing about!

They’ve got old Fatty-Bum-Bum with them, which is what we call Amanda Porter. The nickname may sound a bit cruel, but you don’t know Amanda. She’s a horrible person, really nasty to everyone. We wouldn’t care that she bought her dresses from Tents R us, if she was nice with it. But she hasn’t got the niceness gene in her entire vast body. I don’t know which Spice Girl she’s meant to be. There isn’t a Gross Spice, is there?

The only decent one among them is Regina Hill. She’s not only got a good voice, she’s obviously had some dancing lessons, too. Why did she have to offer to sing with them? They’d have been booed out of school if it hadn’t been for her. I wish she could have sung with us. If only the Spice Girls would suddenly add a sixth girl to their group. Then we’d definitely win.

Let’s tiptoe away now, before they spot us. Did you notice who’s playing the piano for them? It’s Dishy Dave. He’s the one who started this whole thing off by saying we were good. I wonder what he thinks of the Hippo Girls? And why didn’t we think of asking him to play the piano for us, instead of deciding to accompany ourselves? It just never crossed our minds, and it’s too late now. The M&Ms really would accuse us of copying them then!

None of us could wait for Friday to come. We were still arguing about which song to do, but we’d more or less decided on Mama, because it was slow. That made it easier for us to sing and play. There was no way my fingers on the guitar could have kept up with the pace of Wannabe!

I was hoping - really desperately hoping - that Stuart would be going out till late, so we could use his room. That’s what happened last time we had a sleepover at my place. His room is much bigger than mine, and he’s got a TV and video in there, so we could have played my Spice Girls video.

When I asked him, though, he said he wasn’t sure what he was doing that night.

“Meanie!” I told him.

“Who owes her big brother loads of money, eh?” he reminded me, with a yah-boo kind of expression on his spotty face. Then he held his hand up, saying, “Pay up and I might be able to afford to go out on Friday.”

He knew Dad didn’t give me my pocket money until Saturday, so there was no way that I could. I went to my room and had a quick sulk. Then I sorted out my sock drawer. I’d intended to do that for ages as I couldn’t find any proper pairs any more and had gone to school that morning wearing one white sock and one cream one.

I’d spent all day expecting the M&Ms to notice and make fun of me, but they were far too busy boasting about how brilliant they were at being the Spice Girls, and how no other Spice Girls act stood a chance against them. They didn’t know I’d seen their dancing hippos routine. They were so sad.

It got to Friday and we still didn’t know if Stu was going out or not.

Tom, my next oldest brother, wasn’t. He had made up his mind to enter a picture in an art competition in one of his weird magazines.

For a whole week, he’d spent every night in his room, drawing and painting. Every morning, he’d stagger down with his full waste-paper bin, dropping screwed up sheets of paper all down the stairs. I swooped on one and when I un-crumpled it, I saw it was an amazing science fiction type of picture, complete with space ships and aliens and weird creatures with horns and antennae and tentacles, all in brilliant orange and slime green.

“Hey! Give me that back!” he shouted, and went all red with embarrassment.

“It’s good,” I told him. “Can I keep it?”

He looked pleased. “All right,” he agreed.

I un-crumpled another one. It was seriously loony, with lots of funny purple creatures and bright red cactus plants.