Mega Sleepover 1

16. Camera

17. Confetti

We all keep a diary. Sometimes we read each other bits out of them, but they are absolutely private, on pain of death! We would never look in each other’s without permission. We write all our secret secrets in them. If you haven’t got any secrets, you can make them up. At least, that’s what I do.

I wrote in mine: When I grow up I don’twant to be a pop star any more. I want to drive a taxi.

I went in a taxi for the first time last week when we went to London. It was class.

Kenny was writing loads in hers, all about what she’d learned about how babies are made. She read it out to us. Kenny’s going to be a doctor, like her dad, when she grows up. She says you have to be really tough to be a doctor. She loves anything with blood in it. And she knows all about babies and things. She wrote: I’m not going to have a baby, though. And I’m not getting married. I shall be far too busy saving lives.

Felicity started to giggle. “I am,” she said. “I’m going to marry Ryan Scott and have lots of children and run a playgroup.”

Ryan Scott is a boy in our class. Kenny made a being-sick noise.

I said, “He’s the saddest thing on earth.”

“Boys smell,” said Lyndz, wrinkling her nose. And Lyndz has four brothers, so she should know.

“How do you like boys?” I asked Rosie.

“In a sandwich,” she said, “with tomato ketchup and chips on the side.”

“Yeah! good one,” I said.

Suddenly thinking about chips made us all feel hungry. It wasn’t midnight yet, but we decided to have our midnight feast. I sneaked downstairs to get a big bowl and we put everything in it. There was fizzy rock, Black Jacks, Fruit Salads, chewy dinosaurs, jelly babies, a Snickers bar, and a bag of cheese and onion crisps. We passed it round and started talking about Brownies.

“It’s no fun any more,” said Kenny.

It’s true. It used to be supercool, but it’s boring these days.

“Brown Owl’s always in a razz.”

“She used to be really nice,” said Lyndz.

“It’s because she’s fallen out with her boyfriend,” said Fliss. “Auntie Jill told me.” Fliss’s Auntie Jill is Snowy Owl, that’s how she knows so much. “She told my mum Brown Owl might give up running Brownies because she just doesn’t feel interested in anything any more.”

“That’s a shame,” said Lyndsey. “I feel—”

“Really sorry for her!” we all chimed in.

“Well, I do! It’s horrid when somebody gets dumped.”

“You should see my mum,” said Rosie. “Since my dad left, she looks much happier.”

But you could tell by the way she said it that Rosie wasn’t happy. We knew she was missing her dad, but we didn’t know what to say to cheer her up.

It was half past twelve and there was nothing left to eat. We were lying in the dark with our torches on, starting to get dozy. We were trying hard to stay awake. After all, the whole idea of sleepover is not to go to sleep.

Lyndz is always the first to drop off. We could hear her sucking her thumb. Then Fliss started sniffing, which she always does, so Kenny and I played pass the sniff. We do it at school in silent reading, it drives Mrs Weaver mad. Then Rosie joined in, which made me and Kenny giggle. Suddenly Kenny sat up in bed. She’d had this idea.

“Why don’t we find her a new boyfriend?” she said.

“Who?” said Rosie.

“Brown Owl, of course.”

“How would we do that?” I said. I meant, where would you look? There isn’t exactly a shop to go to.

“Well, there must be someone out there,” said Kenny.

“Mmm,” Rosie agreed.

I was just dropping off, which is the time when I get most of my brilliant ideas. “What about Dishy Dave?” I said, yawning.

“Who’s Dishy Dave?” said Rosie.

But I was too tired to explain. “Tell you … in the… morn… ing,” I said, and fell asleep.

(#ulink_a7d4b8f1-c9a7-5c4e-a570-d260ec67d7ff)

We usually wake up in the opposite order to the way we go to sleep. Lyndz is always awake first and once she’s awake, everyone’s awake. She’s the noisiest person alive. She was sleeping on the camp bed and every time she moved, it squeaked. And when she leant over to reach for her sleepover bag, the camp bed collapsed at one end and catapulted her out on the floor.

So she woke us all up squealing and giggling. The next thing, she’d got the hiccups. When Lyndz gets hiccups, she really gets hiccups. She could get in the Guinness Book of Records for hiccups.

We’ve tried all sorts of ways of curing her of them: a cold key down her back, giving her a fright, standing on her head – No, not us standing on her head! – wet flannels, pinching her nose, making her sing “God Save the Queen” backwards. But best of all is pressing down hard with your thumbs on the palm of her hand, while she holds her breath.

But the minute you wake up in the morning is not a time when your brain is working well. So it took a bit longer than usual, and the longer the hiccups went on, the pinker Lyndz’s face got and the more she hiccuped. In the end I managed it with my magic thumbs, but some people are never grateful.

“That really hurt,” she complained, rubbing her hand.

“Oh, tell me about it,” I said. I thought my thumbs would never recover. Then I tripped over the camp bed, which folded under me, so I ended up on the floor too.

Lyndz made the mistake of laughing. OK, I thought, payback time! And I picked up Stanley, who is my toughest bear.

Teddy fights are one of our favourite things. Sometimes we use pillows, but the best fights are with squishy-poos. A squishy-poo is a sleeping bag filled with clothes and things, which you whack each other with while balancing on a bed. That’s one of our International Gladiator events. But you need plenty of room for that.

When it’s a teddy fight, Stanley always wins because he’s stuffed really hard and he’s quite big. You can see the other bears tremble when they see him coming. Stanley is unbeatable.

I could see Rosie watching us again, thinking definitely weird. But she’ll get used to us in time. Then my dad came in, so we had to stop.

“When you’ve quite finished the demolition job, it’s time for breakfast,” he said.

While we were getting ready, Rosie said, “Now tell me who Dishy Dave is.”

“You know, he’s the new caretaker at school,” said Fliss, butting in before I could speak. “Dave’s great.”

He is great. He used to drive a mobile library van before he came to our school. He’s quite young and we all like him because he doesn’t tell us off. He’s really nice to the infants. Sometimes, if they offer him a cup of tea, he sits down in the home corner with a crown on his head and pretends to be Prince Charles. He’s a good laugh.