Jana Hunter - Sleepover Club Makeover

“They’d most likely wet the saddle,” giggled Kenny, and we all burst out laughing, remembering the kid in Assembly.

So pony rides were O-U-T out.

We were trying to come up with fundraiser ideas for our team. Mrs Weaver had split the class into groups and told us to give each team a name. Ours was the Sleepover Gang (natch!) and the goody-goody M&M’s were, can’t you guess…the Little Angels . (Puke!) They were so jealous that Frankie had come up with the fundraiser idea, they were determined to show the world what little darlings they were (NOT!) and win.

“What about a sponsored bike ride?” suggested Rosie. But everyone said that was no good because Ryan Scott’s team, Hot Wheels , was bound to do that.

“We could have a jumble sale,” said Frankie. (Personally I think she had used up all her good ideas in one shot with the fundraiser scheme.) “You know, collect rubbish and sell it.”

“Yeah, I could put my house in it,” muttered Rosie to herself. Rosie’s house was a bit of a tip since her dad, the builder, had left and sometimes it got her down.

“Or put the M&M’s rubbish team up for sale…”

“Yeah.”

“So what about a jumble sale, then?” persisted Frankie, and I could tell she had something up her sleeve. When the Wizz gets that “look” anything can happen!

“ Bor-ing !” Kenny yawned. “A sponsored football match would be much more coo-el.”

“Yeah, and who’d be on the team?” I wanted to know. “Not me, that’s for sure.”

Kenny pretended to do a header right in my face. “ Goal !” she cheered and Mrs Weaver looked over to quieten us down.

“Well, what about an animal show, then?” (Lyndz could never let go of her favourite subject.) “I could borrow a horse from the stables and parade it on stage.”

“Whoever heard of a horse on stage?” laughed Frankie, and she reared like a stallion, bashing into the book display and making it topple over.

“You’ve heard of a stage coach, haven’t you?” Lyndz grinned.

“D’you want to go on the stage ?” chuckled Rosie. “There’s one leaving in two minutes!”

That started us off on one of our horsey joke fests. The jokes were well daft. Read them and you’ll see what I mean:

Q.Heard the one about the pantomime horse who tripped over his own tail?

A.He didn’t know which end was up!

Q.How d’you hire a horse?

A.You put two bricks under him!

Book Titles:

Twenty Years in the Saddle by Major

Bumsore

Desert Cactus Cowboy by Evan Sorer

Rodeo Rider by I. Hangon

We were killing ourselves so much by then it made Kenny do her horse whinny imitation and soon we were mucking about, in true sleepover style, snorting and neighing away. Any moment now, Lyndz would start hiccuping.

“Er, Sleepover Gang , if you can’t do this sensibly…” began Mrs Weaver and the M&Ms smirked gleefully at the prospect of us getting into trouble.

“Sorry, Miss,” said Frankie innocently. “We were only trying out ideas.”

“Well, try them out quietly ,” warned Mrs Weaver. She was busy drawing up a huge graph (probably planning on a major Maths project) and she looked like she meant business.

“Yes, Mrs Weaver.”

We seriously got back down to it, then. This was a better skive than slogging away in our Maths workbooks, and we didn’t want to ruin the chance for a laugh. So for a while the Sleepover Gang acted more angelic than the goody-goody M&Ms themselves.

Mind you, all the time the rest of the gang were talking and thinking I was fizzing away inside, like a firework ready to explode. See, I had this brilliant idea. The coolest, most wonderful brainwave I’d ever had in my entire life. Oh, you’re wondering why I didn’t come right out with it, are you? Well, it’s weird. When something matters to me, you know like, really matters, I can sometimes go all shy about it, even round my best friends. D’you ever get like that?

Suddenly, though, I couldn’t hold it in any longer. “Let’s have a Makeover !” I blurted out, and I could tell my cheeks had gone bright red with excitement. “You know, make up people and charge for it.”

“Coo-el!” said Lyndz.

“We could even give fashion advice and dress people up…” I was getting really excited.

Rosie interrupted me. “Where would we get the class gear for that?”

“We could borrow glamorous gear from my gran’s dress shop. And make stuff out of our own clothes…” I began, but football-mad Kenny couldn’t let that one go.

“ Glamorous gear. How girlie-girlie!” Kenny (who lives in her Leicester City football strip) wrinkled her nose in disgust.

I could feel myself going red, and bit my lip.

“Using your own clothes is all right for you,” Frankie laughed, giving my long blonde hair a playful tug. “A Fashion Victim like you has got the best gear in the whole school.”

I blushed even harder. Can I help it if I love clothes and make-up? It’s a Proudlove family tradition.

“We could use my mum’s dressing-up clothes,” offered Lyndz, whose mum has the best dressing-up box ever.

I flashed Lyndz a grateful smile. (She’s the soft-hearted one in our gang and you can always rely on her to rescue you.)

“Anyway, we don’t need flash gear,” I explained, feeling a bit more confident. “We can use old stuff and make it totally fab.”

“How?” asked Rosie suspiciously.

“You know, decorate T-shirts and jeans with sequins and beads and stuff! We could do fabric paint designs, embroider flowers and sew on floaty bits…” I’m going to be a fashion designer when I grow up and I couldn’t wait to try out some of my own gorgeous designs.

“Hmmm…” mused Frankie and I could see she was getting into it. Frankie is also known as Spaceman because she loves jewellery, sequins and nail varnish – anything as long as it’s silver.

“We could sell jewellery,” I prompted her, dead innocent like.

“Yeah! We could make our own!” said Frankie excitedly. “I was thinking of selling some of mine at the jumble sale anyway.”

So that was it. Frankie was never one to let go a chance to thread beads and glue diamonds. That’s why she’d been so keen to have a boring old jumble sale.

I wasn’t complaining, though, ‘cos Frankie’s vote tipped the balance. And suddenly the gang saw that a Makeover was the neatest, sweetest little plan that yours truly had ever come up with!

Of course, Kenny had to be the fly in the ointment. “Oh, no, a Makeover!” she groaned, making out to stick her fingers down her throat. “Urrrgh!”

“It’ll be fun,” I retorted. “We can get ideas for outfits to wear to my Auntie Jill’s wedding.”

“The wedding, of course!” Lyndz squealed excitedly.

“Hey, that’d be great,” Frankie agreed.

My Auntie Jill, our very own Snowy Owl from Brownies, is a big favourite with our gang (especially now she’s marrying Mark, our old tennis instructor). And Auntie Jill had promised that her wedding would be “different” (which could mean anything with my crazy auntie) so I reckoned a Makeover was a golden opportunity to make fab gear for it. Trouble is, I’d forgotten how Kenny hates weddings and romance almost as much as she hates frilly clothes, girlie-girlie colours and make-up.

“Pass me the vomit bag!” she heaved.

I could see Kenny was going to take a lot of convincing, but funnily enough it was the ghastly M&Ms (earwigging as usual) who changed her mind.

“You lot doing Makeovers!” they sneered. “What do you know? You’re too ugly !”