Narinder Dhami - The Sleepover Club Sleep Out

by Narinder Dhami

Cover

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten – Goodbye

Have you been Invited to all these Sleepovers?

Sleepover Kit List

Copyright

About the Publisher

Hiya! It’s me.

No, just for once this isn’t Frankie. Bet that’s given you a bit of a shock, hasn’t it?

No, I’m not Fliss either. P-lease!

And I’m not Rosie. Guess again.

Wrong! It’s not Lyndz.

It’s me.

Kenny! Or, if you want to annoy me seriously, you can call me Laura. No-one calls me Laura except my mum when she’s in a mood. If you want us to be mates, you’ll never, ever let the L-word cross your lips.

I guess that by now you’ve realised that you’re stuck with me, instead of Frankie. Hey, you don’t have to look so shocked. I don’t know what Frankie’s told you about me, but it’s all lies. I’m not wild at all. I’m perfectly house-trained (joke). Well, most of the time, anyway.

The point is, Frankie’s told you everything about the Sleepover Club up till now, and why should she have all the fun? I told her it was about time one of the rest of us got to talk to you for a change, and Frankie was cool about it. She’s cool about most things. That’s why she’s my best mate. (I had to bribe her with a bag of Wotsits, but that’s another story).

I wasn’t the only one who wanted to tell you about the sleepover last Friday night. Once we’d decided that someone else instead of Frankie was going to do it, Fliss and Rosie and Lyndz were all dying to get in on the act, too. That’s because our last sleepover was brilliant, one of the best ever. We had a totally radical time, and best of all, we completely trashed the M&Ms. Anyway, we argued for half-an-hour over who was going to tell you about it, and then Frankie persuaded the others that it ought to be me. That wasn’t just because I gave her my Wotsits, but because it was me the M&Ms did the dirty on, and getting revenge was my idea.

Whoops, hang on a sec. I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m not as good at this as Frankie. I need a bit more practice. Hmm. D’you know what? I reckon the beginning would be a really excellent place to start.

You know all about the Sleepover Club, don’t you? There’s just the five of us – Frankie, Fliss, Lyndz, Rosie and me, and we sleep over at each other’s houses every week-end. OK, OK, so you know all that. Don’t get your intestines in a twist. I just thought that maybe if you hadn’t been around before, you might not know. That’s all. (You know what intestines are, don’t you? They’re these sort of tubes inside your stomach. I want to be a doctor, so I know about things like that. The others think I’m completely gross.)

Maybe I ought to remind you about the M&Ms as well. Remember them? Emma Hughes and Emily Berryman? The Queen and The Goblin? The Gruesome Twosome? They’re in our class at school, and they are the biggest enemies of the Sleepover Club in the whole world. If it hadn’t been for the M&Ms playing that horrible trick on me, I’d never have come up with such a brilliant plan to get our own back.

Sorry, I’m doing it again. My mouth’s got a mind of its own. My sister Monster-Features (my parents named her Molly, but Monster-Features sounds so-o-o much better) says if my brain was as big as my mouth, I’d be a genius, but what does she know? I never talk to her, except to fight. Yesterday I wanted to phone Frankie to talk about the sleepover, and Molly the Monster wanted to phone some stoo-pid friend of hers, and we got into a humungous argument, and I picked up the Yellow Pages and – but that’s another story.

Come on, let’s go, and I’ll tell you what happened. And this time I’ll start right at the very beginning.

It all started last week, on a really wet, cold and miserable day. We’d got soaked to the skin walking to school, and the only good thing was that it was a Friday. And that night we were all sleeping over at Frankie’s.

“I asked my mum if we could make popcorn tonight,” Frankie said as we went into the classroom.

“Really?” Fliss, who was fussing with her wet hair, looked impressed. The Sleepover Club have been banned from every kitchen in the universe since we nearly burnt her mum’s house down. “What did she say?”

Frankie grinned. “She said over her dead body.”

“Well, what are we going to do tonight then?” Fliss persisted. You must have sussed out by now that Fliss is just a tiny bit of a fusspot. “We could have a hair-styling contest.”

“No, let’s have a disco,” Rosie chimed in. “I’ve got my new Spice Girls tape.”

“Why don’t we play Twister?” Lyndz suggested.

I opened my mouth to say I wanted to tell horror stories (I always want to tell horror stories at Sleepovers, but we hardly ever do, because Fliss is a bit of a wimp and gets scared), when suddenly I noticed the M&Ms coming towards us with their ears flapping.

“Hold on a minute, girls,” I said, pretending to sniff the air. “There’s a horrible smell around here.”

The others clocked the M&Ms, and started to giggle.

“Oh, very funny,” said Emma Hughes snootily. We call her the Queen because she thinks she is one. She goes around with her nose stuck in the air like the rest of us stink or something. If she ever went to Buckingham Palace, she’d expect the real Queen to curtsey to her. What’s really irritating, though, is that all the teachers think she’s wonderful.

“As if we wanted to listen to what idiots like you were saying anyway,” growled Emily Berryman (The Goblin). We call her that because she’s really tiny with great big eyes and a deep voice. If you put a hat on her and gave her a fishing rod, she’d look exactly like a garden gnome.

“Oh, yeah?” I said. “Well, your ears were flapping so much, you looked like you were about to take off and fly round the classroom.”

“Like Dumbo,” Frankie added, and we all fell about.

Emma turned red with anger. She likes to think she’s perfect, but the truth is, her ears do stick out just a little bit. She opened her mouth to say something nasty in return, but just then Mrs Weaver, our teacher, came in with the register under her arm.

“Sit down, everyone,” she said, looking round.

The M&Ms skipped smartly off to their table on the other side of the classroom, and I rolled my eyes at Frankie. It’s s-o-o-o annoying the way the Gruesome Twosome smarm up to the teachers, and pretend to be all sweet and nice, when really they’re stuck-up nerds.

Mrs Weaver sat down at her desk, and everyone stopped fidgeting and shut up. Mrs Weaver’s OK, but it’s best not to push her too far. Know what I mean?

“Before I do the register, I want to talk to you about our end-of-term trip next Friday.” Mrs Weaver beamed round at us as if she was planning to take the whole class to EuroDisney. “We’ll be going to visit the Armfield Museum, near Leicester, next Friday afternoon.”

“Oh, great big fat hairy deal,” I mouthed at the others. We’ve been to the Armfield Museum with the school a zillion times, plus our parents are always taking us there when it rains in the holidays, and there’s nothing else to do. We’ve been there so many times, it’s about as exciting as cutting your toenails. The rest of the class looked just as unimpressed as we did, and everyone started muttering and moaning under their breath.