Narinder Dhami - Sari Sleepover

“I could ask my sister Tiff to do us some henna tattoos!” Rosie suggested, and we all nodded eagerly.

“I’m WAITING!” Mrs Weaver called, tapping her foot impatiently. Honestly, teachers! They tell you some really cool news and then expect you to sit there quietly and not make a sound! But we all quietened down a bit, and waited to hear what was coming next.

“We’re also running some competitions,” Mrs Weaver went on. “There’ll be a prize for the best Diwali card, and one for the best rangoli pattern. I’ll bring some examples of both of those to show you tomorrow when we start work on our Diwali topic.”

Everyone started talking again, and this time Mrs Weaver gave up, told us to get our maths stuff out and left us to it.

“Mega-cool!” Kenny exclaimed. “I’ve got a great idea for a Diwali card!”

“You can’t put Leicester City Football Club on the front of it!” I teased her. Kenny is LCFC crazy !

“I don’t even know what a rangoli pattern is!” Fliss moaned.

“What is it, Kenny?” Lyndz asked.

Kenny thought for a bit. “It’s sort of like a pattern, ” she said at last, and we all groaned.

“What kind of pattern?” I asked, giving her a shove as we went to collect our maths books.

“Don’t worry about it,” came the Queen’s snooty voice from behind us. “None of you lot are going to win the competitions anyway!” And she and Emily grinned smugly at each other.

“Oh yeah?” Kenny eyeballed Emma nose to nose. “You wanna bet on that?”

Mrs Weaver suddenly looked over in our direction. Emma scuttled off immediately (she’s such a teacher’s pet), and we were able to grab Kenny and drag her away.

“Don’t make any bets with the Queen, Kenny!” Fliss grumbled. “Remember what happened when we were in France!”

Boy, did we remember! The M&Ms had nearly crushed us after Kenny made a stupid bet with Emma on our school trip to Paris, but luckily we’d managed to turn things around and get one over on them. It was a close thing, though.

“OK, it’s cool, no bets.” Kenny winked at us. “But wouldn’t it be excellent if we won all the Diwali competitions and the M&Ms didn’t win any?”

“Maybe Mrs Chopra could help us design our Diwali cards and rangoli patterns,” Kenny suggested. It was the end of the day, and we were all on our way to Kenny’s house to do our homework together. “Then we could really rub the M&Ms’ noses in it!”

“Who do you reckon’s got a good chance of winning?” Rosie asked.

“Lyndz,” I said immediately.

“Frankie,” Lyndz said at exactly the same moment.

“Me!” Fliss said confidently – I dunno why, she’s pretty hopeless at art!

“You lot don’t stand a chance!” Kenny scoffed. “Not when I get Mrs Chopra to draw my rangoli pattern for me!”

“That’s cheating, Kenny!” Fliss said sternly.

“I know,” Kenny grinned, as we got to the McKenzies’ house, “but it’d be worth it to stuff the M&Ms!”

“Can you imagine the Queen’s face if we won the competitions?” Rosie said.

“Yeah, she’d put on that stupid snooty look of hers!” And Kenny pulled a face like she’d sucked a lemon, and stuck her nose in the air. It was exactly how the Queen looked when we got on her nerves!

We were still killing ourselves laughing when Kenny’s mum opened the door.

She immediately looked suspicious.

“What have you girls been up to now?”

“Nothing!” we all chorused. Honestly, adults are just so uncool. Anyone would think the Sleepover Club were in trouble all the time!

“Good, I’m glad to hear it.” Mrs McKenzie opened the door wider. “Come and say hello to Mrs Chopra. She’s just popped in to have a word with you all.”

“See?” Kenny whispered as we followed Mrs McKenzie down the hall, “Mrs Chopra’s come round to beg me to let her do my rangoli pattern! I brought her here with the power of my mind!”

“What mind?” I snorted, and we all started giggling again.

Mrs Chopra was sitting at the McKenzies’ kitchen table. I always really liked the clothes she wore, and today she had on a bright turquoise blue sari with this fantastic silver and emerald green embroidery. It looked fab. Even her glasses, which were silver and blue, matched! Maybe Mrs Chopra would let me borrow the sari for the Diwali / Bonfire Night thing next week. I was dying to try it on!

“Oh, hello, girls, how are you?” she said, beaming at us. “I’ve got a big favour to ask.”

Kenny raised her eyebrows at the rest of us, and I had to bite the inside of my mouth to stop myself from laughing. I could see that the others had to do the same.

“My niece Asha is coming over from India at the end of this week to visit us,” Mrs Chopra went on. “She’s going to be staying for a month, so she’ll be attending Cuddington Primary while she’s here.”

“That’s not much of a holiday!” Kenny began, then shut up as her mum glared at her.

“A month is too long to go without school!” Mrs Chopra said with a twinkle in her eyes. “Asha’s the same age as you, so she’ll be in your class, and I was wondering if you’d look after her while she’s here?”

We all nodded eagerly. We’d have said yes even if we hadn’t wanted Mrs Chopra’s help with our Diwali competition, because we liked her.

But if we’d known then what we know now, maybe we wouldn’t have been quite so keen…

“Hey, look at The Queen and the Goblin!” Lyndz whispered, elbowing me in the ribs. “They think they’re so cool!”

I glanced across the classroom. The M&Ms were working on designing their rangoli patterns and they were determined that no-one else was going to see what they were doing. So they’d carefully stood a whole pile of big books on end, all around their drawing-paper!

It was the end of the week, the day Asha was arriving in England, and we were going round to the Chopras’ house after school to meet her. For the last four days we’d been doing loads of work on Diwali, and Mrs Chopra had promised to help us out any way she could – apart from entering the competition for us, of course.

Mrs Weaver had told us this brill Diwali story about Rama and Sita. Rama was an Indian King hundreds of years ago, but he got kicked out of his kingdom so he had to go off and live in the forest with his wife Sita and his brother Lakshman. Anyway, Mrs W said that Rama had to defeat the King of the Demons, Ravana, who had ten heads! Kenny loved that bit, of course, and she’d started making gruesome Ravana-type faces across the classroom at the M&Ms. That really wound them up.

Where was I? Oh, yeah, so when Rama had killed the King of the Demons, he went back home to be King again and the people put lights in their windows to welcome him back. And that’s how Diwali started.

“They’re so pathetic!” Fliss sniffed, glaring at the M&Ms. “As if we care what they’re doing!”

“I wouldn’t mind having a look,” Lyndz admitted.

“Me too,” Rosie added. “The Queen’s quite good at art – she might beat us!”

“Yeah, we ought to check out the competition,” Kenny agreed. “Anyway, the M&Ms are really winding me up, hiding behind those stupid books!”

“OK, so we do want to see their designs!” I said. “Like they’re really going to show them to us!”

“Whose Diwali card’s the best?” Fliss asked, holding hers up hopefully. Mrs Chopra had given us some proper Diwali cards she’d bought in Leicester to look at, and we all loved the bright colours, glitter and shiny foil. So we’d gone completely over the top with our own designs!