Sleepover Club Eggstravaganza
Read Sleepover Club Eggstravaganza Online
Authors: Ginny Deals
For Granny
Say “Cheese!”
Hiya, Frankie here. Wanna be a supermodel? We’re having a photo shoot in the garden, as you can see. OK, so the flowerbeds aren’t exactly a catwalk in Paris, but you can’t have everything. As my gran always says, life’s what you make it.
Welcome to the latest Sleepover Club adventure. This one got pretty messy, I have to admit. Stinky, too. But hey – it all turned out seriously cool in the end. Go the Sleepover Club!
What do you mean, you don’t know what
the Sleepover Club is? You have
got
to be kidding! We are the
top
bonza babe gang in the whole of Cuddington, and probably the whole of the world too. The crazy sleepovers we have at each other’s houses! The games, the food, the jokes! Our best mate code, which means we always stand up for each other! Oh, except when Fliss is blathering about something stoopid, when we all sit on her. Literally.
Let’s give you a quick rundown on our models today, then. We have Flissy Slidebottom prancing in from the side, mincing about like she’s on hot sand. Don’t tell her I told you her nickname – her real surname’s Sidebotham, which isn’t much better, is it? She thinks she’s Claudia Schiffer, that one. But I don’t think very much of her modelling style, do you? Flinging your arms and legs around doesn’t work for the camera – you just come out in one big blur. FLISS!! Stand still a sec, will you?
You wouldn’t believe how many costume changes Fliss has gone through today. Her
sleepover kit bag was stuffed so full of clothes this weekend that she couldn’t fit in any sensible stuff at all. Guess whose toothpaste she’s had to borrow? As you probably know by now, Flisspot has the biggest wardrobe in town. She and her mum are dead keen on clothes and the latest fashions. Can’t really see what the fuss is about myself. Who wants to dress like everyone else?
Kenny the Football Queen’s just as bad at this modelling business. How am I supposed to snap her when she’s flinging herself about like she’s scoring some mega-header for Leicester City, I’d like to know? She keeps charging out of the shrubbery with this really ferocious expression on her face. Do some action shots Frankie, she begs me. Well, I’m doing my best, but if she comes out all weird she’s only got herself to blame.
Rosie’s got the right idea. She knows how to stand still for more than half a second at a time. Give us a grin, Rosie-Posie! OK, so she’s not so good at grinning to order. No Rosie, a GRIN, not a death stare! You look like Emma
Poos Hughes sucking up to Mrs Weaver with that fake smile all over your face. Hey, do us a favour and pull a gruesome face at Rosie to make her smile, will you? That’s better! Rosie is the original grumpy-chops. Getting her to laugh is sometimes like getting Kenny to sit still. Totally impossible.
And here comes Lyndz, galloping across the lens. Animal crackers, this girl. I suppose that’s an invisible horse she’s whacking. It’s going to look pretty dumb in a photo, but there’s no point telling her that. More action shots! I wish I was just taking photos of my cute baby sister, Izzy. She can’t move around much yet, and she’s beginning to smile in the most adorable way. Kenny, who wants to be a doctor like her dad, reckons she knows all about babies, and insists that Izzy’s just got wind. But I’m Izzy’s sister, so I know she’s trying to smile at me! I still can’t quite believe that I’ve got a kid sister. It’s totally the best thing
ever
.
What, you wanna know more about me? Well, I look like a beanpole and I wear some
crazy stuff sometimes. You can’t miss me, actually. The others think I’m kind of the leader of the gang – but don’t tell them I said that, ’cos they’ll only think I sound big-headed. Oh, and the most interesting thing about me at the moment is that I’ve just got a kid sister! Oh, I already told you that, didn’t I. The others are always banging on about how much I talk about Izzy. Sorry!
Don’t you just lurve cameras? The snaps, the laughs, the bit when the film finally gets developed and you see what you really look like? I think I always look stupid because my legs are so long and stringy, and my hair just flops like a pancake on my head. But the others say I’m very photogenic. They’re probably just being nice because they’re my mates, but that stuff’s always cool to hear.
We’re seriously into photography at the moment. Apart from the fact that we’ve got a bunch of right little show-offs in the Sleepover Club who just lurve posing about for shots, it’s down to this camera that the M&Ms—You remember our total worst enemies the M&Ms,
Emma Hughes and Emily Berryman, don’t you? Bet you wish you could forget them! Well, let’s just say this camera means that the M&Ms won’t be bothering us for a while. You could say they’ve got too much egg on their faces…
But let’s start at the very beginning, which, as my gran would tell you, is a very good place to start. The end of the Easter term was approaching and—
HEY, Rosie, look out! Lyndz is galloping straight towards…Oof, I bet that hurt. Where’s Kenny anyway? Uh-oh – I bet she wishes she hadn’t come running out of that bit of shrubbery just now. Now Lyndz the Hiccup Champ is off and hic-hiccing away…Well, since Fliss was already lying on the grass trying to look gorgeous, perhaps she broke their fall a bit? That poor flowerbed’s gonna take a while to recover. Rather like another flowerbed I could mention – but more of that mega-disaster later. Are you going to tell Fliss that she’s got a grass stain on her new white jeans, or am I?
“Psst, Frankie! Get down!” Kenny hissed at me in class one morning.
“Wha…?”
Kenny flicked a paper pellet with deadly accuracy across the classroom, and caught Emma Hughes bang on the back of her shirt. Result!
“Ouch!” whined Emma, whipping round and glaring at Kenny. “I know that was you, Laura McKenzie!”
Kenny
reaalllly
hates being called Laura. I thought she was going to jump up and clock Emma one, when—
“Behave yourselves, girls,” snapped Mrs Weaver, who’d suddenly appeared. I don’t know how she does that. She must have a teleporter by her desk, like in
Star Trek
. One whiff of trouble, and she beams up from nowhere.
“But Miss, it was Kenny,” butted in Emma’s crony, the Goblin girl herself, Emily Berryman.
“I don’t know what she’s talking about, Miss,” said Kenny innocently. “I was nowhere in the vicinity.”
Kenny watches too many police dramas, I reckon. It was true, though – she hadn’t been anywhere
near
Emma, exactly. Fliss’s mouth went all pinched like a dog’s bottom, and Lyndz got the giggles and had to stare very hard at her maths book like it was the most interesting thing she’d ever seen. Me and Rosie just kept very quiet.
“That’s quite enough. I don’t want to hear another squeak from anyone, do you hear?” said Mrs Weaver sternly.
Ryan Scott and Danny McCloud started squeaking like a pair of mice, and then howled
with laughter like it was the funniest thing in the world. Aren’t boys totally pathetic?
“Well, really!” said Mrs Weaver, looking extremely unimpressed. “I don’t know what’s got into you all today. You’re behaving as if you were still in the Reception class. Get on with your work, or you can finish off this maths instead of doing your Easter displays this afternoon.”
As if by magic, the whole class went silent. Maths in the afternoon!
Quel horreur!
That’s French for ‘serious doom’, by the way. I learnt it in Paris at half-term – but that, as they say, is another story.
“And while we’re on the subject of the Easter displays,” continued Mrs Weaver, now she’d got our attention, “this year’s theme is Poetry. There’ll be prizes for the most original idea, as usual.”
Groans and death noises and mumblings immediately spread across the classroom.
“But Miss, that’s really BORING,” protested Ryan Scott. “Poetry is all love and stuff.”
The boys all yawned and looked completely
fed up. I have to say, I agreed with them. Soppy stuff really does my head in. My parents have gone totally soppy since my baby sister Izzy was born, and I swear – I have to leave the room to be sick. Kenny was looking grumpy, and so were Rosie and Lyndz. Only Fliss went all pink and hopeful-looking. She
really
fancies Ryan, would you believe it? In fact, Ryan even sent her a Valentine’s card this year.
“Poetry isn’t always about ‘love and stuff’, as you put it, Ryan,” corrected Mrs Weaver. “Poetry can be about nature, and people, and war – everything under the sun.”
“What, even football?” piped up Kenny suddenly.
Mrs Weaver looked slightly flummoxed. “Well, yes, I expect so. No poems about football exactly leap to mind, Laura, but yes – I’m sure if you looked around, you could find poems about sport. Let your imaginations run! Why don’t you ask Miss Malone to show you the Poetry section in the library? You’ll be amazed at what you find.”
The boys looked much happier when she said that. It was kind of a relief all round, to tell you the truth.
At break time, we all gathered together in our usual spot. It was really gorgeous just then, because the bank beside the playground was covered with bright yellow and white and orange daffodils, waving in the wind.
The daffs were totally Mrs Poole’s pride and joy. We’d all helped plant them a while back. Someone had come up with the idea of spelling out ‘Cuddington Primary’ with the orange bulbs, but it had gone a bit wrong. Now the flowers were out, all you could really see were a couple of orange squiggles, then ‘ding’, then a couple more orange blobs ending with a big curly ‘y’. Mrs Poole had been a bit disappointed, I think. I quite liked it myself.
Anyway, Fliss immediately started banging on about Kenny’s little stunt.
“I can’t believe you cheeked Mrs Weaver like that,” she began. “If we’d had to do maths instead of our displays this afternoon, you’d be in big trouble, Kenny.”
“Calm down, Fliss,” said Rosie mildly. “It is nearly the end of term, after all.”
“Yeah!” squealed Lyndz, doing a weird little dance on the spot. “Nearly the holidays! Everyone messes around at the end of term. The teachers would be disappointed if we all behaved ourselves.”
“Well, I think it was stupid,” said Fliss primly.
I couldn’t resist it. “Like Ryan Scott wasn’t joining in,” I said with a giggle. “Your Valentine!”
Fliss went a deep shade of pink. Ever since Ryan Scott had danced with Fliss at the Valentine Disco a couple of months earlier, we’d really been taking the mickey.
“Oooh, Ryan, your mouse noises were like,
totally
real. I swear, I thought you had whiskers and a tail there for a minute!” cooed Rosie wickedly.
The rest of us fell about. Then Rosie squealed as Fliss started chasing her across the playground.
“So guys, what’s our Easter display going to
be, then?” asked Lyndz when Fliss and Rosie came panting back again. “It’s got to be a good one!”
“Remember the M&Ms’ prize-winning one last year?” said Fliss.
We all groaned and made sick noises. Last year’s theme had been ‘The Countryside’, and the M&Ms had done this really cutesie-wootsie display of woolly sheep made of cotton wool and matchsticks. The way Mrs Weaver had gone on about it, you’d think it was a piece of really precious art. It had been displayed in the assembly hall with a big sign saying ‘First Prize’, and the M&Ms had crowed about winning for like,
months
.
“Well, I’m not doing anything as wet as those baa-lamb blobs of fluff,” said Kenny in disgust. “I think we should—”
We started making stupid noises, la-la-la-ing and covering our ears and all the usual stuff. Kenny’s ideas always involved football, or blood, or both – and whatever Mrs Weaver said, neither topic was exactly
poetic
.
“Give me a chance to finish,” protested
Kenny. “It might be the best idea you’ve ever heard in your lives.”
“Your ideas are always stupid, Laura McKenzie.” Emma Hughes’ horrible weedy voice floated over to us. She was obviously still mad about the paper pellet thing. “I don’t know why you even bother thinking.”
“Yeah,” bleated Emily Berryman, hanging round her friend like a bad smell.
“What’s it to you, fart-breath?” snarled Kenny. “At least I’ve got a brain to think with.”
We all started giggling at this point. Kenny’s always dead quick with smart answers.
“Huh!” Emma tossed her stupid blonde hair. “Well, I don’t see you and your pathetic friends winning any Easter display prizes,” she came out with in the end. (I just
knew
she’d get that in somewhere. I mean, how unoriginal can you get?) “And we’re gonna win again this year too,” she continued with a slimy smirk. “Then we’ll see who’s got the brains round here.”
“Yeah,” said Emily again.
Enough was enough, I decided.
“That’s all you know, Emma,” I said, stepping up beside Kenny. Lyndz, Rosie and Fliss quickly did the same. “As a matter of fact, we’ve got a fantastic idea for the Easter display that’s gonna make anything you do look totally naff.”
The others looked a bit surprised, but tried to act like they knew what I was talking about, nodding vigorously and nudging each other like we were all in on a great big secret.
“Oh, sure,” said Emma, seeming just the
teensiest
bit worried all of a sudden. “You reckon!”
“Yeah!” said Emily. Honestly, doesn’t that girl ever say anything else?
“Yeah, we reckon,” said Kenny defiantly. “So you and your talking parrot of a friend have got some
serious
worrying to do!”
And we all turned together and stalked off down the playground like cowboys at high noon.