Sleepover Girls in the Ring (4 page)

But the old cogs were beginning to whir in my brain. She definitely looked very familiar.
Suddenly it came to me!

“I’ve got it!” I shouted excitedly to the others. “She’s—”

Just then, Ailsa started to do a series of flick-flacks and cartwheels the length of the gym, ending in a super-dooper double somersault.

“Wowee!”

Everyone started to clap and cheer.

“She’s from the Circus Jamboree!” Fliss and I said at the same time. “Come on! We’ve
got
to talk to her now!”

“That was amazing!”

“I wish I could do that!”

“Did it take you long to learn? Can you teach us?”

“You’re from Circus Jamboree, aren’t you?” said Lyndz eagerly.

An agitated expression spread across Ailsa’s face. Then she just stared away across the gym. We looked at each other, puzzled.

“I only wanted to say how fantastic it was!” Lyndz carried on, sheepishly. “We went for my birthday and it was the best birthday ever. It was totally brilliant!”

“Yeah! We wish we belonged to a circus!” I assured her. “It must be ace performing like that, making everyone wish they could do what you can do.”

Ailsa shrugged. “It’s all right.” But she was kind of grinning as she said it.

“Do you think you could teach us to do what you just did?” Frankie asked again.

Ailsa eyed us up and down and started to giggle. I guess we did look kind of funny. We all have such different physiques, and none of us looks wiry like her. I mean, Fliss is kind of thin and everything, but she’s not got what you might call any
muscles
to speak of. And I guess you need those if you’re going to perform so many flick-flacks one after the other.

“I could try,” Ailsa said thoughtfully. “But I’m not making any promises. I’ve been doing this all my life, remember!”

Mrs Weaver came over to us. I think she’d been dealing with Ryan Scott in the boys’ changing room when Ailsa had put on her performance, so she didn’t know what all the buzz in the gym was about.

“Well Ailsa, I hope Laura and her friends are showing you the ropes,” she said breezily.

“Actually, we were hoping Ailsa would show
us
the ropes, Mrs Weaver,” I said seriously. “The tightropes, of course!”

We all started spluttering with laughter, even Ailsa.

For the rest of the lesson we worked in a group with her. I think Mrs Weaver was just so glad that Ailsa was fitting in that she virtually left us to our own devices, which meant that we could learn the art of flickflacks. Well, ehem, excuse me if I don’t show you right now how
that
went. All you need to know is that we went home with severely bruised bums and crushed egos!

We actually walked home with Ailsa as far as the circus. She was really nice, but she didn’t seem to want to talk about what it was like travelling around the country. Just before we left her, Frankie asked:

“Did the M&Ms do something to upset you at break time?”

Ailsa looked puzzled. “Excuse me? Oh you
mean Emma what’s-her-face and her little friend?”

We nodded.

“Nah,” said Ailsa quietly, “they were just really snotty when I told them where I lived. They said they couldn’t imagine anything so awful as living in a caravan all the time.”

“Well, don’t you take any notice of them!” I said indignantly. “They’re pond-scum, they wouldn’t know a good thing if it bit them on the bum!”

After that we spent a lot of time with Ailsa. It did feel a bit strange that there were six of us hanging round together instead of five, but it was kind of cool having someone new to tell about our adventures. She seemed well impressed by some of them. And a bit sad too that she didn’t have such good friends to share things with.

“I thought there were other kids in the circus,” Fliss said.

“There are, but they’re a bit older than me and we don’t have so much in common,” she explained.

“Like me and Molly the Monster,”
I groaned, and the others all pulled gruesome faces.

I hadn’t told Molly about Ailsa. I suppose the fact that we weren’t really speaking to each other had something to do with that. In fact, every time we saw each other we just scowled and pulled faces. Molly didn’t even mention Edward stupid Marsh at mealtimes any more. But I could tell that she was excited about something, because she was always on the phone to her mates. Not that I could ever hear what she was saying, because whenever I went near her she hissed into the phone: “Scuzzball sister alert!” and shut up until I’d gone away again.

I didn’t care. I had something far more exciting to think about.

One day after school, Ailsa actually invited us back to the circus with her. First she took us into the caravan where she lived with her parents. It was absolutely amazing. It wasn’t like Jewel’s hippy caravan at the protest site earlier this year. It wasn’t like our tiny little holiday caravan, either. It was
enormous!
There seemed to be loads of room
with a proper kitchen and two big bedrooms. They even had satellite TV!

Her mum was dead nice too. She apparently used to be a trapeze artist and an acrobat too.

“But I feel a bit long in the tooth for that these days!” she smiled.

“No way!” we all chorused. She looked even younger than Fliss’s mum!

“Ooh Ailsa, I like your friends!” Ailsa’s mum started shrieking with laughter. “They say all the right things!”

“I think Mum would really like to be a proper teacher. You know, like Mrs Weaver,” Ailsa confided to us over Coke and crisps when her mum had gone outside. “She’d make a brilliant games teacher anyway. She’s got loads of certificates for all the training she’s done.”

“Hey, she could teach us a few circus skills!” Frankie laughed. “That would be good practice for her. If she could cope with Kenny, she could cope with anyone!”

“Thanks very much!” I punched her lightly on the arm. “I think I’d be quite good on the
trapeze, actually!”

Just then, a figure appeared in the doorway.

“Hiya, Dad!” Ailsa got up and gave him a hug. “These are my new friends from school.”

“Hello there!” the man beamed at us. It was only when he spoke that we recognised who he was. It was the
Ringmaster!
He was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, and he looked kind of different from when he was all done up in his red suit.

“Well, I guess you guys would like a quick tour, would you?” he asked.

“Yes please!” we chorused.

We slurped down our drinks and followed him into the Big Top. It felt a bit weird going inside when there wasn’t an audience. But there were loads of performers practising for that evening’s show. Jugglers were flipping balls over our heads, unicyclists were speeding up and down ramps, and the trapeze artists were practising their moves.

“They’ve got a safety net!” Rosie pointed.

“They always practise with the net,”
Ailsa’s father explained. “They practise new moves all the time, and it’s only when they’re confident that they perform them in the shows without the net.”

“It still looks a long way down!” Fliss whispered. “You’d never catch me up there!”

“Oh, I’d love it!” I grinned, happily forgetting how scared I’d been watching the trapeze act on Lyndz’s birthday. “In fact, I’d love to do
any
of the stuff in the circus, it all looks so cool!”

Ailsa’s father smiled. “Well, cool or not, it needs lots of practice, doesn’t it, Ails? And I think that’s what you should be doing right now. You’ve got a show tonight, remember?”

Ailsa shrugged.

“Your friends can come by another time, don’t worry.” Her father ruffled her hair. “It’s been good to meet you all,” he said, turning to us. “Thanks for helping Ailsa to settle in so well here. It’s kind of tough for her when we move around so much, and it’s not always easy making new friends.”

Ailsa was rolling her eyes and looking dead embarrassed.

“No worries,” I told him. “We’ll just expect Ailsa to teach us all she knows about circus skills before she leaves!”

We were still buzzing with the excitement of having been behind the scenes at the circus when Ailsa ran into school the next morning. Her cheeks were all flushed and her eyes were sparkling. The M&Ms looked at her curiously, but she just ignored them and came flying up to us.

“You… circus… half-term!” she panted.

“Huh?” We stared at her.

“Calm down!” Frankie commanded. “And tell us again – slowly!”

“You… at the circus… half-term!” Ailsa was still too excited to get her words out properly.

“You want us to come to the circus at half-term?” asked Lyndz.

Ailsa nodded.

“You mean you’ll give us free tickets?” asked Rosie hopefully.

Ailsa shook her head. We all looked disappointed.

Ailsa started laughing. “No, it’s better than that!” she said excitedly, having finally recovered herself. “Mum and Dad say you can come and learn circus skills with us over half-term!”

We stared at her, totally stunned.

“D’you mean it?” I whispered at last, hardly able to believe my luck. “That’s brilliant!”

And we all started whooping and cheering and leaping around.

When the bell went, we kind of floated into the classroom. It was going to be SUPERB! I could see myself now, doing death-defying stunts on the trapeze and the crowd cheering wildly far below. I mean, I know that I want to become Leicester City’s star striker and everything, but there was nothing stopping me having a career in the circus first!

It was Fliss who brought us back down to earth. We were in the middle of the Numeracy Hour later that day when she suddenly gasped, “Oh no!” and went very pale.

“What’s up?” I hissed, but she couldn’t reply because Mrs Weaver was focusing her beady eyes on us.

When it was break time, we followed Fliss into the cloakroom where she slumped down on one of the benches.

“We can’t go to the circus at half-term,” she mumbled very quietly. “The Jam Doughnut Incident, remember? We’re not allowed to see each other outside school.”

The Jam Doughnut Incident! How could we have forgotten it?

“There’s no
way
Mum will let me go to learn circus skills,” Fliss moaned. “She’ll go ballistic if I even ask her.”

The rest of us looked at each other glumly.

“Our parents were pretty mad, weren’t they?” we agreed.

“Look,” I said firmly, trying to be upbeat. “We’ve got to give this our best shot. I mean, it’s not every day that professionals volunteer to teach us circus skills, is it? Think positive!”

The others looked about as positive as I felt when we left each other that afternoon. I kept rehearsing in my mind how I should tell Mum about our plans for half-term. But there never seemed to be the right time to bring it up because Molly the stupid Monster was always there. And I was determined that she shouldn’t find out about it. The last thing I needed was for her to mess things up for me.

You can tell how desperate I was when I actually volunteered to help with the washing-up after dinner. Everyone looked at me suspiciously, and Molly mouthed “Creep!” as I carried the plates into the kitchen.

“So Kenny, what do you want?” asked Mum, swishing the plates around in sudsy water.