sleepoverclub.com (5 page)

“Take a hike, Berryman,” Kenny growled, deliberately copying Emily’s gruff voice. “This is none of your business!”

“You’re up to something,” the Goblin went on suspiciously. “They’re up to something, aren’t they, Emma?”

Emma Hughes, or the Queen as we call her, looked down her snooty nose at us.

“Definitely,” she agreed. “Why are you spying on Catherine Shaw?”

“We’re not,” said Frankie, Fliss, Kenny and I together, at
exactly
the same moment Rosie said, “So what if we are?” Which kind of gave the game away, a bit.

“You ARE spying on Catherine Shaw!” the Queen said triumphantly. “Maybe we should go and tell her, Emma.”

We glanced at each other in dismay. The M&Ms could ruin
everything
.

“Go on then,” Kenny said breezily. “And if she doesn’t believe you, she’ll probably smack you one in the chops!”

Emma and Emily’s faces both fell. They knew as well as we did that Catherine Shaw was the kind of person who thumped first and asked questions later. And the Queen and the Goblin are both mega-weedy types – even Fliss isn’t scared of
them!

“Come on, Emily.” The Queen linked arms with the Goblin, and they both stuck their noses in the air. “We’ll find out what they’re up to – and then we’ll drop them right in it with Catherine Shaw!”

We glared at the M&Ms as they sauntered off.

“You don’t think
they
could have the disk, do you?” Frankie asked in a low voice. “It’s just the sort of trick they’d love to pull over us.”

Kenny frowned. “Nah, I don’t think so. They would’ve been all smug and
I-know-something-you-don ‘t-know
.”

“Anyway, how could the Queen and the Goblin be sending us emails from a Katie Shaw?” Rosie wanted to know.

“They could be using someone else’s email address,” Frankie suggested.

That gobsmacked us a bit. We hadn’t thought of that.

“Maybe we’d better keep an eye on
them
, as well as Catherine Shaw,” I said. “OUCH!”

Ryan Scott had just come dashing round the corner, and banged right into me, sending me flying.

“Ryan, you complete idiot!” Frankie said crossly, pulling me to my feet. “Why don’t you look where you’re going?”

“EEK!” Fliss shrieked, as Ryan’s dozy mate, Danny McCloud, came racing after him and bumped right into
her
.

We all glared at them.

“What’re you girls doing lurking around here anyway?” Ryan demanded. “You’re up to something! They’re up to something, aren’t they, Danny?”

“Yeah.” Danny nodded. “We saw you following Catherine Shaw to the sweet shop.”

“Oh, shove off and leave us alone,” Kenny snapped.

“Fliss’ll tell us, won’t you, Fliss?” Ryan grinned at her, and Fliss turned pink.

“Um – er – well,” she stuttered, before Kenny clapped a hand over her mouth.

“Push off, Ryan,” Frankie ordered him. “And take your dopey friend with you.”

“Who’s that?” Danny asked dozily.

We all started giggling, as Ryan and Danny went off.

“Hey, you don’t think it could be Ryan and Danny sending us those emails, do you?” Rosie asked. “You know how they like playing tricks on people.”

“Yeah, you could be right,” Frankie agreed. “Like I said before, whoever it is could be using someone else’s email address.”

“Maybe we’d better keep an eye on Ryan and Danny as well as the M&Ms,
and
Catherine Shaw,” I suggested.

“Talking of Catherine Shaw…” Kenny nodded across the playground. “Look!”

Catherine had decided to muscle in on a gang of boys playing football. She was bossing them around, and pushing them over every time they tried to tackle her and get the ball. The boys were too weedy to stop her, so they just let her go on and score a goal.

“She’s chucked her rucksack down on that bench,” Kenny said. She had this glint in her eye which always meant she was about to do something completely barmy.

“Kenny!” Fliss squeaked. “You’re not going to look in Catherine’s bag, are you?”

“She might not be carrying the disk around with her,” Rosie pointed out.

“Well, it’s worth a try, isn’t it?”

Kenny started to sidle across the playground, keeping an eye on Catherine as she did so. The rest of us followed, even though Fliss could hardly walk because her knees were knocking together so much.

“Cover me!” Kenny whispered out of the side of her mouth, as if she was a New York cop or something. So the rest of us gathered round the bench, and tried to look casual. We did our best to hide Kenny, as she started rooting in the side pockets of Catherine’s rucksack.

“Oi! What are you lot doing!”

We all nearly
died
as Catherine Shaw came charging across the playground towards us. She had this look on her face that scared
me
to death, never mind Fliss!

“What are you doing with my rucksack?” Catherine demanded, folding her arms and advancing menacingly towards us.

“Nothing,” Kenny said quickly. I think she was the only one of us who could still speak.

“I feel sick,” Fliss moaned.

Catherine shot an uneasy glance at Fliss, then eyeballed Kenny.

“What were you doing with my rucksack, McKenzie?”

“I was just moving it aside so that Fliss could sit down,” Kenny replied. “She’s not feeling well.”

“I think I’m going to be sick!” Fliss groaned. “Quick, give me that!” And she grabbed Catherine’s rucksack, and bent her head over it.

“Don’t you dare!” Catherine howled furiously. She pulled the rucksack away from Fliss and stormed off, shooting us a poisonous glare as she did so.

“Well done, Fliss.” Frankie slapped her on the back. “That was brilliant.”

Fliss smiled weakly. “I really
did
feel sick when I thought Catherine Shaw was going to have a go at us!”

“Did you see the disk when you had your head over the bag?” asked Kenny hopefully.

Fliss shook her head. “Sorry.”

“So we’re still no nearer to finding out if
she’s got the disk,” Rosie said. “What are we going to do
now?
”

It was a good question, but nobody seemed to have any answers.

“Tom’ll have found out that the disk is missing by now,” I said worriedly, as we walked home at the end of the day. Everyone was coming round to my place to check if Katie Shaw had sent us any more emails, and to do some more work on the Aztec website (although none of us felt like it, much). “I bet he’s going crazy looking for it. I feel—”

“Really sorry for him, yeah, we know,” sighed Kenny. “Don’t worry, Lyndz. We’ll get that disk back. We’ll get it back if it’s the last thing we do.”

“It probably will be, if Catherine Shaw’s got it!” Frankie joked. She was trying to cheer everyone up, but nobody laughed. We just didn’t have a clue what we were going to do next.

When we got to my place, my mum was in the living room with Ben and Spike, who
were watching
The Lion King
. Mum was looking pretty stressed out.

“Lyndz, Tom’s going mad looking for a computer disk he’s lost,” she said. “You haven’t seen it, have you?”

I swallowed. “Not recently,” I said. Which was true enough.

“Oh, blast.” My mum sighed. “You were our last hope. Tom said you girls were using the computer when you were here for the sleepover, so we thought you might have seen it.”

“We saw Tom put it in his schoolbag,” Kenny chimed in. Which was also true enough.

“Where’s Tom now?” I asked.

“Searching his room – for the millionth time!” my mum replied. “It’s such a shame. He put so much work into designing that poster for the gig.”

We all crept out of the living room and up the stairs, feeling completely shamefaced. As we reached the landing we could hear bangs and thumps, and other loud noises. Tom’s bedroom door was open, and he was pulling all the books off his bookshelves and flinging
them on the floor. He was red in the face, and looked totally cheesed off.

“Hey, Lyndz,” he called hopefully, “have you seen that disk? You know, the one with my poster on it?”

“We saw you put it in your bag,” I said carefully, and the others nodded.

“I know.” Tom shook his head, looking completely bewildered. “But when I got to school this morning, it wasn’t there. I just can’t believe it!”

I felt
really
lousy. So did the others, from the looks on their faces. We all stood there, shuffling our feet and clearing our throats. We must have looked dead guilty, but Tom didn’t seem to notice.

“The posters should really have gone up this week,” he muttered, flicking through the papers on his desk. “If I don’t find the disk in the next couple of days, I’m going to have to design a new one.”

Wow! Relief or what! We all looked at each other, and Frankie gave us a thumbs-up.

“But I won’t have enough time to do a really cool design like I did before,” Tom
went on miserably. “It’ll just have to be something simple.”

So then we were really depressed again.

“Tom?” That was my mum calling from downstairs. “The rest of the band is here.”

“OK,” Tom called back. Then he turned to me. “Gotta go, I’ve got a rehearsal,” he said. “But if you find the disk, come and tell me straight away, all right?”

“All right,” I agreed. Fat chance.

“This is awful,” Frankie muttered, as Tom went out.

“I feel really mean,” Fliss said.

“Me too,” Rosie agreed.

Kenny didn’t say anything. I guess she felt the worst because she was the one who’d lost the disk, but I’d never seen her so quiet.

We put the computer on, and checked our site. We had two new emails. One was from Katie Shaw, and it said simply:

The ransom money is now seven pounds. Pay up or you don’t get your disk back!

“I’m getting well sick of this Katie Shaw!” Rosie said crossly, hitting the Delete button.

“Maybe we should think about paying the ransom after all,” I said hesitantly. “I could sell my new riding hat. Someone at the stables would probably buy it off me.”

But the others were shaking their heads.

“We can’t give in, just like that!” Frankie said firmly.

“We’ve still got a bit of time left to try and get the disk back ourselves,” Rosie added.

“And anyway, even if we pay the money, we might not get the disk back,” Fliss pointed out. “That’s what blackmailers do in the films – they take the money, and then try and get
more
out of you!”

Fliss was right. I hadn’t thought of that. I looked at Kenny, as she was the only one who hadn’t said anything – but she didn’t even look like she was listening.

The second email was from Darlene and the others. They’d managed to repair the broken ornament, and apart from getting glue all over the carpet which they’d had to scrape up, they were fine. And Shannon’s
mum hadn’t even noticed that the clown’s hat had been knocked off and replaced!

“Let’s tell them what’s been happening to us,” Fliss suggested, so we typed in this long message, telling them all about Tom’s band and the disk and the blackmailer. Then we sent it off.

“I forgot to tell you,” Frankie said, as we went to my bedroom, “my dad’s started doing the Aztec website. It’s looking really good so far.”

“We’d better get on with the rest of it then,” I said. I didn’t feel like doing any more on the website at all – it just kept reminding me of how important that lost computer disk was. But now that Mr Thomas was working so hard on it, it would be a bit mean to stop. And, anyway, I still needed a birthday present for Tom.

We spread all our notes out over my bedroom floor, and got to work. We finished sorting out the info about the different band members, and Frankie had this really brilliant idea of writing the words in their favourite colours, so that all the stuff about
Liam was written in blue ink and Tom’s was written in purple. Meanwhile, Rosie and Fliss were doing a horoscopes page (we’d managed to find out the boys’ birthdays), and we had a list of all the songs the band had written, which we were going to put on the site too.

After a bit, we started really getting into the website again, which was great, because it took our minds off everything that had happened over the last few days. But Kenny was still really quiet. And that usually means trouble…

“Kenny, pass me that purple felt-tip, will you?” I asked.

“RIGHT!” Kenny said, all of a sudden. “I’ve had ENOUGH!”

I stared at her. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist,” I said, “I only asked for the purple felt-tip—”

“No, I mean I’ve had ENOUGH of all this!” Kenny retorted, jumping to her feet. “All this Katie Shaw business has got well out of hand!”

“But there’s nothing we can do about it,” Fliss began.

“Oh, yes, there is.” That glint was back in Kenny’s eyes again. “Tomorrow morning I’m going to go straight up to Catherine Shaw, and I’m going to ask her for that disk back. And one way or another, I’m going to get it!”

“Kenny, are you sure this is a good idea?” I asked nervously.

It was the following morning, and we were in the playground, waiting for Catherine Shaw to arrive. I don’t know about the others, but I, for one, was hoping that she wouldn’t turn up at all.