sleepoverclub.com

by Narinder Dhami

  “How are we going to ask things like that without them getting suspicious?” Rosie wanted to know.

  “We’ll just have to be really clever about it,” I replied. “Anyway, Liam, Jack and Dan have been Tom’s mates for years – I already know quite a bit about them.”

  “We ought to find out their star signs too.” Fliss pointed to a page in Popstar magazine, headed Star Horoscopes.

  I wrote that down as well. “This is such a cool idea, Frankie,” I said gratefully. “Tom’s going to be well pleased.”

  “And best of all, it won’t cost any cash!” Kenny said with a grin. “Hey, shouldn’t we have some photos of the band on there too?”

  “Yeah, good idea,” Frankie agreed. “Have you got that camera your dad bought, Lyndz?”

  I nodded.

  “What about a film?” Fliss asked.

  Frankie grinned. “It doesn’t need one,” she said.

  Fliss, Kenny and Rosie stared at her.

  “Don’t be daft, Francesca,” Kenny said. “You can’t take pictures without a film!”

  “You can if it’s a digital camera,” Frankie explained. “My dad’s got one. The camera takes the picture, and then you connect the camera to your computer, and you can see the photo on the computer screen. Simple.”

  We were all dead impressed.

  “You know, Frankie, you’re in serious danger of turning into a computer nerd!” Kenny said, giving her a shove.

  “What, instead of a football nerd like you, you mean?” Frankie retorted, swiping her round the head with a rolled-up copy of Popstar.

  “OK, what else?” I asked, looking at my list. But before anyone could say anything, my mum yelled up the stairs that tea was ready.

  “Liam, Jack and Dan usually stay for tea when they come round to practise,” I told the others, as we clattered down the stairs. “So we can find out loads of stuff for the website.”

  “And remember, we don’t want them to guess what’s going on,” Kenny instructed us. “So play it dead cool. Right—Aaargh!”

  Kenny had jumped down the last few stairs into the hall, and landed on the rug, which skidded on the polished wooden floor. Kenny skidded along with it, and ended up in a tangled heap in the kitchen doorway. The rest of us nearly died laughing.

  “Great entrance, Kenny!” Tom called. He and his mates were already sitting at the kitchen table, scoffing Mum’s spaghetti.

  “Yeah, that was dead cool, Kenny!” Frankie whispered, hauling her to her feet.

  We all crammed in round the kitchen table. It was lucky my oldest brother Stuart was out with his girlfriend, and Dad was still at work, or we’d never have fitted. I noticed that Fliss nearly knocked Frankie and Rosie over so that she could grab the seat next to Liam – she really had it bad!

  “I like your shirt, Liam,” Fliss said brightly, as Mum started heaping spaghetti on to our plates. “Is blue your favourite colour?”

  Liam looked a bit surprised.

  “Well, yeah, I guess so,” he said.

  Fliss immediately started pulling faces at me, and raising her eyebrows.

  “OK, OK,” I muttered, quickly writing Liam – blue on my notepad. I’d brought it down with me, and had it hidden on my lap.

  “What’re you doing, Lyndz?” Mum asked. Why do parents always seem to have eyes in the backs of their heads?

  “Nothing,” I said, hiding the notepad under a corner of the tablecloth.

  Kenny turned to Tom. “What’s your favourite colour then?” she asked.

  “Er – purple,” Tom replied, looking as if he thought Kenny had gone totally mad. OK, maybe they all thought we were a bit strange, but we carried on until we’d found out all their favourite colours!

  Then Rosie started off again. “Mm, I love spaghetti,” she said. “It’s my favourite food!” She stared hard at Jack. “What’s your favourite food?”

  By the time we’d scoffed Mum’s toffee apple pudding, we’d found out loads of stuff! I think Tom and the others couldn’t wait to get away from us and our endless questions though, because they legged it back into the garage as soon as they’d finished their pud.

  “What are you girls up to?” Mum asked suspiciously, as she cleared the dishes away.

  “Nothing,” we all chorused.

  “That always means something.” Mum raised her eyebrows at us. But luckily Spike threw his plastic bowl of yucky yellow baby food at Buster just then, so we were able to make our escape.

  We decided that next we’d take some photos, so I got the digital camera, and Frankie showed us how to work it. It was totally brilliant. You took a picture, and then the camera showed you how it looked, so you could decide if you liked it, or if you wanted to take another one before you put it on the computer.

  “OK, leave all the talking to me,” Kenny told the rest of us, as we dashed downstairs again with the camera.

  “Yeah, don’t forget to play it cool!” Frankie teased, as Kenny stepped carefully over the hall rug.

  “Won’t the band think it’s a bit weird that we want to take their photos?” Rosie asked.

  “I told you, leave all the talking to me,” Kenny said breezily. “We can say that Fliss is in love with Liam, and she’s dying for a photo of him.”

  “Don’t you dare, Kenny!” Fliss squealed.

  Tom and the band didn’t look that thrilled to see us, when we all piled into the garage again. I guess we were starting to get on their nerves a bit.

  “Don’t mind us,” Kenny called, beginning to snap away with the camera as if she was some sort of newspaper photographer. “We just want to get a few pictures, that’s all.”

  “Why?” asked Liam.

  Fliss turned pink, and hid behind Rosie, in case Kenny dropped her in it.

  “Oh, no reason,” Kenny said, still snapping away.

  Frankie rolled her eyes. “I thought you said leave all the talking to you!” she hissed, as the boys looked even more confused.

  “Look, they’ll let us take as many photos as we want, if they think it’ll get rid of us!” Kenny whispered. “Go on, Tom, stand next to Liam, will you?”

  Kenny managed to get quite a few pics before the boys got fed up. When Tom started giving me the evil eye, I decided that it was time we left them to it. Giggling madly, we raced upstairs and had a look through the pics Kenny had taken. We decided which ones we were going to use, and then we deleted the rest.

  “Come on, let’s design the website,” Frankie said eagerly. So we got some big pieces of paper, lay on my bedroom floor and began to work out where everything was going to go. To start with, we decided to have Aztec in great big letters at the top of the Home Page, with a photo of the band underneath. Then Kenny suggested that we did a kind of guide to each member of the band, with a photo and loads of info about them. So we started trying to sort that out. It took ages, and we weren’t even half-finished before my mum came in and told us it was time for bed.

  “Thanks, guys,” I said gratefully, rolling up the bits of paper we’d been working on. “This website is going to be so cool. Tom’s going to love it.”

  “Last one into the bathroom’s a hairy chimp!” Kenny yelled, grabbing her pyjamas and toothbrush from her sleepover bag.

  We all scrambled for our stuff, and dashed along the landing. Just as we rushed past Tom’s bedroom, the door opened and my brother came out.

  “Oh, so it wasn’t a herd of elephants after all!” he said teasingly. “Sure you don’t want to ask me any more questions, like what my favourite animal is, or something?”

  “No,” I said, thinking I’d better change the subject – fast. “What’re you up to?”

  “I’ve just finished designing the publicity poster on the computer for our first gig,” Tom replied. “Want to take a look?”

  “Sure,” I replied.

  We all crowded into Tom’s room, and looked at the computer screen. The poster was fab. It had the word Aztec in the middle, which was written in curly letters in different shade
s of purple, and then there was a kind of sunburst of purples, greens and gold around the lettering.

  “Wow!” Frankie said admiringly. “That must’ve been really difficult. I bet my dad couldn’t do that!”

  “Well, my technology teacher at school helped,” Tom said, fiddling with the keyboard. “I’m just copying it on to disk, then I’m going to take it into school and photocopy it.”

  He clicked the disk out of the machine, and then wrote on the label:

  “You know what?” Kenny said in a low voice as we went out. “That poster would look fab on our website!”

  “Ooh, yeah!” Fliss said eagerly, and everyone else nodded.

  “If we got hold of that disk, we could copy the poster on to a blank one,” Frankie whispered. “Tom would never know.”

  We all glanced over our shoulders, and saw Tom slip the disk into the side pocket of his school bag.

  “Let’s wait till he’s gone downstairs,” Kenny suggested, elbowing her way into the bathroom ahead of the rest of us. “Hey, Fliss, you’re last – you’re the hairy chimp!”

  “Oh, very funny,” Fliss sniffed. “And don’t try putting a blob of toothpaste down my neck like you did at our last sleepover!”

  “OK,” Kenny agreed. She squeezed a big lump of toothpaste on to her brush, and dropped it down the back of Rosie’s T-shirt instead.

  “Kenny!” Rosie howled, jumping up and down.

  We finally managed to get into our pyjamas and get our teeth cleaned. On our way back across the landing, we noticed that Tom’s bedroom door was open. He wasn’t there, and the computer was still on…

  “Come on,” Kenny whispered. “This is our chance!”

  We all tiptoed into Tom’s bedroom.

  “We need a blank disk to copy the poster on to,” Frankie said, hunting around on the desk.

  “Hurry up!” Fliss was nearly wetting herself. “I can hear someone coming!”

  Sure enough, there were footsteps coming up the stairs. We all panicked, and leapt for the door. We rushed into my room, just as Tom appeared on the landing.

  “That was close!” Rosie breathed.

  “Do you think we’ll get a chance to copy it later?” Fliss asked.

  “Sure we will!” Kenny beamed. She slipped her hand into the pocket of her pyjamas, and pulled out a computer disk. It was labelled:

  “I nicked it out of his bag while the rest of you were panicking,” Kenny explained. “Now we can take it over to Frankie’s tomorrow morning and copy it. Simple!”

  Well, it sounded simple, didn’t it? But guess what?

  It wasn’t!

  “Yeah, Lyndz, I’ve still got the disk.” Kenny waved it at me, then put it back in her coat pocket. “That must be the ten millionth time you’ve asked me!”

  “Sorry,” I said. “It’s just that Tom’s put so much work into it. He’ll kill me if we lose it!”

  It was the following morning. After breakfast we’d decided to go on to Frankie’s house, so that we could copy the poster and get on with designing the website. We were going to ask Mr Thomas if he’d give us a hand, too. We’d just stopped off at Rosie’s and Fliss’s houses so they could drop their sleepover bags off, and now we were on our way to Kenny’s.

  “I hope Tom doesn’t notice the disk is missing,” I said worriedly.

  “Look, it’ll be back in his bag by this afternoon, Lyndz,” Frankie said. “He doesn’t need it till he goes to school on Monday, anyway.”

  “Yeah, Frankie’s right.” Kenny rang the McKenzies’ doorbell. “Nothing’s gonna go wrong, Lyndz. Don’t worry so much!”

  Yeah, right…

  Molly the Monster, Kenny’s older sister, opened the door, and looked down her nose at us. “What do you lot want?” she said rudely.

  “I live here, remember?” Kenny pushed past her, and we all followed. Kenny and Molly really hate each other, and they have to share a bedroom which drives Kenny bananas.

  “Don’t think you’re going to hang out in our room!” Molly snapped, chasing us up the stairs, “’Cos me and Louise are in there, listening to CDs.”

  “Who’s Louise?” Frankie asked.

  “Louise Ball, she’s a mate of Molly’s,” Kenny explained. “Yeah, strange as it may seem, she has actually got one friend!”

  “I heard that, Laura McKenzie!” Molly howled furiously.

  We all piled into Kenny’s bedroom. A weedy-looking girl was sitting on Molly’s bed, glaring at us.

  “What do you think, guys?” Kenny winked at us. “Shall we hang around here, and annoy Molly the Monster and Louise the Leech?”

  Molly went purple. “Just get lost, Kenny!” she snapped.

  “And take your snotty-nosed little mates with you,” Louise added snootily.

  “What did you call my friends?” Kenny asked, taking a step towards Louise. She actually looked quite frightened. Well, Kenny can be a bit scary when she gets going.

  “Come on, Kenny,” Frankie said firmly, taking her arm and hustling her out of the room. “Let’s go to my place and get on with you-know-what.”

  “Yeah, the sooner we get that disk copied, the better,” I chimed in, as we went downstairs. “I have to replace it before Tom notices it’s gone.”

  “Who does Molly the Monster think she is?” Kenny grumbled, as we went on to Frankie’s house. “It’s about time I played another trick on her. I haven’t done anything since I put custard in her trainers!”

  “Hi, girls.” Frankie’s dad was out on the drive, washing the car. He waved as we walked towards him. “How’s things? No disasters last night at the Collins’ house then?”

  “Oh, Dad,” Frankie groaned. “You make it sound like every sleepover’s a disaster.”

  Mr Thomas raised his eyebrows. “I’m not saying another word!”

  “If you’re not nice to us, we won’t let you help us with our new website,” Frankie said with a grin.

  Mr Thomas looked interested. “What website is that? And, Kenny, put that sponge down!”

  Kenny was sneaking up behind Fliss and Rosie, holding the sopping wet sponge. Pulling a face, she chucked it back into the bucket, while me and Frankie explained about Tom and his band and the website.

  Mr Thomas was dead pleased to be asked to help, because it meant he’d get the chance to show off all the stuff he’d learnt about web design at his evening class. He promised that as soon as we’d finished designing the site, he’d put it all together, and it’d be ready for Tom’s birthday. Cool or what?

  “Everything’s working out brilliantly!” Frankie said, as we raced up the stairs to her bedroom. Mrs Thomas had taken Frankie’s baby sister, Izzy, out for a walk, so we had the place to ourselves. “If we can finish designing the website this weekend, then Dad’ll have plenty of time to start setting it up.”

  “We’d better copy the poster first,” Kenny suggested.

  “Nah, let’s check the Sleepover Club site, and see if those American girls have replied,” Fliss said, as Frankie switched the computer on.

  “Whose turn is it?” Rosie asked.

  We all groaned.

  “Mine.” Frankie plonked herself firmly down in front of the computer, and logged on to the Internet. “I gave Fliss my go this morning.”

  We all waited impatiently for our site to pop up on the screen. When Frankie checked the messages section, we were well pleased to see that we had two new emails!

  “Look, one’s from those American girls, and one’s from someone called Katie Shaw.” Frankie frowned. “We’ve never had any messages from a Katie Shaw before, have we?”

  “No,” I agreed, “and look, the title’s Very Important!. Maybe we should read that one first.”

  “Nah, let’s read the American one first.” Kenny pointed at the screen. “Look, it’s called Our First Sleepover Disaster!”

  Frankie opened up the email, and we all gathered round to read it.

  Dear Frankie, Fliss, Kenny, Lyndz and Rosie, We’re emailing you in the middle of our
sleepover! It’s late at night here, and we’re staying at Shannon’s place. We just snuck downstairs to raid the fridge, and guess what? On the way back, we accidentally broke Shannon’s mum’s favourite ornament! It’s this funny-looking clown with a big hat on, and Darlene knocked it over and broke the hat off!

  What do you think we should do? Should we confess in the morning, or should we hide the bits, and pretend we don’t know anything about it?

  Please email us back!

  We couldn’t help laughing.

  “Hey, that’s just what happened to us ages ago!” Kenny pointed out. “When we were trying to make that video to send to You’ve Been Framed, remember?”

  “You mean when you put those ice-cubes down my pyjamas, Kenny,” Fliss said with a wince.

  “And you jumped and whacked me with that plate of biscuits you were holding, Fliss,” Rosie added.

  “And I leapt out of the way, and I knocked that ornament over and broke it,” Frankie remembered.

  “And we didn’t want Fliss’s mum to find out, so we glued it back together,” I finished off.

  “That’s what we’ll tell them then.” Kenny grinned. “Tell them to glue it back together, and no-one’ll know the difference!”

  Frankie began typing furiously. Then she clicked the Send button, and the email whizzed off, or whatever it does.

  “Darlene and her mates sound as if they’re always getting into trouble,” I remarked.

  Kenny pointed out, “Well, at least we can help them to get themselves out of it!”

  “We got found out when we broke Mrs Proudlove’s ornament though,” Rosie reminded us.

  “That was only because Fliss left the camcorder with the tape in it lying around,” Kenny retorted.

  “If Kenny hadn’t put the ice-cubes down my neck, Frankie wouldn’t have broken the ornament in the first place!” Fliss snapped.

  “Guys, guys, guys!” Frankie yelled. She was staring at the computer screen as if her eyes were glued to it. “I’ve just opened that email from Katie Shaw. I think you’d better all read it. And fast.”

  We all crowded round the screen again.