“We’ve only got £3.15,” I said to Emma Hughes.
Emma sniffed. “Well, I suppose that’ll have to do!” She leaned over and took the magazine out of her rucksack, and I gave her the money. “Nice doing business with you!” she called after me, sounding really self-satisfied as I went back across the room. Then she and Emily started sniggering again. But this time I didn’t care about Emma getting one over on us – I’d got the magazine! That was all that mattered.
“Quick, Rosie, fill in the entry form, and then we can post it after school!” Frankie said urgently.
I flipped quickly through the magazine, looking for the competition page. But when I found it I got a big shock.
“Oh no!” I gasped.
“What?” The others crowded round me
The competition page was there all right, with its headline ‘Win a bedroom makeover!', but there was a big empty space where the entry form should have been!
Kenny grabbed the magazine from me, and stuck her fist through the hole in the page. “Someone’s already cut the form out!” she gasped.
“Emma must be entering the competition herself!” Lyndz said gloomily.
“That girl gets right up my nose!” Kenny clenched her fists and glared across the classroom at Emma. “The one thing we want in the stupid magazine – and she goes and cuts it out!”
“At least she doesn’t know why we wanted to buy the magazine,” Fliss pointed out. “So we won’t have to listen to her and the Goblin going on about how they tricked us!”
“No, they’d be killing themselves laughing if they knew!” I added miserably.
“So what do we do now?” Lyndz asked.
We all looked at each other.
“We’re going to have to go to the newsagent’s after school, and hope and pray that they’ve got a copy of the magazine left!” Frankie said grimly.
“Come on, Fliss!” Kenny yelled impatiently over her shoulder. “Put some effort into it – stop running like a girl!”
“I am a girl!” Fliss yelled back crossly, hurrying to catch the rest of us up. “Why do we have to run anyway? The newsagent’s doesn’t close till six!”
“Yeah, but the last post goes at five o’clock!” I pointed out, “and we’ve got to fill in the entry form yet.”
We’d charged out of school so fast when the home bell went, we’d almost knocked everyone else over. The M&Ms had been all set to come over and gloat about how they’d made us pay more than three times what the magazine cost, but we’d left them standing. Now we were heading down the High Street in the pouring rain towards the biggest newsagent’s in Cuddington.
“Here we are!” Frankie skidded to a halt outside the shop.
“Quick, inside!” Kenny yelled, yanking the door open and pushing us all in.
We all dived in, and the shop assistant behind the till looked a bit alarmed. We ignored her though, and dashed over to the shelves of magazines.
“It’s not here!” Fliss squeaked despairingly, as we scanned all the racks.
“Look behind the other kids’ magazines!” I said urgently. “Sometimes they get covered up, especially if there’s not many copies left.”
We all started lifting up the magazines and looking underneath them, but nothing. And then—
“I’ve got it!” I shouted, waving the magazine over my head, “I’ve got it – the very last copy!”
“Yes!” Kenny held up her hand, and I gave her a high five.
“Check it first before you buy it,” Lyndz said with a grin. “Just in case the shop assistant’s decided to enter the comp, and cut the form out!”
The shop assistant was staring at us now as if we were completely off our heads, but I didn’t care. I had a quick look through the mag, and there was the entry form safe and sound.
“Result!” I said, beaming round at the others. “Someone’ll have to lend me some money to buy it though. I gave all mine to Emma Hughes.”
There was a sudden, rather horrible silence.
“I gave all mine to Emma too,” said Fliss slowly.
“And me,” said Kenny and Lyndz together.
“So did I,” Frankie added, looking a bit sick.
“Are you telling me,” I said in a very calm, very cool voice, “that none of us has got any money?”
The others nodded miserably.
“Oh NO!” I wailed. “What are we going to do?”
“My place is closest, so you lot wait here, and I’ll nip home and get some dosh,” Kenny suggested. “I’ll even break open Molly the Monster’s piggy-bank if I have to!”
“If you’re not going to buy that magazine, can you put it back please?” said the shop assistant sharply.
Reluctantly I put the magazine back, hiding it behind a copy of the Beano. Lyndz nudged me.
“We’d better wait outside,” she muttered. “I don’t think that shop assistant likes us very much!”
“I’ll be as quick as I can,” Kenny said as we all went over to the door.
We were just about to barge through when Sally Peters came in. She goes to our school, but she’s only in Year 3 so we don’t know her that well. She went over to the shelves of magazines, and, as we rushed out of the door, I turned round, just to check that she wasn’t after my copy of Cool! I nearly dropped down dead with shock. Sally Peters had my magazine in her hand, and she was paying the shop assistant for it! I groaned loudly.
“Don’t bother going home, Kenny!” I grabbed her sleeve just as she was about to take off like a rocket. “There’s no point!”
“Why not?” Kenny asked.
“Because Sally Peters has just bought it!” This really wasn’t my day.
“No!” Kenny, Fliss, Frankie and Lyndz all immediately pressed their noses right against the window and stared in, almost giving the assistant a heart attack.
“Rosie’s right – she’s bought it!” Fliss said tragically.
“Well, we’ll just have to get it off her somehow, won’t we?” Kenny retorted in a determined voice, as Sally came out of the shop with the magazine in her hand.
“No violence, Kenny!” Frankie warned her. I think she was only half-joking as well!
“Hi, Sal!” Kenny said in a super-friendly voice. Sally looked a bit alarmed, which was probably because Kenny had never spoken to her before. “All right?”
“Yes, thank you,” Sally said cautiously.
“Well, we were wondering if you could do us a favour,” Kenny went on, grinning at her. “You see, we really need that magazine you’ve got there, so—”
Sally’s bottom lip began to tremble. “If you start picking on me, I’ll tell my teacher!”
“Kenny, you’re frightening the blinking life out of her!” I hissed, pushing her aside. “Get out of the way and let me handle this!”
“I was only trying to be nice!” Kenny said in an injured tone.
“Look, Sally,” I said politely, “We’re not trying to bully you, but we really need that magazine. We’ll give you two quid for it.”
Sally shook her head, and clutched the magazine more firmly. “No, thanks.”
I was beginning to get desperate now. “OK, Sally, we’ll give you anything you want if you’ll let us have that magazine!”
“Except my new Leicester City shirt,” Kenny added.
Sally looked a bit more interested. “Did you say anything?”
“Yeah, anything.” I hoped she wouldn’t ask for a pony or a computer or something outrageous like that. “What do you say?”
Sally was staring at Fliss’s pink rucksack very intently. “I like that keyring,” she announced, pointing at the big purple and white plastic flower which hung from one of the straps.
“What keyring?” Fliss asked sharply. Then her face dropped. “Oh no, not mine! I only bought it last week!”
We all stared hard at Fliss. We didn’t even have to say anything.
“Oh, all right!” Fliss said in a bad-tempered voice. She undid the keyring and handed it to Sally
, who gave me the magazine.
“At last!” I said triumphantly, as Sally began to fasten the keyring to her bag, beaming all over her face. “I’m not going to let this magazine out of my sight now until I’ve posted my competition entry!”
Trust me to go and open my big mouth. When I glanced up the street, the next thing I saw was two boys on mountain bikes charging along the pavement straight towards us.
“Look at those idiots riding on the pavement!” I said angrily. “They’re going to knock someone over!”
There was an old lady with a walking-stick coming slowly towards us. Instead of riding into the road to avoid her, the two boys stayed on the pavement, and swerved round her. The old lady, who hadn’t heard them behind her, was startled and almost fell. She clutched at her heart and looked like she couldn’t breathe for a moment.
“You prats!” Kenny yelled crossly She was just about to hurry over to the old lady to see if she was all right, when we realised that the two boys were pedalling straight towards us, grinning all over their faces!
“Get out of the way!” Frankie yelled at the rest of us, yanking Lyndz and Sally into the shop doorway. Fliss and I both tried to jump back too, but we panicked, and bumped into each other really hard. The magazine flew out of my hand, and landed with a splash in the wet gutter…
“My magazine!” I yelled, lunging forward.
I would’ve got flattened by the two boys on the bikes, but Kenny had refused to move off the pavement, and had stood her ground. The two boys had got a bit spooked by that, and had braked to a halt so fast they’d nearly flown head-over-heels over their handlebars. So I was able to dash over to the gutter and retrieve the magazine. It was soaking wet.
“What do you think you two saddoes are doing, riding on the pavement!” Kenny shouted at the two boys. “Don’t you know what the road’s for?”
“Oh, shut up!” said one of the boys with a grin. They were a bit older than us, but not much, and they were wearing the Cuddington Comprehensive uniform. “We were just having a laugh, that’s all!”
“Well, we’re not laughing and neither is that lady back there!” Lyndz told them furiously, as Frankie went over to check that the old lady was all right.
“Haven’t you got a brain between you!” Fliss yelled at them, taking the sopping magazine from me and holding it by one corner. “Look what you’ve done to our magazine, you wallies!”
That was pretty radical for Fliss to start having a go at a couple of boys! There were quite a few people in the street now, and they were all looking curiously in our direction.
“So what?” sneered the other boy, but he looked a bit alarmed when Kenny stormed over to him and grabbed his handlebars.
“Since when have you been so hard, Michael Johnson? I remember you crying when you lost the sack race at Sports Day!”
Michael turned bright pink. “Come on, Rick, let’s get out of here,” he muttered, and they rode off. But this time they moved off the pavement and on to the road.
“Do you know them?” I asked Kenny.
“Oh, they used to be at our school before you came – they left last year,” Kenny explained as Frankie hurried back over to us.
“They’re OK, really, just kind of brain-dead!”
“The old lady’s all right,” Frankie said. “She’s a bit shaken, that’s all.”
“That’s good.” Dismally I looked down at the magazine which Fliss was still holding. “But what are we supposed to do now? The magazine’s ruined!”
“No, it isn’t,” Lyndz chimed in. “We can dry it out, can’t we?”
“Sure we can!” Kenny agreed. “We’ll go round to my house – come on!”
I glanced at my watch. “But it’s ten past four – we’ll never make the last post!”
“Try looking on the bright side for once, Rosie!” Kenny said, giving me a shove. “Let’s go!”
We all ran the short distance to Kenny’s house as if we were in training for the Olympics. As soon as we got there, we all hurried upstairs to Kenny’s bedroom, and she laid the magazine, open at the competition page, down on the hot radiator.
“It shouldn’t take long,” Kenny said optimistically, as we all pulled off our wet jackets. “We’ve still got plenty of time before the post goes.”
I wasn’t so sure. But there was nothing I could do about it, except wait.
“Oh no, it’s the Purple Posse!” Kenny’s older sister Molly, who shared the bedroom, came in, grinning hugely, and dumped her schoolbag on her bed. She looked at our still faintly purple-speckled faces, and began to snigger. “Very nice – but I don’t think it’ll catch on!”
“Why don’t you go and do something useful, Molly?” Kenny suggested. “Like falling down the stairs?”
“This room’s half mine, remember!” Molly stood irritatingly in the doorway with her arms folded. “And I don’t want your smelly little friends going on my side of it!”
“Don’t worry, we won’t,” Frankie said scathingly. “We wouldn’t want to catch anything!”
“Looks like you already have – the Purple Plague!” Molly the Monster retorted, roaring with laughter at her own pathetic joke.
Kenny reached over and kicked the door shut. The last thing we heard was Molly thundering downstairs shouting, “Mum! Kenny’s being a pain!”
“That’s got rid of her!” Kenny said with satisfaction. She went over and picked up the magazine, but the paper was still far too wet to write on. “Oh, well, it won’t be much longer…”
We all sat in silence, looking at the magazine on the radiator, and at the clock on the wall. Time ticked by. It wasn’t until nearly twenty to five that the magazine was dry enough for me to fill in my name and address on the entry form, and then copy Frankie’s poem on to it. The paper was a bit wrinkled and a bit yellowed, but it wasn’t too bad.
“Come on, Rosie, hurry up!” Fliss kept saying, which was putting me off no end. I made about a million mistakes, but at last it was finished.
“It’s nearly five to five,” Lyndz said in a worried voice. “Are we going to make it?”
“Get your coats on, and stop babbling!” Kenny ordered, stuffing the entry form into an envelope that she’d nicked from her dad’s study and scribbling an address on it. “Leave your bags here, they’ll only slow us down. You can come back for them afterwards.”
We all grabbed our coats and dashed for the door. As we raced for the stairs, Molly the Monster was coming along the landing.
“Oh, you’re going – good!” she said, blocking our way.
“Move it, Molly!” Kenny yelled, trying to push past her.
“Why should I?” Molly asked in an infuriatingly smug voice. “I was here first!”
We all looked at each other, and then we just charged past her. We didn’t exactly knock her over, but as we disappeared down the stairs, we heard her yelling “MUM!” again.
“We’ve really got to run now!” I gasped as Kenny yanked open the front door. “It’s four minutes to five o’clock!”
We belted down the road in the direction of the nearest postbox. I was trying to calculate how far away it was. I wasn’t sure, but it had to be at least five minutes’ walk. OK, we were running, but would we make it?
We got to the postbox just as the van pulled up alongside it, and Kenny quickly stuffed the envelope through the slot. Everyone started cheering and whooping. We all stood around as the postie emptied the box, just to make sure he didn’t leave our letter behind, although he gave us a few funny looks. Then, as he slung the sack in the back of his van and drove off, we all breathed a large sigh of relief.
“OK, back to mine for chocolate biscuits and Coke to celebrate!” Kenny yelled, slapping me on the back. We all went off down the road – and then suddenly realised that there were only four of us. Frankie was still standing by the postbox, a look of horror on her face.
“Kenny, what address did you put on the envelope?” she asked slowly.
“Kenny, you didn’t pu
t the wrong address on it, did you?” I chimed in, alarmed.
“No, I didn’t!” Kenny defended herself. “I put the magazine’s address in London.”
“I thought I saw London on the envelope!” Frankie wailed. “That wasn’t the right address! The address for the competition entries was somewhere in Nottingham!”
“Maybe the magazine will send it on,” Kenny said hopefully, as we walked slowly back to her house. “It’ll only be a day late.”
“I think they’re pretty strict about the closing date,” Frankie said gloomily. “They’ll probably just throw away any entries that arrive late!”
“Just my luck!” I muttered. I was tired out, I was broke, I was wet and I was miserable. And I still had a gruesome bedroom…
“Sorry, Rosie.” Kenny slung an arm round my shoulders. “Maybe your dad’ll get his act together when he comes back from holiday.”
“He’s more likely to have a go at me because we ruined all the paint and wallpaper he bought,” I muttered. “And what’s going to happen about our sleepovers now?”
We walked the rest of the way back to Kenny’s house to collect our bags in gloomy silence. As Kenny unlocked the door, and we all trooped miserably into the hall, Molly the Monster popped out of the living-room, grinning all over her ugly face.
“Dad’s looking for you, Laura!” she announced gleefully. “And your little friends too! What have you done now?”
“Dad!” Kenny looked worried. “What’s he doing home at this time?”
“He finished his house calls early,” Molly said smugly. “And now he wants a word with you!”
Kenny stuck her tongue out at Molly, and turned to the rest of us. “Oh no! Can anything else go wrong today?”
“What do you think your dad wants, Kenny?” Fliss asked nervously.
Kenny shrugged. “Who knows?”
“Ah, Kenny.” Dr McKenzie came out of the study, and we all looked at him anxiously. He didn’t look too angry, but parents are like that sometimes. They pretend to be all cool, and then they hit you with it. “I want a word with you – and the other girls.”
We all shuffled into the study. It felt a bit like being sent to the headmistress’s office at school, because Dr McKenzie sat down at the desk, and we all stood in a line in front of him. I was starting to get seriously worried. What if our parents had decided that not only were we not allowed to have any sleepovers, we also weren’t allowed to see each other out of school, or something gruesome like that?
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