Happy Birthday
Sleepover Club

by Fiona Cummings

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Have you been Invited to all these Sleepovers?

Sleepover Kit List

Copyright

About the Publisher

BOO! It’s me. Kenny. You were expecting Frankie, right? Well, she couldn’t come. She’s ill. Not really, really ill, unfortunately. I could do with a proper patient to practise on. You can’t train to be a doctor by operating on your sister’s stuffed toys. But all Frankie Baby has is a bit of a temperature and a sore throat. Nothing to worry about. And not surprising either. You know how she can go on sometimes.

Phew! I’ll just sit down for a minute and get my breath back. I was practising a few cartwheels before I got to you. Did you see me? The thing with cartwheels is that all the blood rushes to your head, then you go all kind of dizzy. It’s quite nice actually. I was doing cartwheels here in this park when we thought of having the Sleepover Club birthday party.

It was at the beginning of the summer holidays. I was with the rest of the Sleepover Club and I was bored. I was bored because there was no football. I live for Leicester City Football Club, and I hate it in summer when the season has finished. But it wasn’t just me, we were all feeling a bit bored. It’s really weird because all we’d talked about for the last few weeks at school was what a great time we were going to have during the school holidays. We’d be sitting in the classroom struggling over some stupid maths problem, and one of us would say,

“Won’t it be great when we can do what we want, all day, every day!” And then we’d all sort of daydream about how we were going to spend our summer holidays.

I’m the original ‘Action Girl’, I’m always on the move, so I imagined us playing rounders and doing lots of other outdoorsy things. I think Fliss fancied having lots of picnics in floaty dresses. P-lease! Lyndz and Rosie didn’t seem to care what we did as long as the Sleepover Club did it together. Lyndz likes to get away from her brothers. (Fancy having four brothers! Still, I think I’d rather swap with her than have my stupid sister, Molly-the-Monster.) And Rosie just seems to enjoy hanging out with the rest of us.

It’s hard to tell what Frankie wanted to do with her holidays. But whatever it was, she’d want to get the rest of us organised to do it too! She doesn’t have any brothers and sisters, but you know that already don’t you? We all know that because she never stops reminding us about it. She likes doing stuff with the Sleepover Club because she likes having other people to boss around! No, I’m only joking. Frankie’s my best friend.

So, anyway, we had all these great plans for our summer holidays and three days into them we were bored. I mean seriously bored. Even a maths lesson followed by a spelling test would have been a treat. The thing is, everything seems to stop for summer. Everybody goes away and everywhere is really quiet.

“Do you think we’re the only people in Cuddington who haven’t gone away on holiday?” asked Frankie as we were lazing about in the park.

“Yet.” said Fliss. “I’m going to…”

“Tenerife. In three weeks.” The rest of us said together.

Fliss had told us about her holiday a zillion times already, and we weren’t likely to forget.

“I was only saying!” grumbled Fliss and stomped off to the pond to look at the ducks.

“Get her!” laughed Lyndz.

“I wish I was going to Tenerife,” moaned Rosie. “I wish I was going anywhere. We never go on holiday now.”

Frankie, Lyndz and I pretended to play violins. We do that when Rosie is in one of her ‘Poor-Little-Me’ moods.

“We don’t go on holiday much,” said Lyndz. “There are too many of us. But I don’t mind. There’s always lots to do at home.”

“But we used to go away a lot. Before dad left,” mumbled Rosie. She looked as though she was going to cry. I’m not very good with people who cry. I don’t know what to do with them. Lyndz is pretty good, and so is Frankie. I just don’t cry very much myself. When I saw Rosie’s lip going all wobbly, I thought it was a good time to see what Fliss was up to. She was probably still sulking, but we’re used to that by now.

I wanted to see how many cartwheels I could do before I got to the pond where Fliss was standing. I thought it would be about twenty. One, two, three… twelve, thirteen, fourteen…

“Hey, watch it!” I cartwheeled right into Fliss and we both nearly ended up swimming with the ducks!

“Sorry Fliss,” I spluttered. My head was in a major spin after being upside down so many times.

“You know Kenny,” sighed Fliss, examining her legs for bruises. “You really are very clumsy.”

She sounded like Mrs Weaver, our teacher. I wished I’d stayed with the others. Rosie crying would have been better than Fliss moaning.

“And I was trying to work something out before you nearly drowned me!” snapped Fliss.

She started muttering something and counting on her fingers. Fliss was certainly one strange dude!

Suddenly, she leapt into the air.

“I thought so. We’ve had nine! We’ve had nine!” she shouted.

Yep! That confirmed my original diagnosis – our Fliss had finally flipped!

“Nine what?” I asked. “Nine fights? Nine doughnuts? What?”

Frankie, Lyndz and Rosie had joined us. They had obviously seen the commotion Fliss was causing. What an embarrassment!

“What’s she on about?” asked Lyndz. I shrugged my shoulders.

“We’ve had nine sleepovers!” Fliss shrieked. “That means that the next one will be our tenth!”

“Hey Fliss, go to the top of the class and give the teacher a banana!” I said.

“I always knew that you’d learn to count one day!”

“Hang on a minute,” said Frankie. “We’ve had loads of sleepovers. I’m sure we’ve had more than ten.”

“I mean we’ve had ten since we formed the Sleepover Club with Rosie and everything,” explained Fliss very slowly, as though she was talking to a bunch of three-year olds.

“Oh right,” Frankie nodded.

“Anyway, as I was saying,” continued Fliss. “Ten’s an important number, isn’t it? We ought to have a special sleepover to celebrate.”

Yeah. One-nil! For once, Fliss was right. If we had a sleepover to plan, we couldn’t get bored. Especially when it was a special birthday sleepover.

We all felt pretty excited and you know how hyper we can get. We all started talking at once, and laughing and doing high fives as though we’d all just won Olympic medals or something. Somehow I don’t think we would have been so enthusiastic if we had known then what trouble this tenth sleepover was going to cause.

The thing is that we’re all so different. And I know that that’s a good thing, even though it has caused problems in the past. But we always managed to sort them out. And anyway, for our normal sleepovers we just sort of go with the flow, because it’s the sleepover that matters and not really what we do there. But for this tenth birthday sleepover, boy did things get out of hand! It was like it wasn’t just a sleepover anymore it was some major celebration. We all got very selfish and only wanted to do what we wanted to do. Crazy I know. I think we all went a little bit mad for a while.

“We should have a proper party, a dressed-up party, with music and dancing and a proper meal and maybe a marquee and…” said Fliss excitedly.

“What planet are you on Fliss?” I asked. “A marquee? The nearest you’ll ever get to a marquee is the tent you sleep in at Brownie camp!”

“Alright Kenny Clever Clogs, what do you think we should do for the sleepover?” Fliss snapped back. She had those bright-red patches on her cheeks, which is never a good sign.

“What about a day out at one of those paintball courses?”

The others all groaned.

“You only want to do that because you know you’d win. This has to be something special for all of us you know.” I was surprised when Frankie said that. Us being best mates and everything.

“Alright then, what did you have in mind?” I asked.

“What about a children’s party, with silly games and jelly and ice-cream, and balloons…”

“Don’t you think we’re a bit old for that?” asked Lyndz.

“That’s the point,” sighed Frankie, coming over all grown-up. “We don’t have parties like that anymore because we think we’re too old, but I think they’re kind of fun.”

“Oh please Frankie,” moaned Fliss. “Everybody’d laugh at us if they ever found out!”

“What about going out to the cinema and having a pizza or something,” asked Rosie.

“Bor-ing!” the rest of us sang together.

“I was only trying to help!” mumbled Rosie. “I know when I’m not wanted. I might as well go home.”

She started walking towards the gate. The rest of us just watched her go. Then we all turned on each other.

“Now see what you’ve done!”

“What I’ve done. It was your fault.”

“You always think you know best don’t you?”

And before we knew where we were, we were all yelling at each other. And I mean really yelling. That’s when it looked like the Sleepover Club would never even reach it’s tenth birthday!

So, it was the summer holidays. We were bored. But now the Sleepover Club couldn’t even be bored together because we weren’t speaking to each other. Crazy hah?

I bet you’ve done that too haven’t you? I mean, I bet you’ve fallen out with your friends over something really small and stupid. Only it seems really important at the time. It’s only later that you realise how dumb the whole thing is. But by then it’s too late. The damage is done.

It was awful. I felt totally miserable without the others. But somehow I just couldn’t do anything about it. It hadn’t been my fault that we’d fallen out in the first place, so why should I be the one to make up? Of course, if we’d all thought like that we would never have spoken to each other again. Frankie and I usually phone each other about a million times a day and we tell each other everything. When we fell out, we didn’t speak for three days. Mum is always saying that I can never admit when I’m in the wrong, and I guess that’s true.

Looking back it seems stupid that we let everything get so out of hand. But we have our diaries to remind us how awful we felt when we thought the Sleepover Club was about to split up.

I wrote:

If Fliss hadn’t thought of having a tenth birthday sleepover party, we’d still all be speaking now. It looks like I’ll be stuck with Molly-the-Monster all holidays. Pass the sick bucket! I wish we were going to stay with grandpa and grandma McKenzie now, rather than later in the holidays. At least I wouldn’t be bored there. I’m bored bored BORED here without the others.

Frankie wrote in her diary:

Why is it we never agree on anything? If only we could have decided to have a normal party, then none of this would have happened. I don’t see what was so wrong with my idea anyway. The others just don’t like to do anything different. Well I’m not making the first move to get the Sleepover Club back together. I always end up having to organise everybody. And I’m sick of it.

Fliss wrote in hers:

Went shopping with mum today. She bought me a great pair of shorts and some yellow nail varnish. They’re well cool! She said they were to cheer me up, but they haven’t. I still miss the others.

Rosie scribbled in her diary:

I’m never going to make any friends again. Nobody likes me. Belonging to the Sleepover Club was great and now I’m not sure whether there’s even going to be one any more. (You couldn’t read what else she’d written because the writing was all smudged where she’d cried over it. Breaks your heart doesn’t it?)

Lyndz had just written:

Can’t stand this anymore. I’m going to ring the others up and get them to meet round here tonight.

And that’s just what she did.

It felt a bit weird at first going round to Lyndz’s, knowing that there was this big ‘thing’ between us. We were just so polite with each other. It was as though some crummy old soap opera characters had taken over our bodies and we were sitting around discussing the price of tea or something. It was Frankie who sorted us all out – as usual.

“Look,” she said in her grown-up tone of voice. “I’m sorry if I was stroppy the other day. I don’t really mind what kind of party we have, as long as we all agree on it.” The rest of us mumbled that that was how we felt too. We all looked at the floor, as though our feet were suddenly the most fascinating things in the world.

Suddenly, Lyndz leapt on to her bed and started bouncing on it.

“Come on guys!” she yelled at the top of her voice. “It’s party time!” Yep! The Sleepover Club was back together. And just to prove it, Lyndz got hiccups.

“You do realise don’t you, that we’re the only people in the entire universe who know how to stop you making that appalling noise!” I said, as I dug Lyndz hard in the ribs. A shock like that sometimes does the trick.

“Ouch Kenny!” Lyndz doubled over. “Why do you think I got you all round here? Hic.”

“Without us, you’d probably have to walk hiccuping down the aisle on your wedding day,” laughed Frankie.

“I, Lyndsey, hic, Marianne, hic,Collins, hic, do take you, Hic, Hic, Hic…” said Fliss, who knows the whole marriage service backwards.

“Except I’m never getting married,” said Lyndsey. “My brothers are enough to put anyone off men for life!” The thought of getting married seemed to have stopped Lyndz’s hiccups anyway. Either that or the fact that Frankie had been doing her ‘thumb in the hand’ routine on her for the last few minutes.

“OK then, so what are we going to do for this party?” asked Frankie when we’d all calmed down. “And where are we going to have it?”

Well, it was like feeding time in the monkey house: we all started chattering at once. And we got louder and louder. And because we were all shouting, nobody could hear what anyone else was saying.

“Shut up!” yelled Frankie. That girl could be a sergeant major with a voice like hers.

“Right,” said Frankie, coming over all teacher-like. “If we decide where we’re going to have the sleepover, we might be able to decide what we’re going to do for it.”

“My place would be good,” said Fliss. “Because mum’s ever so good at organising parties and stuff.”

The rest of us weren’t very sure about that. Fliss’s mum would probably stand over us with a dustpan and brush in case we dropped any fairy cake crumbs on her precious carpet.

“I know my stupid brothers can get in the way,” said Lyndz. “But we have got a big garden and my parents are pretty cool about letting us do our own thing.”

That was true. But I wanted us to have the birthday sleepover at my place. That way I could organise a few wild, crazy games and the others couldn’t do anything about it. The problem was Molly-the-Monster: the rest of the Sleepover Club dislikes her almost as much as I do – and that’s lots!

“It’d be great if we had the sleepover at my place,” whispered Rosie. “Adam loves you all coming round. And there are lots of rooms we could use.”

Rosie has a stonking great house that her father was supposed to be doing up. He’s not around much now, so it’s chaotic and a bit run-down. But it’s a pretty cool place to hang out. And the staircase is wicked for our ‘sliding down the banister’ races.

Still, we could have a sleepover there another time. I wanted the tenth birthday one at my place.

“OK, I’m like the rest of you. I’d like you all to come to my place,” admitted Frankie. “My room’s large, my parents are cool and we’ve always had pretty great sleepovers there in the past haven’t we?”

“Are you saying that the sleepovers everywhere else weren’t much cop?” I asked. “What’s wrong with my place?”

“Molly-the-Monster?” Frankie laughed. The others groaned. My stupid sister spoils all my fun.

“How can we decide on where to have it, if we all want it at our own place?” Fliss grumbled. “It’s got to be fair!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I moaned. Sometimes I get sick of Fliss going on about what’s fair all the time.

“Just because you don’t like doing the same things as the rest of us, doesn’t mean that you can criticise us all the time,” Fliss suddenly turned on me. “And have you ever thought that it might be you who’s a bit weird for wanting to get all muddy and stinky rather than wearing make-up and having your hair nice?”

Well that was a shock! Fliss wasn’t usually so aggressive.

“I’m just not into all that sissy stuff,” I said.

“Sissy? That’s not fair!” screeched Fliss.

“Fair! Is that all you ever talk about?” I shouted.

And suddenly we were at each other’s throats again. This tenth birthday sleepover party looked doomed before the start! But I do admit that this time it was my fault.

“OK. Time out!” shouted Sergeant Major Francesca Thomas. “Have you two any idea what you look like? It’s pathetic!”

Fliss and I stopped yelling and looked at each other. Her face was bright red and she looked mad! I must have looked like that too, because when we caught sight of each other we just cracked out laughing.

There was a knock at the door.

“I told mum that I’d need danger money to come into a room full of weird women!” Stuart, Lyndz’s eldest brother, carried in a tray of orange juice and biscuits.

“Come on Lyndz. Shift some of this stuff from your desk. This tray is heavy you know.” Lyndz is nearly as untidy as I am. There was so much stuff piled on her desk that when she tried to move it, it fell on to the floor.

“Hey what’s this?” asked Rosie, picking something up.

“Oh that’s just a card I’m working on for my Artist’s Badge at Brownies,” said Lyndz taking it from her.

“Oh no! I’d forgotten!” gasped Rosie. “I’ll have to start planning it tonight. What else do we have to make? Is it a bookmark?”

“Or a poster,” said Fliss.

I hadn’t even thought about what I was going to make, and the Badge Tester was coming to Brownies the following Thursday.

“That’s it!” shrieked Frankie, grabbing me by the shoulders. “I’ve done it again! I am a genius!”

“Oi! Let go of me Big Head!” I gasped. “What cunning plan have you thought of now?”

“Well,” spluttered Frankie. “We’re all doing the Artist’s Badge right? If we all design a birthday card for the Sleepover Club, then get the Tester to decide which one is the best, whoever designed the best card gets to hold the tenth birthday sleepover party. I told you I was clever didn’t I?”

Frankie was talking so fast that all her words had fallen over each other. So it took the rest of us a little while to work out what she had said. But when we did, we had to admit that the girl’s got brains.

Of course, we still had the problem of deciding exactly what we were going to do at this party. But first we were all determined to win the competition.

After Frankie had had her brainwave we were all eager to get home to design our creative masterpieces. The trouble is that I’m about as good at drawing as an elephant is at rollerskating. If we’d been competing for something like the Athlete’s Badge, then I would have started putting up the party streamers. As it was, I knew that I would be going somewhere else for the tenth birthday sleepover party. The question was, where?

My money was on Lyndz winning the competition. She’s brilliant at making things. I can sort of see things in my head, but when I try to put my ideas down on paper, they come out all wrong. Lyndz seems to have good ideas, and be able to carry them out. Fliss is very prissy and fussy about things. They never quite turn out as she expected them to, but they are always very neat and tidy. And adults always like that don’t they?

Frankie is a bit hit-and-miss. Once in art at school, she made this really great dinosaur out of papier-mâché. It was wicked. It stood outside Mrs Poole’s office for weeks. Parents would come into school and stand for ages admiring it, like it was by some famous sculptor or something. Then the next time Frankie made a model it was worse than one of those piles of junk you bring home when you’re in nursery class. She can be weird like that. You never know what to expect.

I’d never really seen much that Rosie had made. Her last sleepover invitation was pretty neat. But Adam had helped her design it on the computer, so that didn’t really count. All I knew for sure was that although I had tried my best with my birthday card, it wasn’t going to be good enough to win our competition.

We all met up at Frankie’s house a couple of days before Brownies. All the others seemed very confident that their card was going to be the best. But everybody acted like their design was the biggest secret in the universe. Frankie had even asked her father to lock hers away in his filing cabinet. I ask you, how ridiculous can you get?

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