Emergency Sleepover (6 page)

“That’s not really enough, is it?” Rosie screwed up her nose. “I mean even though people will have to walk quite a way, they’ll still be finishing before we have chance to get back to Pricebusters ourselves. And we’ve got to set up Kenny’s baked-bean bath. Couldn’t we think of just one more place to go?”

We puzzled and pondered. And all the time Fliss was picking at her nail varnish.

“Will you stop doing that!” I scolded her. “Your mum won’t be pleased if she has to give her precious baby a manicure, will she?”

“Hey Fliss, maybe your mum can paint people’s nails during the scavenger hunt!” Frankie piped up. “That would slow everyone down, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah! Cool!”

“I-I don’t think so,” stammered Fliss.

“But what about if everyone called into her salon and got a dab of the latest nail varnish at the top of their next clue?” suggested Lyndz. “It would be a great advertisement as well. Maybe she’ll get lots of new business out of it!”

I could see Fliss thinking about that. She’s always keen for everyone to know what a wonderful beautician her mum is.

“I’ll ask her,” she said slowly “But I’m sure it’ll be all right.”

“Great!” Frankie rubbed her hands together. “Now all we need to do is write the clues!”

Now I don’t know how good you are at writing poetry, but I’m rubbish with a capital R! So this clue-writing lark was dead hard. Even Frankie, who’s brill at English, found it tough.

“I just don’t know where to start,” she moaned, scratching her head with her pen.

We were still struggling when Frankie’s mum came in, carrying Izzy.

“Crikey girls, you look serious. What’s up?” she asked.

We explained what the problem was.

“Ooh, I used to love stuff like this when I was young!” she squealed. “Let’s have a look.”

We showed her the piece of paper with the location of each clue.

“So your first one will be at the school to take you to Pricebusters, right? And the clue there’s going to be in a carrier bag.”

She handed Izzy to Frankie and started jotting words down on a sheet of paper.

“Aha, cracked it!” she laughed after a few moments. “What about:

“What about that?” she grinned triumphantly.

“Cool!” we agreed.

“Now, what’s next?” she asked, all excited.

“Mother!” Frankie sounded shocked. “Take your baby and go. This is
our
project. But thanks for your help, I’m sure we’ve got the hang of it now!”

Mrs Thomas pretended to look offended, but you could tell she was kind of pleased that she’d helped us out.

We each took one of the clues and worked on that. By the end of the afternoon we’d all jotted down a few ideas and read them out to the others. Everybody seemed quite confident that they could come up with a decent clue before the scavenger hunt itself. But the clues were only one of our worries.

When we had our meetings with Mrs Poole, we went through all the jobs that had to be done – like checking things with Mr Hicks at Pricebusters and making sure that everyone knew exactly where they had to be positioned. Fliss’s mum nearly blew it by saying that she didn’t want to be part of the hunt at all. Her salon is in one of their bedrooms, you see, and you know how fussy she is about people trailing dirt into her house. But Mrs Poole smoothed things over by suggesting she set up a table in the front garden. I still don’t think Fliss’s mum was really happy about it, but seeing as the rest of our parents were involved, I don’t think she dared to complain too much!

It was weird – because we’d concentrated so much on organising the scavenger hunt, Mufti Day just sort of snuck up on us. It was only when the M&Ms had a go at us on Thursday that we realised the first of our fundraising events was almost here.

“Hope you’ve got lots of tissues ready for tomorrow!” they sniggered.

“What?”

“You’re going to need them to wipe all that egg off your faces when everybody ignores your stupid Mufti Day!” they howled.

“Shut your face!” I threatened, and they ran off cackling.

“What if they’re right?” Fliss wondered anxiously.

“Nah,” said Frankie confidently. “Who’s going to pass up the chance to get out of this manky old uniform for the day?”

She had a point. But the next morning as I was going to school, the signs didn’t look good. Everyone, but
everyone
, was in their school uniform.

“Yeah, but it’s not
our
school uniform, dummy!” laughed Frankie when I told her. “They were all waiting for the bus to go to St. Chad’s. No-one gets here for ages yet.”

She was right. We’d got there extra early, and waiting for someone to turn up was agony. Fliss was the first one to arrive after us. She was wearing her new short skirt, high heels and tons of make-up.

“I didn’t know it was fancy dress as well!” I whispered to Frankie.

She spluttered a bit but managed to recover enough to tell Fliss that she looked great. Rosie and Lyndz arrived soon afterwards, and I handed out plastic buckets for us all to collect our 50ps in.

“Love the Leicester City shirt, Kenny!” It was Mr Pownall, dressed in grey shorts, a shirt and tie with an old-fashioned schoolboy’s cap perched on the top of his head. It was wicked!

“You ought to dress like that more often Sir, it suits you!” I giggled, and went to collect his money.

“It’s all in a good cause!” he smirked, and went inside.

Mrs Poole appeared next. At first she looked like she always did. But then we noticed she was wearing a tie with her blouse, ankle socks and she had her hair in pigtails. Class!

“At least she’s entered into the spirit of it,” Rosie remarked. “I just hope everyone else does too.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” mumbled Fliss, poking me in the ribs. “Have you seen who’s just appeared?”

We all turned to see the stupid M&Ms dressed in their full uniform, grinning like two Cheshire cats.

“Oh dear, losers, it looks like your big day’s going to be a big flop!” sneered Emma Hughes spitefully.

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that!” I spat back. “I think it’s going to be you who ends up looking stupid!”

“You certainly are!” hooted Frankie. “Look at this!”

Coming towards us were
loads
of kids, dressed in khakis and jeans, tracksuits and hipsters. It was like they’d been waiting round the corner just to check that they weren’t the only ones not in uniform. It was wild trying to collect all their money without causing a huge great pile-up. But the best thing of all was seeing the M&Ms’ faces. Even their mates Alana ‘Banana’ Palmer and Amanda Porter had come in mufti. And you ought to have heard the earbashing they got! Brilliant!

Mrs Poole came out to see how we were getting on, and even took over Fliss’s collecting bucket for a while. It was amazing. The buckets got fuller and fuller and heavier and heavier. By the time the whistle went for the start of school, my arms were just about ready to drop off.

“Come on, you guys!” I said when the last stragglers had arrived. “We’d better get this lot inside ourselves!”

By that time I was
dying
for the loo. It seemed like ages since I’d left home that morning. I left my bucket of money on the bench and made a dive for the toilets, followed by the others. I heard Mrs Poole talking outside and I knew that I should go and tell her how well we’d done, but, well – I was in a bit of an emergency situation, if you know what I mean. And of course the others were all on a high, so we joshed around for a while.

“I can’t wait to see the M&Ms’ faces when we go back into the classroom!” I squealed. “They are not happy bunnies at all!”

I went out to the bench where I’d left my bucket. But it wasn’t there. Neither were any of the others. They’d gone.

I couldn’t believe it. Someone had stolen our money!

“What are we going to do?” wailed Rosie.

“We’ll have to find it,” I tried to sound calm despite feeling all wibbly inside. “Did any of you notice anyone lurking outside the toilets? Who was the last in?”

“Fliss was,” replied Frankie, “and she’s still in there.”

I was just going to find her when Mrs Weaver and the rest of the class trooped past.

“Come on girls, it’s time for assembly. Get in line!”

The M&Ms were pulling faces at us, so I decided not to tell Mrs Weaver about the lost money. They’d have loved that, wouldn’t they? We just got to the back of the line and pulled faces right back at them.

“You don’t suppose
they’ve
taken it to spite us, do you?” whispered Rosie.

“Could be,” I replied. “Our best bet is to keep quiet and see if anyone mentions it.”

In assembly Mrs Poole talked about Mufti Day and said that she’d announce how much we’d raised just as soon as we’d counted the money. Talk about embarrassing! Then of course, there was Fliss to contend with. She’d spent so long in the toilet that she missed assembly and she somehow blamed us for that! She didn’t even
speak
to us until break time. Not that we had any time for speaking, anyway. Mrs Weaver seemed to think that just because we weren’t wearing uniform, we’d cause a riot if she didn’t give us tons of work to do.

When the bell went for break, Frankie suggested that we follow the M&Ms.

“Just to see if they’ve hidden the money anywhere.”

Fliss sighed. “Well
I’m
going to Mrs Poole’s office.”

“Do you think that’s wise?” I asked. “I mean, shouldn’t we try to find the money ourselves first? We’re going to be laughed out of school when people find out that all our money’s been stolen.”

The others agreed with me, but nothing was going to stop Fliss. She stalked right up to Mrs Poole’s door and knocked very loudly. My heart was in my mouth, I can tell you.

“Ah girls, there you are!” Mrs Poole waved us into her room.

I was just planning my speech when I noticed something on her desk. Our collecting buckets, still full of 50p pieces! I was expecting a lecture about how careless we’d been for leaving them unattended at the very least. But no – she just waffled on about us using our next lesson for counting the dosh. I was gobsmacked, but Fliss wasn’t. In fact, she looked very smug.

“You gave them to Mrs Poole, didn’t you?” I accused her when we got outside. She just nodded.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Frankie shrieked.

“You didn’t give me the chance!” Fliss sniffed. “I thought I should put all our collecting buckets in the toilet cubicle with me to keep them safe. And then you left me in the toilets, remember! So I just took them round to Mrs Poole instead of going straight to assembly.”

But she wasn’t really mad with us any more, and we certainly couldn’t be annoyed with her. We were just so relieved that we hadn’t lost the money. And it was cool because we took the whole of the maths lesson to count it while the rest of the class had to do some really boring calculations. The M&Ms were really hacked off, especially as people kept telling them how mean they were for not taking part in Mufti Day themselves.

“You don’t suppose the M&Ms will try to sabotage the scavenger hunt tomorrow, do you?” asked Rosie after school. “They were well fed up with us today. Especially after we told them we’d raised £162.”

“Well at least they haven’t ripped down our posters, like they did once before,” said Frankie. We’d put up hundreds of posters around school and they were all still there. Look, there’s one up over there. What do you think?

Cool eh?

To tell you the truth, we didn’t have much time to worry about the M&Ms. We were on a frantic countdown to get everything set up for the next morning. We’d all written out ten copies of our clues, and we’d decided to follow the route of the scavenger hunt ourselves as we delivered them. We left the first clue with Mrs Poole at school, then went to Pricebusters to leave the next clue with Mr Hicks. He was really pleased to see us.