Sleepover Club 2000 (8 page)

“Mmn,” mumbled Frankie. “Worra worra. Mmmn.”

“Well, kind of!” I giggled.

“Her mum says to tell her they got her message. They drew the baby’s name out of the hat, and it’s Frankie’s choice, OK!”

You should have heard us scream! I wouldn’t be surprised if all Mrs Watson-Wade’s curlers fell out!!!

Naturally I had to put the light back on, so we could congratulate Frankie properly.

“OK, put us out of our misery,” said Kenny, after the noise had died down. “Tell us this mysterious name!”

We were all blinking at Frankie in the lamplight. The others looked like little squinty owls, so probably I did as well!

Frankie couldn’t even OPEN her eyes, but she had a big smile on her face. “Remember the name I gave that doll just before Christmas? Isobel,” she murmured dreamily. “Izzy for short.”

“Hey,” said Lyndz. “That is so-o cool! Frankie and Izzy!”

“Ace,” agreed Rosie.

“Wicked,” said Kenny.

“That’s such a sweet name,” I said. I meant it too.

Was that a result or what? But the Sleepover 2000 fun’s not nearly over yet. (Heh heh heh!) Wait till I tell you what happened NEXT!

Oops! I am a TOTAL butterfly-brain. I told you all about how we came to be lumbered with the Ecology Zone, but I completely forgot to mention one TINY complication.

Unlike the actual Millennium Dome at Greenwich, ours was strictly a one-day-only event. This meant that, assuming Mrs Weaver approved of our ideas, we only had FIVE days to get the whole thing organised!!!

For various reasons, no-one in the Sleepover Club had registered this important fact until the weekend was nearly over. I mean, before Friday, we knew diddley-dot about ecology, right? Up to then, our biggest worry was having to face Mrs Weaver on Monday and admit we’d let her down. AGAIN.

But now, thanks to Jewel’s excellent input, we had a Five Star Super-de-Luxe surefire winner of a plan.

Unfortunately, we had next to no time to carry it out!! Plus, just to make things that little bit harder, we’d got to keep the M&Ms completely in the dark about our activities!

Why? Perleaze! Here are just three of the many,
many
reasons:

1. The M&Ms never miss an opportunity to get even. If they guessed we were up to something, they’d do ANYTHING to sabotage us.

2. The M&Ms are already into themselves in a really big way. If they suspected we were deliberately trying to get one up on them, they’d see it as a HUGE compliment.

3. In other words, we wanted to totally FLATTEN the spiteful little toads, but look dead cool and casual at the same time!!

“It’s got to be an undercover operation, OK?” said Kenny.

This was on Sunday evening. It was the fifth time she’d phoned that day, to tell me what Frankie had just rung to tell
her!

“We’ve got to lull the M&Ms into a false sense of security,” Kenny went on. “We want them to think we’re totally out of our depth. Whimpering into our pillows…”

“Dribbling into our stew,” I giggled.

“Then on the big day…” Kenny did her sinister chuckle. “We’ll BLOW their prissy socks off!”

The minute Kenny put the phone down, I called Lyndz, so
she
could pass Kenny’s message on to Rosie!

You’d think Mum would be pleased we were saving her money, instead of selfishly running up astronomically huge bills, like some other children we could mention. (Rosie’s big sister Tiffany for one.) Instead Mum actually yelled at me for hogging the phone, when I was only making one FIFTH of the calls I could have made!

My final chat of the day with Kenny went something like this:

Now here’s MY last call to Lyndz:

As I was trying to get to sleep, I thought of a new worry. What if it snowed really heavily and Cuddington Primary School didn’t even open for business?

But when I woke up, there had actually been a slight thaw. Normally I hate it when the snow gets that gruesome Slush Puppy look, don’t you? But this morning I could have stood on a chair and sung a happy little Slush Puppy song!

I was so nervous about letting the others down, that I arrived in the playground at 7.99am precisely. And guess what? The others didn’t turn up. I had to stand around in the slush by myself for AGES, like a totally sad person. Kenny didn’t show till ten past, and it was her idea!

The others rolled up, like,
seconds
before our headmistress drove through the gate.

We all went madly slipping and slithering across the playground, frantic to catch Mrs Poole before Mrs Weaver arrived.

Look, I’m going to fast forward this bit, OK? The actual conversation in the head’s office took AGES. All you need to know is that by the end of it:

1. We convinced Mrs Poole to let us dedicate our Ecology Zone to Browses Piece. (Yippee!)

2. Mrs Poole said we could miss lessons ALL week (not counting maths), to help us get our zone finished by Saturday!

3. She agreed with us that our zone would have more impact if we kept its contents deadly secret till the last minute!! “I’ll have a word with Mrs Weaver,” she said. (
Yess
!)

4. Mrs Poole was so impressed to hear we’d visited the protest camp in our free time, she practically kissed us. “I had no idea you girls were so concerned about the environment,” she gushed.

You did remember about us parking next to Mrs Poole’s car at Browses Piece, didn’t you? So did Kenny. Heh heh heh! That’s what gave her the awesome idea of persuading Mrs Poole to work on Mrs Weaver for us. (Frankie thinks Kenny should be a politician when she grows up.)

Anyway, when we finally got out of our headmistress’s office, Kenny collapsed in complete hysterics.

“Spaceman, you went totally too far then,” she gasped, wiping her eyes. “When you spouted that stuff about ‘think globally, act locally’, I thought I was going to wet myself.”

“It worked, didn’t it?” grinned Frankie. “Mrs Poole loved it.”

“She ADORES us,” said Rosie.

“She was putty in our hands,” sang Lyndz.

“Of course,” I giggled. “We’re the coolest girls in the school!”

Kenny checked her watch. “We’ve got exactly ten minutes. I reckon that gives us just enough time to track down Dishy Dave.”

Our caretaker’s real name is Mr Coleman, but all us lot call him Dishy Dave. Apart from being unusually young and good-looking for a school caretaker, he’s a brilliant person to have on your side! Honestly, that man can do just about ANYTHING!

After our useful chat with Dave, we had to go and face Mrs Weaver. Our teacher has a really suspicious mind. Do you know what she said when we told her our plans? She said, “Hmmn. This is all a bit sudden. Ten minutes in a protest camp and you’re all born-again eco-warriors!”

As the others probably told you, Mrs Weaver isn’t
nearly
such a soft touch as our head. However, since Mrs Poole was rooting for us, Mrs Weaver couldn’t exactly make a fuss. About us getting off lessons, I mean. But boy, did that woman come down hard on us in maths!

It was worth it though. We were having
excellent
fun with the M&Ms and their loyal poodles, Alana and Regina.

You wouldn’t believe how easy it is to lead the M&Ms up the garden path. Those girls are so in love with themselves, they truly believe everyone else is a total dimwit.

All we had to do was let them accidentally ‘overhear’ our private conversation in the girls’ toilets!

You’ve got to picture us washing our hands
incredibly
slowly, OK? And behind a row of locked doors, the M&Ms, plus Alana and Regina, were all silently earwigging like crazy.

“I wish I’d never heard of ecology, don’t you, Frankie?” said Kenny, winking at Frankie.

“Totally, Kenny,” agreed Frankie, sounding stressed out. “Izzy still wakes us a billion times a night. I’m really having trouble coping with this project on top of having a new baby sister.” She nudged me.

“I just had no idea ecology would be so hard,” I whined, making my voice weedier and more gerbil-like than usual. Then I pulled a face at Lyndz.

Lyndz sighed dramatically. “It IS a mega responsibility, Fliss. Still, it’s too late to wriggle out of it. We’ve just got to do the best we can.”

Rosie gave an Oscar-winning sob. “Face it, you guys. Even with all the extra time Mrs Poole gave us, there’s no way we’ll pull this thing together by Saturday. It’s going to be a disaster.”

And we shuffled away in a deeply tragic manner!!

At dinner time, the M&Ms kept darting really cocky looks in our direction. It was totally obvious they were talking about us.

“Heh heh heh. I think we got a result, guys,” chortled Kenny.

By the way, I don’t know about the others, but I wasn’t totally putting it on earlier. I really WAS worried the Sleepover Club had bitten off more than it could chew! We’d given ourselves an absolutely outrageous amount to do in a ridiculously short time.

I don’t think I’ve ever worked so hard in my life as I did in that poky stockroom Mrs Poole was letting us use for a base.

On Wednesday afternoon, Dishy Dave tapped on the stockroom door. He looked dead pleased with himself. “Come and tell me what you think,” he said.

We followed him into the hall.

“
Coo-ell!
” said Kenny.

“The wood’s pretty rough. I found it in a skip.” Dave grinned and tapped the side of his nose. “But you can’t really see it behind the curtains.”

Lyndz’s mum had donated the curtains. They were made of dark green velvet and were incredibly long. As well as hanging them from the sides of his structure, Dave had draped some over the top as well.

It reminded me of those cute little dens I made when I was little. Remember them? The kind where you sling a blanket over two chairs and crawl inside and play house! (Only obviously Dave’s creation was heaps bigger and more impressive than that.) We swished back a corner of the curtain and tiptoed into a shadowy green cave.

“Magic!” we gasped.

“The green makes it look like moss,” breathed Lyndz.

“It’s
perfect
,” said Rosie. “Thanks, Dave!”

“And when you’ve fixed up all those little lights, Dave,” said Frankie cunningly, “it’ll be even
more
perfect.”

“Give me a chance,” complained Dave. “What did your last slave die of?”

Frankie beamed. “Admiration?” she suggested.

We had one last problem. Somehow we had to smuggle in the entire contents of our zone, without the other kids seeing.

In the end, Mrs Poole agreed to let us to stay on after school on Friday, even though this meant she had to work late herself.