Sleepover Club Goes For Goal! (10 page)

And let me tell you, that was the longest minute of my life. I felt as though I could have walked into Leicester and back before the referee finally blew for time.

As you can imagine, as soon as we heard it we just went crazy. You’d have thought we’d won the World Cup or something! The crowd rushed on to the pitch and all these people engulfed us. It was totally awesome. Even Fliss forgot about her ankle so that she could join in with the celebrations too.

We didn’t forget to commiserate with the other team though. We finally caught up with them in the changing room afterwards and shook their hands and told them how well they’d played. They all looked pretty down, so we tried not to get too hyper about winning the match.

“Shouldn’t we exchange shirts or something?” I asked their captain.

She looked at my shirt. “Erm, I don’t think so,” she said, screwing up her nose.

I looked down, and my shirt was one massive swirl of black and grey where the felt tip S.G.U. had all run together. I
was
kind of hot and a bit sticky.

“If you think that’s bad, you should see your face!” Frankie laughed.

I ran to the mirror. I looked like a chimney sweep! I must have got the ink from my shirt all over my hands and then smeared it all over my face.

“You look gross!” laughed Fliss.

“Yeah! That’s why we got the ball so much at the end!” shrieked Rosie. “They probably thought you were the swamp monster or something!”

“I’m, hic, glad we didn’t have to, hic, play extra time,” Lyndz hiccuped. “I don’t think I could have held out.”

“You
couldn’t have held out!” Fliss snorted. “Just think about how I felt with my sprained ankle! And I pulled off a blinding save too. Did you see? It hurt like anything, but I did it!”

Frankie and I exchanged glances – we were never going to hear the end of Fliss’s heroics. It didn’t help matters that when we had got changed and went back into the gym, most of the crowd were still there. They started cheering again as soon as they saw us.

“Let’s hear it for Sleepover Girls United!” shouted Mr Pownall. “Hip hip…”

“Hooray!” everybody shouted.

“Hip hip…”

“Hooray!” Even Ryan Scott was joining in, kind of reluctantly.

“Hip hip…”

“Hooray!” Mrs Poole was cheering, and so was my mum, Lyndz’s mum, Frankie’s mum and Fliss’s mum. Rosie’s mum appeared with Adam right at the last minute.

“I didn’t know you were all coming!” I stared at them open-mouthed.

“We didn’t tell you just in case we couldn’t make it!” Mum laughed. “Congratulations!”

“I’m so proud of you all!” Frankie’s mum looked as though she was about to cry and that wasn’t like her. It must have been because of the baby and everything. Pregnancy makes your hormones go funny, you know.

“Wait until we tell your brothers!” Lyndz’s mum was rubbing Lyndz’s hand to get rid of the hiccups.

“Oh my poor brave baby!” squeaked Fliss’s mum, examining Fliss’s ankle. “I’m going to get you home and look at this properly. I hope you
haven’t damaged anything!” And with that Fliss was whisked away.

“It’s a wonder she didn’t run on to the pitch when Fliss fell down!” I mumbled.

“She tried to,” Mum said. “We had to stop her, didn’t we?”

Frankie and Rosie’s mums looked at each other and they all cracked up laughing. Parents, eh? You can’t take them anywhere!

After the match it was all a bit of an anticlimax really. We’d been building up to the competition for so long, and suddenly it was all over and we all felt a bit flat. Mrs Poole did call us out in assembly and everybody gave us a clap, but that was it. I wonder if footballers feel like this when they’ve won the FA Cup?

Look, the others are coming. We can give you an action replay of the whole match if you want. Fliss’s ankle has finally recovered now, so she’ll be able to show you how she dived to save that shot (she’s been boring us about that ever since!). And you’d better not get Rosie started about how she scored the winning goal, you’ll be here all night! Lyndz is
dying for us to play in another match so that her brothers can come and watch. She says that they still don’t believe that she can really play football. And Frankie keeps reminding me that I owe her a big favour for getting the others involved in the five-a-side competition to start with. I mean, come on, we won didn’t we? Isn’t that favour enough? She says that it’s not exactly what she had in mind!

Now you just stay there and we’ll demonstrate our footballing skills for you. And don’t forget that:

WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS!

   The Sleepover Club at Frankie’s

   The Sleepover Club at Lyndsey’s

   The Sleepover Club at Felicity’s

   The Sleepover Club at Rosie’s

   The Sleepover Club at Kenny’s

   Starring the Sleepover Club

   The Sleepover Girls go Spice

   The 24 Hour Sleepover Club

   The Sleepover Club Sleeps Out