Sleepover Club Eggstravaganza (4 page)

“Nothing,” I said encouragingly. “Probably just Buster, snuffling around.” Buster was the Collins’ Jack Russell.

“No,” said Lyndz slowly. “He’s in the kitchen, I saw him.”

“Forget it, and get on with the next clue,” said Kenny impatiently, hopping from one foot to another.

Lyndz pointed the torchbeam at the piece of paper, and Rosie cleared her throat. “
Three times four, carrot top!
”

“Huh?” said Lyndz, stumped.

Rosie repeated the question. We all looked at each other.

“Carrot top,” I said slowly. “Hey Lyndz, don’t you have a vegetable patch here somewhere?”

“Dead on, Frankie!” roared Kenny in approval, and sprinted off towards the far corner of the garden, where Lyndz’s mum grew vegetables.

“I’m sure I heard that rustling again,” whispered Fliss, clutching my arm.

I was about to say something sarcastic, when I heard it too.
Rustle, rustle, rustle
…

“Let’s run on and join the others!” I quivered, really spooked.

We sprinted after the others, looking back fearfully. But we couldn’t see a thing.

We caught up with Kenny, Lyndz and Rosie at the vegetable bed.

“Hey, guys,” began Fliss, sounding
really
worried. “I swear there’s…”

“Shhh!” said Kenny. “I’m counting.”

She bent over the delicate, frondy tops of the carrots. “One, two, three…Aha!” she cried in triumph, pouncing on a piece of paper tucked under the fronds of the twelfth carrot in the row. “Clever! Three times four is twelve and all that!”

“Listen,” I said urgently. “We think there’s someone in the garden…”

“
Tweet tweet, birdy
,” Kenny read. She just wasn’t listening! “What does that mean, Lyndz?”

Fliss was practically popping with fright. “Will you listen to us!” she hissed.

“No,” said Kenny promptly. “You were saying, Lyndz?”

“We’ve got a bird box, hung on one of the apple trees in the orchard,” said Lyndz.

“Perfect!” cried Rosie.

And they started moving away from the vegetables –
back in the direction of the rustling
.

“Don’t go there!” I squeaked, rushing after them. But the shadowy trees were looming up in front of us, getting nearer and nearer…

“BOO!”

Two figures covered in white sheets leapt out from behind one of the apple trees and started waving their arms around. “WHOOOO!” they howled.

Did we ever scream! We yelled our
heads
off, we were so spooked – even Kenny!

“G-G-GHOSTS!” bellowed Fliss, turning and sprinting back towards the house.

“I want MUM!” squealed Lyndz, hotfooting it after Fliss.

Kenny, Rosie and I just stayed rooted to the spot. Then…

“
RUN!
” I yelled. And we took off like rockets.

“WHOOO—”
Thump
. “Ouch!”

Wait a minute. Ghosts don’t go ouch.

Kenny and Rosie reached the same conclusion. “Hey!” Kenny said angrily. “You aren’t ghosts!”

“What’s going on?” said Rosie, sounding dead suspicious.

We walked back to the two white lumps lying in the grass. Fliss and Lyndz had stopped running too, and were creeping cautiously back towards us. The white lumps were both groaning – not in ghostly voices, but in distinctly Tom-and-Stuart-sounding voices…

“Idiot!” one white lump grumbled. “I told you to lift up the sheets when we were running!”

“Well, you shouldn’t have crashed into me, should you?” moaned the other white lump. “That really hurt.”

Lyndz reached down and whipped the sheets off her two brothers. “Great!” she said, sounding
reaalllly
angry. “I knew I shouldn’t have trusted you! There are no Easter eggs at
the end of this treasure hunt, are there? It was just a stupid game so you could scare us!”

Stuart looked a bit sheepish, rubbing his ankle and squinting up into the torchlight which Lyndz had pointed straight in his eyes, like some interrogation officer in a war film. “It was just a bit of fun,” he said.

Tom spoke up. “There
are
Easter eggs at the end, honest…We just thought it’d be a laugh to play a trick on you as well. Come on! Where’s your sense of humour?”

“It’s gone on holiday,” growled Kenny. “One way ticket.”

Fliss had just about calmed down. Now she stood with her hands on her hips, her eyes glinting with rage. She’s usually scared of the Collins boys because they tease her, but this time, she was like a fire-breathing dragon!

“You’re both totally pathetic,” she stormed. “We don’t want to follow your stupid clues any more, and so you can just tell us where the eggs are. We’re fed up with your moron games!”

Stuart totally crumpled before our eyes.
“They’re at the base of one of the apple trees, near the birdbox.”

“Right,” snapped Fliss, and turning away, she strode off towards the trees. We all watched her, open-mouthed, before scuttling after her.

“Wow Fliss, you really told them off!” Lyndz said in amazement when we caught up with her. “They never listen to me when
I
get angry like that!”

“Yeah, that was something else, Fliss,” said Kenny in an admiring voice.

I was just thinking about that blasting Fliss had given Ryan the other day, for treading on her eggshell. Flissypants was certainly getting more confident these days!

“I guess they won’t be playing any more tricks on us for a while,” said Rosie, looking over her shoulder at the two sorry figures trailing their way back into the brightly lit house.

Fliss still looked full of purpose. “Whatever,” she said briskly. “Come on. Let’s find those eggs.”

We split up and started hunting around the
dark, mossy bases of the apple trees, searching for a sign of chocolate.

Suddenly Fliss gave a crow of triumph, and pounced. “Gotcha!”

We all turned – just in time to see her stiffen, drop whatever it was that she’d picked up, and shout “
YYYYYYYYEEEEUUUCCCHH!
” in this really piercing voice. Then with a howl, she turned and ran into the house, her hands held straight out in front of her.

Huh?

Lyndz slowly pointed the torchbeam at a little pile of brownness on the grass. Dry and crusted, it certainly didn’t look like an Easter egg. In fact, it looked remarkably like a very old piece of dog poo.

Of all the people to pick up a piece of dog poo, Fliss was the absolute
worst
. She went on and on about it all evening. Even when the rest of us tracked down the Easter eggs, gleaming in their shiny foil in the shadows, and carried them inside in triumph, all she could say was “I picked up a piece of dog mess” over and over.

“It was very old,” said Lyndz comfortingly. “Buster probably did it months ago.”

“But I picked it up!” moaned Fliss for the millionth time. “I actually picked it up! I’m sure I’m going to die of some disease!” And she
galloped off to the downstairs loo to wash her hands, all over again.

Lyndz’s mum did us poached eggs on toast for supper (“Well, eggs are still part of the Easter theme, aren’t they?”). The yolks were all gorgeous and golden-yellow, and the butter slopped off the sides of the toast like it should. But Fliss refused to eat a thing.

“Come along Fliss, love,” coaxed Mrs Collins. “It’s lovely crusty brown bread.”

But the words “crusty” and “brown” in the same sentence just set Fliss off again. Honestly! It was like the Black Death had come to Cuddington.

“Sleepover time!” announced Lyndz, scraping back her chair after about her zillionth piece of toast. “Come on, we’ve got to move my bed!”

Lyndz’s room is so small that we actually have to take her bed
out
of her room and prop it up outside the door, in order to fit all our sleeping bags in. After all the usual pushing and pulling, we were just about ready to conk out, and no one complained when Lyndz’s
mum flipped off the light. But Kenny had other ideas.

“Right!” she announced in the dark. “Choccy, anyone?” And snapping on her torch, she delved into her bag and produced all our treasure hunt Easter eggs.

“Yeah, fab!” I cried, reaching over for the red and silver foiled one. “And I’ll get my chocolate candles out, hang on…”

I fished around in my sleepover kit, and dragged out some matches and two chocolatey candles (great idea, huh? Best idea since orange-flavoured Polos, I figured).

“Don’t set fire to me, Frankie,” warned Rosie, drawing her sleeping bag away from me.

“OK, OK!” I said. “I’ll be dead careful, look.”

And I was, putting the little candles up high on Lyndz’s dressing table where no one could knock them over. And you know what? This wonderful, warm, smoky chocolate smell spread around the room. Perfect!

“Everyone on for some Easter egg?” said Kenny, offering it round.

Fliss made a groaning sort of noise.

“Now what?” said Lyndz, totally puzzled.

“It’s just too…
brown
for me,” muttered Fliss weakly.

But that didn’t stop
us
! Mars bars, Dairy Milk, chocolate toffees, Minstrels – now you see ’em, now you don’t!! And with Fliss out of the picture, that made all the more for us. Rosie pulled out a Hot Chocolate tape that she’d borrowed from her mum, and we started playing it – but
reaaalllly
quietly, as we didn’t want Lyndz’s mum roaring in and shouting at us! Kenny was all for doing a dance routine, but I managed to persuade her that Kenny plus dance routines plus candles was not the best combination. So we scoffed one last chocolate each (well, two, if you want to be picky), blew out the candles and zonked out cold. It was one of the quietest ends to a sleepover in Sleepover Club history, I reckon.

“Wakey wakey, guys!”

Fliss’s perky morning voice pierced my dream like an arrow. It had been a horrible
dream – I’d been swimming around in a horrible, gooey brown sea, flapping my arms like a dying whale and drowning in the brown gunge, urgh…

“Bleugh,” I managed. Boy, I felt
horrible
!

“Ifeelsicksicksick,” moaned Rosie. She looked as green as a mouldy pea.

Lyndz moaned and stuck her head under the pillow. And Kenny couldn’t even
speak
– she just stumbled really quickly out of her sleeping bag and fled for the bathroom, clutching her stomach. And for Kenny to get out of bed quickly takes some doing!

Fliss watched us all with that mother-hen look of hers. “Oh dear, dear,” she clucked sympathetically. “Too much chocolate last night? Mum would have a fit if she knew how much you ate. It’s
sooo
bad for you.” She patted her own stomach and smiled in a saintly way. “I’m really glad I didn’t eat any now.”

“I bet you are,” mumbled Lyndz, from deep inside her sleeping bag. “I – hic – oh
yuck
, I’ve got chocolate-flavoured hiccups now!”

It was dry toast for breakfast all round. Mrs Collins fussed around us comfortingly. “There, there,” she said, filling our glasses with good, strong orange juice. “You’ll feel better soon.”

“Soon” couldn’t come quickly enough for me – nor for the rest of the gang, to judge from their pale faces. Fliss just kept smirking to herself at the end of the table.

Mrs C looked over at Fliss. “Give me a hand with the dishes, will you love? This lot need a bit of TLC this morning.”

Fliss looked as sick as a goat! So I guess it wasn’t
all
bad…

“Why did the baby cross the road?” said Emma Hughes the minute I stepped into the classroom on Monday morning. “Because it was tied to the chicken’s leg!”

She and Emily collapsed into snorty giggles, along with the rest of the class.
Oh-oh
…The revenge! We’d forgotten to plan the revenge!

“Hey guys, it’s Frankie’s birthday today!” called Ryan Scott. “All together now –
Nappy
Birthday to yooo, Nappy Birth
…”

Mrs Weaver strode into the classroom and silenced everyone with her ray-gun stare. “Settle down, class!” she called, and plonked her register down on the desk.

The class settled. Thank Heaven for small teacher-shaped mercies anyway, I thought glumly. The others gave me encouraging smiles, and Lyndz pushed over a hilarious stick drawing of the M&Ms lying dead in a pool of blue Biro blood, which cheered me up a bit.

“Good news today,” smiled Mrs Weaver. “We have a winner for the Easter display! I’m delighted to announce that this year’s winners, for the second year running…”

The second year running?
I looked aghast at the others. This could only mean…

“…are Emily Berryman, Alana Parker and Regina Hill, for their beautifully illustrated version of William Shakespeare’s
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day
.”

A wave of half-hearted clapping spread across the classroom as Emily, Alana Banana
and Regina simpered their way up to the front and collected their prize-winner Mars bars from Mrs W. My only consolation was seeing how furious and disappointed Emma Hughes looked – missing out on her cronies’ glory!

“I can’t believe it,” I groaned. “Why oh
why
didn’t we plan our M&M revenge this weekend, like we were supposed to? Now we are so far behind in this race we’re practically going
backwards
!”

“This is completely terrible!” whimpered Rosie, her head in her hands. “If the M&Ms were unbearable before, they are going to be
total
prima donnas now!”

Kenny thumped the desk. “Right,” she said, in that determined voice of hers – the one which usually means someone somewhere is going to get into DEEP trouble. “Time for some ACTION.”

“Shh,” hissed Fliss, with a beady eye on Mrs Weaver. “Kenny, now’s not the time! Look, Mrs Weaver’s about to say something.”

“As I mentioned last week,” Mrs Weaver declared, “we are going to be making Easter
cakes on Thursday afternoon. Thanks to all the egg-blowing that has been going on in the school lately, we have plenty of eggs just waiting to be used, and milk, sugar and flour will be provided. However, if you would like to add any other flavourings or toppings to your cakes, I suggest you bring in some ingredients of your choice.”

Cookery! It beat maths any day of the week. I love the last week of term, don’t you?!

“How about glacé cherries?” someone called out.

“Hundreds and thousands!” came another voice.

“Chocolate drops! We’ve got lots at home, Miss, I can bring them in, if you like.” That was Emma Hughes – keen to get pally with Mrs Weaver again after the previous week, I bet.

“Urgh,” we all muttered simultaneously. It’d be a while before we could think of chocolate with anything more than disgust!

“Yes, yes, thank you for your suggestions,” said Mrs Weaver, clapping her hands to quieten everyone down. “That all sounds
lovely. Make sure you bring in your ingredients for the Thursday lesson, then. Now, I believe it’s time for some English.”

It was a gorgeous blustery day outside, the kind of day that fills you with crazy energy and makes you want to run around and get blown all over the place. We spent ages at break time just leaning into the wind, and seeing how far we could go before we fell over. Fliss was the best at it. She just tipped forwards very daintily, holding her arms out like someone about to do a complicated dive off a diving board. Lyndz kept giggling and falling all over the place, and Kenny flapped her arms around and went “Whoooaaa!” a lot. Rosie tried leaning backwards, and ended up smack on her bum. It was a right laugh.

That is, until the M&Ms made their appearance. Talk about predictable. But you know what? With the wind in my hair and the sun on my face and all my mates round, I actually found that I didn’t care all that much.

Kenny launched into her sniffing-the-air routine, like the Child Catcher in
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
. “Urgh, there’s a horrible stink round here,” she declared.

“Probably Francesca’s nappy,” drawled Emma, which set all her mates off. “I think we won our little bet, don’t you?”

“Oh yes, that beeeyoootiful Shakespeare poem that you did, ah,” I said in an ultra sarcastic voice. “Very good, clap clap.”

“Shut up, nappyhead, and stick your dummy back in your gob,” said Emma nastily.

“Oooooh!” we all said together. “Eggy!”

“Come on, you lot,” said Fliss suddenly. “I don’t think we want to talk to these guys any more.”

And, hand in hand so we made a long crocodile, we raced off down the playground, leaving the M&Ms standing around like a bunch of lemons. Cool, huh?

When we got to the other end of the playground, we just flopped down, giggling.

“OK,” said Kenny, clapping her hands. “Time to plan that long-awaited revenge! And
just you wait till you hear what I’ve thought of! It’s the wickedest plan
ever
.”

“Wicked” doesn’t come
near
how evil this plan was. We were all struck kind of dumb.

“Kenny, you’re mad!” said Fliss at last, her eyes wide. “You can’t afford to get into any more trouble this term!”

Kenny shrugged. “I don’t care,” she said recklessly. I reckon it was the wind making her go a bit crazy. “I can’t live with the M&Ms crowing over us for one second longer. And think of poor Franks!”

“Yeah, think of me!” I grinned. The wind had got to me as well, and all I could think of was the glory of the M&Ms’ faces when…

“I really,
really
don’t like it,” said Rosie, suddenly looking quite scared. “In fact, I don’t want anything to do with it!”

“Me neither,” put in Fliss quickly.

“Hey!” said Kenny indignantly. “Whatever happened to ‘one for all and all for one’?”

“That’s for the Three Musketeers,” Lyndz pointed out, “and there’s five of us.”

“That’s not the point!” I said, dismayed.
“We’re supposed to stick together!”

“Not me,” said Fliss, shaking her head. “Not this time, Kenz. No way. Sorry Franks, but…”

Her voice trailed away to nothing, and an uncomfortable silence fell on us.

“Lyndz?” prompted Kenny. “What about you? Are you for us or against us?”

Lyndz shrugged her shoulders helplessly. “I don’t want to take sides.”

Kenny got to her feet, and stared coldly at Fliss, Rosie and Lyndz. Then she spoke the fateful words. “Come on, Frankie. Looks like it’s just you and me.”

Was this the end for the Sleepover Club? I tell you, right then it felt like it.