Sleepover Girls Go Gymtastic! (7 page)

“Do you know what we need?” I shouted, jumping up. “We need something to completely take our minds off these stupid SATs. And what better than… gymnastics!”

The others didn’t look too convinced.

“I’m not sure, Kenny.” Fliss had gone white. “We promised our parents we wouldn’t think about it until next weekend. Mum’ll do her nut if she finds out we’ve been practising for the competition.”

“But we
won’t
be practising,” I reassured her. “We’re just going to let off some steam for a bit, you know. Clear our heads so that we’re in a better frame of mind to study. What do you say?”

“Count me in!” Rosie was the first to leap to my side.

“And me,” Frankie joined us. “As long as it’s only for ten minutes.”

“Well I guess I ought to start practising again,” Lyndz admitted.

“OK then.” Fliss got up from the bed. “But we will get back down to some work afterwards, won’t we?”

“’Course,” I agreed.

We pushed the beds to the side of the room as quietly as we could. Then we all started humming
Live and Let Die.
That made us crack up to start with because it sounded so funny. But once we got used to it, we started putting our moves together.

Fliss looked ace doing her routine and was as light as a feather when she landed. But Lyndz sounded like an elephant when she did her backward roll, even though she did it over her sleeping bag to cushion the sound.

“Mum’s bound to have heard that!” hissed Fliss anxiously. But there was no sound of footsteps rushing upstairs, so we carried on.

The absolute best bit was when we started practising circle rolls as part of our routine all together.

“We’ll go clockwise,” Frankie suggested. But of course that didn’t mean anything to Lyndz, who starts to panic whenever you mention clocks or watches. So there we all were rolling one way – and Lyndz rolled the other. Then Rosie changed directions too and soon we were a massive tangle of arms and legs. I started laughing so much I almost wet myself. And Lyndz got the dreaded hiccups, which just made the rest of us laugh even more. Tears were streaming down our faces and I was clutching my sides. I swear I was aching so much that I never thought I’d be able to perform another gymnastic move ever again.

It was really to stretch myself out that I started to cartwheel around Fliss’s room. And when you’re upside down you kind of lose direction a bit. How was I to know that Callum, Fliss’s stupid brother, had been spying on us and had opened Fliss’s bedroom door? So there I was, cartwheeling right out of the bedroom, across the landing and whoops, right into Mrs Proudlove’s room.

The others were walking behind me chanting excitedly, “…13, 14, 15…”

When there was this almighty explosion.

I crashed to a halt – right in front of Fliss’s mum, who was red in the face and screeching, “JUST WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?”

The others all bumped into each other behind me.

“I thought we agreed that there would be no gymnastics until
after
the SATs!” she continued. “I just
knew
that you couldn’t be trusted. I should have known better than to agree to this sleepover in the first place. But what I
do
know is that your parents will agree with me when I tell them how you’ve abused our trust. There is no way now that you can be allowed to enter that competition.”

Fliss virtually broke down in tears there and then and the others looked devastated. I felt kind of responsible, so it was up to me to think fast and save the day.

“Actually, you’ve got it all wrong Mrs P,” I began innocently.

“I beg your pardon!” Fliss’s mum went even redder in the face and looked as though she was going to burst for sure.

“We
are
revising, you see. We’re looking at the way shadows are falling in front of me as I move.”

“Yes, hic, that’s what we, hic, do in science,” Lyndz picked up my thread pretty quickly. “It means that the sun’s, hic, behind her.”

“And Kenny’s not floating off into space when she cartwheels because of gravity,” Rosie added seriously. “You see, the earth pulls all things towards it because of the object’s weight.”

Fliss’s mum had calmed down, but she still didn’t look too convinced.

“And we’re using Kenny’s display for English revision too,” explained Frankie quickly. “It’s sort of English in motion. ‘Kenny’s cartwheels cause chaos’ – that’s alliteration.”

“And,” Fliss piped up, “if Kenny did fifteen cartwheels and you multiply that by five you get…”

Oh-oh. Fliss wasn’t really good at thinking on her feet. Her mother was looking at her intently.

“Seventy five,”
whispered Frankie behind Fliss’s back.

“Seventy five,” Fliss announced confidently.

“Hmm,” Mrs Proudlove sniffed. “We certainly revised things differently in my day, but I suppose if it works it can only be a good thing. Just don’t let me catch you performing your ‘revision in motion’ again, all right?”

We breathed a huge sigh of relief and headed back to Fliss’s room.

“I think it might be an idea if you got ready for bed anyway,” Mrs Proudlove called after us. “You’re going to be needing as much rest as you can get over the next week.”

“Don’t remind me!” I hissed under my breath.

As soon as we were all ready for bed, we emptied our midnight feast on to the floor between us and sat up in our sleeping bags.

“I thought your mum was going to explode, Fliss,” Rosie started laughing. “Did you check out her face?”

“I told you it was a bad idea to do gymnastics,” Fliss replied huffily, but then started chuckling. “It was pretty cool the way we got out of it though, wasn’t it?”

“A Sleepover Club classic!” I agreed.

As we chatted, we steamed into the sweets we’d brought. I’d never seen them disappear so quickly. Mini Mars, ‘Tangfastics’, toffee popcorn – they were all gone before you could flick-flack from one end of the room to the other.

“Your mum certainly doesn’t believe in overfeeding us, does she Fliss?” I asked as I licked the last of the sugary bits from my fingers.

“She doesn’t want me to get overweight, that’s all,” Fliss flashed back.

“Fat chance!” I retorted, which made everybody fall about laughing.

“Do you suppose plants ever get fat?” Rosie asked sleepily.

“Nah,” Frankie replied. “They take all their nutrition through their roots, don’t they? I guess they just take what’s required to make sure the plant develops properly and grows as it should.”

“It must be pretty boring being a plant,” yawned Lyndz. “No pizzas, no sweets, just boring soil, day in, day out.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I mean, here we were on a sleepover and the others were talking about the growth system of plants!

“I’ll tell you something,” I said, snuggling down into my sleeping bag. “I’ll be really glad when these SATs are over. We’re turning into a real load of sad cases!”

By the time Monday morning came I was even more desperate for the tests to be over. As we sat in the classroom waiting for our first science paper, I felt sicker than I’d ever felt in my whole life. I really had worked hard for the SATs, I’d even surprised myself. But it was the uncertainty of not knowing exactly what kind of questions would be on the paper.

As we waited, we all gave each other the thumbs-up sign. Fliss was looking as white as a sheet and had dark rings under her eyes like she hadn’t slept at all since our sleepover. I guess stress can get to you like that.

Mrs Weaver put the test papers face down on each of our desks.

“Now we’ve been through everything you’re going to be asked, so read each question carefully before you answer. You have thirty-five minutes to complete the paper. You may begin.”

I was actually shaking as I turned the paper over, and I had to force myself to concentrate on reading through the instructions. At first all I could see was the illustration for the first question. All the words underneath seemed to swim together. But I took a couple of deep breaths and read the question slowly. It was about identifying materials, which we must have gone over about a million times in class. And once I’d settled down, the questions themselves were pretty straightforward.

Actually the test wasn’t as bad as I’d expected. Some of the questions were familiar and some were asked in a different way, so you really had to concentrate to work out what they were asking. The only one I struggled on was one about circuits, because you had to explain what would happen when the switch in the illustration was closed. I find it a bit difficult to write explanations like that down, but I tried my best.

I just had time to go back and check through all my answers before Mrs Weaver said, “Pens down please, your time is up.”

As soon as she’d collected in all the papers we were allowed to go outside to the playground.

“Wasn’t that just
awful
!” we squealed, collapsing into each other as soon as we got into the fresh air. We were mentally drained but kind of hyper as well. It was weird.

We went over the questions and asked each other what we’d put. I think we’d more or less got the same answers, apart from Fliss who by the sounds of it had done a different paper completely. She got a bit panicky actually, so we decided to give it a rest and run through a few gymnastic moves, just to calm ourselves down before the maths test in the afternoon.

It was well cool actually. I don’t know whether it was because we were all pumped up by the SATs or what, but we all performed really well, even Lyndz.

“That was brilliant, Lyndz. You really nailed that backward roll,” Frankie encouraged her.

Rosie had altered her routine and did a blinding handstand which she seemed to hold forever. Then she made a really smooth transition into a forward roll, finishing by standing tall and straight, just like a pukka Olympic gymnast. We were all amazed.

“That’s brilliant,” I gushed. “I’ve got a really good feeling about this competition now. Everything is going our way. We’re going to win it, I know we are. I can feel it in my water!”

“Urgh Kenny, you’re disgusting!” Fliss shivered.

“Well, can your water tell us what questions we’re going to get in this maths test?” Frankie demanded. “Because I reckon we should do some more revision just in case your water can’t be relied upon.”

“Ha, ha!” I retorted. “But I guess you’re right, as usual, Miss Thomas. It must make your brain hurt, being such a goody-goody all the time.”

Frankie clutched her head dramatically. “It does,” she moaned. “But I try to live with it!”

Giggling, we all ran back to the classroom to get our maths textbooks.

That gymnastics practice really helped to settle us down. So when it was time for the maths paper we were all chilled and totally prepared for it. And because it had worked for us that first day, we followed that pattern for the rest of the week. As soon as we’d finished one of our papers we ran outside and went through our gymnastics routine, then settled back to more revision. It was like a lucky talisman or something. You know, a kind of superstition, like those footballers who always do the same thing before each match because they think it helps them play better.

And do you know something? The SATs were really nothing to be scared about at all. Sure, there were some questions that were really hard, like calculating the perimeter of a star, or describing what happens when you use a forcemeter in science. But the others were just stuff we’d covered in class. The English comprehension paper was dead boring, though. I almost fell asleep in that test. They ought to have more exciting stories just to keep you interested, I reckon.

Anyway, we managed to practise our gymnastic routines every day, which we hadn’t expected at all. And our parents couldn’t accuse us of shirking our studies either, because the practices actually helped us. So by the end of the week, the SATs were all over and we had a full week ahead of us to perfect our skills for the competition.

“We’re going to play a blinder in this gymnastics competition, I just know it,” I told the others confidently. “We’re way ahead of ourselves with our routines. If we rehearse to the max next week, we’ll be international television superstars this time next month, just see if we’re not.”

Have you heard that expression about not counting your chickens before they’re hatched? Well I was about to find out just how true that can be. Like being careful when you think you’re standing on top of the world, because it just might start crumbling beneath you.