Sleepover Girls Go Gymtastic! (4 page)

It has to be said that the singer, that Axl Rose bloke, didn’t have the greatest voice in the world – it was all scratchy and strained. But it was just perfect for the song.

Frankie and I hummed along to the bits we remembered. Then, when the rhythm and pace wound up, we started leaping about the driveway. I did a cartwheel and almost knocked Mrs Proudlove flying.

“Really, Kenny!” she gasped, jumping out of the way. “I think this music is doing funny things to you. Andy, look what you’ve done! And I’m sure that’s Joe crying. Can you please turn the wretched thing down?”

With that she stomped up the path and into the house. Oops.

“This is fantastic! Perfect!” Rosie yelled as she tried to do one of those flying leaps across the rose bed.

“Isn’t it great!” I shouted back.

“Well, you’re the funniest Bond girls I’ve ever seen!” Andy guffawed. “I don’t remember anyone doing those kinds of moves in the film.”

“What film?” Lyndz asked.

“What do you mean,
what film?
” Andy sounded amazed. “The original Wings track was the theme tune for the Bond film,
Live and Let Die.
It was a bit before your time, I guess,” he shrugged.

“James Bond’s – always doing – gymnastic kind of moves, isn’t he?” Frankie clutched her side as she gasped for breath. “This music is just the best!”

Fliss, who had been practising a few moves herself, rushed over to join the rest of us. As the music faded away we all hugged each other and started dancing round.

“We’ve found our music, we’ve found our music!”

Andy looked really puzzled. But at least he wasn’t like Fliss’s mum, who would have questioned us non-stop about what we were doing. We managed to fob him off with a story about the track being for PE and the gymnastics competition wasn’t mentioned at all. At last, we’d got our music sorted out. All we needed now was the routine. And that was when things really started to go pear-shaped.

You see, the thing was that all Fliss could talk about were the blimming routines she’d so cleverly choreographed for us all. Like we’d got down on our knees and begged her to do it or something.

“I spent all yesterday evening working them out,” she announced the next day.

“What about your revision?” asked Lyndz.

“Oh, you know, I did bits. But look, what do you think about this routine? Cool huh?”

By the time Fliss had shown us the moves she’d worked out for us all, it was obvious that this was
not
going to be a team effort. Fliss very definitely saw herself as the star – as usual.

“I’ve made you all a copy of
Live and let Die,
” she announced, handing them out. “So next time we get together to rehearse I’ll expect you all to know what you’re doing.”

As soon as her back was turned I started pulling gruesome faces. Unfortunately Fliss turned round and caught me.

“What’s that for?” she asked, going all red in the face.

“I’m just a bit sick of you taking over the whole competition thing,” I told her. “I found out about it, didn’t I? But suddenly it’s Felicity Proudlove turning into Miss Bossy Britches and telling us what to do.
As usual.
”

Fliss glared at me. “If you remember, it was Andy who had the CD
you
decided we wanted,” she said. “I don’t recall much discussion about whether we should use it or not. You decided and that was that.”

“Well, you didn’t raise any objections!” I spat back. “If it had been up to you we’d have been prancing about to one of your mother’s favourite show tunes.”

Fliss went even redder in the face and looked as though she was about to cry.

“We do all agree that it’s the right music,” Lyndz said soothingly. “And it was really good of Fliss to make us all a copy. It’ll make it a lot easier for us to plan our routines.”

“I don’t think anyone’s really in charge, are they?” Frankie suggested. “It’s got to be a group effort. That’s the whole point.”

The others all nodded. I just grunted. I knew what Fliss was like. She thought she was this graceful little thing who everybody’d be looking at, so she assumed it was her right to take over. Well, I wasn’t having that.

“I’ll show you Felicity Proudlove!” I vowed.

I didn’t
intend
to start planning gymnastic routines during the mock science test, I swear. It just sort of happened. I’d been playing
Live and Let Die
over and over as I revised the previous evening, and it had kind of got stuck in my head. So as soon as we turned our papers over and I recognised one of the questions, it started racing around again.

I tried to ignore it, I really did. But it was hard. Especially when one of the questions on forces and gravity gave me this brilliant idea for a whole series of really wicked moves for our finale together. I started sketching the whole thing out and just lost track of time. Instead of writing in answers about the life cycle of a plant or the human skeleton, I was jotting down plans for balances and leaps.

I was well pleased with the routine I’d drawn up, and started performing it with my fingers across the desk. I was sort of aware that Frankie was staring at me, but I just thought it was because she wanted to know what I was doing.

When I looked over at her, she had this look of anger and panic all mixed up across her face. Then she started doing this mad thing with her eyes. She stared hard at me, stared hard at the paper on my desk, then looked frantically at the clock on the wall. I tried to look back at her with question marks in my eyes like they do in cartoons, but that didn’t work. It was only when I looked at the clock too that I realised what she was trying to tell me. There were only ten minutes to go and I still had most of the paper to complete!

What a nightmare! My brain was in a major fog from all the leaps I’d been planning, and it was kind of hard to flip out of gymnastics mode and back on to science. When I tried to read the questions, the words didn’t seem to make any sense at all. It was as though they were written in Martian or something.

A question about the solar system threw me completely. Two days ago I’d understood the solar system like the back of my hand, but now it was complete nonsense. And the more I struggled over the questions, the less I could remember. In the end I didn’t even have time to read them properly. I just latched on to a word or two that I recognised and stuck down the first answer I could think of.

“What on earth were you doing in there?” Frankie squeaked as soon as we came out.

But before I could answer, I had to frantically jot down my brilliant idea for the routine, because of course I’d had to hand it in on my answer sheet.

“We want to win this competition, don’t we?” I asked when I’d finished. “And I had this brilliant idea for our routine. Look.” I showed her my scruffy notes. “Honestly Frankie, it’s better than anything Fliss can come up with. She’d be having us do little pirouettes and stuff, but this is brilliant and it’ll go with our music perfectly!”

Frankie stared at me. “So basically all that in there was to get one over Fliss?”

“No. Well, all right then, I suppose it was,” I admitted. “It’s just that it was me who found out about the competition, and it really bugs me that she’s starting to take over.”

“Well I hope you feel proud of yourself!” Frankie yelled. “It’s only a competition, you know. Who cares which of you came up with the routine? It’s a bit of a laugh. If we win it, great. If we don’t, it’s not the end of the world. But it
will
be the end of the world if you mess up your work just because of some stupid feud with Fliss!”

I had to agree that she was right. I felt ashamed of myself for getting so carried away and I was determined to put everything back into perspective.

“I really will work hard for my SATs,” I promised Frankie. “Then it’ll be great to let off some steam when they’re over by rehearsing for the competition, won’t it?”

But I didn’t know that it was too late. We were about to be hit by two of the biggest bombshells imaginable. And they were going to scupper all of our dreams for sure.

You know how sometimes everything is going along just perfectly? You haven’t a care in the world (apart from SATs and of course Fliss bossing everyone around for the competition) and then BAM! Something happens which turns your world upside down. Well, that’s what happened to us just a couple of days after the mock science exam.

We were all round at my place trying to get our gymnastics routine together, and Fliss and I had been at each other’s throats all night. She’d been acting the big cheese like she knew everything there was to know about handstands and backflips. You’d think she already had an Olympic medal for gymnastics, for goodness sake.

At least we had a laugh when she tried to put Lyndz through her paces. Frankie and I were almost hysterical. I mean, poor Lyndz was trying her best, but she just didn’t look right at all.

“You look more like a constipated chicken than a gymnast!” I yelled out.

“Well you don’t look too great yourself,” Fliss shouted back. “Your posture’s all wrong. Look, you should do your walkover like this.”

She stood up straight, flung her arms in the air dramatically, and did a perfect walkover, finishing with a flourish like they do in the Olympics.

“We’ll see about that!” I snapped and did TWO walkovers followed by a cartwheel.

“Follow
that
Miss Prissy-Flissy!” I goaded her.

“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Frankie said sternly. “I’m going to look through that factsheet again to see if there are any more tips to make things a bit easier for us.”

I pointed to where the factsheet was on the step, and carried on cartwheeling around the garden.

Suddenly there was a mammoth groan. Frankie was sitting there as white as a sheet with her hand over her mouth.

“What’s up? You’re not gonna hurl, are you?” I asked, rushing over to her.

She just shook her head and wafted the factsheet in front of our noses.

“Look at the date of the competition,” she moaned. “It says it’s on Saturday May 18th!”

We all looked at each other and shrugged.

“It’s not your birthday, ’cos you’ve only just had it,” I said slowly. “And the rest of our birthdays are ages away.”

I pulled a silly face at the others, but they were all looking really sick as well. In fact, I was sure that Fliss was going to burst into tears at any minute.

“Come on! It can’t be anything
that
important, surely?” I reasoned.

“Oh stop being so thick, Kenny! Even
you
must know what’s happening two days later!” Rosie snapped angrily. “You remember SATs, those horrible examy things we’ve been revising for forever? Well, they start on the 20th. There’s no way that our parents are going to let us enter this competition now.”

“I don’t understand it,” said Lyndz quietly. “Why hadn’t we noticed the date before?”

“The page with it on had got stuck to the one above,” Frankie explained in a tight little voice. “With what looks like peanut butter.”

The others all looked at me accusingly.

“You can’t begrudge a girl a little snack now and then,” I joked. But for once, jokes weren’t going to get me out of this mess.

“There must be something we can do,” I said at last. But I knew I was kidding myself. Whichever way you looked at it, we were doomed from ever entering the gymnastics competition.

“Unless…” Fliss suddenly piped up excitedly. “… Unless we told our parents that we were revising at each other’s houses, met in Cuddington, caught the bus into Leicester, entered the competition and came home. That would work, wouldn’t it?”

Her eyes were gleaming wildly and she was jabbering on like a wild woman. I was gobsmacked. This was Fliss, Miss Goody-Two-Shoes herself, actually suggesting we do something
deceitful
! I mean, the very same thought had actually crossed
my
mind, but I knew that there was
no way
we could get away with it. I was actually quite proud of Fliss for being so daring. There was hope for her yet!

“It just wouldn’t work, Fliss,” Frankie told her gently. “You know as well as we do that the chances of us entering this competition have just melted to zero.”

Well, Fliss did dissolve into tears then, and boy didn’t we all know about it. We had to make up some stupid story for my mum about her being totally stressed about the SATs. It was true in a way, but not in the way Mum thought.