Party Time. Fiona Cummings

house, and scare Mum into the bargain. And he’s just got worse and worse. Whenever he starts fussing, Mum just raises her eyes behind his back, and we have a good giggle about it together when he’s gone.

      Still, I thought I should mention our plan. So that night when I was washing the dishes, I said:

      “I don’t suppose I could have a sleepover here on New Year’s Eve, could I?”

      “On New Year’s Eve?” Dad plopped a few cups into the soapy water. “I don’t think so. I’m not sure my nerves could stand seeing in the new year with all your crazy friends.”

      But he was smiling as he said it. “Sorry champ!” He ruffled my hair. “Maybe next year. We’ll see.”

      “Yes, sorry Frankie,” Mum smiled at me sympathetically. “But I think your dad’s probably right.”

      I wasn’t really disappointed, because that’s exactly what I’d expected him to say. I just hoped that my friends were having better luck.

      When the phone rang a bit later, I knew it’d be for me.

      “I’ll get it!” I yelled.

      “Hi Frankie, it’s me, Lyndz.” She sounded fed up.

      “Don’t tell me,” I said. “You can’t have the sleepover at your place.”

      “How did you know?”

      “It didn’t exactly take Sherlock Holmes to suss that one out,” I sighed. “You sound really cheesed off What’s up? Why won’t they let you have one?”

      “Apparently Mum’s promised Stuart and Tom that they can have a few of their mates round. I said that was cool because we’d just join in. But Stuart and Tom both said ‘No way and Mum and Dad seemed to agree. Their friends are all stupid morons anyway. I wouldn’t want to have a party with them.”

      Still, poor Lyndz sounded really upset.

      “I’ve had no joy either, because of Mum,” I told her. “But don’t worry, I’m sure one of the others is having better luck than we are.”

      “I hope so. See you tomorrow.”

      I decided to give Kenny a ring to see how she was getting on. Bad move! She was in the middle of a huge row with Molly and her older sister Emma about using the phone. And every time she started to speak to me, the other two started yelling at her.

      “I’ll ring you back Frankie,” she shouted. Then – silence. The line had gone dead.

      “I hope they haven’t murdered her,” I said, shivering really dramatically when I told Mum and Dad what had happened.

      “Her father’s probably pulled the phone out of the socket, more like!” Dad laughed. “You do realise that in a few years we’ll have two people to fight with for the phone?”

      He smiled at Mum and patted her stomach and they went all soppy-eyed. They’ve been doing that a lot lately. I thought I might heave, so I went to my room.

      To be honest with you, I didn’t give the sleepover much thought that night. I was sure that someone had sorted something out. I kind of hoped that it wasn’t Fliss though. She’d make us play stupid games and her mum would make us eat silly little sandwiches. And we wouldn’t be able to let our hair down in case we made a mess of her clean and tidy house. I know that sounds awful, but girls just want to have fun sometimes. You know what I mean?

      Anyway, as it turned out I needn’t have bothered about Fliss, because the next morning she told us that her mum was organising her own party.

      “And I don’t think she can cope with one of our sleepovers as well,” Fliss explained.

      Lyndz and I rolled our eyes at each other. I don’t think Fliss’s mum copes with our sleepovers at the best of times.

      “Actually” muttered Fliss in her quietest voice, “I thought I might like to stay at home and join in with Mum’s party myself. You wouldn’t mind, would you? I mean, not having a sleepover on New Year’s Eve after all?”

      Rosie had joined Lyndz and me by that time, and we all stared at Fliss open-mouthed.

      “Of course we’d mind!” I screeched. “You were as excited as any of us about it! And now that something better has come along, you expect us to drop the idea altogether. Well maybe the rest of us will have our sleepover without you!”

      I didn’t really mean it, but Fliss winds me up sometimes. She always expects us to alter our plans just to suit her. But it looked like our plans were altering anyway. Rosie hadn’t had any joy in persuading her mum to let us have the sleepover at her place either.

      “She says she’ll see,” Rosie told us glumly. “And that usually means she’ll pretend to think about it for a fortnight and then tell me the answer’s ‘no’ anyway.”

      I tried to sound positive. “Let’s hope McKenzie comes up with the goods. She usually does.”

      Typical Kenny. The one morning we were all desperate for her to be early (apart from Fliss, who’d gone off by herself to sulk) was the one morning she was very late. She was so late that Mrs Weaver was about to mark her absent in the register. And Kenny didn’t look happy. She didn’t look happy at all. In fact, if I didn’t know her better, I’d swear that she’d been crying.

      We knew by the way that she slammed all her pens on the desk that she was in a bad mood. We were supposed to be finding out about medical developments in the twentieth century for our bit in the play. But Kenny just made loads of doodles in her notebook. And they were all doodles of really gory things, like blood spurting out of hearts and severed legs and stuff. Awful