The others looked a bit surprised, but tried to act like they knew what I was talking about, nodding vigorously and nudging each other like we were all in on a great big secret.
“Oh, sure,” said Emma, seeming just the teensiest bit worried all of a sudden. “You reckon!”
“Yeah!” said Emily. Honestly, doesn’t that girl ever say anything else?
“Yeah, we reckon,” said Kenny defiantly. “So you and your talking parrot of a friend have got some serious worrying to do!”
And we all turned together and stalked off down the playground like cowboys at high noon.
After that little showdown, there were loads of high fives all round for the Sleepover Club.
“Way to go, Franks!” beamed Kenny, banging me so hard on the back I practically swallowed my tongue.
“You sure showed ’em!” squealed Rosie, doing a couple of imaginary punches in mid-air.
Even Fliss was grinning. “You really do pull off amazing stuff when the chips are down, Frankie,” she gushed.
“Chips?” said Lyndz, who perked up immediately.
“DOH!” we all groaned. Lyndz’s mind was on food, as usual!
“So, what’s this top idea, then?” continued Kenny in excitement. “Come on, spill the beans! You sounded way excited back there, so I guess it’s a Super Spaceman Special, huh?”
“Er…” I faltered.
“Go on!” prompted Lyndz, leaping on Rosie’s back and resting her elbows on Rosie-Posie’s shoulders. “Tell us!”
“Well,” I said carefully, aware of four excited pairs of eyes resting on me, “when I said idea, I didn’t exactly mean idea…”
“You haven’t got an idea at all, have you?” said Fliss, cottoning on suddenly.
“Well…No, not an idea as such,” I confessed.
Kenny clutched her hair. “But we just challenged the M&Ms!” she yelled. “Francesca Thomas, I could kill you!”
“Well, I had to say something, didn’t I? The M&Ms were flattening you!” I shot straight back, looking her firmly in the eye. Her gaze dropped first. “It’s not so bad!” I rallied them – they were looking like drooping flowers all of a sudden. “We’ll just look on it as a challenge, that’s all!”
“Great,” they all groaned.
A horrible silence fell as we racked our brains. How were we going to get out of this one?
“Doesn’t anyone know any poems?” said Lyndz at last. “Limericks? Nursery rhymes?”
“Mary had a little lamb, the midwife fainted,” said Kenny promptly. “Well, I thought it was funny!” she protested when we all punched her.
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day,” began Fliss, looking all dreamy.
“Yuck,” I declared. “How does the rest of it go?”
Fliss blushed. “I don’t know. Something about temperatures.”
“Temperatures are good,” said Kenny, getting interested.
“Look, this is getting us nowhere!” said Rosie in irritation. “Let’s just do what Mrs Weaver suggested, and go and ask Baloney at lunchtime.”
Baloney is our pet name for Miss Malone, the librarian. It’s a perfect name, as her skin’s a bit blotchy like a sausage and she talks rubbish half the time.
“Yeah!” we all agreed. “Baloney to the rescue!”
And we played Stuck In The Mud for the rest of the break.
“Poetry, gels?” said Baloney that lunchtime. She always calls girls “gels”, which sounds weird but kind of goes with the rest of her. She wears hairy tweed skirts, and those little glasses on a thin gold chain that just rest on the tip of your nose. “What kind of poetry?”
“We were hoping you’d be able to tell us, Miss Malone,” I said politely.
“Yeah, anything, Miss Malone,” the others all chorused.
“Well, poetry can never be ‘anything’, gels,” said Miss Malone, looking quite shocked. “There are so many poems and poets out there, you see. There’s…”
And she started wittering on about Keats and Yeats and loads of other poets who all seemed to end in – eets, as far as I could make out.
“But do any poems leap to mind when you think about Spring maybe, Miss Malone? You know – seasonal stuff, flowers and grass and that?” interrupted Rosie as soon as Baloney drew breath.
Baloney stopped in her tracks. “Ah, now Spring! Well, of course, there’s always Wordsworth,” she gushed, sounding quite misty-eyed. “I wander’d lonely as a cloud that floats on high o’er vales and hills, when all at once I saw a crowd, a host, of golden daffodils…”
“DAFFODILS!” I yelled, clutching the others. “Perfect! Think of all those daffodils out in the playground!”
“What about them?” said Fliss, looking confused.
Kenny and I rolled our eyes at each other. Fliss had absolutely no imagination.
“Well, we could…er…we could…” I began, waving my arms around in search of inspiration.
“We could copy the shape of a daffodil and maybe write the poem inside it?” offered Lyndz shyly.
“Lyndsey Collins, you’re a genius!” roared Kenny, flinging her arms round all of us and launching into a little jig which had us all creased up within seconds.
“Come, come, gels!” said Baloney reprovingly. “This is a library, not a…”
“…circus, yes, we know Miss Balo—” As Lyndz began to choke with helpless laughter, Kenny quickly corrected herself. “Er, Miss Maloney I mean. Could you tell us where we can find the poem, please?”
Lyndz’s desperate attempts not to giggle at Kenny’s mega gaffe had resulted in…you guessed it…HICCUPS. We all took it in turns to bash her on the back as we followed Baloney’s tall shape towards the Poetry section. She hiccuped the whole way through Baloney’s explanation about looking after library books and returning it by the end of the week, and – can you believe it? – was still hiccuping as we turned to leave.
“Lyndsey Collins, this is a library, not a circus,” I said solemnly, which only made Lyndz worse.
“Frankie, you’re not helping,” hissed Rosie. “Try holding your breath, Lyndz.”
“Hold your breath and think of the moon,” said Fliss suddenly, as we emerged into the playground.
“What?!” we all shrieked.
“Fliss, you nutcase, how’s that supposed to work?” scoffed Kenny.
Fliss shrugged her shoulders, all annoyed. “Don’t ask me. I just know that’s what Mum told Callum to do the other day, and his hiccups stopped.”
“Phew – hic – so long as ali – hic – aliens don’t come into it,”