I’d spent all day expecting the M&Ms to notice and make fun of me, but they were far too busy boasting about how brilliant they were at being the Spice Girls, and how no other Spice Girls act stood a chance against them. They didn’t know I’d seen their dancing hippos routine. They were so sad.
It got to Friday and we still didn’t know if Stu was going out or not.
Tom, my next oldest brother, wasn’t. He had made up his mind to enter a picture in an art competition in one of his weird magazines.
For a whole week, he’d spent every night in his room, drawing and painting. Every morning, he’d stagger down with his full waste-paper bin, dropping screwed up sheets of paper all down the stairs. I swooped on one and when I un-crumpled it, I saw it was an amazing science fiction type of picture, complete with space ships and aliens and weird creatures with horns and antennae and tentacles, all in brilliant orange and slime green.
“Hey! Give me that back!” he shouted, and went all red with embarrassment.
“It’s good,” I told him. “Can I keep it?”
He looked pleased. “All right,” he agreed.
I un-crumpled another one. It was seriously loony, with lots of funny purple creatures and bright red cactus plants.
“It was supposed to be Life On Mars, but it went wrong,” he explained.
He snatched it out of my hand and tore it to shreds. Buster came bounding up the stairs and ate them.
“He’ll be sick now. Red and purple sick, all over the carpet,” Tom said, putting me right off my Coco Pops.
The first big disaster of our rehearsal was that Fliss hadn’t brought the guitar.
“I looked in the shed but it wasn’t there. Andy drove me here, anyway. I couldn’t have brought it because he’d have seen it,” she said.
At least Frankie had remembered her keyboard, so all was not lost. She reckoned it wouldn’t take long to learn the tune from my tape. At least we’d still be able to practise.
Last time we’d held a sleepover at my house, we’d all been seriously into cucumber. We’d gone off it now. Celery was our new thing. It was so nice and crunchy and didn’t give you the burps like cucumber did. So when Mum had asked me yesterday what kind of food we’d like, I’d told her to give us lots of celery.
Mum had made cheese and celery sandwiches, baked potatoes with pineapple and celery stuffing, and a big salad with loads of celery in.
There were two pizzas, one vegetarian, as both Frankie and I are veggie, and a ham and mushroom one for the others, plus all the usual crisps and cakes, and a huge bag of popcorn. Oh, and lots of lemonade and Coke.
“What’s that?” Rosie asked, pointing to the plate in the middle of the kitchen table.
We all looked where Rosie was pointing. I’d thought it was a bit of Dad’s wonky pottery which Mum had turned into a table decoration, but on close inspection, which involved prodding it a bit, it turned out to be a pile of celery sticks, arranged as a kind of mountain with the curly leaves looking like bushes on top, and tiny flakes of carrot stuck on like flowers.
“Weird!” said Frankie. “Really weird.”
I had to agree with her. It was very weird indeed.
We weren’t sure whether it was intended to be eaten, or just looked at, but Fudge solved it for us by leaping on the table, which she wasn’t supposed to do, striding between our plates and knocking the celery heap over with her tail. After that, none of us wanted to eat it at all, as it was covered in cat hairs.
I’d told everyone to bring some Spice Girls costumes with them, so after we’d eaten the proper food, we took the crisps and things up to my room and got down to sorting out our clothes.
The bathroom’s next to my bedroom. It soon got turned into an extra changing room, as it’s got a big mirror in it. Fliss and Rosie were in there when suddenly we heard an ear-splitting scream!
Had they found a humongous spider in there, or was it something worse…?
Before any of us could arm ourselves with spider-killing weapons, there was a screech of, “Get out! Go away!” and the bathroom door slammed so hard that the pictures on my bedroom wall rattled.
Well, anyone knows that spiders can’t understand English. So whatever was in the bathroom had to have more intelligence than a spider. Buster? One of the cats?
When we dashed out to see what the matter was, we found my brother Tom standing there. Now, the average spider has considerably more brains than Tom. I mean, surely he could hear bumps and voices and know that the bathroom was occupied?
Of course, there isn’t a lock on the door. It broke ages ago and Dad never got round to fitting a new one, though bathroom door locks are about the most important thing in a house. I mean, you don’t want someone walking in when you’re on the toilet, do you?
Tom was standing there like a twit, with a clean T-shirt and a pair of underpants in his hand.
“I was only going to have a bath,” he complained.
“A bath? You had one last month! Don’t you think it’s a bit soon for another one?” I said.
“Perhaps he’s got a girlfriend,” Frankie said.
To my amazement, Tom went bright red.
“He has! He has! Tom’s got a girlfriend, Tom’s got a girlfriend,” sang Frankie.
“No, I haven’t!” he said.
He bolted back into his bedroom and banged his door shut, making my pictures rattle again. I plonked myself down so hard on my bed that I bounced.
“I can’t believe it!” I exclaimed. “Tom? He can’t have a girlfriend. He’s never been interested in girls.”
“He’s nearly fifteen. He could be,” said Kenny.
“I think he’s quite hunky,” said Fliss, wiggling back into my room in her silver dress and matching shoes. She thinks anything male is hunky. She probably even fancies Buster!
“Better looking than Ryan Scott?” asked Frankie.
Fliss refused to answer.
“I’m going to write Fliss Loves Tom and put it under his door,” said Frankie, looking round for some paper.
“Don’t you dare!” screamed Fliss, flying at her and grinding a paper plate of crisps to dust on the carpet.
“No, don’t. He’ll get upset. He’s really shy,” I told her.
I thought it was really funny, though. He’d be in for a good teasing from me tomorrow.
I tried the red wig on. Once they’d stopped laughing, the others thought I looked quite like Ginger Spice. She likes shiny clothes and I’d made a black plastic mini skirt out of a piece of bin-liner.
I wore a black T-shirt with Stu’s old black leather jacket over it, and my winter boots. I was sure Stu wouldn’t mind my borrowing his jacket. He hadn’t worn it for ages as it had got a bit small for him. I was boiling hot, but I tried not to moan. I knew the Spice Girls wouldn’t have complained. Some of their video was shot in the boiling hot desert, yet they still jumped around and danced. They’re amazing. Really professional.