by Narinder Dhami
Contents
Have you been Invited to all these Sleepovers?
Hi. It’s me. What do you mean, who? Rosie, of course! OK, so I sound a bit miserable, and I’ll tell you why. At the moment I’ve got two big problems: 1) I’m sitting on a lump of ice and it’s freezing my bottom off, and 2)—
“Come on, Rosie-Posie, get up!” Kenny yelled, skating towards me at about a hundred miles an hour. I gasped, and scrambled to my feet quickly to get out of the way, but Kenny just dug her blades into the ice and came to a stop about two centimetres from my nose. What a show-off. I began to wobble from one side to the other, then my legs slowly started moving apart, and I couldn’t stop them. I did the splits like Bambi does in the film, and sat down on the ice again.
“Nice one, Rosie!” Frankie said, skating smoothly up to me. “You didn’t tell us you could do tricks!”
“Oh, ha ha,” I muttered, rubbing my sore behind, “I’d laugh if that was the slightest bit funny.”
“Oh, come on, Rosie, don’t be such a sad case!” Kenny grabbed hold of one of my arms, Frankie took the other and between them they pulled me to my feet. “What’s biting you? You’ve been in a right mood all afternoon!”
Before I could say anything, Fliss and Lyndz skated over. You remember everyone in the Sleepover Club, don’t you? You should do, by now! There’s me, Kenny, Frankie, Fliss and Lyndz. We take it in turns to have sleepovers every week at each other’s houses, and it was my turn tonight. That was my second problem…
I guess you remember what happened. When we moved to Cuddington, my dad bought this massive house, and we were all going to live in it like a happy-ever-after family – that’s my mum and dad, me, my sister Tiffany, my brother Adam and our dog Jenny. The house needed loads doing to it, but my dad’s a builder, so that was all right. Anyway, he started pulling off all the old wallpaper and taking up the carpets and knocking down walls, then he suddenly decided he’d had enough, and he went off to live with his girlfriend. Since then he keeps promising that he’s going to fix the house for us, but he’s hardly done anything. I love my dad to bits, but he drives me mad.
“Look out!” Kenny screeched as Fliss and Lyndz headed straight towards us. Fliss wasn’t very good at stopping, and because she and Lyndz were holding hands, she was dragging Lyndz along with her. Alarmed, Kenny and Frankie let go of my arms again, and I collapsed in a heap. Unfortunately, I grabbed at the hood of Kenny’s Leicester City FC sweatshirt as I fell, and pulled her down on to the ice next to me. Fliss and Lyndz managed to avoid us, but not Frankie, and the three of them landed in an untidy pile right on top of me and Kenny.
“Oi! Get off!” Kenny roared, “you’re suffocating us!”
Frankie, Lyndz and Fliss could hardly move, they were laughing so much. It was all right for them. They weren’t at the bottom of the heap like I was.
“Are you girls all right?” called Frankie’s mum from the side of the rink.
Frankie gave her a thumbs-up as we all climbed to our feet.
“I’m going to be black and blue after this,” I grumbled. Ice-skating just wasn’t my thing. But then, nothing ever goes right for me…
“Oh, come on, Rosie, it’s a good laugh!” Frankie said with a grin.
“You’ll soon get better after you’ve been a few more times,” Lyndz said kindly.
Fliss stared at me suspiciously. “What’s the matter, Rosie? You’ve got a right face on you.”
“That’s what I said,” Kenny chimed in. “So what’s the story?”
I felt a bit embarrassed and shuffled my feet, but that was a mistake because I nearly fell over again.
“It’s my dad,” I mumbled. “He promised he was going to decorate my bedroom this week, and he didn’t.”
“Well, great big fat hairy deal!” Kenny shrugged. “So what’s new? You’ve been waiting for him to do it for months!”
Frankie and Lyndz both elbowed Kenny in the ribs so hard that she nearly fell over, and I glared at her.
“I know,” I snapped. I guess I don’t like anyone else criticising my dad, even though he gets on my nerves. But it’s true. My bedroom’s a tip, and it’s been like that for ever. When I first met the others, I didn’t even want them to come round to our house and see just what a mess it is. “But he promised me he’d do it before the sleepover tonight. We even went out and bought all the wallpaper and paint last week-end.”
“You didn’t say anything about that,” Lyndz remarked.
I had a horrible big fat lump in my throat. “I wanted it to be a surprise when you slept over,” I muttered.
“So why hasn’t he done it?” Fliss asked sympathetically.
“He’s gone on holiday with his girlfriend,” I said, and the others groaned.
“What, again?” Kenny said, raising her eyebrows. “Your dad’s the Holiday King!”
“I know.” I couldn’t argue with that. “He’s gone to Majorca for a week with her. He says he’ll do my bedroom when he gets back…”
The others just looked at me. They didn’t say anything, but I knew what they were thinking. I was thinking exactly