“Frankie?” I prompted.
She sighed heavily down the phone. Uh-oh. This wasn’t sounding good.
“What’s up?” I asked. “What’s the matter?”
“It’s my mum,” Frankie said slowly. “She’s got a hospital check-up that day.”
“And?” I asked. It was starting to sound worse by the second.
“And… I want to go with her,” Frankie said. “So I’m not going to go snowboarding.”
“What?!” I screeched. “Why do you have to go with her? What’s wrong with her?”
“Well, it’s just a regular check-up but her blood pressure’s still too high and… you know, I just want to be there,” she said.
My heart sank. “And she wants you to go with her, does she?” I asked.
Frankie hesitated. “Actually, she said she’d rather I went with you lot and had some fun, but…”
I pounced on her words. “You should then, if that’s what she wants! You can’t really do anything to help her at the hospital anyway, can you?”
Another pause. “Noooo, but…”
“Tell you what,” I said, thinking quickly. “Come with us and you can have a great day out and take your mind off it all. And you can ring her on her mobile if you’re worried, can’t you?”
“Ye-e-e-es,” Frankie said doubtfully, “but…”
“She’ll feel happier knowing that you’re enjoying yourself and not getting all worried,” I said, pulling out all the stops to try and convince her. Then I played my trump card. “Besides, you hate hospitals – I know you do!”
She sighed. “Yeah, you’re right,” she said, kind of reluctantly.
“Yippppppeeeeee!” I yelled. “So you’re gonna come with us, then?”
“Yeah,” she said. “But only if I can ring her while we’re there.”
“I’ll even give you 50p for the phone call if it makes you come with us!” I said, a big grin stretching across my face. “It wouldn’t be the same without you!”
After that near-miss, there came another blow to the plan – and this one was far more seriously BAD We were all sitting and having tea on Monday night, and Mum only went and asked Molly and Emma if they wanted to come too, didn’t she?
I choked on a bit of potato and Dad had to bang me on the back. “Oh, Mum!” I protested in horror. Those two would just wreck everything, I knew it! “Can’t it be just the Sleepover Club?”
Mum pushed her glasses up her nose. She has this real thing about families doing everything together, worse luck. Just because she gets on with the rest of her family, it doesn’t mean I do!
“Fair’s fair,” she said (one of her favourite phrases). “I’m going to phone up the snow centre tomorrow so I need to know how many people to book the lesson for. And it’s only fair that Emma and Molly can come too if you’re going.”
“But there won’t be enough room in the car,” I argued, desperately trying to think of reasons to stop them coming along.
“We can take both cars,” Mum said calmly. “Emma? Molly? What do you think?”
“I’ve got a netball match on Saturday so I can’t,” Emma said. “And even if I could, I wouldn’t want to spend my Saturday with a bunch of ten-year-olds, thanks all the same!”
I gave her a cold stare but secretly was pleased that she didn’t want to come. Good! Now there was only Molly the Monster I had to worry about…
“I’d love to come!” she said, smirking at me in that horrible way of hers. “Can Carli come too?”
Worse and worse and WORSE! Molly is a monster and a half but Carli… Carli’s practically in the M&M league of yuckiness! And when Molly and Carli are together, it’s really bad news. Suddenly my heart seemed to have sunk right down into my trainers.
“Of course she can – as long as it’s OK with her parents,” Mum smiled. “Right, that’s that settled then.”
“Oh, Muuum!” I groaned, but she gave me one of her looks.
“You’re very lucky to be going at all, Laura – and don’t you forget it!” she said sharply. “Now eat your dinner!”
I knew when I was beaten. GUTTED!!!
Once I’d just about gotten over the shock that it was going to be the Sleepover Club on the slopes plus yucky Molly plus even yuckier Carli, the rest of the week dragged by agonisingly slowly. Why is that when you’re on holiday or it’s the weekend, time whizzes by dead fast, but when you’re waiting for Christmas or your birthday – or a snowboarding trip – it goes reeeeeaalllly slow, as if all the clocks in the world have broken down?!
The only good thing about the week was winding up the M&Ms. Ahh, a speciality of mine, don’tcha know! I can never resist the urge to make those two SQUIRM!
At school on Thursday morning, I broke the news to the others that my mum had booked us all in for a snowboarding lesson on the Saturday coming.
“Yahoo!” Lyndz said excitedly. “We’re really going!”
“Hooray!” shouted Rosie.
We all jumped around cheering and yelling, even Frankie. Even Fliss!!
“What? Going where?” I heard two familiar nosey voices ask. AHA! The M&Ms had been eavesdropping!
“Maybe they’re going back to Mars, where they belong,” sniggered Emily.
“Hope so,” Emily agreed. “Good riddance, wherever you’re going! Don’t hurry back, will you?”
“I’d never hurry anywhere to see you,” I sneered back at her. “Don’t flatter yourself, darlin’!”
“It’s none of your business where we’re going, anyway,” Frankie said, her nose in the air. “Although it’s going to be great getting away from you two for a while!”
“Can’t wait,” Rosie said. “No smelly Ems around, polluting the air…”
“Just clean, fresh snow,” Lyndz said teasingly.
That got their curiosity going! “Snow?” Emily said. “Who said it’s going to snow? It’s not cold enough yet!”
“Where we’re going there’s always snow,” Fliss said smugly. “So poo to you!”
I snorted with laughter. Fliss thinks “poo” is the rudest word in the world! “Well said,” I agreed. “Double poo to you with a cherry on top!”
“And a cocktail umbrella!” Frankie chuckled.
“And a snowboard sticking out of the top!” Lyndz spluttered, between giggles.
“Snowboarding! Is that what you’re doing?” Emma said, disbelievingly.
“Yeah,” I gloated. “Jealous by any chance, are we?”
“I can’t wait to go snowboarding, can you?” Rosie said to the rest of us. “It sounds so wicked!”
“So exciting,” said Frankie solemnly.
“What, you mean you’ve never been?” Fliss said to the M&Ms sorrowfully. “Never mind – we’ll tell you all about it next week!”
Do you know – for once, we had the M&Ms well and truly speechless. It was ace. They just couldn’t think of any comeback! They both stood there, looking red-faced and totally jealous, and then