“Oh, you’re both as bad as each other!” Frankie cut in. “Why don’t you just give it up and make friends?”
“Yes, and then we forget all about this!” Pilar added.
“I’ll be friends with Pilar, Elena, Anna and Isabella,” I said pointedly, “but I’m not going to be friends with her!”
“And I am friends with Frankie, Fliss, Rosie and Lyndz,” Maria said, “but I am not friends with her!”
“Fine!” I snapped.
“Fine!” agreed Maria.
And we turned on our heels and stalked off in opposite directions, leaving the others behind us.
“WonderLand, here we come!” I said as I climbed on to the coach behind Fliss. “This is going to be cool!”
We’d just had another weekend without a sleepover because of the Oldies still making a fuss about the food fight, so this trip to WonderLand would make up for that.
“We only just made it, though!” Frankie pointed out.
“Yeah, so don’t do anything crazy today, Kenny!” Fliss warned me.
“Me! Why should I be the one to do anything crazy?” I asked innocently, poking Fliss hard in the back. She squealed and nearly whacked Emma Hughes on the head with her rucksack as she went past her seat.
“Watch where you’re going, you idiot!” Emma snorted.
“Yeah,” chimed in Emily Berryman, who was sitting next to her. “You could have taken Emma’s head off!”
“That would have been an improvement!” I said sweetly, and the Terrible Twins both glared at me.
Maria and Pilar were sitting behind the M&Ms, with Elena and Anna behind them, and Isabella was across the aisle on her own. Anyway, when I made that crack about Emma, I thought I saw Maria almost smile. But maybe I didn’t really. Maybe I imagined it… After all, we still weren’t speaking to each other, and the others had given up trying to make us. They couldn’t really be friends properly unless me and Maria were too, so the Spanish girls were still going round with the M&Ms.
We all went further on down the coach, and sat down – me next to Lyndz, Fliss next to Rosie and Frankie on her own.
“What have you got in your packed lunch?” Lyndz asked as soon as we sat down.
“Two packets of cheese and onion crisps, two ham and tomato rolls, a Snickers, a Twix, a packet of chocolate Hob-Nobs and a strawberry milkshake,” I said.
“I’ll swop you a packet of salt and vinegar for a cheese and onion,” Lyndz offered.
“And I’ll swop a sausage roll for half your Hob-Nobs,” Fliss said.
Anyway, swopping and changing our lunchboxes around took up lots of time, and by the time we arrived at WonderLand, we all had totally different lunches from the ones we’d set out with! Then we all stopped thinking about food for once, and started getting pretty excited instead. Fliss had been to WonderLand before, but none of the rest of us had. It looked pretty spectacular. The front was built like a huge castle, and you had to walk on a drawbridge over a moat to get in.
“Wow! This is coo-ell!” I gasped as the coach pulled up in the car park next to all the others. “What’s the best ride, Flissy?”
“I liked the riverboat ride,” Fliss said.
“Oh, great big fat hairy deal!” I snorted. “I mean, what’s the scariest ride?”
“The Mega-Loop!” Fliss gave a shudder. “You’re upside-down most of the time. I went on it with my mum and my brother, and my mum was sick when we got off!”
“Right, we’re definitely going on that one then!” I jumped to my feet. “Come on, what’re we waiting for?”
“Sit down, Kenny!” Lyndz grabbed my arm. “Mrs Weaver’s waiting to speak to us!”
“Right, I want you all to listen carefully,” said Mrs Weaver, who was standing at the front of the coach. “We’ve talked about this already, but this is a reminder for those of you who don’t always act sensibly.”
And she stared grimly down the coach at the Sleepover Club. What a cheek!
“You are allowed to go round the theme park on your own, but stay with your friends at all times. Myself and the other teachers will be patrolling around, keeping an eye on things, and if you have any problems, you can always speak to the park stewards.”
We were all fidgeting away in our seats with ants in our pants, waiting for Mrs Weaver to stop rabbiting on. As soon as she did, we all jumped up and pushed our way off the coach. Then Mrs W. led us over to one of the ticket offices, and we all got given a luminous pink wristband to wear that would let us go on all the rides.
“Quick, let’s get away from the boring old teachers!” I hissed in Frankie’s ear as soon as we had gone over the drawbridge and we were inside. Everyone agreed, and we sneaked off while Mrs Weaver was still reminding everyone where we were meeting for lunch, and that we had to be on our best behaviour at all times.
“Come on, let’s go on the Secret Garden ride.” That was Emma Hughes, wittering on behind us and being a bossy-boots as usual. “It doesn’t sound too scary!”
“That ride look good.” Maria was pointing at a deadly-looking rollercoaster-type ride which towered high above our heads and twisted and turned like a corkscrew.
“That’s the Mega-Loop!” Fliss whispered in my ear.
The Queen turned green (hey, I’m a poet!). “No, I don’t want to,” she said firmly. “Come on!”
I saw Maria pull a face at the others as they trailed off after the M&Ms.
“Poor them!” said Lyndz. “They’re going to have a really gruesome time with the M&Ms!”
“Serves Maria right!” I muttered, but secretly I couldn’t help feeling a bit sorry for her too. The M&Ms wouldn’t want to go on any of the cool rides!
We took it in turns to choose what we wanted to go on. Rosie went first, and she chose the log flume. We all got sore throats because we screamed so much, and we all got soaked, especially me and Frankie ‘cos we’d bravely volunteered to sit at the front. But it was a roasting hot day, so we soon dried off!
“Right, my turn now!” Lyndz said when we climbed off. “I want to go on the Jolly Roger!” That was a huge model of a pirate ship that swung up and down and side to side. It looked fab!
“Look, the queue’s pretty small.” Frankie nudged me. “Come on!”
We all charged over to join the end of the line. Just as we got there, three older boys we didn’t know jumped in and pushed their way in front of us.
“Hey, get out of the way!” I yelled indignantly. “We were here first!”
“No, you weren’t!” sniggered one of the boys, who had floppy dark hair and sticking-out ears. “Look, we’re in front of you!”
“That’s because you pushed in!” Frankie pointed out.
“So make us move then!” said one of the others, a tall skinny boy with ginger hair.
“OK, I will!” I yelled. I charged forward, but I wasn’t moving because