“Oh, stop being a pain, Kenny, and go and play in the traffic!” said Emma Hughes with a pretend yawn. “Nobody wants to listen to you!”
Pilar and the other Spanish girls were all glaring at me. “Yes, go away, Kenny!” they chorused.
“We want to eat our picnic with our friends,” said Maria pointedly.
Their friends! I almost choked. The M&Ms had done their best to split us up, and now they’d won and they were taking our mates away from us!
“You’d better tell them the truth, Emma Hughes!” I said threateningly, “or else!”
The Queen was beginning to look a bit worried by now, but just at that moment the other Sleepovers caught up with me and grabbed my arms again.
“Back off, Kenny!” Frankie hissed in my ear. “You’re just making things worse!”
Even though I was mad, I could see what she meant. Pilar, Maria, Isabella, Elena and Anna just didn’t believe what I was saying – not now that the M&Ms were being as nice as pie to them. I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself down.
“Look, we just want to talk to you,” I said.
“Well, we not want to talk to you,” said Elena, and the others nodded in agreement.
“’Bye, Kenny!” said Emily Berryman with an infuriating grin.
“Come on, Kenny,” Frankie whispered. “We don’t want to talk to them with the Gruesome Twosome here anyway!”
“Yes, come on, Kenny!” Fliss tugged at my arm and took a step backwards. She accidentally trod on one of the bags of shopping lying on the grass, and there was a loud CRACK.
“My bag!” Isabella squealed. She pulled the carrier bag open, and took out an object wrapped in tissue paper. Inside was a pretty blue bowl. Well, it would have been a pretty bowl if it hadn’t been in two pieces.
“I buy that for my mother!” Isabella yelled, her face turning red with fury. “Now you break it!”
“I didn’t mean to,” Fliss stammered.
“She did it on purpose!” Emma Hughes had to stick her nose in and try to stir things up as usual. “I saw her!”
“No, I didn’t!” Fliss snapped. “You can shut up, Emma Hughes!”
“Make me!” Emma sneered.
“OK, if Fliss won’t, I will!” I lunged forward, but Frankie caught my sleeve and dragged me back. She and the others hustled me away across the grass, leaving the Spanish girls furious and the M&Ms laughing.
“That Emma Hughes is history!” I snapped as Frankie and the others pulled me over to the park gates. “This mess is all down to her!”
“And now she’s made friends with Anna and the others, they won’t believe us if we try to tell them what she and Emily are really like,” Rosie pointed out.
“No, I bet the Queen and the Goblin are being really nice to them!” I said, clenching my fists. “You know how two-faced Emma Hughes is!”
“Well, there’s not much we can do about it, is there?” Frankie muttered, and nobody could think of anything to say.
We all trailed back miserably to my place, and went out into the garden. The sky was blue, the sun was shining, it was warm, and in just over a week’s time we’d be finishing school for the summer holidays. But we couldn’t help feeling fed up. We’d been looking forward to Pilar and the rest of the gang coming over so much, and now the M&Ms had gone and ruined it all.
“Why don’t we design our fancy-dress costumes?” Lyndz asked.
No-one was that keen, but it was better than sitting around doing nothing. So I went inside and nicked some paper and pens from my dad’s study, and then we lay around on the grass, sketching. I can’t draw though, so I just doodled.
“I think I might go as the Tin Man,” said Lyndz.
“What?” I glanced over at her.
“The Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz,” Lyndz explained.
“That sounds like a hard costume to make,” said Fliss.
“No, I’ll just use loads of cardboard boxes and paint them silver,” Lyndz said. “And I can make myself an oil-can to carry. It’ll be great!”
“Well, I want to dress up in something glamorous!” said Fliss. “I don’t want to be a rusty old Tin Man!”
“You could go as Barbie,” I suggested, winking at Frankie. Fliss has got long fair hair, she’s dead skinny and she’s got about as many clothes as Barbie has! I meant it as a joke, but Fliss immediately looked interested.
“That’s a good idea – then I wouldn’t have to make a costume! I could just wear one of my dresses.”
“I think I might go as the Witch from The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe,” said Frankie. “Then I can still wear my silver nail varnish! What about you, Rosie?”
“I don’t know,” Rosie said gloomily, “I can’t think of anything!”
“We’ll help you,” Lyndz told her.
“Hey, I’ve just had a great idea for my costume!” I said triumphantly. “And it’s not my Leicester City strip either!”
I jumped to my feet and ran into the house. It took me a while to find what I was looking for, but when I did, I took it outside.
“Remember this?” I said with a grin, holding it up.
“The mummy mask!” squealed Lyndz and Fliss together.
“I didn’t know you’d still got that!” said Frankie.
Remember when went on that school trip to the museum and slept over, and we frightened the M&Ms to death with the mummy mask I’d made? That was just so cool!
“I’ll go as a mummy!” I announced, putting the mask over my face. “All I’ve got to do is nick some bandages from my dad’s surgery, and I’m sorted!”
“Maybe you can scare the M&Ms into telling the truth about those emails!” Lyndz suggested.
“Yeah, what are we going to do about that?” Rosie asked.
Everyone looked gloomy again.
“I wish I hadn’t broken that bowl of Isabella’s,” Fliss sighed.
“If only there was some way we could prove that the M&Ms sent those emails,” Frankie said. “Then everything would be OK.”
“And maybe I could buy Isabella another bowl,” Fliss added.
“Well, we could find out what time the emails were sent by checking them,” Lyndz pointed out. “But that doesn’t help us very much because we can’t prove who was using the computer at the time—”
“Lyndz!” I gasped, “you’re a genius!”
Lyndz looked at me blankly. “I am?”
“Yeah, you are!” I said triumphantly. “We can prove who was using the class computer when those emails were sent!”
The others stared at me. They still didn’t get it.
“Look,” I gabbled impatiently, “how do we always know whose turn it is to use the computer?”
“Because Mrs Weaver puts a list up on the classroom noticeboard,” Fliss replied.
“Exactly!” I grinned round