Sleepover Girls Go Camping Read online

  Unfortunately, tripping up and gashing open my knee was the only thing I could think of. And very painful it was, too – I hope Kenny appreciated it. Still, it kept Jerry occupied and stopped her worrying about Kenny.

  When Tom called us all for supper, Fliss looked really panicked. “What if they go to fetch Kenny and find she’s not there!” she said.

  But just then, as if she was a mind-reader, Kenny appeared. She strolled out of our tent with a humungous grin on her face, and muddy marks on her trousers.

  “Are you feeling better now?” asked Jerry. “Do you think you might be able to manage a little supper?”

  “You bet, I’m starving!” Kenny replied.

  “B – but what about your stomach ache?” squeaked Rosie.

  “I haven’t got one,” Kenny looked puzzled, then she cottoned on. “I mean, it’s gone now,” she said.

  “The lie-down must have done you good,” said Jerry.

  Kenny just smiled.

  We all went to sit down and The Simpsons brought us our food.

  “Mmm, this isn’t half bad!” said Kenny, slurping down her pasta like a pig.

  We all looked at her really suspiciously. The M&Ms had cooked it and she never praises anything that they’re involved in.

  “You haven’t sabotaged it, have you?” asked Frankie suspiciously.

  “Get real!” laughed Kenny. “I’m hardly likely to ruin the food we’ve all got to eat now, am I?”

  “So what have you been doing?” I asked.

  But Kenny just shook her head and kept tapping the side of her nose. “You’ll find out soon enough,” she told us.

  When everyone had finished eating, we got up to collect the plates.

  “Nice meal!” Kenny whispered to Emma Hughes, as she took her plate.

  The M&Ms looked at Kenny suspiciously, but she just smiled and took the plates into Grange Hill.

  After pudding we had to wash up, which didn’t sound like much fun. I hate washing up at home, but then I’m not in the middle of a field acting stupid with my friends, am I? We had a real laugh – though we seemed to wash more of each other than the plates! I noticed that Kenny was already kind of wet, but she wouldn’t say why.

  By the time we’d finished, we were all soaking. And kind of tired. Have you noticed how when you’re at home you just want to stay up late, but the first night you’re away you want to go to bed early, just because it’s all new?

  It seemed like everyone felt the same because we were all yawning as we sat outside singing. I’d assumed that there’d be a camp fire every evening, but there wasn’t one that first night, which was really disappointing. Brown Owl said it was because they take a long time to prepare, but she promised we’d have one on the other nights.

  It was nearly dark as we all trooped back to our tents to collect our toilet bags. As soon as we got there, Kenny grabbed her ice-cream carton and peeped out of the tent flap.

  “What are you looking for?” Frankie whispered.

  “The M&Ms,” Kenny replied. “Ssh, they’re coming!”

  She hurried back inside and waited for them to walk past. She was holding tightly to the carton she was holding. There seemed to be a lot of water sloshing about in it.

  “Right, you lot go to Doug and delay the Gruesome Twosome and their mates as long as you can. Understood?” commanded Kenny.

  “Yes, Sir!” Frankie, Rosie and I saluted her together. Fliss just looked cross.

  “I wonder what she’s got planned,” said Rosie as we walked to the shower block.

  “Dunno,” shrugged Frankie, “but it certainly looks like it’s something big!”

  “I don’t see why she couldn’t let us in on it, though,” moaned Fliss.

  “She must have her reasons,” said Frankie. “Anyway, remember, we’ve got to delay the M&Ms as long as possible.”

  We all went into the shower block. The girls from The Simpsons patrol were just leaving. They smiled and said “Goodnight”.

  “They’re really friendly, aren’t they?” said Fliss.

  “Unlike some people,” said Rosie, scowling at the M&Ms.

  “Where’s your horrible little friend?” asked Emma Hughes.

  “Kenny? She’s got a stomach ache,” replied Frankie.

  “Something serious I hope,” smiled Amanda Porter.

  The rest of her group laughed their stupid little laughs.

  “It must have been something you cooked,” said Fliss, who was hovering in the doorway.

  “Well you certainly didn’t eat much,” Emma Hughes snapped. “I would have thought a wimp like you should be building up your strength. You’re going to look a complete wally when you get on the assault course again.”

  Fliss went bright red. But so did Emily Berryman and she started to walk towards the door.

  I think we all panicked a bit then. Fliss more than the rest of us. As she was in the doorway, it was up to Fliss to stop Emily Berryman as she went past. And Fliss definitely wasn’t up to giving her a rugby tackle. She started dithering, dropped her toilet bag and stooped to pick it up. Berryman didn’t notice and tripped over her. Then all the stuff from her toilet bag spilt all over the floor and she ended up falling on top of it. It was like something out of a cartoon, but we couldn’t have planned it better if we’d tried.

  We all bent down to help pick everything up. And of course Frankie, Rosie and I kept picking up Emily Berryman’s things sort of accidentally-on-purpose. So it took quite a while to get everything sorted out.

  “You’re so clumsy!” snarled Emma Hughes to Fliss as they were leaving.

  “So is she,” Rosie said, looking at Emily Berryman. “And we wouldn’t want Fliss to be contaminated with any of the germs from her things.”

  The M&Ms and their cronies flounced out, and we all cracked up.

  “What about Kenny?” wailed Hiss. “What if she hasn’t finished yet?”

  “Oh, but I have!” said Kenny suddenly appearing. “I’ve just been hiding behind a bush watching you all. Nice one, Fliss!”

  Kenny still wouldn’t tell us what she had done. She just had this big I’m-so-clever grin on her face and kept saying, “You’ll find out soon enough!”

  We all finished washing and brushing our teeth, then went back to our tent to get ready for bed. We did our striptease in our sleeping bags, then sat in a circle round the pole in the middle.

  “Let’s have our midnight feast now!” I said. “I’m so tired, I don’t think I can keep awake much longer!”

  The others laughed. I’m always the first one of us to fall asleep.

  We emptied all our sweets onto Kenny’s sleeping bag. Her ones looked a bit gross because they’d been loose in the bottom of her bag and were covered in all sorts of bits of fluff.

  “How do we decide what we’re going to eat for our midnight feast tonight and what we’re going to save?” asked Rosie.

  “You mean, how are we going to stop ourselves from eating everything in one go?” laughed Frankie.

  “And how do we stop the swamp monster breaking in and stealing all our sweets?” said Kenny in a really spooky voice.

  “Don’t!” squealed Fliss.

  “I’m not scaring you, am I?” asked Kenny, in the same spooky voice.

  Before Fliss could answer, a loud piercing scream seemed to rip through the campsite. We all clung together, hardly daring to breathe.

  “What was that?” squeaked Frankie.

  “I don’t know, but it came from the tent next door,” said Rosie.

  We all looked at each other.

  “The M&Ms!” we said together.

  “It sounds as though Brown Owl’s in there now,” said Fliss.

  We all went to the tent flap and peered out. We could hear someone wailing and we were pretty sure that it was Emma Hughes. Then we heard Brown Owl.

  “I’m sure it’s just a freak thing, Emma,” she was saying. “Why on earth would anyone want to put a frog in your sleeping bag?”

  Well,
we just collapsed in a heap when we heard that.

  “A frog!” squealed Frankie to Kenny. “You actually put a frog in her sleeping bag!”

  Kenny was nodding and spluttering.

  “Sssh! Brown Owl’s coming!” said Fliss.

  We all dived into our sleeping bags.

  “Are you all right in here, girls?” asked Brown Owl.

  “What was that noise?” asked Fliss in her weakest little voice.

  “Oh, nothing to worry about,” said Brown Owl. “You haven’t been into the Teletubbies tent for anything, have you?”

  “Oh no, we wouldn’t do that!” said Kenny.

  “Hmm,” said Brown Owl thoughtfully. “I don’t want there to be any trouble. I want this to be a happy camp.”

  “Oh, but it is!” gushed Rosie. “We’re having a great time, aren’t we?”

  “Yes!” we all spluttered, trying not to laugh.

  “That’s good!” said Brown Owl. “You’re cooking tomorrow, so you’ll have to be up by seven. I’d try to get some sleep if I were you! Sweet dreams!”

  When we were sure that Brown Owl had gone, we all turned on our torches and sat up.

  “That was wicked!” I squealed.

  “I just hope the M&Ms don’t suss out who it was and do it back to us, though,” shuddered Fliss. “I’d die if I found a frog in my sleeping bag.”

  “We’ll have to try not to leave our tent for too long tomorrow, just in case,” said Frankie seriously. “And we’d better make sure that the flap is tightly shut tonight.”

  Kenny and I got up and fastened it as securely as we could. Not even King Kong would have been able to get through when we’d finished with it!

  “Anyway, we should be celebrating getting one over the M&Ms!” said Kenny. “Chocolate frog anyone?”

  We collapsed in giggles again.

  Our midnight feast goodies were still scattered over Kenny’s sleeping bag. We scooped them all together again and roughly divided them into three piles. We put what we weren’t going to eat that night into two plastic bags and left them by the tent pole.

  I ate what felt like my weight in chocolate and declared, “I’m stuffed now!”

  “Me too!” agreed Rosie.

  “I guess we ought to try to sleep if we’ve got to be up early tomorrow,” suggested Frankie.

  I expected Kenny to disagree, but she was already snuggling down in her sleeping bag. “Seven o’clock!” she grumbled. “What sort of crazy time is that?”

  It felt strange to be having a sleepover in a tent. Especially as we were all suddenly too tired to sing our sleepover song. But at least we had another two ‘under canvas’ sleepovers to look forward to.

  Are you all right there, I’m not walking too fast, am I? The playground isn’t too far away now, then we can have a go on the swings. I bet Kenny will be a lot livelier today than she was on that first morning at camp. Boy is she grumpy when she gets up. Especially when Brown Owl has woken her up at the crack of dawn!

  “Tell her to shut up!” moaned Kenny, pulling a pillow over her head.

  The rest of us dragged ourselves out of our sleeping bags and wandered around bleary-eyed. But by the time we’d got ourselves dressed, and dressed Kenny because she said she was too tired to do it herself, we were ready for anything. Well, almost anything, we weren’t ready for the M&Ms, that’s for sure.

  As soon as we saw them, we knew we were in trouble.

  “We’ll get you for that!” hissed Emma Hughes, as we dished out baked beans and toast.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Kenny said innocently.

  “You’ll be sorry, that’s all!” said Emily Berryman, snatching her plate from me.

  “What do you think they’ll do?” whispered Fliss. “I hope they haven’t been into our tent while we’ve been cooking breakfast.”

  We rushed back to the tent as soon as we could, but nothing seemed to be missing. We felt inside our sleeping bags, too, but there were no frogs in any of them.

  “We can’t stay in the tent all day!” said Fliss.

  “We won’t have to, all the patrols are doing different activities, so we’ll be spread out across the site,” explained Frankie. “And we’ll be back at the campsite together for lunch, so if the M&Ms go anywhere near our tent we’ll know about it.”

  “I suppose we’ll just have to hope that their group doesn’t get back before us, won’t we?” said Rosie.

  We didn’t have the chance to worry about that for long; we soon became busy trying to encourage Fliss down the abseiling tower. I mean it wasn’t really high or anything, Fliss was just in scaredy-cat mode. It’s crazy. You know that she can do something, but she doesn’t think she can and wimps out.

  Paddington came abseiling with us, as well as another cool instructor from Foxton Glen called Danny. Whenever he called Fliss forward, she’d go to the top of the tower, take one look down and go all feeble. I felt a bit sorry for her, especially as Kenny kept having a go at her.

  “Fliss don’t be such a baby!” she yelled. “Look at all the ropes round you! It’s absolutely impossible for you to fall, isn’t it, Danny?”

  “Sure is!” said Danny. “I’m holding tight onto you up here!”

  He winked at Paddington, who blushed big time.

  I thought Fliss was going to be up there all day. We tried encouraging her. Kenny tried threatening her. We even tried bribing her with new nail varnish, but nothing worked.

  Then she saw the M&Ms. They’d been doing some archery and were heading back to the campsite for lunch. Amanda Porter suddenly turned to look at us and saw Fliss hovering about at the top of the tower. She said something to the M&Ms and they both turned round. Then they started to walk towards us.

  I could see Fliss getting more and more panicky. She looked as though she was going to topple off the tower in fright. Especially when the awful witches started to cluck like chickens and flap their arms about. But that kind of spurred her on.

  “Right, I’m going down now,” Fliss suddenly told Danny.

  She turned round and started to abseil down the tower slowly. We all yelled and shouted encouragement. When she got to the bottom, Fliss sort of wobbled about while Paddington removed her harness.

  “That was cool!” laughed Kenny. “Now we know how to get you to do stuff – we’ll just ask the M&Ms to come and make fun of you!”

  The Gruesome Twosome and their cronies were already walking back towards our tents. I was so glad that Fliss had proved them wrong. But that’s Fliss – she can always produce a surprise when you’re least expecting it!

  When we got back to the campsite we had to make sandwiches for everyone’s lunch, which was a bit of a drag. But the other patrols had to collect wood for the camp fire, which sounded even more of a pain. Our patrol was going to help Brown Owl actually build the fire later in the afternoon. I couldn’t wait.

  While we were making the sandwiches, we took it in turns to keep popping back to check on the tent. Until Brown Owl became suspicious. But by then all the others were hanging round waiting for their lunch anyway.

  “I bet the M&Ms are too scared to break into our tent,” said Kenny confidently. “One-nil to us!”

  “Let’s hope it stays that way!” said Frankie grimly.

  After lunch we had just the best time canoeing. We had to concentrate so hard on what the instructor told us that we didn’t have a moment to even think about the M&Ms. By the time we got back to our tent, I was exhausted. And then we had to go and get everything ready for dinner round the camp fire. It’s hard work being a Brownie sometimes!

  It was pretty cool helping Brown Owl build the fire. It’s a lot more difficult to light than it looks and it seemed to take ages before we even saw any smoke. Then gradually it built up and the flames got quite fierce. It could have been kind of dangerous, I guess, but we were all given a talk about not getting too close and not acting stupid around it. Even Kenny took notice of that. And we also had a fire drill with prete
nd buckets of water, so that if it did get out of hand we’d all know what to do.

  For supper we were having jacket potatoes wrapped in foil and baked in the fire. They were going to take quite a long time to cook, so while we were waiting Brown Owl asked each patrol to go off on their own and come up with a song, dance or poem they could perform in front of the others the following evening.

  Kenny did her I-told-you-so face and Fliss looked really excited. I think she was all set to start practising one of our dance routines straight away, but Kenny was having none of that. “OK, let’s start training for the Blue Peter Challenge!” she said.

  Fliss went white. “B – but I’m not going on the assault course again,” she stuttered.

  “Look, Fliss, if you can master the abseiling wall, the assault course will be a doddle,” Kenny reassured her. “Just imagine the M&Ms are laughing at you!”

  “Thanks a lot!” said Fliss crossly. “Anyway, we’re supposed to be working on our performance for tomorrow night!”

  “Don’t be so wet!” said Kenny. “We’re always doing silly dances at our sleepovers, we know loads of routines really well already. But we haven’t done any practice for the Challenge. Let’s all sprint down to our tent, do ten sit-ups, sprint back and do some press-ups!”

  We knew by the tone of her voice that she was deadly serious.

  “Come on! We want to win this thing, don’t we?” she yelled and hared off.

  The rest of us ran after her, gasping and wheezing. We were totally exhausted by the time Brown Owl called us for supper. It was as if we were in the army, the way Kenny was putting us through our paces. It was a real relief to sit down and eat our baked potatoes!

  Fortunately we weren’t sitting near the M&Ms, so they didn’t put us off our food. But I don’t think anything would have put me off the marshmallows we toasted over the fire for pudding. They were yummy!

  After we’d eaten, we all sang songs round the fire which was well cool! We sang ‘Camp Fire’s Burning’ in rounds, ‘Do Your Ears Hang Low?’ with all the actions and we finished off with ‘Taps’ – which is what we always sing at the end of Brownie meetings.