Sleepover Girls in the Ring. Fiona Cummings

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      We all trooped out of the kitchen and into the lounge.

      “Will the fun never start?” I whispered in Frankie’s ear.

      “Right, what should we do?” said Fliss.

      We all sat on the floor in a circle.

      “I bet those kids in the circus aren’t just sitting around now,” I said wistfully. “I bet they’re walking the tightrope or something.”

      “Yeah, wasn’t that cool!” Frankie agreed. “Wouldn’t it be ace to be able to do something like that? You could impress people wherever you went!”

      We were in full discussion about the circus when Fliss’s mum popped her head round the door. She beamed when she saw us sitting down. She probably thought we were playing ‘ring-a-ring-a-rosies’ or something.

      “I’m just going upstairs to change the beds. Andy and Callum should be back from the park soon. You will be all right, won’t you?”

      “Yes Mum!” Fliss sighed. “I think we’ll manage.”

      Her mum pulled a face, then closed the door behind her.

      “We could always practise a few circus skills,” I suggested.

      Fliss looked horrified.

      “I don’t mean tightrope-walking or plate-spinning with your mum’s best china, you idiot!” I said hastily. “What about juggling, or acrobatics? They’re nice and quiet, aren’t they?”

      Fliss still didn’t look too sure.

      “We’ll be dead quiet, honestly,” I reassured her. “Your mum will never know.”

      “Has she got any wool or anything?” suggested Frankie. “We could practise juggling with that and it’ll be silent if we drop it.”

      Fliss went upstairs to look for some wool, and the rest of us crept about downstairs. I went into the kitchen, and what should I see first? Yep, the jam doughnuts. My first thought was that I could sneak one to eat – but then I had a brainwave! They were ball-shaped, weren’t they? Perfect for juggling! And they didn’t have that much sugar on them, so they wouldn’t make too much mess if we dropped them. And we could scoff them down before Fliss’s mum reappeared. I mean, she’d obviously bought them for us to eat anyway. Sorted!

      I took them back into the lounge, and Rosie appeared with a couple of those plastic plates you take on picnics, a broom and a mop.

      “I thought I could practise plate-spinning with these,” she explained. “They won’t break when they fall. Good, eh?”

      In the middle of the room, Frankie was trying to walk on her hands, with Lyndz holding her feet.

      “’S not as easy as it looks, y’know,” she said in an upside-down garbled voice.

      “This is great!” I laughed, taking hold of the doughnuts. “It beats those poxy kids’ games any day of the week!”

      I tossed one of the doughnuts into the air a couple of times. Easy-peasy. A bit of sugar sprinkled on to the carpet, but nothing major. I picked up another one and started to throw that as well. When I was comfortable with that, I grabbed the third one and tried to juggle with that too. A doughnut fell to the floor. I tried again. One landed on the sofa.

      “OK Kenny, you can do this!” I told myself.

      I grabbed the doughnuts and slowly, slowly threw them into the air. And do you know what? I actually started to juggle with them. I couldn’t believe it!

      “Hey guys, look at me!” I yelled.

      Lyndz stopped to watch, and let go of Frankie’s legs. THUD! Franks tumbled on to the carpet. That kind of made me lose my concentration, so I bumped into Rosie and dropped one of the doughnuts. Which wouldn’t have been so bad if Fliss hadn’t chosen just that moment to come through the door.

      “Whaddayadoing?” she shrieked. Then – SQUELCH. She trod on the doughnut.

      Well, you would not believe the amount of jam that spurted out of it and shot across the carpet in a red streak. I mean, when you eat a doughnut there never seems to be that much jam in the middle, does there?

      Fliss kind of yelped, then went white.

      “Mum’s going to kill us!” she squealed.

      “It’s not that bad,” I reassured her, and scooped up the jam with my finger.

      Unfortunately, the trail of jam now looked worse than ever against the cream carpet.

      “I think I can hear someone coming!” hissed Rosie.

      I quickly grabbed the other two doughnuts, shoved one in my mouth and the other in the back pocket of my jeans.

      “Baaborginagaig!” I commanded, although my mouth was so stuffed with doughnut I couldn’t make myself understood.

      The others looked at me blankly. I got down on the floor and did a handstand to show them what I meant, balancing over the jammy stain so that if Fliss’s mum did come in she wouldn’t see it.

      “Gotcha! You mean you want us to carry on doing handstands and stuff, don’t you?” Frankie grasped at last. “Well, why didn’t you just say so?”

      But I was upside down with a mouthful of doughnut, wasn’t I? Not a great place to be in, all in all… I started to splutter, I started to cough, then I started to choke.

      “Are you OK, Kenny?” Rosie asked. “You don’t look too good!”

      “Come on Kenny, deep breaths!” Lyndz slapped me hard on the back.

      I gasped and coughed and the remains of the doughnut sprayed out all over the lounge – and all over Fliss’s mum, who had come in to see what all the noise was about.

      It was hard to tell what her first reaction was going to be. She went kind of red, then very, very white. I thought she was going to cry, or maybe collapse with shock. But none of us was prepared for the ear-splitting shriek that eventually burst from her lips.

      “GET OUT OF MY HOUSE! N-O-O-O-W-W!”

      Well, we weren’t going to argue with that! We left the house running, grabbing any old shoes on the way out of the door. We ran down the path and on to the pavement, only stopping when we were well out of sight. Gasping, we exchanged shoes so that somehow we ended up with the right pairs.

      “Poor Fliss!” said Frankie at last. “Do you think she’s going to be all right?”

      “I hope so,” I murmured.

      But I think we all knew then that “The Jam Doughnut Incident” was going to have serious consequences for the Sleepover Club.

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