Mega Sleepover 7: Summer Collection. Narinder Dhami

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СКАЧАТЬ d’you mean? Of course it matters!” I yelled. “We’ve got to beat Maria and that lot out of sight! And that means you’ve all got to try harder!”

      The others didn’t look that keen, and that made me mad. Just because they were all being wimps and wanting to be friends with the Spanish girls again – well, I wasn’t! Although I might have given in if Maria had been a bit nicer… But she was too busy shouting at the other girls in Spanish – probably telling them they had to try harder too!

      Anyway, we had some ups and some downs during the next few races. Lyndz and Frankie won the three-legged race which put us ahead, but then Anna evened things up by winning the obstacle race. Maria and Elena came second and third in the Potato Grab, but then Frankie won the egg and spoon and I was second in the hurdles. So by the time we got to the last race, the skipping race, we were on a dead heat with five prizes each.

      “You’d better win this, Fliss!” I said in a determined voice.

      Fliss looked a bit pale. “I’m not very good at skipping,” she muttered.

      “You’re going to win this race if it kills you!” I told her.

      “I feel sick!” Fliss moaned. “I don’t want to do it!”

      “Hey, that’s an idea!” I bounced to my feet. “Fliss, go and tell Mrs W. you feel ill, and you don’t want to be in the race. Then Frankie can take your place – she’s the best skipper out of all of us! And she would have been in the race anyway if Ryan Scott hadn’t knocked her over in the heats.”

      “Do I have to?” Frankie grumbled, looking less than keen.

      “Yeah, you do!” I said firmly. What was going on here? Looked like I was trying to run this feud single-handed, because the others just didn’t seem interested…

      Looking relieved, Fliss went off to speak to Mrs Weaver. Meanwhile I glanced over at Maria and the others. Maria was having a real go at Pilar in Spanish, waving her arms about and talking really loudly. I guessed that Maria was saying that Pilar had to win the race – but Pilar looked about as keen as Frankie did.

      “OK, it’s all sorted.” Fliss came back. “Frankie’s in.”

      “Oh, great,” Frankie muttered.

      They all lined up for the skipping race. Maria looked well sick when she saw that Frankie had taken Fliss’s place, and she came storming over to me.

      “Where is Fliss? She should be in this race!”

      “Fliss isn’t very well,” I said coolly, “so Frankie’s doing it instead.”

      “You make that up!” Maria snapped. “You know Fliss will not beat Pilar!”

      “Prove it!” I retorted, glaring at her until Elena and Anna came over and dragged her away.

      “On your marks!” called Mrs Weaver. “Get set!”

      The whistle blew.

      “Go for it, Frankie!” I yelled.

      Pilar and Frankie sped off neck and neck. They both had long legs so they could take big strides, and they’d soon left the others behind. But they were still so close together, it was hard to tell which one of them was in the lead. First it looked like it was Frankie, then Pilar.

      “COME ON, FRANKIE!” I shouted.

      And then it happened. Pilar’s skipping rope suddenly hooked itself on to one of the gold earrings she was wearing. She skidded to a halt and gave a yell, trying desperately to untangle it.

      “Go, Frankie!” I leapt to my feet gleefully. We had the race in the bag now!

      Then I just couldn’t believe my eyes. Frankie stopped skipping and dashed over to Pilar! She started trying to help her untangle the rope, but it was well and truly stuck. A few seconds later, everyone else in the race skipped past them!

      “Frankie!” I screamed, dancing up and down in frustration. “Go on! Don’t stop!”

      But it was too late. Everyone else had already crossed the finishing-line!

      

      “All right, Kenny, stop going on about it, will you!” Frankie snapped as she threw a handful of raffle tickets into the tombola drum. “It was no big deal!”

      “No big deal!” I retorted. “You stopped to help Pilar, which meant we didn’t win the race! We could have walked it – and we’d have got their book tokens too!”

      “Frankie was just trying to help Pilar,” Lyndz chimed in.

      “Yeah, her ear was all red and sore afterwards, didn’t you see?” Rosie added.

      “I think it was really nice of Frankie to stop and help,” Fliss said.

      It was the day after Sports Day, and it was almost time for the Summer Fair to start. All the stalls had been set up on the sports field that morning, and there was a long queue of people at the gates, waiting to come in. We’d all really been looking forward to the fair, but after yesterday we weren’t getting on too well. We didn’t argue very often, but now the others were really bugging me. I knew they all wanted to get matey with the Spanish girls again, but there was no way I was up for that! Not while Maria was still keeping the war between us going.

      Maria and the others were over on the cake stall with Lyndz’s mum, and they were all looking pretty sulky. I reckoned Maria was having exactly the same problem as me…

      “If you and Maria would just sort things out, we could all be mates again!” Frankie said, throwing some more tickets into the drum.

      “Well, she started it!” I retorted.

      “You two are as bad as each other!” Frankie said. “You both need a kick up the behind!”

      “Maria’s a pain!” I said crossly. “I wish Molly the Monster was back home instead of her!”

      “Well, you’d better behave yourself today,” Fliss warned me, as Mrs Weaver walked round inspecting the stalls. “Mrs Weaver’s got her beady eye on you!”

      “We’ve got some good prizes, haven’t we?” Lyndz looked at our stall. We had a mixture of cuddly toys, bath stuff, sweets and bottles of soft drink. “I love this Dalmatian!”

      The stuffed Dalmatian was our best prize, and Frankie had sat him right at the front of the stall where everyone could see him. He was really big and made of soft white fur. I wasn’t into cuddly toys much, but even I wouldn’t have minded winning him! All the winning tickets ended in 0 or 5, and the Dalmatian was number 500.

      “That should get a lot of people coming to our stall!” Frankie said.

      “Hey, I’ve just had an СКАЧАТЬ