Hiya! I havenât seen you for a while. Weâve been having a pretty wild time lately â thatâs why we havenât been around much. Guess where weâve been? Go on! Itâs tough, youâll never get it. Do you give up? OK then, Iâll tell you! Weâve only been in a circus, thatâs where. I knew youâd be amazed! The whole thingâs amazed us, I can tell you. Not to mention our parents â although I donât really want to talk about that right now, itâs too depressing. Because if they get their way, the Sleepover Club is finally finished â curtain down, finito!
Now youâre looking miserable too, and we canât have that. If I tell you what weâve been up to, itâs bound to cheer you up. But if you hear anyone calling out âKenny!â in a bellyaching kind of voice, just ignore them. Itâll be Molly my stupid sister, and Iâve just about had enough of her. If it wasnât for her, our parents wouldnât be so mad with us now.
Anyway, Iâm on my way to meet the others to decide how to get round our parents. I mean, weâve been in messes before, as you well know, but nothing like this. This time itâs BA-AD!
How did it all start? I hear you ask. Well, Iâll tell you.
Right next to our school, thereâs this piece of open land. People hold car-boot sales on it and stuff like that. But generally itâs empty, and kids just use it as a cut-through to school.
Well, one week there was loads of activity there. First they sealed it off so no-one could walk across it. Then loads of men in wellies appeared, making notes on clip-boards. After that, different men started marking things out on the ground. Fliss got all squeamish when she saw that and swore they were drawing around dead bodies! Then finally one day, a whole load of lorries appeared and started putting up all these really big metal poles.
âThey must be building something,â remarked Rosie as we were walking home.
âThey look like enormous tent poles to me!â Lyndz chipped in.
âYeah, right!â I chortled. âLike anyone would just go and put up an enormous tent right next to school.â
But do you know what? Thatâs exactly what someone did do. It was there in all its glory when I walked to school the next morning. And by the time we left school in the afternoon, the land was full of caravans and cars and there seemed to be hundreds of people milling about.
âI know what it is!â shrieked Fliss when she saw all the activity. âItâs going to be a circus!â
âCool!â
âWicked!â
The rest of us were really excited, but Lyndz went all sniffy and frosty.
âItâs not cool having animals cooped up in cages just so they can come out and perform for ten minutes a night,â she said. âItâs cruel and unkind.â
Now I donât know about you, but I was amazed to hear Lyndz say that. I mean, we all know how mad Lyndz is about horses, donât we? I thought sheâd love to see them with plumes and everything, prancing about in a circus.
Fliss must have been thinking the same thing, because she piped up, âI thought you liked seeing animals, Lyndz.â
âNot when theyâre caged up with no freedom, I donât,â Lyndz snapped back.
We could tell that thereâd be no shifting Lyndzâs opinion, so the rest of us just exchanged glances and kept quiet. And we kept quiet every day when we passed the circus, and Lyndz tutted and sighed and said how terrible it all was. Part of me knew that she was right, of course, but part of me really wanted to go to the circus to see the clowns and the trapeze artists and all that other stuff.
So it was a huge relief all round when we saw the first poster advertising the circus. It announced:
âSee that?â I prodded the poster excitedly. âItâs âall humanâ! That means thereâs not an animal in sight.â I turned to Lyndz. âSo now do you think you might just get the teensiest bit excited about there being a circus in town?â
Lyndz blushed. âI guess so,â she admitted.
âHey guys, look!â Rosie was still studying the poster and jiggling up and down with excitement. âThe first performance is on Saturday next week. Thatâs your birthday, Lyndz! Now that you approve of circuses, we could all come here to celebrate. What do you say?â
We all looked eagerly at Lyndz.
âWe-e-ell,â she said very slowly. âSeeing as there are no animals involved, that sounds like a great idea!â
We whooped and cheered and did high fives.
âWicked!â
âBrilliant!â
âSad cases!â
That last comment was our arch-rivals, the M&Ms. Emily Berryman and Emma Hughes are these dweeby girls in our class who always try to spoil our fun, but there was no way that anyone was going to spoil our excitement today. We just pulled faces at them until theyâd disappeared out of sight.