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Hey, pssst. Itâs me, Frankie â over here, in the bushes. Donât look round! And whatever you do, donât look up! Meet me the other side of the dog park in five. Iâll be the one in the sunglasses and the mad hat. And come alone â this is for your ears only!
Sorry about the cloak and dagger stuff, but this time itâs serious. This time we almost got arrested. And we still might â if this rescue operation goes wrong. Iâm dreading it. You know what Iâm like about heights!
Anyway, letâs find somewhere to sit while weâre waiting for the others and Iâll tell you the whole gory storyâ¦
Now, where shall I start? I probably need to go way back, before the Sleepover Club even existed and tell you how we all came to be best friends â and sworn enemies of the gruesome M&Ms.
In the very beginning there were just two of us: Me, Francesca Theresa Thomas â Frankie to all my friends (which of course means you) â and my best mate Kenny. Her real nameâs Laura McKenzie, but everyone calls her Kenny â if they know whatâs good for them! We met at playschool when we were three years old. Kenny came flying down the slide and smashed right into the back of me. I was so mad, until I saw her cheeky grin and heard her say, âHey, soz, didnât see you there,â which was pretty unbelievable, because even then I was big for my age. But I couldnât stay angry with Kenny for long and itâs been like that ever since.
Sometimes in drama lessons we do this exercise where we have to describe a character weâre playing as if theyâre a piece of fruit or⦠a piece of furniture. For example, if I were a piece of furniture, Iâd be this a-mazing chair I once saw in a museum. It looked Egyptian; it was like a huge throne, with carved wooden legs with catsâ heads on them. It wasnât what youâd call comfortable, but deadcool. I would kill to have it in my bedroom.
Kenny would be a chair too, but one of those office chairs. You know, the type that goes up and down and round in circles and given the slightest encouragement charges across the room at forty miles an hour skittling everything in its path. It would be blue and white, which are Leicester City Football Club colours, because Kenny is their biggest fan. And it would probably be waving a scarf and cheering!
We met Lyndz, Lyndsey Collins, when we were five and went to Cuddington County Primary School. If Lyndz were a chair sheâd be soft and cozy, the most comfy armchair in the world. Imagine your favourite place to cuddle up and watch TV, or read a book â thatâs Lyndz.
I know everyone says threes donât work â someoneâs bound to end up left out and feeling jealous â but Lyndz doesnât have a jealous bone in her body so we all got on just fine. In class, if ever we had to work in pairs, Lyndz would choose some Billy-no-mates to work with. Lyndz has this big heart, so big you could probably float the whole of Leicester on it.
One of the people she sometimes took pity on was Fliss, full name: Felicity Diana Sidebotham. Fliss is definitely not a chair. Sheâd be more like one of those fancy curved dressing tables. You know the kind, with pink curtains underneath and frills and tassels. Fliss is a very pink person.
Itâs hard to imagine now, but in those days she was a bit of a Felicity-no-mates. She was a bit shy and a bit girly for Kennyâs taste. But when the M&Ms started their Campaign of Terror, well, we had to do something, didnât we?
The M&Msâ real names are Emma Hughes and Emily Berryman â sometimes known as The Queen and the Goblin or The Gruesome Twosome. The M&Ms would have been our enemies, even if theyâd never done anything to us, just because theyâre the most disgusting, sneaky, stuck up goody-goodies in the entire history of the universe and beyond. And, no, Iâm not exaggerating!
If the M&Ms were pieces of furniture theyâd probably be matching gold mirrors, like the one in Snow White. If you asked them, âWho is the fairest of us all?â theyâd scream back at you, âWe are, of course, you idiot!â
One of the most irritating things about the M&Ms is that they always have to be top of everything and bosses of the class. If thereâs ever a competition with a prize to win, somehow they always manage to win it.
But worse than that: their idea of fun is to pick on people who canât stick up for themselves. And one of those people was Fliss.
Fliss really cares about her appearance and â how can I put this â well, sheâs pretty vain. So, when the M&Ms stuck chewing gum in her long blonde hair, squirted tomato ketchup â accidentally on purpose â down her designer T-shirt and put hamster droppings in the pocket of her new, very expensive Bennetton jacket⦠and then squashed them, Fliss almost had a nervous breakdown.
As if all that wasnât enough, they started to give her the Smile Treatment. Believe me, there is nothing more unpleasant than being smiled at by those two muppets. Whenever Fliss glanced up from her work one of them was already looking in her direction,