Sleepover Girls on Safari (5 page)

Ten minutes later the whole class was in the castle grounds, happily tucking into barbecued burgers and bangers.

After a private chat with Mrs Weaver, I’d sheepishly explained that I probably hadn’t seen a ghost at all. It was just a trick of the light. The boys were already calling me Casper.

Lyndz was the only person who’d sussed what I was up to.

“That was brilliant, Flissie. Frankie almost blew the whole thing,” she whispered. “You do know everyone’s going to think you’re loopy?”

“It was worth it,” I grinned. “Operation You Know What is back on track.”

“Ssh,” hissed Lyndz. “Kirstin’s coming over.”

Kirstin’s plate was heaped with food. “These are great snags,” she mumbled through a mouthful of sausage. “How are you feeling now, Fliss?”

“Better,” I said bravely. “You must think I’m a real wally.”

“Not at all. I’d have screamed blue murder if I’d seen a ghost.”

Frankie finished off her second veggie burger. “She didn’t really see one,” she sniggered. “She saw a shadow and freaked.”

“I got confused,” I said defensively. “It could happen to anyone.”

“Not me,” declared Frankie. “I have nerves of steel!”

“This barbecue is the best,” Lyndz said tactfully. “I just lurve eating outdoors, don’t you, Emma?”

Emma flicked a beetle away from her sausages. “I suppose. It’s not very hygienic.”

“It’s not very hygienic,” Frankie mimicked.

Lyndz hastily talked over her. “What do you think of the food, Kirstin?”

“It’s good,” she grinned. “Safaris tend to make you hungry.”

“What things do you barbecue in Australia? Apart from ‘snags’?” Kenny asked her.

Kirstin pulled a face. “Australians will barbecue anything: emu, crocodiles, kangaroo.”

“Kangaroo? You’re kidding,” said Lyndz in horror.

“Have you tried any of those witchetty grubs?” Kenny asked.

“No, I generally stick to the steak,” Kirstin laughed.

Mrs Weaver was clapping her hands again.

“We’re going around the exotic farm next,” Rosie said.

“Whoopdee-do,” sighed Kenny. “Like we’ve never seen a farm.”

Kirstin gave Lyndz a sly look. “It says in the book they’ve got Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs. Lyndz should definitely take a look at those!”

Lyndz shook her head. “Nothing can top that amazing tiger. As far as I’m concerned we can go home.”

We knew what she meant. The farm was actually quite cool. The Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs were surprisingly cute and the llamas were hilarious. (They were also VERY whiffy.) But I wished we could have seen them before we had our safari. Our hearts weren’t in it somehow.

Lyndz is right, I thought. Nothing’s going to come near that tiger.

Kenz was bored. She peered over a low enclosure and a bunch of equally bored-looking peacocks looked back. I vaguely heard Kenz say, “Yo! Peacocks! Can’t you do something interesting?”

I wasn’t really paying much attention. The fresh air had given me dry lips and I was rubbing on my strawberry lip balm. So I can’t actually tell you why that peacock took such a dislike to Kenny. To this day she swears that all she did was say “Yo!”

When I told Andy later, he said, “Was Kenny wearing her Leicester City sweatshirt?” I nodded. “There you go. Mystery solved,” he teased. “The peacock must have supported Nottingham Forest!”

Whatever the reason, the peacock launched itself over the wall at Kenny in a fury, rattling its quills like castanets, making hideous screeching noises and trying to peck her in some really personal places. Obviously Kenny didn’t want to be pecked to death so she just took off.

Peacocks run a lot faster than you think. This one gave the impression of moving on greased roller skates. And I don’t know if you’ve ever had a good look at a peacock’s beak, but it’s vicious!

Luckily Kenny’s football skills came in handy as she ran around the farmyard, darting this way and that, desperately trying to keep out of the peacock’s way.

Honestly it was the maddest thing I’ve ever seen. We were practically crying with laughter. But the angry peacock showed absolutely no sign of giving up. We started to worry that our mate would get hurt.

“I’d better get someone,” I said anxiously.

Kirstin shook her head. “I know what to do!” And she lowered her head like a charging bull and rushed at the peacock, making screamy peacock noises.

You could see the peacock thinking, “Yikes! Too much competition!” It took off for the barn roof, where it settled out of harm’s way, glaring down at us with mad, glittery eyes, and making screechy sounds. I got the feeling it was saying “nah nah nah nah nah” in peacock language.

“Thanks, Kirstin,” panted Kenny.

“No worries,” Kirstin smiled.

Kirstin’s cap had fallen off while she was running. Danny McCloud handed it back. “That was well impressive.”

“Yeah, we convicts have our uses,” she told him.

Unfortunately Mrs Weaver had appeared in the middle of the mayhem. “That bird seems very upset,” she said accusingly. “You weren’t teasing it, were you?”

“No, Mrs Weaver,” we chorused.

But our teacher just said, “Hmmn. We’re going to look at the maze now. But I’ll be keeping a close eye on you girls for the rest of the day.”

“Yes, Mrs Weaver,” we sighed.

“She can’t keep an eye on us if we’re in the maze,” Frankie grinned.

I think she was picturing those massive mazes you see in films. The kind where hordes of different characters wander in aimless circles without ever running into each other. But the maze at Gawdy Castle was nothing like that.

“It’s diddy!” I gasped.

“The hedges only come up to my knee,” said Kenny in disgust.

“Where’s the challenge in that?” Frankie agreed.

“I want you to divide into pairs,” Mrs Weaver was saying. “The first pair to find their way to the centre in the fastest time wins this bag of Celebration chocolates.”

Kenny’s eyes gleamed. “That’s all the challenge I need!”

We all queued impatiently for our turn to go into the maze. Frankie paired off with Rosie. I went with Kenz and Emma went in with Kirstin.

Lyndz said she’d just watch. She had Lyndz-type plans of her own, but we only found that out later.

It was really tricky going through that maze. You could see the middle all right, but getting
there took longer than you’d think. The twists and turns were so tight, you couldn’t exactly run fast. Plus I felt like a huge giant jogging along those prickly little paths. The boys got fed up with the whole thing. They treated the hedges like hurdles and hopped over, so Mrs Weaver said they were disqualified.

Emma and Kirstin made the fastest time.

To our amazement Emma offered the chocolates round.

“I couldn’t. They’re yours!” said Frankie stiffly. I knew how she felt. It did seem unnatural to be taking sweets from our old enemy.

“Take two!” said Kirstin. “They’re not ours, dummy, they’re the Sleepover Club’s.”

Frankie still hesitated.

“I didn’t poison them, Francesca,” Emma snapped.

“Wouldn’t put it past you,” Frankie muttered.

Lyndz interrupted what could have been a nasty incident. She came hurtling through the grounds, yelling excitedly. “Mrs Weaver, I found where they put that baby elephant and
its mum!” she yelled. “Can I take my mates to say hello?”

“Certainly not, Lindsay. We have a packed schedule as you know,” Mrs Weaver protested. “There’s still the castle to see. Besides after that incident with the peacock—”

To everyone’s amazement Emma interrupted. “Please, Mrs Weaver, that wasn’t Kenny’s fault. The peacock attacked her. All Kenny did was run away. And we’d only be five minutes, wouldn’t we?” she asked us.

Teachers treat you quite differently if you’re their pet, don’t they?

Mrs Weaver instantly changed her tune. “All right, Emma dear. But do be quick. The rest of us will make our way to the castle.”

I heard mutterings from the other kids. They wanted to see the elephants too. You could see that Frankie totally didn’t want any favours from Emma, but she was also dying to see the baby elephant again, so she had to go along with it.

The mother and baby were in a quiet out-building in near darkness. It felt really peaceful in there. The ranger in the body warmer was chatting to the mother, and feeding her bananas.
She took them in her trunk really carefully and popped them whole into her mouth.

“I see you’ve brought your mates,” he said to Lyndz.

She was already stroking the baby’s head, crooning softly. “You’ll soon be better, and then you’ll be back with all the others.”

Lyndz is so nuts about animals it’s unbelievable!

The mother finished the last banana and peered around in the gloom, looking for something.

“She’s thirsty,” her keeper explained.

There was a full bucket of water by the door, so Frankie thoughtfully dragged it over.

“There you go, Mrs Elephant,” she said. “Can you reach it now?”

The elephant had a good long guzzle of water, then she studied us all thoughtfully. Afterwards, Frankie swore she’d been smiling.

“You’d better move away!” warned the ranger.

But it was too late. Before we’d realised what she was going to do, the elephant spurted about a gallon of water all over Emma!

It sounds really mean, but we all cracked up. I thought Frankie was going to die actually. She was literally holding her sides and howling with laughter. “Emma, you look just like a drowned rat!”

Poor Emma was soaked through and shivering so I rushed her back to Mrs Weaver.

“Don’t worry, dear, I always bring spare clothes on school trips,” our teacher comforted her.

But Emma flatly refused to change out of her outfit. She got quite hysterical about it. I think Mrs Weaver thought Emma was worried about strangers seeing her underwear. But I’ve had time to think about it since then and I don’t think it was an underwear problem at all.

I think she thought of her hideous combats as her Sleepover Club clothes. She didn’t
like
us really, but she did
admire
us. She was desperate to be one of us, even for a day.

I took Emma back to the coach where I blotted up the worst of the elephant water with paper towels.

“You’re a good friend, Fliss,” Emma said in a teary voice.

“You’re not so bad yourself,” I said. “Actually I thought you took that really well. You could have gone ballistic when that elephant drenched you. But you didn’t.”

“They laughed at me,” Emma said miserably.

“Yeah, but it’s not personal. We laugh at everyone. We laughed at Kenz. You did too.”

Emma cheered up slightly. “I think I’m going to dream about that peacock chasing Kenny! It was the funniest sight I’ve seen in my life.”

“You looked quite funny yourself,” I reminded her.

She gave a funny little grin. “I suppose I did. Thanks for helping. I mean it.”

“Hurry up, you guys. They’re waiting for us outside the castle!” The other Sleepover Club members had come to find us.

Kirstin’s eyes were sparkling. “What do you reckon, Fliss? Do you think we’ll see anything spooky?”

How is it one little word can totally change your mood? One minute you’re sunny and happy and everyone’s best friend. Next minute a wormy doubt wriggles into your mind and
takes a nasty lump out of your confidence. All because of one word: “SPOOKY”.

It had too many “Os”. It made me think of ghostly mouths wailing in the dark. “Ooooh! Ooooh! Ooooh!”

A shiver went through me as if someone had just dropped an ice cube down my back. Stop it, Fliss, I told myself firmly. Nothing scary is going to happen in the castle. Frankie’s outrageous ghost story wasn’t even true, remember?

I tried not to picture a wailing, white-faced ghost pulling a terrified child inside the castle wall.

It couldn’t be true. Could it?

“Not very good-looking, are they,” Frankie mused.

“I reckon all the Gawdy family inherited the ugly gene,” agreed Kenny.

We were standing in the entrance hall to Gawdy Castle. It was nothing like I’d imagined. It was actually disappointingly ordinary.

The floor was carpeted in a faded rose design that reminded me of my grandma’s sitting room. Huge oil paintings of the Gawdy family hung on all the walls.

Nature had been really unkind to them, poor
things. They all had really sticky-out teeth and practically NO chins.

“They’re like cartoon characters,” I giggled.

“The Gawdys go back for generations,” said a disapproving voice. “They’re a very fine old English family.”

A very pale woman had come up behind us without us noticing. I’m not exaggerating, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a depressing-looking person. She definitely needs a makeover, I thought. Black is SO not her colour. If she just had a little touch of pink, now it would make all the difference.

Frankie was peering suspiciously behind the woman.

“What are you doing?” I hissed.

“Seeing if she casts a shadow. That woman has to be a vampire.”

“I thought they couldn’t come out in daylight,” I objected.

“This is the part of the tour where your teacher gets a rest.” The woman glanced around the class and I thought she was going to smile, but she didn’t. “My name is—”

“Dracula?” Frankie muttered.

Luckily the woman didn’t seem to hear. “My name is Mrs Skinner and the gentleman standing next to me is Mr Clemency. We’re your guides and in a few moments we’ll be taking you on a tour of this fascinating old castle.”

Mr Clemency was a jolly elderly man with a curly white beard. He twinkled at us over his glasses.

“Oh, that’s fair. Not!” hissed Kenny. “Half of us get stuck with Mrs Grim Reaper here, while the rest get Father Christmas!”

“We could get lucky,” I said hopefully. “We might get Mr Clemency.”

We weren’t and we didn’t. The lucky fifty per cent of the class walked out into the sunlight with cuddly Mr Clemency. The rest of us followed scary Mrs Skinner up a very gloomy staircase.

“To who knows where,” Frankie hissed dramatically.

But in the end our tour guide wasn’t sinister so much as boring.

“If I hear one more fact about this castle, I’m going to scream,” Kenny complained after half an hour.

“It’s her voice,” Kirstin explained. “She just drones on. It makes everything sound the same.”

It was true. If you actually listened to Mrs Skinner’s words she was telling us about genuinely thrilling events, bloody battles and ferocious family feuds. But she could have been reciting stuff out of the telephone book.

Rosie kept looking around nervously. “Are you sensing anything?” she whispered.

“Yeah, I’m sensing my brain is slowly going numb,” I whispered back.

“I meant ghosts, stoopid. If anyone’s going to see the Gawdy Castle ghost, you would.”

“Rosie, I didn’t really see a ghost,” I explained. “I thought you knew that. I was just trying to stop Emma and Frankie fighting.”

“You don’t have to pretend, Flissie,” said Rosie. “I saw you, remember. You looked terrified.”

“I was,” I said truthfully. “I was terrified Frankie would bop Emma on the nose and ruin everything.” I could see Rosie didn’t believe me. “OK, Rosie-posie,” I sighed. “If I see the Gawdy Castle ghost, you’ll be the first to know.”

We continued down yet another corridor lined with portraits of hunting dogs and dead pheasants.

“Doesn’t this castle have any dungeons?” Frankie asked our guide.

Everyone perked up. But Mrs Skinner didn’t seem to hear. “Now we’re going into the kitchens,” she droned. “Where there is a bread oven that predates Henry V.”

“Wouldn’t want to miss that,” Frankie said in a sarky voice.

But as we entered the vast barn of a kitchen, Mrs Skinner’s walkie-talkie started to hiss and a muffled voice began to speak.

“My feet hurt,” Rosie moaned.

“My ears hurt,” said Kenny. “From listening to that woman.”

Mrs Skinner spoke briefly into her walkie-talkie. “I’m afraid I’ll have to cut this tour short to take a personal call in the office,” she told us. “Make your way to the reception hall and wait for the others.”

And she hurried off without even a backward look.

Everyone gave sighs of relief.

“Excellent,” said Frankie. “We can finally have some fun.”

Emma looked suspicious. “What kind of fun?”

“Look, there’s a map of the castle on the wall there. I bet we’ve got at least ten minutes until the other group finishes going round.” Frankie looked incredibly mischievous. “We can go and explore by ourselves. We can go into the secret rooms they don’t want you to know about.”

Rosie’s eyes grew wide. “You want us to go off on our own?”

“I certainly do,” said Frankie. “It’s time we had some action.”

“But what about the story?” Rosie gasped. “That poor boy who was pulled into the wall?”

“It wasn’t true, Rosie,” said Emma in her M&Ms voice. “I told you before. It was just a stupid story.”

“Bet you’d be scared if it happened to you,” said Frankie rudely.

“I wouldn’t,” said Emma at once. “I can do anything you can, Francesca Thomas.”

“Oh, really?” said Frankie. “Then prove it.”

The two girls glared at each other.

“Erm, guys,” I said.

“Those girls have the weirdest friendship,” Kirstin said in my ear. “I mean right now you’d think they hated each other, wouldn’t you?”

“Go on, Emma,” Frankie was saying. “Prove how brave you are!”

“Keep it down,” I whispered. “Everyone’s looking.”

“Let them,” said Frankie. “What use is a dare with no witnesses?”

“A dare!” I gulped. ‘“What do you mean?”

“I dare Emma to go down into the castle dungeons!” said Frankie loudly.

Everyone gasped.

Emma looked slightly pale, but she said quickly, “Make it a double dare and I’ll accept.”

“Fine by me,” Frankie said in a fierce voice.

To my dismay, Kirstin said, “All the Sleepover Club girls should go. Make it a Sleepover Club Dare,” she giggled. “No wimping allowed.”

I didn’t want any kind of dare. I was totally bewildered. How did this even get started?

Emma was frowning at the wall map. “OK, everyone follow me.”

The other kids looked at us in awe. They couldn’t believe we were going down to the dungeons on our own, and nor could I.

We followed Emma downstairs and along twisty stone corridors until we were dizzy. Finally we went down a steep flight of steps. At the bottom was a huge, iron-studded door.

“They probably keep it locked,” Rosie said hopefully. “If there’s a torture chamber down there.”

But I knew we weren’t that lucky.

It was like that time my little brother tried to put those baby frogs in his pocket. They hopped out and went legging it back to the brook, as fast as he put them in. “I wanted to be their friend,” he’d sobbed.

I’d been hoping that if I tried hard enough, everyone would get on. I’d tried so hard I was worn out. And it had been a total waste of time. Now Emma and Frankie were glowering at each other outside a scary medieval dungeon. Any minute now Kirstin would suss what was going on.

Emma turned the knob and triumphantly yanked the door open, straining against its
weight. On the other side, worn stone steps disappeared into the dark. Operation Pretend Friend had come to the end of the road.