Sleepovers Read online

  Table of Contents

  Sleepovers

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  sleepovers

  I wonder if you've ever had a sleepover? How many people came? You can have a sleepover with just one special friend or you can have a big sleepover with lots of children camping in the living room with sleeping bags and pillows everywhere! Sleepovers can be great fun, chatting and giggling and eating and making stuff and painting fingernails and inventing new hairstyles and listening to your favourite music and watching DVDs. The only thing you don't seem to do on a sleepover is sleep! Sometimes you don't settle down till ten o'clock, eleven o'clock, twelve o'clock, even one o'clock. It's not a good idea to plan anything too energetic the next day!

  I loved writing about the five special sleepovers in this book. It was great fun inventing a different theme for each party and describing all the presents and the birthday cakes. My main girl, Daisy, wants to have a sleepover party too – but she's also very worried. She's not sure how her new friends will react to her sister Lily, who has special needs. Emily will be fine, because she's such a sweet girl. Daisy would give anything to have Emily for her very best friend – but Emily's already got a best friend, Chloe. Chloe looks as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth but she is seriously scary, and absolutely horrible to Daisy.

  I think we've all known someone like Chloe! She's so mean in this book – but don't worry, something very unfortunate happens to her right at the end!

  I hope all your sleepover parties are splendid affairs!

  sleepovers

  Jacqueline Wilson

  Illustrated by Nick Sharratt

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  ISBN 9781407043364

  Version 1.0

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  SLEEPOVERS

  A YOUNG CORGI BOOK

  ISBN: 9781407043364

  Version 1.0

  First published in Great Britain by Doubleday,

  an imprint of Random House Children's Books

  A Random House Group Company

  Doubleday edition published 2001

  First Young Corgi edition published 2002

  This Young Corgi edition published 2008

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Copyright © Jacqueline Wilson, 2001

  Illustrations copyright © Nick Sharratt, 2001

  The right of Jacqueline Wilson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This electronic book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  Young Corgi Books are published by Random House Children's Books, 61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA

  www.kidsatrandomhouse.co.uk

  www.rbooks.co.uk

  Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm

  THE RANDOM HOUSE GROUP Limited Reg. No. 954009

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  One

  "Guess what!" said Amy. "It's my birthday next week and my mum says I can invite all my special friends for a sleepover party."

  "Great," said Bella.

  "Fantastic," said Chloe.

  "Wonderful," said Emily.

  I didn't say anything. I just smiled. Hopefully.

  I wasn't sure if I was one of Amy's special friends. Amy and Bella were best friends. Chloe and Emily were best friends. I didn't have a best friend yet at this new school.

  Well, it wasn't quite a new school, it was quite old, with winding stairs and long polished corridors and lots and lots of classrooms, some of them in Portakabins in the playground. I still got a bit lost sometimes. The very first day I couldn't find the girls' toilets and went hopping round all playtime, getting desperate. But then Emily found me and took me to the toilets herself. I liked Emily sooooo much. I wished she could be my best friend. But she already had Chloe for her best friend.

  I didn't think much of Chloe.

  I liked Amy and Bella though. We'd started to go round in a little bunch of five, Amy and Bella and Emily and Chloe and me. We formed this special secret club. We called ourselves the Alphabet Girls. It's because of our names. I'm Daisy. So our first names start with A B C D and E. I was the one who spotted this. The secret club was all my idea too.

  I always wanted to be part of a special secret club. It was almost as good as having a best friend.

  I wasn't sure if Amy's birthday sleepover was strictly reserved for best friends only. Amy went on talking and talking about her sleepover and how she knew she wasn't going to sleep all night long. Bella teased her because one time when Amy spent the night at Bella's she fell sound asleep at nine o'clock and didn't wake up till nine o'clock the next morning. Chloe said she sometimes didn't go to bed till ever so late, eleven or even twelve at night, so she'd stay awake, no bother. Emily said she always woke up early now because her new baby brother started crying for his bottle at six o'clock every single day.

  I still didn't say anything. I tried to keep on smiling.

  Emily looked at me. Then she looked at Amy.

  "Hey, Amy. Daisy can come too, can't she?"

  "Of course," said Amy.

  My mouth smiled until it almost tickled my ears.

  "Whoopee!" I yelled.

  "Really, Daisy!" said Chloe, clutching her ears in an affected way. "You practically deafened me."

  "Sorry," I said – though I wasn't. But you have to try to keep on the right side of Chloe. She's the one who tells everyone what to do. The Boss.

  She even tried to tell Amy what to do at her own sleepover. "You've got to get some seriously scary videos, right?" she said.

  "My mum won't let me watch seriously scary videos," said Amy.

  "Don't tell your mum. Just wait till she's gone to bed and then we can all watch in your bedroom," said Chloe, sighing because she thought it was so simple.

  "I don't have a video recorder in my bedroom, just a portable television," said Amy.

  "I haven't even got my own television," said Bella comfortingly. "Never mind. Hey, what are you going to have for your birthday tea, Amy?"

  Bella likes food. She always has big bars of chocolate at break-time. She eats eight squares herself. She gives Amy three squares because she's her best friend, but she lets Chloe and Emily and me have one square each. Chloe sometimes gobbles the last square too. Chloe gets away with murder.

  "Mum says I can have a big birthday cake," said Amy. She smiled at Bella. "Chocolate cake!"

  "No, have an iced cake in a special shape. They're seriously cool," said Chloe
.

  "Amy can have what she likes. It's her sleepover," said Bella.

  Chloe frowned.

  "We can all have sleepovers on our birthdays," said Emily quickly. "Then we can each choose the way we want them to be. If we're allowed. My mum's going nuts looking after my baby brother but I think she'll let me have a sleepover."

  "Mine will too," said Bella.

  "My mum lets me do anything I like," said Chloe. "So does my dad."

  I didn't say anything. I hoped they wouldn't notice. But they were all looking at me.

  "Can you have a sleepover too, Daisy?" said Emily.

  "Oh sure," I said quickly, but my heart started thumping under my new school sweatshirt.

  It wasn't my birthday yet, thank goodness.

  I couldn't have a sleepover party. I didn't want to tell them why. I might have told Emily by herself. But I didn't want to tell the others. Especially not Chloe.

  Two

  I told Mum about Amy's sleepover party while we were having tea.

  "That's lovely, Daisy," she said, but I could tell she wasn't really listening. She was too busy concentrating on feeding my sister, Lily.

  "There now, Lily, yum yum," Mum mumbled, spooning yoghurt into Lily's mouth. Mum's own mouth opened and shut. Lily's mouth didn't always open and shut at the right time. It snapped shut so the spoon clanked against her teeth, or suddenly gaped open so the yoghurt drooled down her chin.

  Mum mopped at her. Lily's arm jerked up and she tried to grab the cloth.

  "There! Did you see that, Daisy? Lily's trying to wipe her own chin. Clever girl, Lily!"

  "Mm, clever girl," I said.

  My sister Lily isn't clever. She isn't my little baby sister. She isn't little at all. She's my big sister. She's eleven years old but she isn't in the top year at school. Lily doesn't go to my new school. She didn't go to my old school either. She never used to go to school at all, she just stayed at home with Mum, but now she goes to this new special school. That's why we moved, so that she could go there. It's a special school because Lily has special needs. That's the right way to describe her. There are lots and lots of wrong ways. Some children at my old school used to call Lily horrible names when they saw Mum pushing her in the street. They used to call me names too.

  I don't think Emily would call Lily horrible names. Or Amy or Bella. But I'm not at all sure about Chloe.

  I'd shut up about my sister Lily since I'd started to go to this new school. I didn't want anyone calling her names.

  Though I call her names sometimes. I get mad at her. She isn't like a real sister. We can't play

  together and swap clothes and dance and giggle and mess about. She's not like a big sister because she can't ever tell me stuff and hold my hand across roads and watch out for me at school. She's not like a little sister either because she's too big to sit on my lap and she's too heavy for me to carry around. It's even getting a struggle to push her in her wheelchair.

  Something went wrong with Lily when she was born. She won't ever be able to walk or talk. Well, that's what Dad says. Mum says we just don't know. Dad says we do know, but Mum won't face facts. Mum and Dad have rows about Lily and I hate it. Sometimes I almost hate her because she's always in the way and she cries a lot and she wakes us all up in the night and she takes up so much time. But I always feel lousy if I'm mean to Lily. I get into her bed at night when Mum and Dad are asleep and I whisper sorry in Lily's ear. I cuddle her. She doesn't exactly cuddle me back but she acts like she's glad I'm there. She makes these little soft sounds. I pretend it's Lily talking to me in her own secret language. I whisper secrets to her under the covers and she whispers "ur-ur-ur-ur-ur" back to me. It's as if we're having our own tiny private sleepover just for us.

  I got into bed with her that night and told her all about Amy's sleepover. I've told her all about Amy and Bella. I've told her heaps about Emily and how I wish she could be my best friend. I've told her heaps about Chloe too and how I wish she didn't sometimes act like she was my worst enemy.

  "What's that you're saying, Lily?" I whispered. "Oh, I get it! You say that Emily's probably going to get seriously fed up with Chloe being so mean and moody all the time. You think she's going to break friends with her and be my best friend instead?"

  Lily went, "Ur ur ur ur ur."

  I gave her a grateful hug. Sometimes I was almost glad she was my sister.

  Three

  Amy and Bella and Chloe and Emily and I all got very excited about the sleepover party. We talked about it all the time at school. We talked about it so much that our teacher Mrs Graham got cross with us.

  She got especially cross with Chloe because her voice was the loudest. She kept her in at playtime. I had a lovely playtime with Emily. She said she liked my long hair and wished she could brush it, so I undid my plaits and then we played hairdressers and I was a posh lady going to a dance and Emily was fixing my hair for me, and she gave me a facial too, with soap from the washbasins in the girls' cloakrooms. I didn't wash all the soap off properly so my face felt a bit stiff when we went into the classroom. It went stiffer still when I saw Chloe glaring at me. I knew she was going to get me.

  "You mean pig, Daisy!" she yelled as soon as it was going-home time. "It was all your fault. You were saying something stupid about how you've never been to a sleepover before so I said you can't have had any friends at your old school and then Mrs Graham got cross with me when I didn't start saying stuff, it was you. Why didn't you tell her it was all your fault?"

  "It wasn't really Daisy's fault," said Emily.

  "Yes it was! She wouldn't own up. She let me take the blame. She's horrible. I don't know why we have to have her tagging around with us all the time," said Chloe.

  "Don't be like that, Chloe," said Emily, putting her arm round her. "Here, do you want a chocolate biscuit? I saved it for you."

  Chloe wouldn't take the chocolate biscuit so Bella ate it.

  "Are you really having a chocolate cake for your birthday, Amy?" said Bella.

  "Yeah, my mum's friend's making it. And we're having egg sandwiches and sausages on sticks and cheese and pineapple and fancy ice-creams and special fruity drinks with teeny umbrellas," said Amy, her eyes shining.

  "Like grown-up cocktails," I said.

  "Is Daisy still coming to your sleepover?" said Chloe.

  My heart started thumping.

  But Emily was quick. "Course she is. We're all coming. Hey, I can't wait till it's my sleepover party. If my mum lets me have one."

  "My mum will let me. She lets me do anything. I'm going to have the best sleepover party ever, you'll see," said Chloe.

  I was pretty sure I wasn't going to be invited to Chloe's sleepover party. I didn't care. But I did desperately want to go to Amy's.

  "Of course you can still come, Daisy," Amy whispered in my ear.

  I gave Amy a quick hug. I decided I liked Amy almost as much as Emily.

  I went shopping with Mum to buy Amy a birthday present. I thought I might buy her a grown-up fountain pen as she liked writing. I wanted to spend a long time choosing, but Lily was with us too, of course, and she was having a bad day, crying a lot.

  People started staring at us and it made Lily more upset. She cried and cried very loudly.

  "Do hurry up and choose Amy's present!" said Mum.

  I couldn't decide which colour fountain pen Amy would like best. Bright red? Lime green? Sunny yellow? Sky blue? Amy liked wearing all different bright colours. I didn't know which was her favourite.

  "Daisy! We'll have to go," Mum said.

  Lily was bright red in the face herself – and screaming.

  I suddenly saw a plastic case of special metallic roller pens all different colours: pink and orange and emerald and purple and turquoise, even gold and silver. I thought how great it would look writing with all these different colours.

  "Can I get these for Amy, Mum? Please?"

  They were more expensive than the fountain pens but Mum was so keen to get us out of S
mith's that she didn't argue.

  I hoped Amy would like her special coloured pens. I'd have liked a great big set like that. I'd had a lovely purple metallic pen but Lily had got hold of it and spoilt the tip so that it could only write in splotches.

  I would have loved to try Amy's pens ( just to make sure they worked all right) but as soon as we got home and Mum got Lily changed and fed and calmed down she wrapped Amy's pen set in a piece of pink tissue paper and tied it with my old crimson hair ribbon.