her. “Nobody broke anything.”
“I think you won,” Fliss told Kenny afterwards.
But Kenny admitted, “It was a close thing.”
After our mad half hour we thought we’d perhaps better quieten down a bit and at least start getting ready for bed. Then we all suddenly got a bit shy around each other again, so Fliss said we could get undressed in the bathroom. But Lyndz said, “No need,” and she taught us all this brilliant technique she called Sleeping Bag Striptease.
“This is what you do,” she said, wriggling down inside her sleeping bag until only her head was poking out, and started flinging her clothes out around the room and finally pulling on her PJs. Then she sat up looking a bit hot and bothered, but grinning from ear to ear.
When we timed ourselves, Kenny was the fastest, even though it was the first time she’d ever done it. But Fliss was almost as fast.
That twenty seconds record that Kenny set has been beaten lots of times since. Not by me, I might add, because I’m too tall. There’s never as much room in my sleeping bag and I often end up with both legs down the same trouser leg. It’s not easy being a beanpole, you know.
Once we were all ready for bed came the best part: the midnight feast. We’d all brought secret supplies and, after we were quite sure Nicky wasn’t coming back in, we turned off all the lights and sat round in a circle with our torches on. Kenny said we should put all the food together in a bowl that we’d made Fliss sneak down to the kitchen to borrow.
“You can’t possibly mix smoky bacon crisps with Skittles and fruit jellies,” Fliss said, horrified.
“Watch me,” Kenny said, busy tearing packets open.
Then we passed the bowl round and all tucked in. It was a bit like a lucky dip, not knowing what you’d pull out. Afterwards the crumbs and stuff left in the bottom did look a bit of a mess: “Like Nappy’s brain,” I said.
There’s a really annoying boy who lives next door to me, called Nathan, but I call him Nappyhead. If he had a brain, which I doubt, it would probably look just like that bowl of mangled leftovers.
“Somebody should eat it,” Kenny said, grinning. “I dare Lyndz.”
But before Lyndz had chance to say anything, Fliss said, “I’ll do it,” and stuffed her mouth full to bursting, while the rest of us made being sick noises.
“Whoa! Way to go, Fliss,” Lyndz said and we all cheered. There was definitely more to Fliss than we’d realised.
Although it was getting really late by now no one wanted to get into bed and go to sleep.
“Tell us a story, Frankie,” Kenny said.
“What kind of story?”
“Scary,” said Lyndz, grinning, “at least a bit scary.”
“Yeah, full of blood and guts,” Kenny said, drawing her top lip back and baring her teeth so she looked like a vampire.
But being scared half to death in her own bedroom was not one of the things Fliss was up for. “I don’t do scary,” she said firmly. “I’ll have nightmares.”
“Not with us here, you won’t,” Kenny promised. Famous last words.
While the other two sat right beside her with their arms round her shoulders, I made up this story about a bloodsucking vampire called Vladimir that lives at the top of the Clock Tower in the middle of Leicester.
“He can make himself invisible so he can slip into your bags and follow you home when you’ve been shopping,” I told them.
“Don’t say that,” Fliss begged. “I’m always round there shopping with my mum. I’ll never dare go again,” she wailed.
“For goodness sake, it’s a story,” Kenny said. “Get on with it, Frankie.”
“One day he slipped into the shopping bag of a girl called F-f-f…
“Oh, don’t make it Fliss,” she begged.
“Fiona,” I said. “When she got home Fiona opened her shopping to show her sister and little did she realise that the vampire had slipped out unseen into her bedroom, waiting for his moment to re-materialise.”
While I was telling the story I shone my torch under my chin and grinned, which Fliss said made me look really spooky and a bit like a vampire.
“Later,” I went on, “when the girl was lying in bed, all on her own, Vladimir slid over and sank his long vampire’s teeth into her soft white neck…”
When I looked over at Fliss she was holding on to her own neck as if she thought the vampire was in the room with us. By the time I’d finished even Lyndz was looking a bit sick. Kenny, of course, was grinning from ear to ear. She loves talking about blood so much I sometimes think she might have been a vampire herself in a previous life.
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