Read Online Sleepover Club Goes For Goal! by Fiona Cummings - Free Book Online

their minibus broke down on the way there, and one of the girls was sick so they never made it. Now his girls are hungry for a competition too. So we’ve arranged one for you all here – next Wednesday. What do you say? Are you up for it?”
    I couldn’t say anything. For once I was speechless. All I could do was grin like an idiot. In fact I was still opening and closing my mouth like a goldfish when the others appeared.
    “What’s up with you?” asked Frankie, prodding me in the ribs.
    “Are you ill?” Rosie felt my head.
    “Stop doing that, Kenny!” commanded Fliss. “You’re freaking me out!”
    It was just hysterical, them fussing over me like that. I cracked up laughing.
    “I think she’s really lost it this time,” Lyndz whispered behind her hand.
    That made me laugh even more. I started leaping around and punching the air.
    “It’s OK, it’s OK!” I yelled. “We’ve got ourselves a competition!”
    The others all looked at each other then back at me.
    “Game on
!”

Well, you can imagine how totally hyper we were about the competition. This was going to be our chance to prove ourselves. But after we’d played football together that lunchtime, I started to have my doubts about the whole thing. I mean, it had been less than a week since we’d last played together, but the others seemed to have forgotten absolutely everything that Mr Pownall had taught them. And what made it worse was that they just laughed about it.
    “Whoops, butterfingers!” Fliss giggled as she scooped the ball out of the net for about the tenth time.
    “Concentrate for goodness sake!” I yelled. “This competition is serious, you know.”
    “Lighten up, Kenny!” Frankie rugby-tackled me to the ground. The others all piled on top of us and started tickling me.
    “Get off!” I gasped, struggling to get up. “It’s not funny, we’ve got to practise for the match.”
    “You’re a right misery guts, do you know that?” Rosie grumbled, scrambling up from the ground.
    “Look, I’m sorry,” I said. “But I thought you wanted to win this match as much as I do. This might be our only chance to play, and wouldn’t it be great to go out in a blaze of glory?”
    “Well, yes,” admitted Lyndz, “but I don’t suppose there’ll be anyone watching us anyway. It’s not a big competition like last Saturday, is it?”
    “But we don’t need supporters to play well, do we?” I fired back. “You’re just being defeatist. Come on guys, do it for me?”
    The others all looked at each other.
    “OK, but we’re only doing it this once,”Frankie spoke for all of them.
    “And if anyone laughs at me…” piped up Fliss.
    “… you’re out of there,” the rest of us said together. “Yes, we know!”
    The problem was that to practise properly we really needed some opposition. We tried practising by ourselves over the weekend, but it got pretty hopeless. I mean, when you’re trying to be the striker
and
the goalkeeper you can get a bit of an identity crisis!
    “This is never going to work!” wailed Fliss. “We’re going to be a laughing stock. We’ll have to call the whole thing off!”
    “No way!” I told her. “We’ll just have to sort something out!”
    And that’s where the boys came in. (I always knew that they must be useful for something!) It nearly made me choke to ask them a favour on Monday morning, but it had to be done.
    “But boys aren’t supposed to play against girls,” sneered Ryan Scott when I finally asked him to play against us. “You might get too upset when you never get the ball.”
    “Yeah, right!” I snorted. “I reckon you’re scared that we’re going to beat the pants off you. Not up to the challenge then, Scotty Boy?”
    “OK, you’re on!” he said indignantly, “but you’d better not start snivelling when we keep beating you!”
    As if!
    I knew that Fliss would have a fit when I told her what I’d arranged, so I didn’t tell her until the last minute. Bad move! She