Mallory's Super Sleepover (7 page)
Read Mallory's Super Sleepover Online
Authors: Laurie Friedman
Roasted marshmallows always taste good, but they taste even better when you’ve just scrubbed a kitchen and a living room and a bedroom and a bathroom. That’s what my friends and I spent the last hour doing.
I had to promise Mom and Dad no more messes. That promise shouldn’t be hard to keep. I didn’t like cleaning up and neither did my friends.
“Who wants to hear another scary story?” asks April.
Everyone shudders but in a good way.
“No more stories,” Mom says with a smile. She starts collecting our marshmallow-roasting sticks. “You girls have been out here long enough. It’s time to go inside. You can watch a movie and have a midnight snack. Then it’s bedtime . . . or should I say sleeping-bag time.” Mom smiles like she likes her joke.
Everyone giggles as we walk inside. This party is finally becoming what it was supposed to be in the first place . . . fun!
I turn on the movie, and my friends and I all curl up on the couch and on the floor. “Who wants popcorn?” Dad walks in the living room with two big bowls of popcorn and the tray of snacks that Mary Ann and I put together after school.
We eat and watch the movie.
When it’s over, Mom and Dad help us clean up the leftover snacks. “Why don’t you girls bring your sleeping bags and pillows and stuffed animals in the living room,” says Dad. “There’s more room, and I think you’ll be more comfortable.”
“Last one to Mallory’s room is a rotten tomato,” says Emma.
We all race down the hall to get our stuff.
“You sound like a herd of stampeding buffalo,” Max yells from his room.
Some of my friends giggle like they think Max is funny, but Mary Ann and I tell them he’s definitely not.
We get our stuff and set everything up in the living room. When we’re done, Dad turns out the lights. “Good night, girls,” says Mom. “It’s lights out time.”
Everyone tells Mom and Dad good night as we crawl into our sleeping bags.
When we hear Mom and Dad’s door close, Mary Ann and I pull something out of our sleeping bags. “It might be lights out time,” whispers Mary Ann. “But we have flashlights!”
Mary Ann and I pass around the stash of flashlights that we hid inside our sleeping bags earlier. We all turn on our flashlights.
“Should we tell more scary stories?” asks Emma.
“We could play Truth or Dare,” says Zoe.
Pamela yawns. “I’m sleepy. Maybe we should go to sleep.”
Arielle and Danielle shine their flashlight in Pamela’s direction. “Go to sleep at your own risk,” they say at the same time.
Everyone giggles.
“Shhh! If Mom and Dad hear us, they’ll come down and take away the flashlights,” I say.
“Does anyone want to hear the story of when I went to visit my grandma’s house and my brother and I thought we heard a ghost in the attic?” asks April.
Everyone shivers as April tells us about the strange sounds she and her brother heard coming from her grandmother’s attic. Everyone says how scary ghosts are. Everyone except one person and that one person is sound asleep.
Arielle shines her flashlight in Pamela’s eyes, but Pamela doesn’t move. Arielle and Danielle give each other a thumbs-up sign.
“We hid something in our sleeping bags too,” whispers Danielle.
“And it’s not flashlights,” Arielle adds. She puts her hand over her mouth like she doesn’t want to start laughing.
She and Danielle reach into their sleeping bags and and each pull out a bag. I shine my flashlight on it so I can see what they have. It looks like markers. I can’t imagine why they would hide markers in their sleeping bags.
But I don’t have to wait long to find out.
Arielle and Danielle cross the room quietly to where Pamela is sleeping. Then I see what they are going to do with the markers.
Arielle starts drawing a flower on Pamela’s cheek. Danielle draws a bird on her forehead.
“What are you doing?” I whisper.
“Shhh!” says Danielle. “You’ll wake her up.”
Arielle takes another marker and draws hearts and stars all over Pamela’s nose and chin. “We said go to sleep at your own risk,” she says.
Danielle draws a tree down one of Pamela’s arms. Arielle draws a vine and some leaves down the other one.
Mary Ann giggles. “I’m glad I wasn’t the first one to fall asleep.”
“Me too,” says Emma.
Arielle draws a bird on her shoulder.
I try to swallow, but I feel like there’s a bird in my throat. “You have to stop,” I whisper to Arielle and Danielle. “Pamela is going to be upset when she wakes up and sees what you’re doing.”
“She’s not going to wake up if you stay quiet,” says Arielle.
“She won’t care,” says Mary Ann like she’s taking Arielle and Danielle’s side and not mine. “You have to admit it’s kind of funny, and they did warn her not to go to sleep.” Mary Ann puts her hand over her mouth like she doesn’t want to laugh out loud.
Emma and Zoe and April nod like they kind of agree and think it’s funny too.
I can’t believe Mary Ann is taking Arielle and Danielle’s side, and not mine. And I can’t believe she and the rest of my friends think this is funny too.
I know Pamela, and I know she’s not going to like what Arielle and Danielle are doing to her. I start to say something, but my friends stare at me like they’re going to be mad at me if I start talking and wake up Pamela.
I know I should say something, but for some reason, when I open my mouth, nothing comes out. I don’t know why it’s hard to say what I know I should say. I open my mouth, to try again. This time, something comes out, but not words.
“AH-CHOO!”
A huge sneeze comes out, and when it does, my friends looks at me, and then they look at Pamela, who rubs her eyes, and then opens them.
I shine my flashlight in her direction.
Pamela looks confused. “Why is everyone staring at me?” Then she looks down at her hands. Even in the dark, she can see there’s something on them. Pamela looks even more confused. She gets out of her sleeping bag and walks down the hall to my room.
We wait for her to come back, but she doesn’t.
“What do you think she’s doing?” whispers April after what seems like a very long time.
“She’s been back there forever,” says Emma.
I don’t know what Pamela is doing, but whatever it is, I don’t think I like it. “Do you think I should go check on her?” I ask.
But I don’t have to check. Someone turns the lights on in the living room. Pamela walks into the living room, and Mom and Dad are with her. I don’t know who looks more upset, Pamela or my parents.
The next thing I know, the doorbell rings. Pamela starts picking up her stuff.
“Pamela is very upset by what you girls did to her,” Mom says. She puts an arm around Pamela and walks her toward the door. “She called her mother, and she’s going home.”
Mom and Dad walk outside to talk to Pamela’s mom. I know I need to do something. I get out of my sleeping bag and grab a party favor. I walk over to the door.
I try to give Pamela her party favor. “Pamela, I’m really sorry.” I try to explain what happened.
But Pamela doesn’t want my apology or my explanation or my party favor.
I watch a tear fall across one of the flowers on Pamela’s cheek. Pamela’s mother takes Pamela’s things from her and leads her to her car.
I feel like my
Super Sleepover
just turned into a super mess.
Some messes can be cleaned up with sponges, rags, and a mop, but some messes are much harder to clean up, and I think this is one of those messes.
A Super Scary Story
by Mallory McDonald
(NOTE #1 TO READER: This super scary story was not told at my sleepover. Even scarier . . . It happened at my sleepover!)
FOREWORD
Once upon a time, there was a little girl. Actually, she wasn’t so little. She was ten, which isn’t little at all. Anyway, this girl had a sleepover party to celebrate her tenth birthday. She invited some friends and planned some fun stuff to do, but her sleepover turned out to be nothing like other sleepovers.
(NOTE #2 TO READER: That was just the background info. We haven’t gotten to the super scary part yet.)
Her sleepover was different. It all started in the kitchen. She and her friends were supposed to be neatly decorating cupcakes, but her friends weren’t neat cupcake decorators. They made a big mess doing it.
Then, before they could clean the mess up, they got into a water balloon fight with the girl’s brother and his friends. Water got everywhere. Not just on people and not just outside in the backyard where it should have gotten. But some water got inside the house too.
This all happened while the girl’s parents were out taking a walk. It shouldn’t have happened because the parents left a babysitter in charge of the kids, but it did, because instead of babysitting (or in this case, kid sitting), the babysitter (or in this case, kid sitter) was busy talking on her cell phone to her boyfriend. You’re probably wondering why the girl didn’t just go get the sitter when the problems started. Well, a lot of people, like the sitter and the girl’s parents, wondered that too.
(NOTE #3 TO READER: You’re probably also wondering when this story gets scary. Keep reading!)
When the girl’s parents came home, a couple of things happened.
First: They saw the mess.
Second: They got kind of mad. (Actually a little more than kind of
i
mad, but we won’t go into all that here.)
Third: They made the girls clean up everything.
Then something good actually happened The party continued
(NOTE #4 TO READER.: I bet when you read the part about the party continuing, you decided this story is not bad and certainly not super scary. You were probably th'ink'ing that all things considered, it sounded pretty good. But we are getting to the super scary part, I promise.)
The girls did things that most girls do at sleepovers.
They put on their pajamas. They told stories and roasted marshmallows around a fire. They watched a movie and ate late-night snacks.
Then some of the girls did something that most girls probably don’t (and shouldn’t) do at sleepovers. They decided to decorate (actually, a little more than decorate, but we won’t go into all that here) one of the girls who fell asleep early.
When she woke up and saw what they had done, she got so upset that she called her mom and told her she wanted to go home.
(NOTE #5 TO READER: OK. Here’s what you’ve been waiting for. The super scary part is about to begin.)
So she left, and right when she did, ?the party girl’s parents told the party girl they wanted to see her in their room. She didn’t really want to go to their room, but she knew she didn’t have a choice.
When she got there, her parents looked mad.
The super scary part was that she had never seen her parents look so mad.
It was like all of a sudden they were transformed from nice, normal-looking parents into scary creatures like the kind you see in late-night horror movies.
Their eyes got big. Their faces -turned red.
Their bodies started to shake.
Their teeth looked long and sharp.
Then they started to yell. (If you asked them, they would say they were not yelling. They would say they were talking sternly. But if you ask the girl, she would say that whatever you want to call the way they were talking was even scarier than the way they looked.)
With their mad voices and their mad faces, they told the girl how upset they were with her and some of her choices. They talked in their mad voices and with their mad faces for a very long time. (They talked for so long that the girl began to tremble and shake and wonder if she would ever be OK and happy again and could only hope that her friends who were still downstairs in their sleeping bags and pajamas would send someone up to get her.)
But unfortunately for the girl, no one came to get her. Then, just when it didn’t seem like her parents could make her feel any more scared than she already did, they did.
They told the party girl that she was free to go.
(NOTE #6 TO READER.: I bet you are thinking that this was good and it made her happy, but it didn’t. It made her even more scared, and here is why.)
As the party girl walked down the stairs to join her friends, she knew she had not heard the end of this.
She knew what her parents really meant when they said she was
free to go
was that she was
free to go FOR NOW.
Even though she had been plenty scared by her parents’ scary looks and scary voices, she knew that the scariest part of the story was yet to come.
She crawled into her sleeping bag next to her best friend. Then she rolled over and tried to sleep. But she could not sleep. Something deep inside her ten-year-old body told her that the scariest part of the story would begin in the morning after her friends would all leave.
And she wasn’t looking forward to that part of the story at all.
The End. But only for now.
AFTERWORD
One more thing happened when the girl crawled into her sleeping bag next to her best friend. She came to a decision. She decided that all the bad stuff that happened at her sleepover wasn’t all her fault. It was her best friend’s fault too.
Her best friend was the one who told her to invite a lot of people even though she knew the girl’s parents had said to keep things small. She was the one that said to leave the kitchen a mess and to go make water balloons in the house. She was the one who told the girls to throw the balloons. And she was the one who laughed when some of the girls at the party started decorating another girl at the party. She was the one who had not been acting like a best friend.
The more the girl thought about the things her best friend had done, the madder she got. So when her best friend said, “Good night, sleep tight, and don’t let the bedbugs bite” (which is what they always say at sleepovers before they go to sleep), the girl looked at her best friend and said, “I hope they bite you.” And she told her why.
Then she closed her eyes and pretended to go to sleep. But like I said before, she couldn’t sleep because she was scared, and now to top things off, she was mad too.
And to be perfectly honest, a little bit confused.