You know how sometimes everything is going along just perfectly? You haven’t a care in the world (apart from SATs and of course Fliss bossing everyone around for the competition) and then BAM! Something happens which turns your world upside down. Well, that’s what happened to us just a couple of days after the mock science exam.

We were all round at my place trying to get our gymnastics routine together, and Fliss and I had been at each other’s throats all night. She’d been acting the big cheese like she knew everything there was to know about handstands and backflips. You’d think she already had an Olympic medal for gymnastics, for goodness sake.

At least we had a laugh when she tried to put Lyndz through her paces. Frankie and I were almost hysterical. I mean, poor Lyndz was trying her best, but she just didn’t look right at all.

“You look more like a constipated chicken than a gymnast!” I yelled out.

“Well you don’t look too great yourself,” Fliss shouted back. “Your posture’s all wrong. Look, you should do your walkover like this.”

She stood up straight, flung her arms in the air dramatically, and did a perfect walkover, finishing with a flourish like they do in the Olympics.

“We’ll see about that!” I snapped and did TWO walkovers followed by a cartwheel.

“Follow that Miss Prissy-Flissy!” I goaded her.

“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Frankie said sternly. “I’m going to look through that factsheet again to see if there are any more tips to make things a bit easier for us.”

I pointed to where the factsheet was on the step, and carried on cartwheeling around the garden.

Suddenly there was a mammoth groan. Frankie was sitting there as white as a sheet with her hand over her mouth.

“What’s up? You’re not gonna hurl, are you?” I asked, rushing over to her.

She just shook her head and wafted the factsheet in front of our noses.

“Look at the date of the competition,” she moaned. “It says it’s on Saturday May 18th!”

We all looked at each other and shrugged.

“It’s not your birthday, ’cos you’ve only just had it,” I said slowly. “And the rest of our birthdays are ages away.”

I pulled a silly face at the others, but they were all looking really sick as well. In fact, I was sure that Fliss was going to burst into tears at any minute.

“Come on! It can’t be anything that important, surely?” I reasoned.

“Oh stop being so thick, Kenny! Even you must know what’s happening two days later!” Rosie snapped angrily. “You remember SATs, those horrible examy things we’ve been revising for forever? Well, they start on the 20th. There’s no way that our parents are going to let us enter this competition now.”

“I don’t understand it,” said Lyndz quietly. “Why hadn’t we noticed the date before?”

“The page with it on had got stuck to the one above,” Frankie explained in a tight little voice. “With what looks like peanut butter.”

The others all looked at me accusingly.

“You can’t begrudge a girl a little snack now and then,” I joked. But for once, jokes weren’t going to get me out of this mess.

“There must be something we can do,” I said at last. But I knew I was kidding myself. Whichever way you looked at it, we were doomed from ever entering the gymnastics competition.

“Unless…” Fliss suddenly piped up excitedly. “… Unless we told our parents that we were revising at each other’s houses, met in Cuddington, caught the bus into Leicester, entered the competition and came home. That would work, wouldn’t it?”

Her eyes were gleaming wildly and she was jabbering on like a wild woman. I was gobsmacked. This was Fliss, Miss Goody-Two-Shoes herself, actually suggesting we do something deceitful! I mean, the very same thought had actually crossed my mind, but I knew that there was no way we could get away with it. I was actually quite proud of Fliss for being so daring. There was hope for her yet!

“It just wouldn’t work, Fliss,” Frankie told her gently. “You know as well as we do that the chances of us entering this competition have just melted to zero.”

Well, Fliss did dissolve into tears then, and boy didn’t we all know about it. We had to make up some stupid story for my mum about her being totally stressed about the SATs. It was true in a way, but not in the way Mum thought.

The next couple of days we walked around like we’d been told that all holidays had been cancelled forever, television had ceased to exist and the only music we’d ever be able to listen to would be Fliss’s mum warbling along to her show tunes. And if you thought that was bad, it was about to get much MUCH worse.

You remember that mock science test we’d done? I must admit that I’d forgotten about it as well, until Mrs Weaver announced gravely:

“I’m sure you’ll all be thrilled to know that I’ve marked your science tests.”

A huge groan went round the classroom.

“You might well groan,” she continued in a stony voice. “I felt like groaning myself when I saw some of the test papers. Some of you did extremely well…”

The M&Ms (arch-enemies, urgh) grinned at each other like Cheshire cats.

“… whilst others of you didn’t. I have to say that I was very shocked when I saw some of the papers.” Mrs Weaver gazed deliberately over at Fliss and me. We both blushed like beetroots and stared at the table.

“Now, before I speak to you individually, we will all go over the correct answers.”

Talk about embarrassing. I couldn’t even remember seeing the questions before, never mind remember what I’d put for the answers. It’s a wonder I’d got any of them right at all.

The annoying thing was that I knew nearly all the answers as Mrs Weaver was going through them. Why had I been so distracted by our gymnastics routine? I felt really ashamed when she handed back my paper and I saw great big crosses all over it.

Just as the bell went for break she plonked her bottom down on my desk.

“I think we need to talk, Laura,” she said seriously.

Oh-oh, trouble! As soon as she’d dismissed everyone else she launched forth in her “very concerned” tone of voice.

“You know Laura, I was very shocked when I marked your paper. I had no idea that you were struggling with science. I get the impression that perhaps it’s the whole concept of the examination situation which you find hard. Your paper certainly gave the impression of someone who wasn’t very focused on the subject. In fact, I’d say that you were positively distracted. Is that fair comment, do you think?”

I nodded and looked at my feet. I could hardly admit that my mind had been focused on planning a routine for a gymnastics competition, could I?

Mrs Weaver frowned. “Well, I think the best plan is to learn from this experience and attend a few revision sessions to settle you down before the SATs proper. I’ll give your mother a call now and ask for her permission. Right then, off you go and enjoy the rest of break.”

I was doomed with a big fat D. Sure, my mum had already given me the speech about trying my best. You know the one: “All we want is for you to try your best. Results aren’t important, it’s trying your best that matters, blah, blah, blah.” You’ve had that one too, right? Well they don’t mean it, do they? What they mean is, “get good marks, or else!”

So it was with a heavy heart that I went home that evening. I was expecting fireworks and I certainly wasn’t disappointed. Mum went absolutely ballistic. And it didn’t help that Molly had already opened her mouth and rammed her Nike trainers right in it. It turned out that she knew all about the competition because she’d found the factsheet in our room. Not only that, but she’d been taking sneaky peeks at our rehearsals too. And as she was already well cheesed off because I’d broken one of her precious ornaments whilst I was trying to do those backflips upstairs, she’d wasted no time in dobbing me in.

“Really, Laura,” Mum said in her quiet but extremely angry voice. “I used to think that you were quite intelligent, but now I’m beginning to wonder. To waste your talents on some gymnastics competition when your SATs tests are just around the corner is stupid in the extreme. How many times must I tell you that however important it is to have interests, at this stage of your life your education must come first?”

(Yawn, yawn, heard it all before.)

“And if you persist in looking at me with that insolent expression on your face I’ll make sure the Sleepover Club is disbanded forever, do I make myself clear?”

Man! Mum sure can bring you back to earth and make you feel about a centimetre high sometimes. By the time I’d promised her that I was going to get down to some serious work for the SATs, and that I definitely wouldn’t be wasting any more time even thinking about the gymnastics competition, I felt like an old chewed up piece of Hubba-Bubba gum.

But if I thought I’d had a rough deal, it was nothing compared to Fliss. She was in a right state at school the next morning. Apparently Mrs Proudlove had exploded so far into the stratosphere that they thought they might have to launch a rocket just to bring her back.

“Mrs Weaver told Mum how disappointed she’d been with my test paper, and Mum just went mad,” Fliss sobbed. “She kept going on and on about how hard it was for her looking after me and Callum and the twins and said that she couldn’t cope with any more traumas. She really flipped, it was awful!”

Frankie put a reassuring arm round her. “I’m sure she was just upset at the time. She’ll have calmed down now.”

“I don’t think so,” Fliss sighed. “You should have seen her. She kept going on and on about how I’d let her down, and how I was wasting my brain and how sorry I’d be if I messed up my exams and ended up in a dead-end job.”

Now that did seem a bit dramatic. After all, it was only one little test Fliss had messed up on.

“And she said I’d be grounded for life if I didn’t put in some serious work!” Fliss wailed.

Oooh, nasty!

“The thought of being stuck in with your mum on the rampage for the rest of my days would make me get down to some pretty serious revision!” I laughed.

I thought that was funny, but no one else did. They all gave me really weird looks and carried on trying to comfort Fliss.

“I guess what Kenny is trying to say, in her clumsy way” – Frankie flashed me a look – “is that maybe we should all work hard and forget about the gymnastics competition. Our exams are more important, and the olds won’t ever think differently. Agreed?”

“Agreed!” we all nodded glumly.

So, all in all the next few days were boring in the extreme. Imagine watching paint dry whilst listening to nursery rhymes all day long and you still don’t come close to how boring our lives were. We went to school, we worked, we came home and did yet more work. We ate and we went to bed. Then the next day we got up and did exactly the same things again. I told you it was boring.

But before you get really bored and decide to leave me here talking to myself, I’m going to tell you about the miracle that happened which cheered us all up. And you’ll never guess what it was. Not even if I promise you a triple fudge sundae with extra sauce on top. Well… go on then, try to guess!