Sleepover Club Blitz Read Online Free Page A

all they’d fallen under some evil SPELL.
    I’m not that crazy about football, so while I waited for my ordeal to be over, I kept myself busy by collecting incriminating evidence against Owen Cartwright.
    Would you believe that boy POSES every time he goes to take a penalty? He even pushes his hand through his hair, David Ginola style!
    This was truly one of life’s major mysteries. My friends were so SMART. Couldn’t they see this bogus boy was unworthy of their affections? URGH! I thought. How DARE he have my surname!!
    Suddenly I’d had it up to
here
with that fair-haired phony! I informed the others of my decision as we were walking home in the rain.
    “All bets are off,” I said crisply. “I refuse to help you guys make wallies of yourselves.”
    “You can’t do that!” wailed Fliss.
    “I just did,” I scowled. And while I was feeling brave, I told them what I thought of Mister Charisma.
    Frankie was furious. “Rosie Cartwright, if you weren’t such a little fuddy-duddy, you’d know Owen’s the best thing to happen to our school in
ages.”
    “Rubbish!” I snapped. “Miss Pearson’s history project is heaps more exciting than some – brainless HIMBO!”
    I should have saved my breath. Even after I’d crossed the road, I could still hear my mates wrangling about which of them Owen liked best.
    When I got home, I felt like a real Rosie No-Mates. Why couldn’t I fancy Owen too? I thought miserably. At least I’d have something to giggle about with the others.
    But once I’d seen the creepy resemblance between our school Romeo and those two-faced M&Ms, I couldn’t NOT see it, if you see what I mean.
    It was like that fairy tale in reverse. Inside Owen’s princely good looks lurked a seriously icky frog in disguise, I was sure of it. I just prayed that sooner or later, my friends would come to their senses and see that I was right.

The others must have agreed to stop going on about Owen – at least, when I was around anyway, because next day, they never mentioned him ONCE. Which was basically cool with me.
    After registration, Miss Pearson got us buzzing with the news that some exciting visitors were dropping by later that morning, to help out with our history project.
    In my opinion, “exciting” is a word teachers totally overuse. “Gosh, listen everyone! The school nurse is going to show this
really
exciting video about head-lice!” NOT. But Miss Pearson didn’t strike me as the kind of person to get psyched up about nit shampoo, so I was genuinely intrigued by who these visitors might be.
    While we were waiting, our teacher showed us some old photographs which had been taken in and around our part of Leicestershire during the Second World War. We were gobsmacked. Sixty years isn’t that long, really, but it was hardly recognisable as the same planet!
    The people looked as if they’d just stepped out of some crackly old black and white film. Plus there was almost no traffic. The few vehicles around were
total
museum pieces. Miss Pearson explained that petrol was in really short supply, so people only used cars when strictly necessary.
    There was one photo of these three teenage girls. They were really pretty, in that well-scrubbed, healthy 1940s way. And something about their happy expressions made me think they’d be fun to know.
    “How come they’re so stylish?” demanded Fliss. “You said clothes were rationed, same as food.”
    “They were,” Miss Pearson agreed. She explained that the war changed women’s lives dramatically. Until then, they hadn’t been encouraged to go out to work. But with the men away at war, women were needed to work in the factories or on the land. Some even joined the forces.
    “Girls and women had to become much tougher and more independent,” our teacher went on. “But despite all those wartime shortages, they were determined to look their best. If you look closely at this girl’s pretty coat, you’ll see she’s made it herself out of a