How To Survive Summer Camp (ePub) Read online

  When I’d used up nearly all the pages of Marzipan’s rough pad I went and showed my Star magazine to the Brigadier. I hoped he’d read it from cover to cover but I suppose he didn’t really have the time. But he did spend quite a while flicking through and sometimes he stopped and read a whole page. I was pleased to see that they were nearly always the pages I had written. Sometimes he smiled and once he laughed out loud.

  ‘Do you think it’s OK?’ I asked.

  He smiled. ‘I think it’s more than OK, Miss Stebbings. I think it’s a magazine to be proud of. You have a word with my daughter, see if she can get busy with the photocopier.’

  ‘What, so that I can sell it like a real magazine?’ I said eagerly.

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ said the Brigadier. ‘How’s the swimming going?’ he added, as I was halfway out of his door.

  I pulled a face.

  ‘It’s not.’

  ‘But you’re still trying?’

  ‘Every day. But it doesn’t work. I know what to do with my arms and legs and I blow when I’m supposed to but I still go glug glug glug.’

  ‘Don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of it eventually,’ said the Brigadier.

  I knew I wouldn’t—but I also knew it was a waste of breath arguing. I ran off to ask Miss Hamer-Cotton to get printing my lovely Star magazine straight away.

  I hoped she’d do it there and then but it took her four whole days—and then I couldn’t help being bitterly disappointed. I know it was daft, but I’d expected her to make some proper magazines with coloured covers and real pages. These limp little stapled sheets of messy handwriting looked like something from school. But all the other children started sharing them out, wanting to have a look, and they seemed really interested, so I cheered up.

  ‘Hey, give those back. They’re not free handouts, you know. They’re for sale. One pound per copy. All right, all right, fifty pence. But you’re getting an absolute bargain.’

  I sold every single copy in a morning and went back to Miss Hamer-Cotton for some more.

  She sighed.

  ‘Oh, Stella. It took me ages to do the last lot—especially all that stapling. Can’t you all share the copies I’ve already done?’

  ‘Well, not really, Miss Hamer-Cotton. They’re for sale, you see, and it wouldn’t be fair on the children who’ve already bought their own copies.’ I hesitated as she looked dazed. ‘You wouldn’t like to buy a copy for yourself, would you?’

  I wasn’t sure whether she was going to laugh or get cross.

  ‘You really are the limit,’ she said. ‘And you shouldn’t have sold the copies, Stella. What have you done with the money?’

  I patted my bulging pockets. I sounded just like ‘Jingle Bells’.

  ‘I’m not sure you ought to keep the money for yourself,’ said Miss Hamer-Cotton.

  ‘Well, I was planning to pay my staff a sort of wage.’

  ‘What about your printer?’ said Miss Hamer-Cotton.

  ‘Oh. Well. How much would you like?’

  ‘I was only joking, Stella. At least I think I was. But I really think you ought to make a large donation to a children’s charity.’

  ‘Charity begins at home,’ I mumbled, but I didn’t dare say it out loud.

  I ended up putting a few pounds in the charity box, but Miss Hamer-Cotton let me keep the rest.

  On Saturday morning we were allowed to walk into the village with Jimbo and Jilly. I went to the newsagent and bought Marzipan a new jotter (it was quite a bit smaller but she said she didn’t mind) and some fruit gums and chocolate drops and chocolate toffees and jelly babies and big wiggly jelly snakes—a huge bag of all the sweets that I love and Mum won’t let me buy because she says they’ll rot my teeth. I’d much sooner have false teeth and eat fruit gums and chocolate drops and chocolate toffees and jelly babies and big wiggly jelly snakes every day. Marzipan bought a big Yorkie bar and Janie and Rosemary bought crisps and a big bottle of lemonade.

  Louise and Karen hadn’t bothered to come to the shops with us.

  ‘Won’t they be jealous when we have an absolute feast,’ I said.

  But when we got back to the Emerald dormi we found Louise and Karen having their own private feast. Louise’s dad had sent her a huge box of crystallized fruit. Karen was back in favour and was slobbering at a great pink pear, sugar crystals all round her mouth.

  ‘See what we’ve got, Baldy,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t care. I don’t like that stuff anyway,’ I said.

  I did really. Uncle Bill had bought some crystallized apricots round last Christmas and they were the most beautiful sweets I’d ever eaten, like little sugar suns. Louise was eating an apricot now and it made my mouth water just watching.

  I looked at my sweets. I looked at the chocolate and the crisps. I looked and looked at the crystallized fruit.

  ‘You know what we should do,’ I said. ‘Have a midnight feast.’

  Karen looked at Louise. Louise was no fool.

  ‘I think a midnight feast is a rather babyish idea, if you ask me,’ she said. ‘We won’t bother, will we, Karen?’

  ‘No, that’s right, we won’t bother,’ said Karen. ‘Who wants to go to a silly old midnight feast, eh?’

  ‘Marzipan and Janie and Rosemary and I do, don’t we?’ I said.

  ‘Wow, that would be great, Stella. Yummy yummy,’ said Janie.

  ‘Dora can come too, can’t she?’ said Rosemary. She hesitated. ‘What is a midnight feast?’

  ‘We get up at midnight and have a feast, of course,’ I said.

  ‘Are you just playing, Stella?’ Marzipan asked, looking worried.

  ‘No, I mean it. We’re having a midnight feast. Tonight!’

  ‘We’ll get into awful trouble if we get found out,’ said Marzipan.

  ‘We’re not going to get found out.’

  ‘What if we all get the giggles and Miss Hamer-Cotton hears?’

  ‘She won’t. Oh don’t spoil it, Marzie. It’s going to be such fun.’

  It didn’t feel like fun when my alarm clock went off at midnight. I’d only just got to sleep for a start. The girls in boarding school books who have midnight feasts always hide their alarm clocks under their pillows. Well I tried but it was so uncomfortable I couldn’t stand it. I have this great big Popeye alarm clock which digs in horribly. It’s got such a loud ring that I didn’t dare put it up on my chest of drawers as usual in case it woke Miss Hamer-Cotton too. I tried setting it and cramming it inside a drawer but the ring was so muffled beneath all my jumpers and jeans that I was scared I’d sleep right through it.

  So in the end I had to turf poor old Squeakycheese out of my bed and curl up with the alarm clock clasped to my chest. It was very cold and very hard. So as I said, I didn’t get to sleep for ages and then Popeye’s muscley arms ticked round to twelve o’clock and he rang the bell for all he was worth. It vibrated right through me and I lay twitching with shock. I felt so terrible I thought I might be ill. My eyes were all hot and burny, my head ached and I felt sick. I wanted to turn over and go back to sleep more than anything else in the whole world. But I was determined to have a midnight feast even if it killed me.

  I sat up and scratched my tufts.

  ‘Wakey wakey,’ I whispered into the dark dormi. ‘It’s midnight. Time for our feast.’

  Someone muttered. Someone mumbled. But no one moved.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, and I stuck my legs out of bed. ‘Midnight. Listen to the clock. Dong, dong, dong, dong, dong—’

  ‘Stella!’

  ‘Dong, etc.,’ I said. ‘Next up after me gets first pick at my sweets, OK?’

  ‘Me!’ Rosemary shouted, jumping out of bed.

  ‘Sh! Keep your voices down, please,’ Marzipan hissed, getting up too.

  Rosemary chose a handful of chocolate drops. She gave a pretend nibble to Dora and a real nibble to Janie. Karen sat up in bed, peering through the gloom. She watched us for a couple of minutes without saying anything and then she lea