Pony Passion by Harriet Castor

meetings: the corner of the playground nearest the bins where no one else goes (and if you’re wondering why, you should come and catch the whiff sometime). “I know it’s stinky,” said Frankie when Fliss complained, “but we don’t want anyone nicking our toptastic ideas, do we?”
    Then Kenny bent over and grabbed Frankie round the waist. “Ready?” she said. “One, two, three…”
    There were kicks, stamps and shimmies. Frankie tossed her imaginary mane and Kenny wiggled her bum. But soon Kenny was outof step with Frankie, doing her kicks in the wrong places, and falling over her own feet. It was just about the most hilarious thing I’d ever seen.
    “Stop!” I gasped, as Rosie and I held on to each other, laughing fit to burst. “You’ll make me, hic, wet myself!”
    Suddenly we heard Fliss gasp. She was our official look-out, keeping watch round the corner of the gym block in case anyone tried to spy on us. Instantly we all stopped laughing. Frankie said, “What? What is it?”
    Fliss didn’t turn her head, but her arm reached back and beckoned us. “You have got to see this…” she said.
    We squashed up next to her, poking our heads round the wall.
    The most amazing sight swung into view.
    It was Emma Hughes and Danny McCloud.
    Holding hands.
    “Oh – my – gosh,” whispered Frankie. “Gross or what?”
    Ducking back behind the wall, we stared at one another in astonishment.
    “Bleurgh!”
    Then Kenny slapped a hand to her forehead. “What have I done?” she wailed. “This is all my fault! It’s hideous! It’s unnatural!”
    When the bell rang and we piled back into the classroom, we noticed that the Queen and the Goblin were talking to one another again. More than that – it looked as if they were better friends than ever.
    “Emma probably thinks Emily helped get her and her darling Danny together,” whispered Frankie.
    “It turns my stomach just thinking about it,” said Fliss.
    “But you know the good thing?” said Kenny. “I reckon Emma will spend so much time mooning over Fog-brain she won’t give a thought to their lousy project. And the Oscar for best presentation will go to…us!”
    Our class was going to give the presentations on the last day before half-term. The rest of the Sleepover Club were counting the days till then. But I was counting the days till something else. The week before half-term, my plaster cast was due to come off, and on the Saturday I was going to have my first riding lesson since the accident.
    I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I was. Riding was the thing I loved doing most in the world and I hadn’t been able to do it for six whole weeks – each of which had felt like a year.
    When the day my cast was due to come off finally arrived, I was so jittery I couldn’t sit still. My eldest brother Stuart drove me to the hospital, and I could tell I was getting up his nose with my fidgeting, but I just couldn’t help it.
    “Will it hurt?” I asked, winding my window a centimetre up and then a centimetre down – up and down, up and down.
    “Hideously,” said Stuart. “They do it with a great big saw, and if it gets stuck theyhave to chop your whole arm off.”
    “No!” I looked at him, aghast.
    “Of course not, dumbo!” he grinned at me in the driver’s mirror. “You are so easy to tease!”
    I stuck out my tongue. “And you are so mean!”
    After that I didn’t want him to see I was scared when they brought out the electric whizzy thing and started cutting through the plaster. In a way it was better, pretending to be brave. With Mum I’d probably have been bawling my eyes out. But I couldn’t have been hiding my nerves that well, because the nurse smiled at me and said, “Don’t worry. I’ve done this before.”
    When the cast finally snapped off it was such an ace feeling. My skin underneath had been getting majorly itchy – and not being able to scratch had been sooo frustrating. “Hello arm,” I said. It looked pale