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did she have Bethany, Miss Walsh, Alana and the rest of the Sleepover Club for an audience, but also, not far away, there was the other group, including Jude and Ryan Scott, any of whom might turn to look her way just at the wrong moment. I could hardly bear to imagine it – Fliss would die of embarrassment.
    Somebody had to do something. Wiping my eyes with the back of my hand, I grabbed my board and yelled, “Don’t worry, Fliss! Kenny to the rescue!” and charged into the water as fast as I could.
    Thinking back, I realised it could have been dangerous. Fliss’s pants could have bobbed away from me into seriously deep water. As Miss Walsh pointed out later, when she was ticking me off for being so rash, the pants might’ve caused a major incident, with the coastguard coming out and everything. Can you imagine that ?
    Luckily, though, after a couple of minutesof paddling, I’d reached the pants. I grabbed them and set off back towards where Fliss was crouching.
    “Thanks, Kenny,” she spluttered, taking them from me and wriggling into them underwater. “I really, really owe you for this one!”
    When we both got out of the water, we found that Rosie had managed to do her kneeling thing again, and was grinning away, pleased as anything. Alana, on the other hand, was sitting slumped on the sand with a piece of seaweed stuck in her hair, looking as miserable and bedraggled as one of Lyndz’s cats when they’ve just been given a bath.
    “Come on, Alana,” Bethany was saying, patting her on the shoulder. “You were doing really well that last time. You’ve so nearly got it.”
    Alana shook her head. “It’s too hard,” she said. “I want to do volleyball.” I think she’d swallowed even more water than me, so I did feel quite sorry for her.
    “Bethany – can’t you show us how it’s really done?” said Frankie. “I mean – it’s a bit hard for us to imagine when we’ve never seen any proper surfing.” The ‘real surfers’ down at the other end of the beach were too far away for us to see them except as blobs – with different coloured blobs for surfboards.
    “Hey, yeah – please!” I said. “It’d be ace!”
    Bethany didn’t look at all keen. But I think being surrounded by five pleading faces – no, make that six: even Alana Banana looked interested – was more than she could resist. She heaved her shoulders up in a big sigh. “Well, I guess it might be an idea…”
    “Yeeeeesssss!”
    Unfortunately, our shouting had got the attention of Rude Jude (as Frankie called him) and the other group, and as Bethany strode out into the water, her board under her arm, the whole lot of them turned and stared.
    “Don’t look round, don’t look round,” I muttered to myself as I watched Bethany. I was pretty certain, having seen the tension earlierbetween her and Jude, that if Bethany knew she had an audience, she would go off the whole idea quicker than you could say “wipe out”. (Which is the surfing term for falling off your board, by the way. Cool, huh?)
    Luckily, Bethany didn’t look round.
    Lying flat on her board, she paddled out so that she could get a longer run in to the beach than we’d had. Then she turned and let a wave catch her board just perfectly. In one graceful movement, she stood up and came surfing straight in towards us. It was awesome.
    We whooped and cheered as Bethany came out of the water. As we clustered round her, Lyndz nudged me and whispered, “Hey – check out Rude Jude.” I turned. He was wading out into the water with his board under his arm.
    “Copy cat,” I said.
    Lyndz nodded. “Bet he’s going to do something really show-offy.” She snorted. “Typical boy .” And since Lyndz has four brothers, she should know!
    Soon Bethany and the others saw that we were watching something and turned to look too. It would’ve been better if we’d all ignored Jude, of course, but I was sooo curious, and I bet the others felt the same. I was really hoping