One Perfect Pirouette

by Sherryl Clark

  Our two goal shooters were clearly nervous and missed lots of attempts. Still, at half-time we were ahead by two. During the break, Ricky decided to climb up to the top row and say hello. Of course, Lala giggled.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I said. ‘Shouldn’t you be in class?’

  ‘Nah. Our teacher’s away sick, so the fill-in guy said we could come and watch.’

  I couldn’t resist it. ‘Do you know Jade, from our team?’

  ‘Who? Oh, her. Yeah,’ he scoffed. ‘She lives in my street.’ He pointed to a woman sitting in the front row, centre, with frizzy blonde hair. From here, we could see black roots and the glint of big gold earrings as they swayed from her ears. ‘That’s her mum. Being very, very quiet today. Usually she screams and shouts. Must’ve had a warning, hey?’

  ‘Maybe she’s the reason my mum didn’t take on the coaching job,’ I said.

  ‘Is she a netball coach?’ asked Lala.

  ‘No – basketball.’ I debated briefly with myself about whether I should say more. ‘I told her she should coach you.’

  Ricky’s eyebrows shot up and his hands flexed like he was still holding his beloved ball. ‘Me? I got no team.’

  ‘You could find one,’ I said. ‘I keep telling you you’re good.’

  ‘No, you said I was good at –’ He stopped himself in time, but his face was flushed.

  ‘Good at what?’ Lala asked. She nudged me and giggled. ‘I told you.’

  ‘She’s good at getting me into trouble,’ Ricky said, pointing at me. ‘Gotta go. See ya.’

  He clambered back down to his seat and didn’t look at me again. Luckily, the whistle went for the second half and I could ignore Lala’s laughing eyes. The rest of the game was much like the first half and, with two minutes to go, the score was tied. Even I was sitting on the edge of my seat, cheering, and when Lucy grabbed the ball and threw it to our goal shooter, who put it through the hoop with ten seconds left, we all leapt up and cheered even louder.

  ‘Did we win?’ yelled Lala.

  ‘Yes!’ The big silver cup with blue ribbons tied to its handles was going to make Jade happy. As captain, she accepted it at the prize-giving afterwards, along with a medal for Player of the Match. For once, she laughed with joy. But as we lined up, ready to walk back to school, I saw Jade’s mum talking to a man in a tracksuit and then grabbing Jade by the arm and dragging her over to talk to him, too. Jade was smiling, but it was her old fake smile again.

  We didn’t see her for the rest of the day and, with ballet class that night, I forgot about netball. But on Wednesday morning I found out all about it. The man was the selector for the state Under-14 netball team and Jade had been picked for the selection trials. She was so excited that even I was included in the circle around her, listening to her babble on about what the man said and admiring her medal.

  At the youth hall that afternoon, Ricky helped me with the tables and copied everything I did, but he wasn’t very talkative.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I said. ‘If you’re sick of dancing with me, you don’t have to, you know.’

  ‘No, it’s fine,’ he said. ‘Keeps me fit. You’re looking stronger, too.’

  ‘I hope so. I’ve got classes three days a week, plus three afternoons here with you, and now everyone in our family is lifting weights and running. Well, me and Mum don’t run; we walk fast.’ Orrin left us all way behind, but it was fun working out with them. More fun than I’d expected.

  ‘Cool.’ That was all he said and, once we’d put the tables back, he said goodbye and left. I walked home alone in the thick, gloomy dusk, wondering if I’d upset him yesterday at the game. Surely he would’ve said. Fog was rolling in across the park and I shivered, sped up to jogging pace and got back to a warm, lit-up house. Mum was in the lounge room, lifting her legs up and down with small weight belts attached to them.

  She passed me the local newspaper, folded open to the sports page. ‘Is that your friend’s team?’

  Who – Jade? I read the small ad in the corner. Coach wanted for Under-16 basketball team. She must mean Ricky. ‘I don’t know. He said he didn’t have a team anymore.’

  ‘I’ve rung that number,’ she said, puffing slightly. ‘It sounds like his team – didn’t you say their venue burnt down? That’s what the man on the phone said.’

  ‘You rang up?’

  ‘Why not? I’m still interested in doing something like that, if they have crowd control for the parents. The high school has agreed finally to let them use the gym there.’

  ‘Good. I think.’ Was that why Ricky was so quiet? He was going to dump me and go back to basketball?

  chapter 20

  Only six classes to go before the NBS audition, but who was counting? Me. Nobody dared to complain or groan in front of Ms Ellergren, but grumbles in the changing room were growing. There was no dancing in the intensive classes at all, only going over and over the same stuff on positions and steps and jetés and everything we all knew backwards. But Ms Ellergren seemed obsessed with absolute perfection, and we all felt more and more like an army regiment in every class.

  It didn’t bother me as much as the others – I knew I still had a lot of work to do on my arms. Ms Ellergren reprimanded me about it at least three times each class, and I’d had nightmares about it, too. Besides, I had my practice in the youth hall with Ricky, where we danced and created our own choreography and had fun. Even doing weights with Mum was fun, too. But the strain was showing on the other girls, especially Stephanie and Danielle.

  I’d put my shoes on and was ready to go into the studio to warm up when they turned up, their whiny voices announcing them before they pushed open the changing room door. ‘It’s totally boring,’ Stephanie said. ‘She can’t tell me the NBS is like this. I’ve been to the public days – they do all kinds of dancing.’

  ‘My legs ache so much I can’t get to sleep,’ moaned Danielle.

  Stephanie sniffed when she saw me. ‘I suppose Miss Perfect here loves the boredom. Too dumb to manage anything more.’

  ‘There’s no dancing in the NBS audition,’ I said. ‘It’s like a class. We’ve got to show we know the groundwork.’

  ‘Oohh, groundwork. Where did you learn that big word?’ Stephanie flipped her fingers at me.

  I could hear Mum saying, She’s not worth wasting your time on, so I scooted round to the door and left them sniggering behind me. In the studio, it took me a few minutes to calm down. My hands kept clenching, wanting to punch Stephanie in the face, and my legs felt jerky. I had to calm down, breathe. When class began, I’d settled down enough to concentrate, although I could still feel the anger seething away inside me and it actually energised me more. Several times, Ms Ellergren commended me on a jeté or an arabesque, and even my pirouettes earned me a smile.

  But for every good mark she gave me, Stephanie’s face darkened a bit more, and I dreaded facing her after class. As soon as we’d finished, I headed for the door, but Ms Ellergren called me back. ‘Go and change,’ she said, ‘and then I want to talk to you.’

  Stephanie had hung back to listen and now she glared at me and stalked away. In the changing room, she’d obviously said something nasty just before I walked in – I was greeted by silence, and Antoinette and Kate wouldn’t look at me. I changed quickly, packed my bag and tucked it under the bench before returning to the studio. What did Ms Ellergren want? Was it me? Wasn’t I doing well enough? Or wasn’t Orrin cleaning the studio properly?

  Ms Ellergren was reading some papers, which she put down on the piano before smiling at me. Two smiles in one day! ‘I have been given the schedule for the NBS auditions,’ she said. ‘Your appointment is on the final day, Friday.’

  ‘I’ll tell Mum,’ I said.

  ‘You’ll get a letter yourself, but you also need to give your mother these.’ She handed me the papers. ‘This is information about scholarships and bursaries. After watching you for the past few weeks, I have a very strong feeling that you will be selected, my dear.�
�

  ‘Really?’ I gulped and coughed. I was so astonished I could hardly speak.

  She smiled again. ‘Yes, really. But it’s not just about your dancing. Has anyone explained about the physical analysis?’

  I nodded. ‘Mrs Calzotti said they examine your body and test things like your hip rotation and flexibility, and your Achilles tendons.’

  ‘Exactly. That is a huge part of it. If your body isn’t made for the extremely high level of dance expertise required, there’s no point in their accepting you.’ She held out her hand. ‘Give me your foot.’ I did as she asked and she told me to arch and flex it a few times while she held and stretched it more. ‘Good. Now –’ She let me stand again and gazed at me thoughtfully.

  ‘Is there something wrong?’

  Why was I here? Despite everything, was she about to tell me I was wasting my time?

  ‘A ballet dancer needs more than the right body and perfection in the basics. What I see in you, Brynna, is the artist with a soul, but it needs more nurturing. Do you practise outside class time?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Your technique is very good now – I can see you’ve been working hard. What I want you to concentrate on is the poetry and music in your dancing. Save technique for this class. Explore yourself through experimenting and dancing. Use Swan Lake or one of the other ballets, play the music and feel your way into responding to it.’ She tilted her head. ‘That’s all. See you on Saturday.’

  I left the studio, a bit dazed, her words whirling through my head. The changing room was empty and I barely noticed that my bag was on top of the bench instead of under it. Mum was waiting outside for me. As we drove home, I chatted to her, but my brain was on another planet. It wasn’t until I unpacked my bag in my bedroom that I realised something was wrong with my ballet shoes. The ribbons were missing, but it was more than that. I held them up in horror. Someone had cut big holes in them, holes that would be impossible to repair.

  ‘Mum!’

  My scream held all my dismay and hurt and panic. She came running. ‘What? Are you hurt? Did you fall?’

  With the tears rolling down my face, I showed her my shoes. ‘They’re ruined!’

  Her mouth simply gaped. She stared at the shoes as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. ‘Who on earth did that?’

  ‘Stephanie.’ Who else would be so vindictive?

  She grabbed them from me. ‘Right,’ she said grimly. ‘What’s this girl’s surname? I need to have a few words with her mother.’

  Mum angry wasn’t something you wanted to experience, and one part of me loved the idea of her paying out on Stephanie and her mother, but another part said Stop. ‘There’s no point. It’ll only make her happy that she’s upset me.’

  ‘I can’t let this go, Brynna. I did it once before and it messed things up for years.’

  ‘What do you mean? What happened?’ Here it was, the secret again, the extra thing she’d never told me. Was she going to tell me now?

  She sat heavily on my bed, gripping my shoes as if they were stress balls. ‘The Olympic team. Why I never went to Seoul.’

  ‘You were injured,’ I said. ‘Of course you’d be upset about it.’

  She shook her head. ‘It was more than that. The accident on the court – it wasn’t an accident. The other girl didn’t trip and fall on my leg. She did it on purpose. She saw I’d landed awkwardly with my leg out and she pretended to trip.’

  I stared at Mum and my heart stopped for a moment, then banged in my chest so loudly that it gave me a fright. I gasped. ‘Did they ban her? Did she get penalised?’

  ‘No,’ she snorted. ‘She was all over me with apologies and they believed her.’

  ‘How could she live with it?’ I said. ‘She stopped you from competing in the Olympics!’

  ‘She lived with it just fine. She went to the trials and made the team.’

  Finally I understood what Mum was talking about – that some people would do anything to get what they wanted. A deep, dark chill ran through me. ‘Are you saying that Stephanie might do something like that to me? If we don’t tell her mum?’

  ‘Yes. This has to stop now, before she does worse. I have no doubt her mother will deny it – she might even be spurring her on – but by speaking out, we let them know we’ll fight back.’

  ‘Did you fight back?’ I asked her, hoping she wouldn’t be mad with me.

  ‘No.’ Mum held up my ruined shoes. ‘I didn’t want to look like I was sour-graping. But instead it ate away at me for years and destroyed my love of the game. If I’d said something then, made an official complaint – because I did have supporters who agreed with me – then at least I would’ve dealt with it, instead of shoving it aside.’

  I looked at the ruined shoes. They were nothing compared to a broken leg. ‘But you did keep playing.’

  ‘Not really. The woman moved to Bendigo and I couldn’t bear to be on the same court as her. I chickened out. Stupid me.’

  I’d never heard Mum talk like this before, but now I began to understand all the things she’d said to me, what lay behind them. More than ever, I didn’t want to let her down. ‘Okay, let’s do it.’

  Needless to say, Stephanie’s mum was abusive on the phone, denied it all and said I was just jealous of Stephanie. But Mum had the last word. ‘I’ll be keeping these shoes as evidence. If I see any more of this kind of behaviour directed at Brynna, I’ll make damn sure your daughter is expelled from Ms Ellergren’s school. You can bet on it!’ And she slammed down the phone.

  ‘There,’ she said to me. ‘Done.’

  I hugged her again, and knew that somehow Mum had just blasted a demon of her own into outer space.

  chapter 21

  I was half-expecting Ricky not to turn up at the youth hall the following afternoon, but he was there and full of energy with his basketball tucked under his arm.

  ‘You want to dance or shoot hoops?’ I said.

  ‘Dance! Basketball’s tomorrow night.’

  ‘You mean your old team’s back together?’

  ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘This’ll be a new team and the rumour is that we’re getting a new coach. I didn’t think anyone would want to coach a team from round here.’

  I hesitated. Mum hadn’t actually said she was applying for the job. Besides, if she did get the coaching gig, she mightn’t want me saying who she was. It felt weird, seeing her become this person who was an expert in something other than being Mum, but I didn’t want to mess it up for her. ‘So, are we dancing or not?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He looked sheepish.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I brought some music.’ He pulled a mess of cords and little boxes out of the front of his jacket. ‘See? iPod and speakers.’

  ‘Those tiny things will be loud enough?’

  ‘Sure. Wait and see.’

  ‘Okay. Let’s warm up first.’ What kind of music did he think we were going to dance to? Rap? Hip-hop? He’d have a good laugh at me when he discovered I had no idea how to dance to those things. I’d have to wait and see what it was.

  Having to force my feet into my old shoes was horrible, but they were all I had. Luckily I hadn’t grown any more, so it was the familiar pinching I was used to. I sighed and tied my ribbons, trying not to think about my damaged shoes. We went through all the barre and centre exercises, then he set up the little iPod unit and pressed Play. I nearly fell over when Swan Lake burst out of the speakers.

  ‘Where did you get that from?’

  He grinned. ‘Off the internet.’

  ‘It’s my favourite!’

  ‘Cool. So, what’ll we do?’ He stood there, waiting for me to lead the way. I’d watched the ballet on video lots of times and knew the story and what each dance was about – I’d even pretended to dance some of them myself, in front of the TV, when no one else was home.

  ‘I’ll dance what I can,’ I said, ‘and maybe you follow me. But a lot of the real ballet is on pointe, whic
h I can’t do.’

  He nodded and waited, watching me position myself at the side of the room. I felt so stupid, trying to be a ballerina in Swan Lake, of all things! But Ricky was totally serious about giving it a go, and I remembered what Ms Ellergren had said. It didn’t matter if the steps were the same as I’d seen – all I had to do was let the music take me. After a few minutes, I watched him and realised that’s what he was doing. He’d given up copying, and was just dancing whatever he felt like. There wasn’t much ballet in it, but his rhythm and grace left me gobsmacked. If I could capture some of that, Ms Ellergren would be smiling, for sure.

  Ricky stopped at the end of the room. ‘Aren’t we supposed to dance together?’ he said, puffing. ‘You know, you do those turn things and I hold your arm and stuff?’

  ‘A lot of it is the male and female together, only there are two different girls in it. It takes a long time to learn to dance together like that.’ I sat down to rest, too, for a few moments. ‘You usually have a choreographer, who shows you what the steps are and how to put it all together.’

  ‘Why are there two different girls?’

  ‘Do you know the story?’ He shook his head. ‘Odette is the main ballerina. In the story, she’s got a curse on her, so in the daytime she’s a swan and at night she turns back into a woman again. This prince comes along and falls in love with her, but he can’t break the curse until he declares his love and the sorcerer stops him. Then the sorcerer makes up a fake Odette called Odille, and sends her along to trick the prince.’

  ‘Whoa, I can see this is not going to end happily.’

  ‘You’re right – it doesn’t. The prince announces his marriage to the wrong one, Odille, and then because the curse can’t be broken, the prince and Odette both drown themselves in the lake.’ I laughed at his expression. ‘Don’t be too sad. It’s a beautiful ballet, my favourite.’