Dance-off!

by Harriet Castor

  We’d blurted it out as soon as we’d got to the bins, and now Frankie, Kenny and Fliss were looking at us like we’d just told them the world was going to end in five minutes. Lyndz and I were both panting from having run so fast, but the others were breathing through their mouths too, because the bins smelt so disgusting. Meeting by the bins wasn’t half pongy, but it was brilliant when you wanted to keep something secret, as no one usually liked to hang around there.

  “But it’s a dance competition not, like, a fight or anything!” said Fliss.

  “Durr! They don’t mean a weapon weapon,” said Frankie impatiently. “It must be some mega-amazing idea for their routine.”

  “We’re doomed!” said Lyndz.

  “Don’t be so wet,” growled Kenny. “We haven’t even started yet. Come on, guys. Don’t let them rattle us.”

  “We need to arrange a proper rehearsal,” said Fliss, “so we can make up our routine. Break time isn’t enough.”

  “OK, so what about this weekend?” suggested Kenny. “Saturday, for instance? We could spend the whole day on it.”

  “Mmm.” I frowned. “I’ve got to go to Safeway’s with my mum in the morning. I can’t get out of it. She needs a hand, especially since Adam’s decided to come with us this week.”

  “And I’ll be at the stables in the morning,” said Lyndz.

  “The afternoon, then?” said Frankie. “We need somewhere with lots of space. It’s a shame it’s too cold to rehearse outside.”

  “Don’t even think about it,” said Fliss, shivering and hopping about from one foot to the other. I think Fliss must be more delicate than the rest of us. She really suffers, having to be outside at break time in the winter.

  “How are you going to manage on holiday, Fliss, being out on the ski slopes all day?” I asked.

  “Oh, I’ll be fine,” said Fliss confidently. “On Saturday my mum bought me some gorgeous pink salopets.”

  “What are salo—… salo—… whatever you said?” spluttered Kenny.

  “It’s this dead cool jumpsuit that’s padded, kind of like a sleeping bag,” said Fliss.

  Kenny pulled a face. “Sounds sooo elegant – not!”

  “They are, too!” Fliss insisted.

  Suddenly the bell went.

  “OK, guys!” said Lyndz quickly, holding up her hands like a referee. “Decision time. This rehearsal. How about we have it at my house on Saturday afternoon? I’ll need to ask permission, but I don’t suppose Mum and Dad’ll mind. We could use the sitting room. It’s pretty big when you push all the furniture back.”

  “That’d be perfect,” said Frankie, writing it down.

  A few moments later, when we were lining up, ready to troop back into the classroom, I whispered to Lyndz, “I still wish we knew what the M&Ms were up to. I wish we could read their minds.”

  Lyndz nodded. Then she said, “Hey, maybe we could! If we all sat round a table and concentrated really hard, and held hands and things…”

  “Yeuch!” whispered Frankie. “Can you imagine all the rubbish that’s swilling round in those two saddos’ skulls? Wading through that stuff would be like going through those stinky bins with our bare hands.”

  Lyndz and I giggled. “Gross!”

  Have you ever been to Lyndz’s house? It’s a crazy place! Lyndz’s dad is doing it up. He’s even moving whole rooms and staircases and things. Only, he’s been doing it up ever since I’ve been friends with Lyndz, and he never seems nearer to finishing. Whenever I go round to Lyndz’s house, I expect the unexpected. I don’t think I’d be surprised to see the front door half way up the wall!

  It was an ace venue for our Sleepoverbabes rehearsal, though, because I knew we’d be able to leap about and Lyndz’s mum and dad wouldn’t mind. There’s always so much building grunge in the house that there’s no way they can be precious and tell you to sit still in case you mess the place up.

  When I got there, Lyndz had already lugged the sitting-room furniture to the edges of the room, with the help of her older brothers, Stuart and Tom.

  “They’re not going to stay and watch, are they?” I hissed to Lyndz. I knew I’d feel really shy, rehearsing in front of them.

  “No way!” Lyndz hissed back. “A complete Brother Ban will be in force this afternoon.”

  Which was a good job, since Lyndz doesn’t have just those two older brothers – she has two younger ones as well!

  A few minutes later Fliss made a grand entrance waving a dvd. “Guess what?” she said. “Girls Aloud were on TV this morning and they did a seriously awesome routine. I recorded it.”

  “Why don’t we start off watching that, then?” suggested Lyndz. “To see if we can get some ideas.”

  Fliss was right, the routine was awesome. But it was one thing to watch it and go “Wow!”, and quite another to work out exactly how to do the steps. It took us ages just to get two or three. We used the pause button so many times, Lyndz was worried that the dvd player would explode!

  But what we saw gave us ideas of our own, too, and we ended up with loads of fab moves. There was the bum wiggle, for instance, and the shoulder pop, the kick-and-turn, and the ‘cross your heart’, named by Frankie (which involved sticking your hands out in front of you – right, left – and then crossing them – right, left – on your chest).

  “We are so cool!” giggled Frankie, as she and Fliss did a sequence of moves in unison.

  ‘Cool’ might have been the right word to describe the other four but, to be honest, ‘hot and flustered’ was how i felt. I found it so confusing. Sometimes you had to concentrate really hard on moving only one part of your body at a time – your arms, then your shoulders, then your feet – and sometimes you had to move everything at once. I often felt like I had four hands and three feet, at least!

  “I reckon we should do the choruses all together,” said Frankie, “and then, in the verses, one of us comes to the front each time, and does our own thing.”

  “What kind of ‘own thing’?” I asked. Even the idea of standing at the front on my own made my stomach lurch like a rollercoaster ride. I may have played Cinderella in our school panto once, but I still got major stage fright.

  “I’ll help you, Rosie,” said Fliss, who must’ve noticed how worried I was. “Look – why don’t you go: step, kick, shoulder, shoulder, head roll, turn around?” she suggested, doing the moves as she spoke.

  “Errrr…” I said uncertainly. “What was that again?”

  “OK.” Fliss gave a little sigh. “Much slower this time…”

  “Nooooo! Shoulder, shoulder, then head roll!”

  When I’d got it wrong for the seventy-ninth time, I was so frustrated I felt like bursting into tears.

  “You have to do it with attack, Rosie!” said Fliss.

  “What d’you mean?” I said. To tell you the truth, I was a bit annoyed. It was all right for Fliss – she been going to dancing lessons since she was tiny, so she was used to this sort of thing. I felt like I was making a right idiot of myself.

  “Your hands look like wet lettuces! And you’re turning too slowly, like some old biddy!” She demonstrated a shuffling, wobbly turn, and it made the others fall about laughing.

  That was it. I felt this sudden tight anger in my stomach, and my eyes went swimmy with hot tears. “Well, maybe you should all do it without me, then!” I blurted out, and marched out of the room.

  There’s a problem having a strop in someone else’s house: you don’t know where to go. I didn’t dare try upstairs in case I bumped into Tom or Stuart, but when you’ve marched out of a room, you’ve got to march to somewhere, or you’re going to look a real berk. So I stomped through the kitchen (which was empty, thank goodness), and straight out of the back door.

  Bad move. I’d forgotten how cold it would be in the garden. Luckily Lyndz came looking for me straight away.

  “Are you OK?” she said softly, hooking her arm through mine. “Fliss didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “I know.” I man
aged to smile, though my tummy still felt knotty. “I’m fine. I just got a bit frustrated, that’s all.”

  When I got back into the sitting room, Fliss gave my hand a friendly squeeze, and said, “Brilliant! You’ve got it!” when I went through the steps again. Soon I was feeling much better.

  “That’s one majorly cool routine we’ve got there,” said Kenny, when we’d run the whole thing from start to finish, including all the new solos.

  “We are ace, we are cool, we so completely rule!” chanted Frankie, who’d flopped next to Lyndz on the sofa.

  We were cool – but boy, did I have a lot of practising to do at home! Luckily, my bedroom’s quite big, so I could go through my moves without Tiff watching and laughing at me. That would’ve really done for my confidence.

  On Sunday I practised all morning. I was really keen not to let the others down.

  “Rosieeeeeeeee!”

  I was vaguely aware that Tiff was yelling up the stairs, but I was determined to get to the end of the chorus section if it killed me.

  Just as I made it to the end (with, for the first time, no mistakes!!!), my bedroom door was flung open. Tiff’s face appeared, looking annoyed. “Hey, deafo, didn’t you hear? It’s the phone for you.”

  I bounded down the stairs and picked up the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  “Rosie! Thank goodness you’re there,” said Fliss in a weird breathless voice. “There’s been a disaster.”

  “What? What?” I said. I had sudden vague imaginings of someone being hurt – maybe Lyndz had gone riding…“What’s happened?” I almost yelled, clutching the phone so hard my knuckles went white.

  “They’ve changed the flights for our skiing holiday,” said Fliss, in a voice of doom, like she was announcing the end of the world.

  I had to turn my yelp of laughter into a cough. “Oh, um, dear,” I said. “Is it a problem?”

  “That’s only the biggest understatement of the year!” wailed Fliss. “We’re going to have to fly out on the last day of term. I won’t be able to go to the party. We’ll all have to pull out of the competition. Sleepoverbabes is officially cancelled!”

  Friends are tricky, sometimes. I always think it’s odd how someone you really, really like can make you so cross that for a moment you even feel you hate them. Or, sometimes, a friend thinks something you just don’t agree with – but even though you know they’re being silly, you can kind of see how they feel at the same time. Do you know what I mean?

  That was what it was like at school the next week with Fliss. She was really upset that the rest of us were going ahead with the competition without her.

  “What do you expect us to do?” said Kenny. “All go into mourning cos you’re off on some swanky holiday?”

  “Yes,” said Fliss stubbornly. “I didn’t ask to go.”

  “We’d much rather you were there,” said Lyndz soothingly. “Of course we would. It won’t be the same without you.”

  “I can’t believe you’re just going to carry on, like you don’t care!” Fliss’s eyes filled with tears.

  “Oh, get over it,” said Kenny bluntly. I could see she’d lost all patience with Fliss.

  We were in an Art lesson, working on our decorations for the school hall. Of course, since the decorations were for the party, that was what was on everyone’s mind. I could see that for Fliss, it kind of rubbed salt in the wound, as my mum would say. But at the same time I agreed with Kenny. Why did Fliss expect us to bin all our hard work and miss out on the fun of the dance competition just because she was off having an ace time skiing and staying in a posh hotel?

  Still, I was trying to keep out of the argument. I reckoned I’d caused enough trouble, throwing that strop at Lyndz’s house. I kept my head down and concentrated on my paper lantern. I was painting it red, with yellow blobs round the edges. In the middle of the yellow blobs I was going to stick scrunched up cellophane sweet wrappers, to look like jewels. It was going to be cool.

  “Mum said I could have an extra-special sleepover, to make up for missing the party,” said Fliss. “But I’m not sure I want to invite any of you to it, any more.”

  “Fine,” muttered Kenny. “Won’t be much of a sleepover on your own.”

  But a minute later Lyndz said gently, “A sleepover would be so great, Fliss. What kind were you planning? Was it going to have a theme?”

  Fliss nodded, smiling despite herself. “Mum came up with it.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Now Fliss looked positively excited. “Grease,” she said.

  “Grease?” said Kenny. “What d’you mean? Engine oil? Chip fat? What’re you talking about?”

  “Not grease,” said Fliss. “Grease. You know, that film with John Travolta.”

  “Never heard of it,” said Kenny.

  “It is quite old,” said Frankie. “But it’s cool. Me and Mum got it out from Blockbusters once.”

  “It’s set in this American high school in the Fifties,” explained Fliss.

  “Prehistoric,” said Kenny.

  Fliss took no notice. I could see she was really into the idea. “There are these different gangs,” she said. “The girls are called the Pink Ladies and they have pink jackets with writing on the back, and they are so cool—”

  “And the songs are good, too,” put in Frankie, dabbling her paintbrush in the water jar.

  “Anyhow, my mum said we can have all-American food, like popcorn and hot dogs and milkshakes and stuff,” said Fliss.

  “Yummy!” said Lyndz.

  “That’s more like it!” Kenny said, looking brighter.

  “And we all have to dress up,” Fliss added.

  “Well, I’m gonna need some help,” said Kenny. “Since I still don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”

  “It’s like the original High School Musical,” said Frankie, in a sing-song voice you’d use to a baby. “Why don’t you google it?”

  Kenny growled and, picking up her paintbrush, flicked a fine spray of red paint into Frankie’s hair. Frankie squealed; giggling, she did it back, with blue.

  But it wasn’t their lucky day.

  “Francesca and Laura!” thundered Mrs Weaver’s voice. “Outside the door! Now!”

  “Just when the fun was starting,” muttered Kenny with a shrug as she walked past.

  The next Saturday Mum helped me pick out my clothes for Fliss’s sleepover. We chose some light blue leggings, a denim mini that she’d bought me last summer, a long-sleeved T-shirt with a scoop neck, and my flat black pumps. Mum did my hair in a ponytail, and tidied the wisps with a couple of sparkly clips that Tiffany had lent me.

  “Lose them and you’re in big trouble,” Tiff had said. Sisters – charming, huh?

  Now Mum turned me round. “As a finishing touch,” she said, “you should have a neck scarf!” She produced a little silk scarf that Gran had given her once, but that she’d never worn.

  “Mu-um!” I complained. “It’ll look naff!”

  “No, it won’t,” said Mum firmly, fixing it round my neck with the knot at the side. She pulled me over to the mirror. “Look – that’s proper Fifties style, that is.”

  And I had to admit that it did look quite cool.

  Down in the sitting room I did a twirl for Adam, who gave me a big approving grin. Then Mum took me in the car round to Fliss’s.

  When Mrs Sidebotham answered the door I could hardly believe my eyes. She had dressed up too! She was wearing a bright yellow, really full skirt, with loads of petticoats underneath, topped with a wide shiny black belt, which she’d nipped in really tightly to make her waist look dead small. Her clingy top was yellow, to match the skirt, and she had her hair in a ponytail like mine. But it was her feet that surprised me the most. Have you ever seen a mum in frilly ankle socks? Well, that’s just what Mrs Sidebotham had on, plus a pair of white pumps that were so clean they looked like she’d gone over them with toothpaste.

  “You look great, Mrs Sidebotham!” I said as
I took off my coat.

  “That’s very sweet of you, Rosie,” replied Fliss’s mum, patting her hair. As I bent down to take off my shoes (it’s one of the rules of Fliss’s house: no shoes indoors) she added, “As a special concession you can keep your shoes on today. I realise that they’re part of your costume.”

  In the sitting room I discovered Fliss, looking like an exact replica of her mum, except that her top and skirt were pink. Kenny was there too, in a Leicester City shirt (surprise, surprise), and jeans.

  “Nice outfit, McKenzie,” I laughed.

  “Blue jeans are very Fifties,” she said. “Apparently.”

  When Lyndz arrived it turned out she was in jeans too, and a leather jacket that Tom had lent her. I could tell Fliss was a bit disappointed – she had hoped everyone would wear girly things, like her. So it was a relief when Frankie turned up in a madly flowery dress, with bangles on her wrists and her hair in bunches.

  “Dad spotted the dress in a charity-shop window,” she said, holding the skirt out to the sides and doing a wobbly curtsey.

  Just then Andy, Fliss’s Mum’s boyfriend, came in with a tray of luscious-looking milkshakes and we all cheered.

  When he’d gone, Frankie said, “Fliss, I don’t mean to be funny, but what’s happened to Andy’s hair?”

  Fliss giggled. “Mum made him put loads of Brylcreem in it and comb it into a quiff,” she said.

  The rest of us looked at each other in puzzlement, then we suddenly cottoned on. “It’s very Fifties!” we chorused, and then all fell about laughing.

  First off, we watched the film, and it was absolutely, fantastically brilliant. Sandy (the main girl in the film) and her friends even had a sleepover!

  We bopped away to all the songs. Fliss knew most of them off by heart. Sometimes her mum couldn’t resist coming in and bopping too – you could tell the theme for the sleepover had been her idea!

  During the film we’d gorged ourselves on popcorn and Andy’s yummy milkshakes. When it was finished, it was time for hot dogs and hamburgers with loads of mustard and ketchup, which Callum, Fliss’s little brother, managed to smear all down his front. Then it was ice cream, with a choice of chocolate or strawberry sauce out of squeezy bottles. We were all in food heaven, though afterwards we felt so full we had to lie down on the sitting-room floor and have a Grease singalong while our tummies recovered.