With Warm Regards, Franny

by Ben Chambers

  I wasn’t really too interested in hearing about those people, so I sort of interrupted her. I just said to her, “Do you think maybe I could come back and be a ballet teacher at your dance school?” I sort of blurted it out while she was in the middle of talking. It was very rude of me, but I guess I didn’t really think it through at the time. I think Margaret hardly even heard me, too, because she didn’t say anything. But then she eventually understood what I had said.

  “A ballet teacher?” she said. “But you—did you continue your studies elsewhere after leaving my academy?”

  “Oh, no. I didn’t.”

  “But, Franny. You only studied for a few years, didn’t you? You left when you were about fourteen.”

  I realise I was probably very dumb to even think about asking her for a job. But for some reason I couldn’t let go of the idea. “I know. But I thought that maybe if you kept giving me some lessons, I could become very good at it. I had a lot of fun when I was little, and I thought maybe it could be a lot of fun again. I thought maybe I could even teach all the little girls, and they would really enjoy themselves too.”

  The only thing was that I didn’t want to wear any dresses or things any more. I thought dancing would be quite fun again, but I still didn’t want to dress up anymore. But I didn’t think it would matter. The dance teachers never wore tutus and things, unless they wanted to. They just wore some nice comfortable clothes for teaching in.

  “Franny, I—” she said. “I’m sorry, but it just doesn’t work like that. You have to study ballet for a long time to be qualified to teach. Most people who teach have completed vocational grading.”

  I was very disappointed when she said that. I’m not sure why, but I sort of thought she would just say yes when I first got the idea. I sort of thought I had it all figured out. I could just work for her and have a lot of fun doing it. I didn’t have to work for her forever, but I thought I could at least do it for a few years. And then I would have plenty of time to figure out what I wanted to do after that.

  So then I said, “Could I maybe just come and help you look after the little kids then? Even if I don’t teach them ballet. Could I just come and help out? I could maybe clean the mirrors?” Dance studios always have these big mirrors along the walls to help you see yourself when you’re dancing. It’s very important to be able to see what you’re doing so you can keep checking your form. And those mirrors always get so dirty. There’s always a lot of smudge marks and things from when people accidentally rub up against it. And they take a long time to clean. So I thought I could be quite useful if I did that. “And I could help the girls put on their little shoes and things?”

  “I’m really sorry, Franny, but I’m just not looking for any new employees at the moment. We’ve got four full-time staff already, and it’s hard even to maintain them.”

  But I didn’t really hear her. I was thinking about all those little kids trying to put on their ballet shoes. It’s always so hard to get those things on, and kids struggle all the time. I remember how much trouble I used to have. I thought maybe when all the little girls got really sore feet, from all the ballet, I could help them out. You actually have to have very tough feet to do ballet, even as a kid. From standing on your tippy toes all the time, it gets very sore. And sometimes, even your toes would bleed. I thought about how awful it was that all those little kids’ feet would bleed. And that they might want to cry, because it hurts a lot. They would be very sad and in pain, but they try to act brave and look very pretty, because they want to be beautiful ballerinas. Just like all the stupid fairy tales they hear all the time.

  But I didn’t bother saying any of that to Margaret. I could see she was just sitting there, sort of shaking her head, as if she knew I wanted to keep asking her for a job, and she would just keep saying no. I just kind of started feeling very bored then. I didn’t really feel too angry or sad or anything anymore. I just felt very bored of the whole thing. I didn’t want to listen to her lecturing me anymore or even be in that house anymore. She asked me something about what sort of other employment I was interested in, but I didn’t want to answer her.

  “Thanks, Margaret, but I actually have to get going,” I said.

  “Oh, you do? Are you sure? If you like, I could make us some afternoon tea. I bought these beautiful little—”

  “Yeah, I have to go now. But thanks anyway.” I started to get up, and Millie rubbed up against my leg again. I gave her another scratch on the head and then headed for the door.

  “Oh well. That’s all right, Franny,” Margaret said. She was following me into the hallway. “It was lovely to see you.” I went towards the front door. I was very bored of her then. I didn’t feel like chatting anymore. We were standing by the door and she said, “Make sure you come back again soon. And bring your parents with you as well; I’d love to catch up with them.” I could see she was starting to lean in to give me a hug, but I didn’t feel even a tiny bit like giving her a hug. I sort of ducked to the side a little bit and opened the front door very quickly.

  “Goodbye,” I said, and went out. I pulled the door closed behind me. I ran down the stone steps, skipping two at a time. I had quite a lot of fun running down those steps. I’m not sure why; I think maybe it’s because I’m usually very careful with things like that and always take them slowly. But I ran down those ones very fast. It was also because I imagined this very silly thing. I sort of imagined it was a big spooky haunted house and that there was a monster chasing me down the steps. I imagined it was right behind me with a big nasty claw stretching out ready to grab me. But I was too quick for it. I was sprinting down those steps very fast, and it couldn’t catch up. Then I ran out through the gate very quickly. My heart was even beating quite fast, too. It was a lot of fun.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I started walking to Newmarket. It’s this shopping area that’s not too far from where I was. I thought maybe I could watch a movie. I wasn’t sure what movies would be playing, but I figured I could at least watch something. When I got there, there were a lot of teenage kids around. They were all hanging out. The problem, though, was that Newmarket was the place where all the horrible rich kids hang out, the ones who come from very wealthy families. They always looked very obnoxious. It’s especially bad on a school day, because then there are hundreds of them, all in uniform, all over the place.

  Just thinking about that made me remember the horrible time that I had to spend in high school. There was one thing that happened during high school, though, that was actually the worst of all. I started feeling embarrassed even just thinking about it. One day I was leaving school, and I was walking out the front gate. But then right outside the front gate, there was this group of students who were all gathered out there. I could see that they had a little stall set up that was asking people to sign a petition to stop animal cruelty. I think it was for testing makeup and chemicals on rabbits or something. And I could see before I even got there that they were going up to every student and asking them to sign the petition. I knew that they were eventually going to ask me, too. I started getting worried and was looking everywhere for another way to go. But I had to go out that gate to get to my house. I always walked that way. So I eventually went through, and of course, a girl came up to me and said, “Hey would you like to sign this petition to stop animal cruelty?” But there was only one problem. It’s that I didn’t even have a signature at the time. I had been spending many years trying to design the perfect signature, so that I could practice it a lot before I became an adult. Because when you’re an adult, you always have to sign a lot of things all the time. But I didn’t have my signature perfected at that point, and so it was impossible for me to sign anything.

  So I just said, “Oh, no, thank you.”

  But then she straight away said, “Do you like people torturing animals?”

  She was so stupid. Of course I didn’t like it! But I didn’t have my signature ready yet! There was nothing I could do about it. But a whole lot
of people had stopped and started looking at me. Because they were all signing the petition, but I didn’t want to. All I said was, “Sorry, no.” And started to try to walk through the crowd of people. But then she was sort of following me, asking me all these questions about chemicals and animals, and then even more people started looking at me. It made me very embarrassed and nervous, so I started running. I was trying to get away as quickly as possible, and I didn’t even look when I ran across the road and a car came right up and hit me! I kind of bounced off the front of the car and flew through the air. That part wasn’t so bad. The horrible part was when I landed on the ground, my whole skirt got pushed up, and everyone saw my undies! I was wearing these Superman undies; I couldn’t believe it! I hardly ever wore those ones, but I decided to that day for some reason. I don’t even know why. I just got straight up and ran all the way home. It was the most embarrassing thing of my life.

  I kept on walking through Newmarket when I came across this ice cream store. I’d been there quite a few times in my life with my parents, but I hadn’t been to it in quite a long time. They had this very delicious ice cream that they sold in there. I love ice cream. Especially chocolate ice cream, that’s my favourite. I think I’m normally a pretty tidy eater. But not when it’s ice cream. It’s really crazy, but when I eat chocolate ice cream, I go into this trance or something. I’ll close my eyes and not even notice anything except the ice cream that I’m eating. Sometimes people will talk to me or even tap me on the shoulder or any other thing, but I won’t hear them at all. The only thing I’ll even notice is my ice cream. It’s funny, because sometimes when I’m done, I’ll look down and notice that I even accidentally dropped some of it onto my top or jumper that I’m wearing. There will be these little blobs of chocolate ice cream there, and I’ll just laugh and think it’s very silly. But luckily, I am very good at washing clothing. My mum taught me how to wash clothes very well from a young age. It was actually quite nice of her, to teach me that. So I never worry about getting ice cream stains on my clothes, because I can always wash it out perfectly every time. What I’ll do is, I will spot clean it. It’s this very special secret technique that I know of. What you do is you find the spot that has the stain on it, and you dab a little bit of water onto it with a little cloth. Then you get a small pinch of washing powder and sprinkle it over the stain. Then you get a little brush. The best thing is a toothbrush. I have a special toothbrush that I use just for cleaning. I never brush my teeth with it or anything; that would probably taste pretty gross. I have a different toothbrush for that. But you gently scrub the stained patch with the toothbrush. After that’s been done, you rinse away all the washing powder with some water. Then finally you just dab the wet patch with a nice dry towel. Once you let it fully dry for a day, it’s all fixed.

  I decided I wanted to go into the ice cream shop. The only problem was that it was very crowded in there. I guess everyone sort of loves ice cream. But I really wanted to get some, so I decided that I would just have to be very brave. I went through the door, and it was so busy. It was packed to the rafters! That’s something that my dad used to say. I tried to get in the line, but there was hardly any real line at all. It was kind of just a big mess of people trying to get to the front. So I joined on to the back and started waiting. It smelled very nice in there. Like lots of sugar and waffle cones. I love waffle cones. I almost never even eat ice cream any more unless I can get it in a waffle cone.

  While I was standing there, a woman came and pushed past me and about three other people. She just cut right in! She just kind of stuck her elbows between people and dug her way through. I couldn’t believe someone could be so horrible like that. And no one even seemed to stop her. She just pushed her way in, and the people kind of shuffled out of the way a bit. Maybe they gave her a quick little look. A quick evil eye. But then they didn’t say anything. I thought it was terrible that she could get away with doing that kind of thing.

  What I really wanted to do was tell her off. I wanted to go up to her and tap her on the shoulder, and then, very loudly, so everyone could her me, say, “Excuse me, ma’am.” Then she would turn around and she’d look very nasty. Like a big ugly ogre. But I wouldn’t be scared at all. I’d just say, “You can’t cut in line. You’ll have to go right to the very back and wait your turn, just like everybody else.” She would give me this very angry look then and stare right at me. But I wouldn’t be afraid at all. I’d just stare right back at her. And then, eventually, she’d start to turn, and walk to the back of the line. Everyone would be very pleased that someone as brave as me was there to stand up to her. They might even start clapping. Maybe the whole crowd would start applauding, just for me. And I’d stand there with my hands on my hips, and I’d be very proud of myself.

  But there’s no way I could really do that. So I just decided to leave instead. I didn’t really feel like ice cream any more. When I got outside the cinema, I saw they had this big sign saying, ‘Staff Wanted’. I thought it would be pretty cool to work at the movies. You just get to give people tickets and drinks and ice creams. And probably, when no one was looking, you could even secretly scoop out a handful of popcorn right from the machine and eat it right there. I thought for a moment about applying for a job there. I’d actually applied to work at a movie theatre once before, when I was about sixteen. Not that one though, a different one. The one in the city. But then I thought that I probably shouldn’t apply, since my application went so badly last time.

  I used to go to the city movie theatre practically every day with my dad. We would usually go on a Tuesday and then sometimes a Friday, too. Tuesday, because it was half-price tickets, and Friday because it was the end of the week, and we wanted to celebrate. We would always watch almost any movie that we felt like. Even if we’d already seen it before. It was great. My mum would sometimes come with us too. But not that often. She said she didn’t like how loud the movies were. Which I guess I could understand; they were quite loud. But when it was the movies, I didn’t care how loud they were. Once I even wondered if they could turn it up even louder, just so I couldn’t hear anything else other than the movie. I wondered about that because every now and again, there would be some very annoying people in the movie theatre. Annoying people who would talk or eat food very loudly or shuffle around in their seat too much or any other annoying thing that they would do. Mostly it was pretty good there, and me and my dad could just watch the movie. But sometimes other people ruined it. Normally though, if I heard someone being very loud behind me, I would turn around and give them this very evil stare. I would peer right over the top of my seat and stare at them very angrily for about ten seconds. I was even willing to miss some of the movie just to make sure they would shut up. Sometimes that worked, which always made me feel very proud. It actually made me feel quite tough, too. But sometimes they just ignored me and kept talking anyway. Luckily, my dad was very awesome, though. He’d stand right up and lean over the whole movie theatre and tell them to shut up. It was great when he did that. I’ve never even once heard anyone keep talking after my dad told them to shut up.

  But we used to go to that theatre all the time, ever since I was a little kid. And I even got to know lots of the people who worked there. I wasn’t too scared to talk to them, because I was always too excited about going to the movies, so I didn’t even notice about being shy. When I was young, I would run right up and tell them all the tickets and food and drinks that I wanted, and they would bring it right to me. Then I might even tell them how excited I was to see the movie. They all got to know me very well, too, because I would talk to them so often.

  But then one day, when I was about fifteen, me and my dad were going to see a movie. When I went up to get the tickets, this one lady that had worked there for about ten years told me that they were looking to employ a new person to work some evenings during the week. She said that she thought if I applied, I would definitely get the job, since I had been going there so long.

  I was
pretty excited about that, actually. I thought it could be quite a bit of fun. So I got my parents to help me write my application, and I went to hand it in. The only problem was that when I went there to give it to the manager, he told me straight away that we could sit down for an interview. I thought I would just hand in my application, and then he might call me maybe a week later to tell me that I got the job. I wasn’t expecting to have an interview straight away like that, so it really caught me off guard. I said okay, because I didn’t know what else I could do.

  But then, right away, I knew it was a mistake. I started feeling very light headed and was getting very dizzy. I think I was quite nervous. We went into his office, and he gave me a chair to sit on. His office had that red carpet, just like in the movie theatre, and it almost made the whole room glow red. He started asking me questions, but I was feeling very dizzy and kind of sick. I was trying to answer him, but I couldn’t really understand anything that was happening, I was so nervous. I didn’t even remember it, but he told me later that I started wobbling around in my chair and then just fell over onto the floor. I woke up a few seconds later because I felt my nose bleeding everywhere. I don’t know if I hit it when I fell or what. I sometimes get nosebleeds like that quite a lot though, when I’m feeling dizzy. He was very scared when I woke up; he was asking me in a very scared voice if he should call an ambulance. I told him that I was fine, because I was feeling very embarrassed. I just got up and said I had to go home and went straight out of the movie theatre.

  It was a terrible experience. It made me kind of hate applying for jobs ever again. But he was very nice about it, at least. He called me at home a few hours later and asked if I was okay. He said that I shouldn’t worry and that he would still really like me to work at the cinema, because he had known me for so many years and said I was a nice girl. But I just told him that I actually didn’t want to work there anymore. I just said I had too much schoolwork and that I didn’t have time. I was actually just too embarrassed. After that, I always sent my dad to the counter to get the tickets for me. I didn’t really want them to see me anymore.