Dance-off! (7 page)

“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.

After that Fliss’s mum ordered Callum to bed and the five of us went up to Fliss’s bedroom.

“You know what was great as well in that film?” said Lyndz, sitting down on the spare bed, which Fliss keeps covered with neat rows of about five
hundred and one cuddly toys. “The dancing! That jive competition was cool! Couldn’t we put some of the moves in our routine?”

“Great idea!” exclaimed Frankie. “Hey – we should have a go now while we remember!”

Apprehensively I glanced at Fliss. Up until now, no one had mentioned the dance competition. I figured it was still a sore subject.

But the next minute, Kenny said, “Fliss! You know the film really well. Can you show us some moves?” And straight away Fliss’s expression changed from about-to-turn-grumpy to really keen.
Smart move
,
Kenny
! I thought, feeling relieved.

“Well, for a start there’s hand-jive,” Fliss said, “which means things like this.” And she waggled her hands in front of her, holding each elbow in turn, and then doing something which looked like she was playing ‘One potato, two potato’ with herself.

We all had a go, and after a few false starts even I got some hand-jive moves going pretty well.

Kenny said, “What about those amazing
jumps, when the girl’s legs swing right up?”

Some of the dancing in the film had been pretty acrobatic, with the boys flinging the girls around as if they were rag dolls.

“Oh, it’s
seriously
tricky, that stuff,” said Fliss.

“Let’s have a go!” said Kenny. “That’s
exactly
the sort of thing we should have in our routine. Gobsmackingly brilliant moves that’ll leave the M&Ms gasping!” Fliss was hesitating, so Kenny held out her hands. “Come on!” she coaxed. “Can’t be much harder than a piggyback, can it? I’m pretty strong, and you weigh about as much as one baked bean.”

Which to Fliss – who worries about her weight because she’s dead slim and
bananas
– was a big compliment. “OK, then,” she said. She faced Kenny and put her hands on Kenny’s shoulders. “Hold me round the waist,” she said. “I’m going to do one little bounce, and then jump up with my legs either side of you, right? If you sort of bend forward into it, you can swing me back up into the air before I land.”

Kenny nodded confidently, but I had a sneaking suspicion she didn’t have a clue what Fliss was talking about.

“You sure about this?” Fliss asked. Kenny nodded again.

So Fliss did one little bounce on the spot, then she flung herself towards Kenny as if she were trying to hug her with her legs. Holding Fliss round the waist, Kenny swung forward like she’d been told to, till Fliss’s feet were pointing to the ceiling.

“Er, I’m stuck,” said Kenny in a strangulated voice.

Fliss was giggling. Her head was nearly on the floor. “Just swing me up again!” she said.

“Heeeeaaaaave!” groaned Kenny, putting all her strength into the swing.

She so nearly made it. She pulled Fliss upright again, although she didn’t manage to swing her into the air, as Fliss had suggested. It would have been fine – if only Fliss’s left foot, heading back towards the floor, hadn’t got tangled in a loop of lace from her petticoats.
As she landed, Fliss stumbled, and since her arms were still round Kenny’s neck, she pulled Kenny forward on top of her.

“Aaarrrgghh!”

They landed in a sprawled heap, and for a second Kenny just lay there, shaking with laughter.

“Get up,” said Fliss.

“Hold your horses, I’m not that heavy,” said Kenny.

“Get up!” Fliss screamed. “Get up, get up,
get up
!!!”

Quick as a flash, Kenny scrambled to her feet. “Fliss, are you OK?” she said.

By this time Frankie, Lyndz and I were clustered round her.

“No!” Fliss said, starting to sob. “It’s my ankle. It…” She gasped as she tried to move. “It
really
hurts.”

Together, the four of us managed to pull Fliss up. Her left leg had twisted at a really odd angle under her as she fell. Now Frankie supported her as she hopped to her bed and then half
sat, half lay on it, propped up on her pillows.

“Does it still hurt?” asked Lyndz.

Fliss nodded, biting her lip. “
So
much.”

“We’d better call her mum,” I said to Frankie. But Fliss said, “No – no. It’ll be OK in a minute. I’ll just lie still for a bit.”

“Let’s think,” said Kenny, a determined look on her face. “In football matches, when someone twists their ankle, they put an ice pack on it. D’you have an ice pack, Fliss?”

“I don’t think so,” said Fliss in a small voice. Her ankle obviously hurt – a
lot
.

“Won’t a bag of frozen peas do?” said Frankie.

“Good thinking!” exclaimed Kenny. “I’ll see if I can get to the freezer without anyone seeing me.”

“The freezer’s in the laundry room,” said Fliss with a sob through gritted teeth. “Last door on the right before the kitchen.”

“OK.” Kenny opened Fliss’s bedroom door a crack and looked both ways along the landing. “Coast clear,” she mouthed, and tiptoed out.

By the time Kenny got back, holding the bag
of peas with her sleeves pulled down over her hands, Fliss was sniffing and pointing at her ankle in alarm. “It’s gone all puffy!”

“Here, this’ll stop the swelling,” said Kenny, applying the peas.

Fliss winced at the cold. After a moment she wailed, “But I don’t want a fat ankle!” For the first time since the accident, Kenny laughed.

It’s strange, but sometimes when you’ve had a shock it can make you go giggly afterwards. Soon Kenny was re-enacting what had happened, with lots of exaggerated grimacing, and the rest of us were in hysterics. Even Fliss.

“How does it – hic – feel now?” hiccupped Lyndz.

“Oh, miles better,” said Fliss breezily. She swung her legs off the bed. But the second she tried to stand on her left foot, she fell back again, her face twisted with pain.

“Aaaaaaah!”

“That’s it,” said Frankie. “Fliss. I’m telling your mum right now.”

“OK,” said Fliss in a trembly voice.

It was pandemonium. Fliss’s mum thundered up the stairs and burst into the room like one of those doctors on
ER
racing into the operating theatre.

“My baby! Are you all right?” she screeched.

“Oh, Mummy!” wailed Fliss, suddenly far more upset than she’d been before.

“Tell me exactly what happened,” said Mrs Sidebotham, taking Fliss’s hand and smoothing her hair back, over and over.

While Fliss went through it all in minute detail, Andy shouted up the stairs, “Is everything OK?” about every three seconds. Not surprisingly, the hubbub woke Callum, who came out on to the landing, trailing his blanket and making small grizzling noises. His grizzling got louder when he realised no one was taking the least bit of notice.

“Are you
sure
you can’t stand on it?” Fliss’s mum asked her. Fliss tried again, and yelped with pain.

“OK,” said Mrs Sidebotham, “we’ll have to get you to the hospital.”

“Oh, please,” said Kenny, “may I come too? I want to be a doctor, you see—”

“No, Laura, I think it’s best not,” said Fliss’s mum firmly. She already looked totally stressed. Having Kenny for company would probably have pushed her over the edge.

She looked round at the rest of us, and for one awful moment I thought she was going to burst into tears. But instead she said, “Rosie, Lyndsey – would you go and ask Andy to come up here? Felicity will need carrying down to the car.”

“Yes, Mrs Sidebotham,” said Lyndz and I together, and we raced downstairs.

We told Andy what had happened to Fliss and he dashed up the stairs. A minute later he came down again, much slower this time, carrying Fliss like she was some injured heroine in a film. Mrs Sidebotham opened the front door for them and then we heard the car doors slamming and the engine starting up.

When Andy came back he gave us a wobbly smile and said, “Don’t worry about Fliss,
girls. You go back up to your friends.”

So Lyndz and I slunk back upstairs to Fliss’s bedroom. There we found Kenny and Frankie sitting on Fliss’s bed, and looking as cheerful as two wet weekends.

“What happens now?” I asked.

Frankie shrugged. “We wait, I guess. Fliss’s mum said it was too late to ring any of our parents. So the sleepover’s still on.” She smiled weakly.

“How long d’you think Fliss’ll be at the hospital?” asked Lyndz.

“It could take a while,” said Kenny. “Sometimes there are loads of people in Casualty, and you just have to wait your turn.”

If it hadn’t been so awful it would have been funny, imagining Fliss and her mum waiting in Casualty in matching Fifties outfits, with matching ankle socks and matching blonde ponytails.

But none of us felt much like giggling any more. “Come on,” I said, “we may as well get ready for bed.” So we brushed our teeth and changed into our pyjamas, then wriggled inside
our sleeping bags. Kenny put out the main light and we all switched on our torches.

“I bet Fliss’ll come back and it’ll turn out she’s fine,” said Lyndz. “Remember that time at Mrs McAllister’s stables, when Fliss was riding Alfie and he suddenly shot off at a million miles an hour?”

“That was scary!” said Frankie. “If she’d fallen off she could have been so badly injured!”

“Exactly,” said Lyndz. “But it turned out she was OK. It’ll be the same tonight, you’ll see.”

“She might just be badly bruised,” I said, nodding. But I was only pretending to share Lyndz’s optimism. In my tummy I had a cold, sick feeling of dread.

“Rosie! Wake up!”

I heard Lyndz’s voice and felt her nudging me in the ribs.

“Wha…?” I mumbled sleepily. “What time is it?”

“Half past one,” said Frankie. “Fliss is back.”

In a second I was awake. I scrambled out of my sleeping bag and shot to the window, where the others were craning their necks to see the car in the drive below.

“Is she all right? Can you see?” I said anxiously.

“She’s getting out…” said Kenny. “She’s OK. She’s – Ohmigosh!”

“What?” There was a pause. “Kenny?”

“She’s on crutches,” said Kenny flatly. “Her leg’s in plaster.”

Lyndz had been wrong. Totally wrong. Fliss wasn’t fine. She had broken her ankle.