Dance-off! (8 page)

“Well, two of the little bones in it, anyway,” Fliss explained when she joined us in the bedroom.

Now she was sitting on the bed, still in her
Grease
outfit, her crutches propped against the wall. Her left leg was stuck out in front of her with what looked like a big red boot on it, except that her bare toes were poking out of the end.

“Can I touch it?” I asked, stretching my fingers gingerly towards the cast.

“Go ahead,” said Fliss. “It’s totally set.”

“How come the plaster’s red?” asked Frankie.

“You can choose different colours,” said Fliss. “It’s a new thing. I wanted pink, really, but they said they didn’t have it.”

Fliss didn’t look half as miserable as you might expect. It sounded like she’d quite enjoyed being made a fuss of at the hospital. “The doctor was
lovely
,” she said, smiling dreamily.

To be honest, it was Kenny I felt most sorry for right then. She was trying to put a brave face on it, but I could tell she felt just awful.

“It was an accident,” I said to her quietly, when she passed me on her way to the bathroom. “Don’t blame yourself.”

“Thanks, Rosie,” she said. “I know you want to be nice, but don’t pretend. It was my fault, and I know it.”

The next morning, on the way home in the car, I told Mum what had happened.

“Poor Felicity,” said Mum, shaking her head. “And poor Nikki, too.” (Nikki is Fliss’s mum.) “I can just imagine how stressed she must have been. If this had happened when you were all at our house…” Mum shuddered.

After a minute, we stopped at some traffic lights and she turned to me with a serious look. “Rosie,” she said. “I hope you girls will realise now just how dangerous your messing about can be.”

“Yes, Mum,” I said.

“You have to try and see the consequences of things,” she went on as the lights changed. “Try to
think
. I know you’d like me to treat you more as a grown-up sometimes, but this is exactly what being a grown-up is about…”

Blah, blah, blah. I expect you can imagine the rest, so I won’t bore you with it. Mum’s lovely, but she doesn’t half go on sometimes, especially when something worries her. We got all the way home before the lecture finished, and by
then I’d said “Yes, Mum” about ninety times. Yawn!

That afternoon, I had a phone call from Frankie. “I’ve had an ace idea,” she said, “for cheering Fliss up.”

“Spill,” I said.

“Tomorrow, we all take to school loads of stickers and glitter and coloured pens and stuff, and at break we can decorate her cast, and make it look really cool.”

“Excellent!” I said. “I’m not sure whether I’ve got any stickers, though. It’s a shame it’s Sunday or I could go and buy some.”

“Just bring whatever you’ve got,” said Frankie.

So I spent the rest of the afternoon turning my bedroom upside down, looking for anything sparkly or spangly that might help jazz up Fliss’s plaster cast. I did find some stickers – some really beautiful cat ones that I’d been given for my last birthday. I hesitated over them, because I’d been saving them up for something really special. To be honest with you, I didn’t want to part with them. Who would know, after all, if I
just told the others I hadn’t got any stickers? But then I felt mean, and I put them in my school bag along with my glitter-glue pens and some sequins I’d found in my sewing box.

On Monday morning Fliss caused a big stir, hobbling into school on crutches. As she made her way through the playground half our class trailed after her, most of them wanting to have a go on her crutches.

“She’s loving it!” Frankie whispered to me. And it was true. Fliss was basking in the attention, a big smile on her face.

“I know why, too,” I said, nudging Frankie and pointing to one of the people clustered round Fliss. “Suddenly Ryan Scott’s interested!”

At break time, Frankie, Kenny, Lyndz and I persuaded Fliss to park herself on a bench while we went to work on her cast with all our decorations.

“It’s so sweet of you guys!” she giggled.

“It’s the least we could do, Fliss,” said Kenny earnestly. “Here, look – I’ve brought you
something to keep your toes warm.” She held up a large sock with a picture of a birthday cake on it. “When you press like this…” she said, jabbing at the cherry on top of the cake, “… it plays ‘Happy Birthday’!”

The buzzy little sound, coming from something as ridiculous as a sock, made us all crack up. “It’s awful!” said Fliss. “Brilliantly awful! Where did you get it?”

“It’s my dad’s,” said Kenny. “But don’t worry,” she added, when she saw Fliss’s nose wrinkling, “he’s never worn it.”

What with the sock, the stickers, the glitter, and all the swirls Kenny drew with her silver and gold pens, Fliss’s cast ended up looking like a mad miniature Christmas tree.

“Is your mum cross about the accident?” Kenny asked, when at last we sat back to admire our handiwork.

“Not cross,” said Fliss. “More disappointed, I think, because we’ve had to cancel the skiing holiday.”

“What –
no one’s
going?” asked Lyndz.

“Well, they were hardly going to leave me behind, were they?” said Fliss indignantly. “And they couldn’t take me. I would have died of boredom sitting in the hotel all day while Mum and Andy were off skiing.”

I saw Kenny’s shoulders slump. At that moment I think we all felt bad, realising that we’d ruined a holiday for Fliss’s entire family.

“Hey!” said Frankie suddenly. “Now you can come to the party on the last day of term!”

Fliss smiled ruefully. “Mmm. But I can’t dance with the rest of you, can I?”

There was a moment’s silence. Then Lyndz said, “Why don’t you take charge of the costumes, Fliss? We so need your advice.”

Fliss nodded. “OK,” she said. “I guess I shouldn’t let
all
my talents go to waste.”

There was less than two weeks to go now, before the party. We began spending every
break time rehearsing in the only private spot we could think of – that’s right, by those pongy bins – with Fliss acting as look-out in case the M&Ms or any other spies from our class came along.

It was weird having a whole section missing from the routine – the bit when Fliss had come to the front to do her solo. We filled the gap by repeating the chorus steps, but they didn’t go quite as well with that bit of the music.

“It’s not the same without you, Fliss,” said Kenny.

“Of course it isn’t,” said Fliss briskly. “But you’ll just have to manage somehow, won’t you?”

On Thursday each of us brought in a selection of clothes that we thought might be suitable. Fliss laid them out on one of the benches in the girls’ changing room, so that she could see them all together.

“You should be in
toning
colours,” she said strictly, hobbling up and down, and removing items she disapproved of. “I’m thinking pinks and purples, with quite a bit of silver.” (Which
is Frankie’s favourite colour – all the silver things were hers.)

Kenny – who is definitely
not
a pinks and purples kind of person – was chewing her lip in a desperate attempt to stop herself saying “Yeuch!” She only just succeeded.

Fliss handed garments to each of us, and told us to stand in a line, holding them up. I had a purple T-shirt (my own) and a short pink skirt (Fliss’s). I wasn’t at all sure the skirt would fit me.

Suddenly we heard the growly voice of Emily Berryman behind us. “Working out costumes, are you?” she said. Then she added, really sarcastically, “Mmm.
Lovely
.”

Emma Hughes was standing beside her. “It’s touching, really,” she said to Emily, in a loud voice so that we could hear. “They haven’t a clue how hopeless they’re going to look next to us, have they?”

And with that, they went cackling off down the corridor like two horrid witches.

“Losers!” shouted Kenny after them. Which
was exactly what we hoped they were going to be next week.

I was worried, though. With Fliss’s section missing from our routine, it just wasn’t the same. The whole thing felt unbalanced, somehow.

Though I wasn’t really aware of it, I must have kept turning the problem over and over in some dark corner of my brain, because on Tuesday, three days before the competition, I suddenly felt like a light bulb had been switched on inside my head.

It was slap bang in the middle of a maths lesson, and we were having my least favourite thing in the whole world: a mental arithmetic test. I was so amazed by this thing that had come zinging into my brain, that I didn’t even hear three of the questions Mrs Weaver read out, and I didn’t write any answers for three more.

As soon as the bell rang at the end of the lesson, I dashed between the desks, dodging shoving bodies. “Fliss, Fliss,” I said breathlessly. “You
shall
go to the ball!”

Fliss turned round. She’d just levered herself up on her crutches. “What on earth are you talking about, Rosie?”

I was so excited I must have looked mad. “The party,” I said. “I’ve just had the most wonderful idea!”

“Hand-jive???”

We were out in the playground. Fliss, Frankie, Kenny and Lyndz were looking at me in amazement.

“Of course!” I said. “Don’t you see? It’s perfect! Fliss can’t join in with the whole routine, obviously, but when it’s her turn to do a solo, she can come to the front and do a wicked hand-jive. She won’t have to move her feet at all.”

Suddenly Frankie cracked a big grin. “Rosie,” she said. “You’re a genius. It is perfect!”

“But what about my crutches?” asked Fliss. “I need them to get into position, but while I’m doing the hand-jive I won’t be able to hold them.”

“That’s easy,” I said. “Once you’ve got to the front, two of us can step forward and take the crutches. We can give them back to you at the end of your spot.”

“Can you make up a routine in time for Friday?” Kenny asked Fliss.

“Thursday,” corrected Lyndz. “Mrs Weaver said she wants to have a look at the routines the afternoon before the competition, remember?”

“Of course I can!” said Fliss. “What’s a little hand-jive when I could have been Gwen Stefani?”

That set us all off laughing. “Way to go, Fliss!” giggled Lyndz.

“Hang on, there is one problem,” said Fliss suddenly. “You’re all sorted with costumes, but I don’t have anything to wear.”

“I’ll give you mine,” said Kenny quickly. She was just dying to get out of wearing the pink shorts Fliss had chosen for her.

“No, wait,” I said, “I’ve got another suggestion. Because you’re missing your skiing holiday, Fliss – and because they’ll fit our colour scheme, too – I reckon you should wear your pink salopets.”

“Hey, yeah!” said Lyndz. “We’re all dying to see them.”

“Really?” Fliss looked pleased. “They’ll be a bit warm, but I guess I won’t be moving around much – and I can change out of them after our routine. OK, Rosie, you’re on!”

This was how the Sleepoverbabes were now complete. And how Fliss came to be dressed for our routine like a pink Abominable Snowman. I hadn’t realised salopets were so all-over-thick-and-squashy. In their own strange way they were quite stylish, I suppose. They just looked a
bit out of place in a Cuddington Primary classroom, rather than out on some glamorous Alpine mountainside.

Fliss wore them for the first time that Thursday in the lunch hour, when Mrs Weaver made each group go through their routine in our classroom.

“What’s she want to see it for?” hissed Kenny, as we were waiting outside for our turn. “Is she worried we’ll be singing rude words, or taking our clothes off, or something?”

“Maybe she’s
hoping
that’s what we’ll do,” snorted Frankie.

“Hey, take a look at this!” said Lyndz. She was standing on tiptoe, peering through the glass in the classroom door. “It’s the M&Ms and Alana!”

Quick as a flash, we squashed up like sardines against the door, so we could all get a peek.

“What’s the Queen doing?” said Kenny. “She’s moving really jerkily.”

“She’s standing on her toes!” gasped Frankie. “Look! Right on the ends like a ballerina!”

It was true. Emma Hughes was wearing pink ballet shoes with ribbons criss-crossed round her ankles. And she was standing on the ends of them.