Read Online Dance-off! by Harriet Castor - Free Book Online

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 everybreak 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.” (Whichis 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. Whichwas 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.