Read Online One Perfect Pirouette by Sherryl Clark - Free Book Online Page B

lonely and missing my friends at home. Jade and Lucy only cared that I was good at netball, and if I wasn’t going to help their team win, I wasn’t worth hanging with. After recess, the other kids showed off their projects on sport and I daydreamt about dancing. Then I had a brainwave and, when the bell rang for lunch, I went up to talk to Mrs Nguyen.
    â€˜Would I be able to practise my ballet in the school hall at lunchtime?’
    She frowned. ‘I don’t know. If there’s no sport on in there, it might be all right. Shall I ask the principal?’
    â€˜Yes, please.’
    I waited with fingers crossed.
    A few minutes later, she came back. ‘He says if you eat your lunch and then go to the office person, she’ll make sure it’s not being used. Have you been dancing for a long time?’
    â€˜Three years. There’s a special audition coming up and I haven’t got anywhere to train.’ I didn’t tell her I’d already been in the hall.
    â€˜Good luck,’ she said.
    I sat outside on the seats near the office, not wanting to waste a minute. When the second bell rang right above me, I jumped, and then raced in to see the office lady. ‘The hall’s open,’ she said, ‘but you’ll have to make sure you’re very careful in there, or we can’t let you use it.’
    â€˜I will.’
    In the hall, I shut the door, turned on the lights and quickly tied up my ribbons. I only had half an hour, but it was better than nothing. Warm-up first – I didn’t dare risk an injury – but then I went from barre and centre exercises straight into pirouettes. One, two, three, head up, eyes on one point. I was getting better, but I wanted to be perfect.
    Before I knew it, the bell rang again – and I’d hardly even started! No time to cool down. Off with ballet shoes, on with runners, race back to class. Mrs Nguyen smiled at me as I rushed into the room and sat down, then she started talking about something in the news. My heartbeat slowed down and I listened to her for a few minutes, then my mind swung back to ballet. When I got home, I’d unroll the lino and do another hour at least. Maybe I could find an old mirror in the shed, too, and put that against the wall, or borrow the one from Mum’s bedroom.
    My ballet shoes were getting too small, fast. Mum had said it’d be another month before we could afford new ones and I hated to think how much pointe shoes cost. Luckily, I stopped daydreaming in time to hear Mrs Nguyen give us some homework on food groups, and after that I tried to concentrate. When the last bell rang, I leapt up, grabbed my backpack and raced out the gate. No way was I going to netball!
    At home, I pulled out my shoes again, tied the ribbons and stepped onto the lino. I was so glad none of the girls from class, like the Silhouettes, could see me. For sure, they’d turn up their noses at me dancing in the garage. They probably had huge marble-floored hallways for their dancing, or maybe a dance space in their house. A whole room. How cool would that be?
    As well as cleaning the lino and borrowing a mirror from Mum’s room – just a small one – I’d pinched Orrin’s CD player and speakers. There was so much more to being a great dancer than the steps and routines. You had to feel the music, feel the theatre of ballet, like an actor did on stage. Each ballet told a story, with music and dance, and the dancers had to be inside the music, let it flow through their bodies.
    I’d put on extra layers of clothes, but still I shivered in the freezing garage. I did the best I could with the warm-up, then took off my ballet shoes and put on a pair of soft vinyl slippers. They were cheap and it didn’t matter if they got scraped on the concrete. From Orrin’s CD player, Swan Lake began to fill the air and I felt the familiar ripples inside, the notes making me want to float and twirl.