Flirty Dancing

by Jenny McLachlan

  They get a huge round of applause and I’m not surprised when they’re told to sit down. Pearl is grinning, but not in the mean little way she normally smiles; instead, her whole face is beaming. I’m taken back to junior school and the last time I saw that smile. I vividly remember swinging Pearl round on the end of my jumper – she was grinning up at me – then I let her go and sent her flying across the field. Mum told me off for stretching the arms. Then, as though Pearl can read my thoughts in the darkness of the room, the mask falls back into place and her smile vanishes.

  Soon, group sixteen is performing. Only three groups have been told to stay behind so far. I jump when Ollie leans across to me and whispers, ‘You can do the knickerbocker.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Tonight, in a minute. I’m going to lead you into the move. You can do it!’

  ‘No way. Seriously, Ollie. That’s crazy, we can’t even –’ But I don’t get the chance to finish.

  ‘Thank you, group sixteen,’ says Nathan, pushing his thick-rimmed glasses up his nose. ‘Clearly going for the sympathy vote. Exit on the left, please. Group seventeen, up you come!’ Ollie jumps to his feet and I follow, telling myself over and over to relax, smile and put my shoulders back. I must look like an evil goblin as I run to the front, desperately twisting my mouth into a casual smile.

  Having sorted out the music, Ollie joins me at the centre of the stage, puts his arm round me and we stand in the close hold. Lulu decided that we should start almost as though we are frozen in the middle of the dance. The room around us falls silent. We look at each other, then move closer together. Our bodies lock and I can feel our hearts beating. Then our music kicks in and I feel the familiar surge that I always get when I hear the opening drums . . . two more beats and we’re off!

  I know we’re dancing well. We’re quicker than ever and totally in tune with each other. I can feel our confidence, and, I guess, so can the audience. Ollie is focused and every one of our turns and spins is tight, fast and smooth. As we come to the end of our dance, we haven’t missed a step.

  Ollie swings me to face him. This isn’t in our routine!

  He looks at me, raises his eyebrows as a warning, then pushes me away. I have no choice but to go for it. If I don’t, our dance will end with us in a heap on the floor. Ollie pulls me back across his arm and his hand catches me on my lower back, pushing my legs up. I try to flip over as Ollie lifts me higher and higher. The room rushes past, but not fast enough. I can’t make it! If I stop mid-air, Ollie will drop me. In a panic, I squeeze his shoulder desperately trying to communicate this. Then I’m falling back the way I’ve come, landing heavily on my feet. I stumble back, but Ollie whips me up and spins me twice to finish the dance.

  The music stops and the room is silent. My cheeks burn. I couldn’t do it. I ruined the dance. But, also, I’m angry. Ollie and I weren’t partners then – he was doing his dance, and I got in the way. His fingers loosen away from mine and our hands fall apart.

  Then there is a clap, followed by another and another and another. We look at the judges because it doesn’t matter what everyone else thinks – they will decide if we get through. The applause dies away. They talk for a second and Nathan makes some notes. ‘Thank you,’ he says, frowning slightly. He hesitates for a second then gives us a nod, ‘Sit down. Group eighteen.’

  Relief floods through my body and my heart pounds as we stumble through the remaining dancers.

  ‘Why did you do that?’ I whisper as soon as we’re sitting down. ‘I looked like an idiot!’

  ‘Don’t talk about it, please. It was stupid.’ He’s staring at the floor. Then he looks up with a look of amazement on his face. ‘But, we did it, Bea. Can you believe it?’

  ‘Not really.’ I shake my head. I desperately want to talk to him about everything – about our dance, his little ‘surprise’ and how I killed the knickerbocker, but I have to wait. Pearl leans over to Ollie and soon their heads are together and she’s whispering and smiling.

  Are they talking about me? I turn away. This is me being fierce. I’m not going to let Pearl, or my stupid, hopeless, shoulder-love for Ollie ruin the fact that we have got through the auditions. Ollie and me. We did it together.

  ‘Watch Starwars on Saturday,’ says Nathan when all the groups have auditioned and there is a handful of us left in the black room. ‘It’s footage from the auditions all over the country and you may spot yourselves. The next episodes will show each round of the semi-finals and then the finals will be live.’

  We walk out of the Brighton Centre together and I get a text from Betty saying they left over an hour ago. Pearl puts up with me because of Ollie, and I listen while she goes over every detail of their dance. I may be walking with Ollie and Kat, two of my favourite people in the world, but just being near Pearl makes me slip quietly into the background.

  When we get to the seafront, she turns towards town but Ollie hangs back. ‘Are you coming with us to KFC?’ he asks. Pearl rolls her eyes. ‘You can get the train back with us.’

  I can’t let Ollie see me like this, a shadow of myself. ‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘But I’ll head off now.’

  ‘Come on. Big Daddy? Boneless Banquet?’ he says. ‘Don’t be scared . . . They’re nicer than they sound.’

  ‘I can’t. See you tomorrow?’ He looks slightly baffled, but he shrugs and follows Pearl. Kat goes too, having given me the tiniest of Ladybird waves with her fingers. I stand alone on the pavement. Mum wouldn’t have cared if I’d got back an hour late, but what can I do? My eyes sting as all the magic of the evening falls away from me and I see Pearl slip her arm through Ollie’s. A sick feeling stirs my stomach. That’s my arm she’s touching and my shoulder she’s resting her head against.

  How hopeless: short, quiet, round Bea versus spectacular, glittering Pearl. As I walk towards the station, street lights blink on, one after another, and the storm clouds in the sky hide the last glimpses of blue.

  8

  In tutor time, Betty’s wearing her ‘Panty Liners’ vest and, for some reason, a pair of Peppa Pig sunglasses. ‘Can you believe it, Bea? We didn’t get through!’

  ‘Take it all off, Betty,’ says Mr Simms.

  She does, but accidentally-on-purpose gets the vest stuck on her head, where she leaves it piled up like a turban. ‘How about you and Ollie?’ she says. ‘The weird situation has just got a whole lot weirder! You’re going to be on TV dancing “jive” with Ollie The Lushness Matthews. Weird.’ She notices my anxious face. ‘But definitely good weird.’

  Is there such a thing as good weird? I suppose there is, I realise, as I watch Betty take a sip of hot tea from a mug she has hidden behind her bag. The mug has ‘Teaching Legend’ printed below Mr Simms’s face. ‘Biscuit?’ she asks, pushing a packet of Bourbons towards me.

  I take a broken half and look around for Pearl. She’s not here yet. Perhaps she’ll give up her whole ‘destroy Bea’ thing now she’s seen Ollie abandon me on the streets of Brighton. Clearly, I’m not a threat.

  But in French it turns out that I am.

  Pearl and Lauren have got to the lesson early and when I go in they’re flirting with Mr Tweed at the front of the room. Lauren’s writing on the whiteboard, stuff like ‘Oui ? French’ and ‘Mr Tweed est la bombe!’ to distract him from Pearl’s ‘art’.

  Now, although I hate to admit it, Pearl is good at drawing, which is why what she’s doing is so effective. She’s drawing a pig wearing roll-up jeans and a little cardigan. Next, she carefully adds short curly hair and a daisy clip, asking Mr Tweed for a red pen to give the pig red lipstick, red nails and red shoes. The pig has a tummy rolling out over the top of its jeans. The pig is me. Everyone who walks in the room either knows this straight away or gets told – that’s Holly’s job.

  Betty wanders in, looks at the picture and gives me a questioning look. I shrug. What can I do? If I put my hand up and say, ‘Mr Tweed that big fat pig Pearl is drawing is supposed to be me,’ it will confirm what everyone s
uspects.

  Plus, surely he’ll wipe it off when the lesson starts?

  Nope. We’re watching a film about French markets then working from textbooks so I have to look at it for the whole lesson. Before we leave the room, Betty asks if she can clean the whiteboard. Mr Tweed lets her, finally glancing up at what has been staring his class in the face for the past hour. He smiles appreciatively at Pearl’s drawing skills.

  ‘You’ve got to say or do something,’ says Betty, catching up with me outside the room. ‘The second you saw that picture you should have gone up to the front and just wiped it off. Or, even better, drawn a picture of her as Mr Poo Head . . . with a big poo on her head . . . and a speech bubble saying, “I’m Pearl and I’m a poo” – that would have been funny – anything would be better than just sitting there and taking it.’

  ‘I don’t want to make things worse.’

  ‘But you’re not doing anything and things are getting worse. You, Bea Hogg, need to grow some balls. Big ones!’ Now this makes me laugh. In fact, I’m laughing so much I don’t notice Ollie coming up to us.

  ‘Hey,’ he says, looking bemused. ‘My mum’s away this weekend so I’m having a party at my place on Saturday.’ He pauses for a second, before adding, ‘Tell Amber and Charlie. See you both there?’ And he’s gone again.

  ‘Well,’ says Betty, ‘that was very brief. Ollie’s not usually all shy like that.’

  ‘Do you think he was shy?’

  ‘Yeah, definitely. Strange. Anyway, who cares . . . we’re going to a party. We’re going to a party!’ she yells in a passing Year Seven boy’s face. She manages to get a high five out of him.

  ‘I don’t know, Betty . . . Pearl will be there and she’ll make me feel like –’

  Betty cuts in, ‘No excuses, Bea. Where are your big balls? Come with the three of us and we’ll never leave you alone for a second. How often do Year Nines get invited to a Year Ten house party?’

  ‘OK, OK.’ So that’s it. I’m going to a party at Ollie’s house. But what if he didn’t really want to invite me, but had to because I was standing next to Betty? I must look worried because Betty grabs my arm and says, ‘Don’t even think about trying to get out of this one. I want you round at my place at seven . . . no excuses.’

  ‘Little Bea Hogg!’ says Betty’s dad when I turn up. ‘I’ve missed you – you used to stay round here at least once a week!’

  ‘Is my toothbrush still in the bathroom?’ I ask. It really is great to see him – a bit like coming home.

  ‘Of course. There’ll always be a toothbrush for you here.’ He ushers me in. ‘Follow the noise and you’ll find Betty. She’s going through a Juliette Gréco stage at the moment. Her mum would be so proud.’ As I go up the stairs, he calls after me, ‘Don’t tell her I said that or she’ll never listen to it again.’

  The jazz music leads me to her door, which is covered, and I mean covered, in lips cut out from magazines. I feel like I’m about to be eaten up. I push open the door and the throaty crooning French singer is suddenly drowned out by girly screaming.

  ‘Bea! Get in and shut the door,’ says Betty. She is standing on her bed in her underwear, pretending to smoke a breadstick. In a shocking French accent she announces that, ‘Tonight, we are going to be PROPER ladies, Ladybirds even,’ she adds with a wink to me, ‘doing zee make-up and zee giggling and all zat jazz!’

  Two hours of make-up and frantic clothes-changing later, we walk round to Ollie’s. This takes a long time, because by now we are finding everything funny.

  ‘Here we are, girls,’ says Betty as we turn down a road. ‘This is the home of the Ollie Matthews.’ I feel like there should be a blue plaque next to the door or a star shining above the roof, but it’s just an ordinary semi like mine, perhaps with fewer Charlie and Lola stickers on the windows. All the lights are on and we can see it’s packed because in each lit-up window there are moving shapes.

  The door’s been left open so we walk in. I recognise nearly everyone from school – it’s mainly Year Tens and Elevens – but no one pays us any attention as we push our way through the crowded living room. Loud music makes talking impossible so we just follow Betty. She leads us to the kitchen. ‘Anyone care for a drink?’ she asks, looking at what’s on offer.

  The worktop is awash with half-empty fizzy-drink bottles, along with a few beer cans and Bacardi Breezers. We find some unopened cans of Coke in the fridge, but Betty zooms in on the alcohol and quickly makes herself a cocktail she calls ‘Brown’ . . . because it’s brown.

  Going back through to the living room, we find space on the corner of a sofa to sit down. Well, there isn’t room for all of us and I end up on the floor, but it’s kind of nice just sitting there, watching what’s going on. We have a Hula Hoops-eating competition, seeing how many we can fit in our mouths at once. Eventually, Charlie wins with fifteen, but then she gags and sprays them out over my hair so it doesn’t count.

  We’re busy nominating someone to go and get more nibbles from the kitchen when Ollie sticks his head in the room and comes over. ‘If Mum comes back early from Blackpool, I’m dead,’ he tells us cheerfully. ‘I’m supposed to be at my sister’s, but Lulu thinks I’m round here watching a film.’

  Suddenly, there’s a crash as a girl who’s started dancing flies into a plant on the windowsill. Ollie winces and looks slightly less relaxed.

  ‘So, Ollie,’ says Betty, knocking back the dregs of her Brown, ‘you two jive beasts got through to the second round of Starwars!’

  ‘We totally did, me and my Dancing Bean.’ He looks down at me and, despite the room that’s heaving with bodies, my friends watching my every move and the heat and noise that surround us, I smile up at him and feel myself glowing. My Dancing Bean.

  I want to pat the floor next to me and say, ‘Sit down,’ and then we can talk all evening, about everything . . . about how I broke my foot falling down a badger hole, how I can’t click my fingers, how I stroked a baby penguin, about everything. I have a mad, fierce moment. I’m going to do it!

  ‘Hey, Ollie,’ I say. ‘Why don’t –’ But before I can finish Pearl pulls him round by the shoulder – where did she come from? – and slumps against him.

  ‘There you are!’ she says. ‘Come and dance with me.’ And she pulls him away from us, away from me, and into the middle of the room.

  I shrink back into the corner and watch them do a sort of half-jive to the music. Pearl makes it look so easy and, as she moves around the room – and around Ollie – in her skinny jeans and loose top, everyone stops talking to watch them. It’s amazing how the boys just can’t take their eyes off her.

  ‘Come on, Bea,’ said Betty, ruffling my curls. ‘Let’s get another drink.’ And we head for the kitchen.

  We hang out in there for a while, chatting to Charlie’s brother, George, and his mates. I notice Lauren and Holly sitting in the garden, but there’s no sign of Kat. By now Betty has moved on to ‘Orange’ and she’s laughing madly at everything George says.

  Pearl walks in, her cheeks glowing from dancing, and takes a long drink from a bottle that’s handed to her. Sitting on the edge of the table, she fixes her large blue eyes on me.

  ‘Bean,’ she says. ‘Do you like boys?’ Around us, a few people stop talking. ‘Go on, you can tell me!’ She laughs and throws back her head so that her wild hair trails down her back.

  ‘Come on,’ I say to the others. ‘Let’s go.’ But they don’t hear me over the noise of the party.

  ‘Ah, don’t go, Jelly Bean . . . it’s just a question.’ I need to get out of this kitchen, but Pearl is still staring at me, still smiling. I go to walk past her, but she lifts her legs up on to the work surface, trapping me. I turn to go the other way, but there are too many people. Behind me, Betty is attempting to make another Orange while Charlie and Amber try to stop her.

  I’m alone.

  ‘Answer the question,’ says Pearl, quietly. ‘Do you like boys? Yes or no?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, finally g
iving in to her. I want to go home now. The evening is ruined.

  ‘Yeah, right,’ laughs Pearl. She still won’t let me pass. Behind her, I see Ollie come into the kitchen. He stops and looks over at us. Most of the people around us have fallen silent, waiting to see what will happen.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘I was just asking if Bea was having fun, wasn’t I?’ Ollie looks from Pearl to me.

  ‘That’s right,’ I say, trying to make my voice sound as normal as possible. Her legs drop down and she even gives my shoulder a stroke as I walk past. The girls follow me back to our corner in the living room.

  A few minutes later, Pearl comes in, holding hands with Ollie. She leads him into the hallway and up the stairs. I feel embarrassed and stupid, like I’m a million miles away from being the sort of person Ollie would want to be with.

  ‘I’m going to ring home for a lift,’ I say. They try to stop me, but I’ve made up my mind.

  As I wait outside for Mum, the sounds of the party bubbling away behind me, I feel an ache growing inside my stomach. I glance at the upstairs windows. All the curtains are closed and I can’t see a thing. I wonder if I ate too many Hula Hoops?

  No. I don’t think so. I’m just totally and utterly jealous.

  9

  I wake up to the sound of CBeebies and the smell of bacon cooking. Mum and Nan are chatting in the kitchen and the kettle’s boiling. I roll over into a patch of sun shining in through the window and the airbed makes its wheezy noise. I start to doze off again.

  Suddenly, I hear a frantic patter of footsteps coming up the stairs and then along the hallway. Next, the door is thrown open.