by Jean Ure
I mentioned it to Chloe later that morning. At least she didn’t immediately shy away in horror. She said, “Mm … it could be fun.”
“So shall we go?” I said.
That was when she started to back off. “What, you mean, like, now?”
“At the weekend. There’s this girl I met that does ice dancing. She’s offered to take me.”
“It’s not a very good time,” said Chloe. “I mean, they’re going to start casting for the end-of-term Gala any day now.”
For goodness’ sake! What was wrong with people? It wasn’t like I was suggesting we climb Mount Everest or go sky-diving. Just a couple of turns round an ice rink!
“Thing is,” said Chloe, “I wouldn’t want to do anything that might stop me getting a decent part. Like even just twisting your ankle might ruin your chances, specially if they found out how you did it. You know what they’re like! If you don’t dedicate every single waking hour …”
I obviously must have pulled a face, or made some noise of disgust, cos she said, “Maddy, I’m sorry, but I worked really hard to get here!”
“We all did,” I said. “Don’t worry about it! I can go by myself.”
By now I was absolutely determined that one way or another, I was going to prove to Livi and Jordan that as a trained dancer I could put on a pair of skating boots and whizz round an ice rink without falling flat on my face. They were the ones who had doubted me, not Sonya. I was, however, beginning to think that maybe it would be wiser if I waited until the Christmas holidays. The end-of-term Gala might not be all that important, but it was still a showcase; and, as Sean had said, Madam would be out there, watching us like a hawk.
That afternoon we had Character with Mr Alessandro. The previous week we’d done the Czardas out of Coppélia. This week we were going to learn some of the dances from The Three-Cornered Hat, which is one of my favourite ballets. Caitlyn caught my eye and gave me a big grin. She knew all about my passion for everything Spanish!
It was Roz who poked me in the ribs and hissed, “Have you seen?”
I hissed back at her: “Seen what?”
“Over there.” She jerked her head towards the corner of the room. I swivelled round to take a look. A girl was sitting there. I recognised her as someone from Year Nine. Carey something or other. Carey Ellison! I could guess why she was there. She had obviously been given permission to come and check us out and choose who she wanted to use in her end-of-term showpiece. Presumably something which featured character work.
Character was one of my strengths! I’d only really discovered this since being at CBS cos we’d hardly touched on it with Mum. I think secretly Mum considers character dancing a bit inferior to strictly classical, though I could be wronging her. It might just be she didn’t have time for it in the syllabus. When Sean had made his debut in El Amor Brujo she said it was one of the best things he’d ever done. But then that was Spanish. Nobody could say Spanish was inferior!
As we filed out at the end of class, Carey came over to me.
“You’re very good at this,” she said. “You obviously enjoy it.”
I beamed rather foolishly and said, “I do!”
“Mm.” She nodded. “Excellent!”
Roz and Caitlyn couldn’t wait to come scuttling up to me.
“What did she want?” breathed Roz. “What did she say?”
“Oh … just said I obviously enjoyed doing Character.”
“Wow! You know what that means, don’t you?”
I thought I probably did, but I certainly wasn’t going to admit to it. Too much like tempting fate! Caitlyn, obligingly, said it for me.
“It means she’s got you earmarked … so it’s just as well you didn’t do you-know-what!”
“What, what?” squealed Roz. “What didn’t she do?”
“Maddy knows,” said Caitlyn.
Three days later, the cast lists went up. At the top was a piece called Winter Dreams:
WINTER DREAMS by Jocelyn Wang
The Spirit of Winter ................. Caitlyn Hughes
“Omigod!” cried Alex. “You’ve got a whole piece to yourself!”
Caitlyn, as usual, was modest about it. “It’s probably nothing much,” she said; but her cheeks had fired up and I could tell she was thrilled. Who wouldn’t be?
There were five other pieces with small casts of just three or four people; and then there was Carey’s piece.
BALLET OF THE DOLLS by Carey Ellison
I ran my eye quickly down the cast list, searching for my name. French Doll, Rag Doll, Russian Dolls, Spanish D—
Miki Karashima? I felt my heart squeeze itself into a tight ball of shock. Miki Karashima as the Spanish Doll?
“Woohoo!” cried Chloe. “I’m a Skittle! Hey, Roz, you’re a Russian Doll! So’s Amber. Mei, you’re a Chinese Doll!”
“China Doll, actually,” said Tiffany.
“What’s the difference?”
“China Doll doesn’t come from China. It’s made of china.”
“Oh! That figures. Mei could be made of china … all tiny and fragile. What’s she cast you as?”
“French Doll.” Tiffany said it rather smugly. Probably waiting for someone to say how chic and Frenchified she was.
“What about Maddy? What’s she down as?”
“Clown?” Roz sounded like she thought it must be some mistake. “She wants you to dance a Clown? So who’s d—” She broke off. “Miki Karashima? That’s crazy! How could she choose her instead of you?” Roz swung round, indignantly. “After what she said to you!”
I swallowed. There is such a thing as pride.
“Obviously she thinks she’s more suited to the part.”
“But everyone knows you’re brilliant at the Spanish stuff.”
“Well …” I shrugged. “Maybe she is, too.” She was in Year Eight so I’d never actually seen her dance. But she couldn’t be better than I was! I just didn’t believe it. Not after Carey had gone out of her way to tell me I was excellent.
I forced myself to go back to the cast list. I wasn’t even a Spinning Top! Even though spinning was one of my strong points. Nico was an Action Man. Oliver and Carlo were Acrobats. I wouldn’t have minded so much being an Acrobat. Maybe even a Juggler. But all I was, was a Clown. Not even the Clown: a Clown. There was a whole bunch of us! Four in all.
“Roz is right,” said Caitlyn, later. “It doesn’t make any sense! Even Mr Alessandro said your Spanish dancing was muy auténtico.”
“I knew I should have gone skating,” I said. “I might just as well have done, mightn’t I? For all the difference it makes.”
Very earnestly Caitlyn said that while she still thought it was stupid, not casting me as the Spanish Doll, it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing being cast as a Clown.
“Clowns are fun! She probably chose you because she knows you’re good at making people laugh.”
I thought, Yes, but that still didn’t change anything. I was still just one of four. It was all very well for Caitlyn, she was a soloist. The Spirit of Winter … alone in the spotlight. I felt like I’d been relegated to the corps de ballet.
Mum asked me that evening whether the cast lists had gone up yet.
I said, “Which cast lists?” Like I didn’t know.
“Which ones do you think?” said Mum. “For the Gala!”
“Oh,” I said. “Those. No, we’re still waiting.”
I’m not usually a coward, but how could I tell Mum that Caitlyn was dancing The Spirit of Winter and I was just a boring Clown? She might not actually say anything; she wouldn’t have to. She would simply pinch her lips into a thin line and give me one of her looks. Long, and hard, and withering. Even Sean had been known to wilt under one of Mum’s looks. She was the only person I knew who could reduce him to silence. And if she could do that to Sean, what chance did I stand? I would tell her later, cos obviously I would have to. But right at this moment I couldn’t face it.
The following week the rehearsal sc
hedules went up. I was relieved that to begin with, at any rate, Carey was taking us all separately rather than calling the whole cast. I’d been dreading the prospect of having to watch Miki learning what I thought of as my part. It should have been my part! Everyone thought so. I had this strange feeling that even Carey thought so. She greeted me quite awkwardly when I turned up for the first rehearsal.
“Oh, Maddy,” she said. And then there was a bit of a pause, and I thought she was going to say something else, but at that moment the others came in and rather lamely she said, “Good! We’re all here. Let’s get started.”
The other three, a girl called Veena and two boys, Marek and Tom, were all Year Eights. I knew them, of course, but had no idea what sort of dancers they were. They seemed quite happy to have been cast as Clowns. Tom admitted that it would have been nicer to be a soloist, but, “All the solo parts have gone to girls.”
That hadn’t struck me before. I told him that that was extremely sexist, but Tom didn’t seem too bothered. He just shrugged his shoulders and said, “I guess dolls are usually female.”
“Not always,” I said. “What about Batman? She could have had a Batman doll. Or a sailor doll, or a spaceman doll, or a – a football doll, or a – well! Almost anything.”
Tom agreed, though not with any particular sense of outrage. “She could have, I suppose. But they’re not really what you’d call traditional, are they?”
So who wanted to be traditional? This was the twenty-first century! The more I thought about it, the more I thought that he and Marek had been let down just as badly as I had.
“I mean, really,” I said, “clowns. They’re so dated!”
“Oh, I dunno,” said Tom. “They’re still around.”
“But what do they do? Apart from look stupid.”
“Well, I guess they make people laugh?”
“Never made me laugh,” I said.
“Did me,” said Tom. “I used to love ’em!”
That was the point at which I gave up. Tom obviously had no ambition whatsoever. Marek, sounding sympathetic, told me that, “You just have to make best … find something good.”
I didn’t like it, but I knew that Marek was right. And I knew that Mum would agree with him. There could be absolutely no excuse for not finding something good, no matter what the part. No matter how small or how insignificant. You just have to make best …
I tried to make best. I really did! But somewhere inside me there was this simmering well of resentment.
Carey clapped her hands and cried, “Please, guys! Remember these are clowns … they’re meant to be fun!”
But I’d never thought that clowns were fun. I’d never really liked them, even when I was tiny. Great stupid things clumping round in their outsize boots and their big baggy costumes. I’d never seen the point of them.
“Cheer up,” said Tom. “It could have been worse … She could have picked you as Baby Doll.”
I said, “There isn’t any Baby Doll!”
“Barbie Doll?”
I snapped that there wasn’t one of those, either. I don’t know why I was snapping at Tom. He was a nice boy and he was only trying to help. It wasn’t his fault Carey had gone and got my hopes up only to cruelly dash them and stamp them underfoot. She was the one I should be snapping at, not Tom. I still had this feeling there was something she wanted to say to me. Like sorry, maybe? She’d been so friendly before. Now she was hardly saying a word, hardly even looking at me, except when she had to cos I wasn’t doing her stupid steps the way she wanted. Stupid clown steps. Stupid music, stupid make-up, stupid costumes. Tom could say what he liked, I refused to be comforted.
As we left the studio we passed Miki, on her way in. She gave us this radiant smile.
“This is so fun!” she said. And then she snapped her fingers and went “Olé!”
I tried not to glower at her. She wasn’t to know she’d been given the part that I should have had and that I was simmering with resentment. But really, I thought, it was too ridiculous! Miki was absolutely tiny, like some kind of miniature porcelain ornament. She couldn’t have been more wrong for a Spanish Doll!
I simmered all the rest of the day. I was still simmering when my phone buzzed as I was on my way home with Caitlyn. It was a text from Sonya.
So! Wanna come skating? This wkend?
I showed it to Caitlyn.
“Oh, Maddy,” she wailed, “you’re not going to?”
I said, “Why not?”
What was there to stop me? Even if I did fall over and break something, not that I intended to, but what if I did? Who wanted to dance a stupid Clown anyway? Some showcase that was likely to be!
Defiantly, as Caitlyn watched, I texted back: Yes! What time, where?
I turned to Caitlyn. “Don’t you dare start lecturing me!”
“Wasn’t going to,” said Caitlyn.
I said, “Good, well, don’t!”
People that were lucky enough to be given solo roles, not to mention getting themselves included in books of photographs, would do best, in my opinion, to just KEEP QUIET.
I arranged to see Sonya at her ice rink on Saturday afternoon.
“It’s going to be a bit crowded,” she said, as we met up, “cos it’s general public. You’re not allowed to go mad and start racing round at top speed, but you shouldn’t anyway, as it’s your first time. And I won’t be able to show you any of my routines, I’m afraid. There’ll be far too many people.”
I said that was all right, I knew the sort of thing she did.
“I went on YouTube and found some videos … I even found one of somebody doing the Sugar Plum Fairy.”
Eagerly she said, “What did you think?”
I said, “Well …” I really liked Sonya. She wasn’t at all boastful about her achievements and I didn’t want to sound superior, like Mum, but it hadn’t seemed to me that a Sugar Plum Fairy on ice really had very much going for it.
“You didn’t like it, did you?” said Sonya.
“It wasn’t that I didn’t like it,” I said. “I can see that you’d have to be incredibly good at skating to be able to do it, but … I think maybe I’m too used to seeing the real thing. I mean, you know … the actual dance. On stage. In Nutcracker.”
“That’s all right,” said Sonya. “Nobody ever said ice dancing’s the same as ballet. Liv and Jordan are going to join us, by the way. I said we’ll see them inside. Is that OK? They’re not going to skate; they just want to watch.”
“Just want to see if I fall over,” I said.
“I’m sure you won’t,” said Sonya. “You’re like all dancers … lots of poise.”
Poise. I liked that! I was beginning to warm to Sonya more and more. I didn’t even mind when she started mothering me, sternly informing me that I was to stay by her side – “Not go taking off on your own” – and not even attempt anything advanced, like spinning or jumping.
“Today it’s just the basics,” she said. “And, here, I brought this along for you.”
I said, “Foot powder?”
“Yes! I don’t need it,” said Sonya, “cos I’ve got my own boots. But you’ll have to hire some and even though they spray them you can’t afford to take chances. Not as a dancer.”
I thought, This is like being out with my mum!
“See, I feel responsible for you,” said Sonya. “I don’t want you getting athlete’s foot and then blaming me.”
I promised that I wouldn’t dream of blaming her. “I was the one that decided to come. You didn’t make me. And anyhow, nothing’s going to happen!”
Nothing would have done had it not been for some great clumsy boy sending me flying. I’d been doing so well! Not so much as a wobble. Sonya said, “You’re a natural. I thought you would be.”
I asked her if I could just try one little jump, but she was very firm.
“Not this time. Maybe if you come again.”
“Well, at least,” I begged, “can I just go round once more? On my own?�
��
She said, “All right. But no racing!”
I wasn’t the one who was racing; it was the great clumsy boy. As he zipped past me, doing about a hundred miles per hour, he suddenly lost his balance, crashed into me, and brought us both down hard on the ice. I heard two little shrieks from Livi and Jordan, who’d been watching my progress and crying, “Way to go!” every time I passed them.
“Maddy!” Sonya came skating over, full of concern. “Are you all right?”
I said, “No problem!” I was a dancer: dancers know how to fall.
“That was such bad manners,” said Sonya, as the boy picked himself up. “And it’s against the rules. I could report you for that!”
The boy, bright red, mumbled a guilty apology. I almost felt sorry for him. In spite of looking so angelic, with her big baby eyes and her little dimpled cheeks, Sonya could obviously be quite scary.
“Good,” she said, watching as the boy went limping off. “He’s hurt himself. Serves him right! You’re not supposed to go that fast when the rink’s full of people. Are you sure you’re OK?”
“I’m fine,” I said. I hate being fussed over.
“I’d feel really guilty,” said Sonya, “if you’d injured yourself.”
“I haven’t,” I said. “Look – see?” I did a little daring twirl. “Perfectly all right!”
My wrist was a bit sore, but a wrist is nothing. Not like a foot, or an ankle.
“Well, anyway,” said Sonya, “you’ve proved you could do it.” She turned and waved at Livi and Jordan. “I told them you would!”
Next morning when I woke up I found that my wrist was all swollen. It was also bright purple, and painful. It made me yelp when I just waggled my fingers. I probed it cautiously. It didn’t feel broken. Not that I really knew how it would feel if it had been, but there weren’t any odd lumps or bumps or bones sticking out, so I thought that almost certainly it was just a sprain, or even just a bruise. Nothing to get fussed about. All I had to do was not use it for a bit and the swelling would soon go down.