Dancing Daze (11 page)
Authors: Sarah Webb
That’s more like it — romance a-go-go! Then I remember that from the look of things now, it has hardly ended in rainbows and lollipops for poor old Claire. Maybe Péter broke her heart? But there’s nothing about Madame telling Claire specifically to lose weight or take any sort of drugs or diet supplements. I’m baffled. What
is
wrong with Claire Starr?
“What are you doing in, Amy?” Dave asks on Friday evening. I’m flopped in front of the telly, watching some incredibly tall and giraffe-legged Irish and English girls parade up and down a catwalk. “I thought you were going to Seth’s house straight after school. Pizza and a movie — wasn’t that what you said? I seem to remember giving you a tenner toward it too.”
“Do you want it back?” I say, my eyes still glued to the screen. “Is that it?”
There’s silence for a moment. Then I feel Dave’s hand on my shoulder. I shrug it away.
“What’s wrong, Amy? Want to talk about it?”
I shake my head.
“Might make you feel better,” he says gently.
“I doubt it.”
“Have you fallen out with Seth?”
I shake my head again.
“Mills?”
I know he’s going to pick, pick, pick until it all comes out, or even worse, he’ll fetch Mum to join in the interrogation, so I give in.
“Mills isn’t speaking to me,” I explain. “And before you say anything, there’s nothing you or anyone else can do to fix it, OK? And no, I don’t want to talk about it. She’s over at Seth’s place with Bailey. Seth was really looking forward to having people over, and I didn’t want to cause any trouble, so I opted out. The end.”
“I see.” Dave blows out his breath in a
whoosh.
“Being a teenager sucks, doesn’t it?”
I look at him, trying to work out if he’s being sarcastic, but he seems sincere enough.
“I wouldn’t go back to being thirteen for a million quid,” he adds. “I’m sorry things are tough for you at the moment, Amy. But hang in there. It will get better, I promise.”
“Thanks, Dave. I thought you were working this evening.” Dave’s a nurse, and he works all kinds of strange hours.
“Swapped shifts. Sylvie wants to talk about the wedding.” He rolls his eyes at the word “talk,” making me smile a bit.
“Do you want this room?” I ask.
“No, you stay put. We can have our chat in the kitchen.” He leaves me to it and goes into the kitchen.
Bored with the program, I decide to follow him. Maybe wedding planning will improve my mood.
Dave and Mum are sitting at the kitchen table, dozens of magazine cuttings scattered in front of them. Mum’s head is covered in paper towel, and she’s giggling so hard that tears are running down her cheeks.
“What are you doing, Mum?” I ask her. “What’s with the weird hat?”
Mum is laughing too much to speak, so she just waves her hand in front of her face.
“Your mum wanted to show me some of Clover’s suggestions for her wedding dress,” Dave says.
I wrinkle my nose. “A paper-towel hat?”
“In the magazine, it’s Italian lace,” Mum says, pointing at one of the cuttings, a photograph of a glamorous bride wearing what looks like a white, lacy nightie, with a matching mop cap on her head. “But it’s so expensive, I thought I’d make my own.”
“Your mum finds some of Clover’s dress suggestions hilarious,” Dave explains.
“Not to mention ridiculously priced,” Mum adds. “Look at this one. Almost ten thousand quid for a piece of old knitting. Are they crazy?” She points at a 1920s-style beige-crochet flapper dress with fringing along the hem that costs 9,750 euros, and a strapless Empire-line dress that’s squashing the model’s small breasts into a weird-looking tube shape that costs 6,500 euros.
“I could make that second dress out of one of Gramps’s old tablecloths!” Mum says.
I smile at her. “It’s early days, Mum, I’m sure you’ll find something nice and not so expensive. Those are pretty.” I point at some pearl-and-diamanté hair clips in the shape of large stars that are twinkling in a blond model’s hair.
“You’re right, Amy. They’re beautiful,” Mum says. “You have a good eye. In fact, that model’s hair is perfect too, very natural.”
There’s a loud squawking noise from upstairs.
“Wanna play twains,” comes a voice from the top of the stairs. “No go bed.”
Alex.
Mum groans. “So much for our quiet evening in.”
“I’ll get him back to sleep,” I say. “You guys stay here.” It’s nice to see Mum and Dave getting on so well. At least someone’s having fun this evening.
After settling Alex (which takes three Thomas the Tank Engine stories and two rounds of “Hush-a-Bye, Baby”) and watching a bit more rubbish telly, I head upstairs to read in bed. I’m rereading an old copy of
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
that used to belong to Clover. But I can’t concentrate on the words. I keep wondering what Seth and Bailey and Mills are up to.
If I only had someone to talk to right now, maybe then I wouldn’t feel so lonely. I don’t like to bother Clover on a Friday night — she’s bound to be out. Now, who can I ring? I think for a moment. Dad! He’ll probably be in with Shelly and Gracie. I get up and find my iPhone, which is plugged into the laptop on my desk, recharging.
Dad answers immediately. “How weird. I was just about to ring you, Amy.”
I feel a warm glow inside. At least someone’s thinking of me!
“I wanted to ask you something,” he says. “I caught Pauline checking out photos of some old dude in swimming trunks on Facebook earlier. And it’s not the first time either. I think she’s spying on him. Has Pauline ever said anything to you about having a boyfriend? I asked Shelly, but she said she didn’t think so.”
“Well, the dreaded Pauline was talking about some man in Portugal when you and Shelly were putting Gracie back to bed the last time I was over. He’s called Dean and he runs an Irish bar there.”
“Dean? Just Dean? No surname?”
“I’m doing pretty well remembering that much. And why are you so interested in Pauline’s love life? It’s gross!”
“I was thinking I could track the man down and bribe him into dragging Pauline back to Portugal.”
“Dad! That’s terrible.”
“I know, but I’m desperate, Amy. At this stage I’ll try anything. I’m determined to stick it out till Christmas, but after that, it’s either her or me.”
After he rushes off to watch golf on the telly, I put my iPhone down. So much for someone to talk to. Did I really think Dad would have time for a proper conversation with me and listen to my problems for a change? And even if he does find this Dean guy, is he really going to bribe him into taking Pauline back to Portugal? Trust Dad to try to buy himself out of his problems again.
I wish I could ring Mills right now and tell her about Dad and his crazy plan, but I know I can’t. And Seth wouldn’t understand. He doesn’t know Dad the way Mills does. Without my best friend to talk to, I feel so alone.
Dear Diary,
Well, it’s finally happened. Madame Irina has driven Lana out of the academy, and I’ve lost the only friend I have in this godforsaken place. How am I going to cope? Zsuzsanna is already on my case. Without Lana to talk to, I don’t know what I’ll do.
I begged Lana to stay, but she was having none of it. She said she had to face facts. She’s the wrong shape for ballet: too tall, too muscular. And she refuses to starve herself to lose weight, like some of the other girls. That is no life, she says. And she’s right. Some of the girls here are on permanent diets, and it makes them miserable and grumpy all the time, and I’m sure some of them will get eating disorders.
I asked Lana what she was going to do instead. She shrugged and sighed and then her eyes went blurry. I’ve never seen Lana cry before, and it scared me. Then she blinked her tears back and stiffened her shoulders. She told me about her friend Miriam who runs a contemporary dance company back in Slovakia. She’s offered her a place. “It’s still dance, right?” Lana said. “And maybe later on I can teach.” She gave me a smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes.
I tried to be as enthusiastic as I could, but it was hard. Lana has always poked fun at modern dance and some of its jagged, angular movements. Then she told me not to worry about her. She’d be OK. “And do not let those Hungarian witches run
you
out, understand?” she said. “Swear to me?” I nodded, my stomach in knots at the thought of dealing with Zsuzsanna and Nóra alone.
After Lana left the academy, I cried my heart out. Afterward, I felt horribly guilty. I have no right to feel so sorry for myself. I’m still here, at one of the best ballet academies in the world. I still have the chance of being a prima ballerina, but Lana’s ballet dreams have been crushed.
The next entry is dated a week later.
Dear Diary,
Class was hard today. I had no one to wink at when Madame Irina went off on one of her “You are all lazy, good-for-nothing shoe-shop girls, not dancers” rants. There was no one to help me perfect my steps after class, no one to translate what the teachers and the other girls were saying when they spoke too fast for me to understand — my Hungarian is getting better, but it’s still not great. And no one to step in when Zsuzsanna gave me a hard time about dancing with “
my
partner,” Péter, in duet class.
Before the lesson, Madame swapped everyone around and asked Péter to dance with just me. Zsuzsanna and Nóra both had to dance with Alexandr. Zsuzsanna protested wildly, but Madame told her to be quiet. Zsuzsanna and Nóra spent the rest of the class glaring at me as if I’d made the decision, not Madame. I love dancing with Péter. I know it sounds crazy, but I think we were born to dance together. I just wish it didn’t cause so much aggro.
Yesterday Zsuzsanna kicked me several times during barre work. Her pointe shoe impacted so hard on my upper thigh that it left angry dark-purple marks. The first time she did it, I spun around and said, “Hey, watch your feet,” thinking it was an accident. But by the third kick, I realized it was no accident. She wouldn’t have dared to do that if Lana was still around. But now I have no one to stick up for me. And complaining to Madame Irina will only make things worse.
So here I am, bruised body, bruised heart. How will I survive without Lana? I have no friends here now, and I feel so vulnerable and so alone . . .
I stop reading to wipe my tears away. I know exactly how Claire feels. But at least I have my family and Seth to rely on, and I’m not being picked on by anyone in school. There’s Annabelle, I guess, but compared to Zsuzsanna, she’s a pussycat. Claire is utterly alone, and from the sound of things, she’s being horribly bullied, both physically and mentally, by this Zsuzsanna. If the bullying started in April of last year, when this diary entry was written, then Claire’s had to deal with it for nearly two years. No wonder she’s cracking up. And I have no idea how to help her.
Dear Diary,
I’m bored, bored, bored, bored, bored, bored, bored, bored, bored, bored, bored, bored . . .
I snap my diary shut and fling it down on my bed. It’s Saturday lunchtime and I’d usually be hanging out with Mills, checking out the shops in Dundrum, drinking megacreamy hot chocolates in Starbucks, or maybe catching a movie. Instead, I’m home alone. I flop down on my bed. I’m just perfecting a string of long, dramatic groans when Mum walks into my bedroom.