Studio Showdown (3 page)

‘Ellie, can I talk to you for a minute?' I asked.

The class was having a drink and Ellie was by the sound system going over something, no doubt the next bit of choreography in what was supposed to be
our
dance.

‘Sure, Paige,' she said, not stopping. ‘What's up?'

‘Um, like, maybe outside?' I suggested, crossing my arms over my chest like I
could ward off the argument I knew was coming.

Ellie narrowed her eyes at me for a second but then she shrugged. ‘Sure,' she said, grabbing her drink bottle. ‘Come on.'

I followed her flouncy pink skirt out of the classroom.

‘Hit me with it, kiddo,' she said, as soon as we were out in the corridor. She uncapped her drink bottle and took a big gulp, waiting for me to speak.

My silly tongue was all tied up in knots.

‘Earth to Paige?' Ellie teased, wiping her mouth.

‘Okay, well,' I began. I scratched at my bun nervously. It suddenly felt way too tight. ‘It's just about the dance.'

‘Isn't it, like, the coolest thing we've ever done?' Ellie enthused. ‘I just love this song.'

‘The song is cool, I suppose,' I said. ‘I just think, well … isn't it meant to be both of us choreographing the dance?'

I said the last bit so softly that Ellie leaned in towards me. ‘Pardon?' she said.

‘It's meant to be both of us choreographing the routine,' I said, louder. ‘Not just you.'

‘Oh.' Ellie took a step back and shook her water bottle, sizing me up.

I did my best to hold my ground and not turn and run away, which is what I felt like doing. I loved Ellie, but you don't ever want to get on her bad side.

‘You don't like what I've done?' she asked.

‘It's not that I don't like it,' I said. ‘It's just that you've kind of taken it over, and I haven't had a chance to even give you my ideas, much less help make up the routine.'

Ellie coughed and looked around. Then she took another step back. ‘Well, Paige, if you
felt like that, you should have made an effort to team up with me before the lesson and we could have gone over some choreography together.'

‘You didn't ask me,' I said, gaining a bit of confidence. ‘You just decided what we would be doing and thought I would go along with it.'

‘Well,' said Ellie, her voice rising and the freckles on her nose starting to stand out like they always do when she gets upset, ‘I didn't know you would hate what I did and be mean about it.'

‘I'm not being mean!' I cried. I could feel tears trying to burst out of my throat from down in my chest, and I swallowed them back. ‘I don't hate what you did, either! But we're meant to be a team and you just barged in and did everything! I have ideas, too!'

‘And what are they?' said Ellie.

‘Well,' I mumbled, ‘like, Benji and I are doing jive in our ballroom practice, and I thought we could do some cute swing dancing with the guys and girls. Like, they could all be young Hollywood starlets in the 1940s or something, out having romances and a good time and living the party life …' I trailed off, feeling stupid. Out loud my ideas sounded dumb, even though I'd been so confident about them in my head.

Ellie shifted her weight from foot to foot. ‘So, you really just want to make it all about you,' she said, ‘and copy from some stupid ballroom thing you're doing?'

‘No!' I protested, as the tears worked their way up my throat even further and left a salty taste in my mouth. ‘It's just an idea that I wanted to share with you and see what we could develop. It doesn't have to be exactly
that. I thought you'd care about working together rather than taking over.'

‘Well, I didn't count on you being selfish and crabby just because you didn't get what you wanted,' Ellie said stubbornly. She flicked her blonde ponytail back. ‘And you should have said so at the start, not now, when I've already worked really hard and made up a quarter of the dance.'

I shook my head miserably. I knew I'd upset Ellie and she was beyond even listening to me.

‘I just wish you included me at the start,' I finally said, looking down at the dusty floor, and blinking to keep my tears back. ‘I wanted us to create something together.'

There was silence for a moment.

Then Ellie shook her water bottle again and pushed past me. ‘Well, it's too late to change now,' she said. ‘Sorry, Paige.' She opened the door to the studio but then paused, as if she
was going to say something more. But she sighed and kept going.

One tiny tear dribbled out of my eye and fell onto the floor.

Lyrical class on Saturday morning seemed like the last thing in the world I wanted to do.

But I pulled on my leotard and foot paws and did my hair up in a bun, like usual, and I listened but didn't really hear Mum going on about my costume for the upcoming jive competition.

She kissed me on the forehead. ‘Have a great day, sweetie. I'll see you after class. We'll go get that material for your dress.'

‘Huh?' I blinked. Oh. We were at Silver Shoes already. I clutched my duffel bag towards me and opened the car door. ‘Thanks. Bye, Mum.'

I wished I was driving away with her.

Especially when I saw who was sitting on the front steps of Silver Shoes, enjoying the sun before class.

Riley, Ashley. And Ellie.

Ellie, who I hadn't spoken to since our little fight about the routine.

And if anyone could hold a grudge, it was her.

‘Good morning, Little Miss Jitterbug,' called out Ashley as I made my way past the rosebushes and up the path to the steps.

‘Hey, Ash,' I said. ‘Hi, Riley.'

Riley waved a hand. ‘Hey, girl.'

‘Morning, Ellie,' I added.

‘Mmm,' said Ellie faintly, from where she was lying on the top step, shading her eyes against the sun.

Oh well. It was a start.

‘Want a snake?' Ashley held out a packet of jelly snakes, which is our favourite snack when we're at Silver Shoes.

‘No, thanks,' I said. ‘I just ate breakfast.'

‘This is my breakfast,' Ashley said happily, gobbling down a purple one.

‘That's disgusting,' Riley said, shaking her head. ‘Nana would kill you if she knew you were having a jelly snake for breakfast. She doesn't let me leave the house unless I've eaten half my body weight in food.'

‘I'm happy to trade places,' Ashley said. ‘Your mum's cooking is the best thing I've ever tasted. Feel free to sneak your leftovers into a paper bag and give them to me. I'm not choosy.'

‘Well, Nana said you should come over for tea tonight if you're allowed,' Riley said. ‘Which reminds me, Paige, I don't have athletics training anymore on the day of your ballroom comp, so I can come and watch you after all!'

‘Woohoo,' cheered Ashley, throwing a half-eaten snake into the air. Unfortunately it landed on Ellie's foot.

‘Ugh!' Ellie kicked out and sat up. When she saw it was only the end of a snake she smiled and went to lay back down. Then she locked eyes with me and her smile disappeared.

I had a feeling that if it was me who had thrown the snake at her instead of Ashley, I'd be in the rosebushes by now.

‘So we'll all go together, yeah?' said Ashley. ‘To see our little Paigeblossom and Benjiboy in action?'

Riley agreed but there was silence from Ellie.

‘Eleanor Charlotte Irvin?' said Ashley.

‘Sorry, what?' asked Ellie, looking through her laced fingers at us.

‘We'll all go together to see Paige and Benji do the jive at the ballroom comp? The one in a few weeks?'

‘Oh,' said Ellie. She stretched out luxuriously in the sun. ‘Yeah. I don't know about that. I might be doing an acting class with Cadence that day.'

I shuffled my feet as my heart sank. ‘Oh. You said that you could come when I asked you last week.'

‘Plans change, Paige,' Ellie snapped. ‘Do I have to ask your permission every time I want to do something else?' She gave me a little sideways look and I knew she was trying to make a point about our fight about the routine.

Ashley stopped chewing on her snake and looked at Riley. Then she frowned at both of
us. ‘Everything okay, girls?' she said, in her best Miss Caroline voice.

I knew she was trying to make light of the situation but I could hear the worry in her voice.

‘Oh, everything's just lovely,' Ellie said. She yawned and sat up, gathering up her things. ‘I mean, I'd love to go to Paige's ballroom competition, because I support her in every style she dances and not everything is about me.' She stood up.

‘Not everything is about you?' teased Ash. ‘That's a first.'

‘Haha,' said Ellie. She grabbed a pink snake from the packet. ‘I'll see you guys in class.'

Riley turned around to watch her retreating back. ‘What was that all about?' she asked.

I sighed and slumped down onto the step. ‘Ellie thinks I hate what she made up for our
routine,' I said. ‘I don't. I just want a chance to show her my ideas, too.'

‘Oh, right.' Ash sat down next to me and put her arms around me. ‘Don't worry about that. You know what a little drama queen our Ellie can be. Maybe just put some awesome steps together of what you had in mind and spring them on her and blow her away? I'm sure she'll come around.'

‘Yeah.' I tugged a snake out of the packet and took a pathetic bite at it. ‘I hope so.'

When you have a best friend, and you go to the same school as them, and are in pretty much all the same dance classes together, it makes it pretty hard to stay in a fight.

By Monday afternoon Ellie and I had reached an uneasy truce, because we had art at school and somehow we both ended up in our paint smocks (they had matching dance prints on them), sitting next to each other at the table.

Our project was to make a papier mâché face mask of an animal for Furry Friends week. Ellie had decided to make a pig, because pink was her favourite colour and a flamingo was ‘too hard'.

‘Look,' she said, holding up her almost-finished mask. ‘It's Jasmine.' She held it up to her face and mimicked Jasmine's voice, adding in some piggy squeals.

I giggled, even though I knew it was kind of mean. ‘Oh wait,' Ellie said. ‘The nose isn't pushed up high enough.'

I held up my own mask, which I was quite proud of. It was modelled after our toy poodle, Lipstick, except I'd exaggerated the eyes with big thick lashes and added extra pink bows to the masses of pale yellow wool I'd used to make her fur. ‘This one could be you,' I said, without thinking, because somehow they really did look the same.

Ellie stared at me and I thought for a second she was going to papier mâché my mouth shut. But then she giggled. ‘You're right,' she said. ‘I never realised I looked like Lipstick before.' She reached over to the paint palette. ‘There's nowhere near enough pink, though,' she added. She dabbed some pale pink paint onto her brush but instead of putting it on the papier mâché Lipstick, she swiped it on the end of my nose.

‘Ellie!' I exclaimed, getting her back with the yellow that was on the end of my own brush. But she dodged it and I got it on her school dress instead. ‘Whoops, sorry!'

‘You will be,' said Ellie, reaching for more paint.

Then we got into a paint fight, which resulted in us getting sent outside to wash all the art brushes in a bucket of hot soapy water. Usually I hate getting in trouble, and avoid it,
but because this time it meant sitting in the sun with Ellie, laughing and dripping water off the balcony onto unsuspecting students below, I thought that, just this time, it was okay.

So the fact that we were kind of friends again made me feel as if Ellie might just be open to me bringing up the Junior routine.

I decided to put my ideas into action, make up some choreography and show her at our next practice.

But to do this I had to call upon the one and only Benji.

I stayed an extra half hour with him after our next ballroom lesson so I could go over some sequences. My dance had to be perfect when I showed Ellie – I really wanted to wow her.

Luckily, Benji was equally as good at choreographing as he was at dancing. Soon
we were flinging moves back and forth along with our ideas and crafting something that was even more amazing than I thought it would be.

‘Maybe it should have been me and you making up the dance,' I joked, as I leant over to catch my breath.

‘Ah, I wouldn't want you to get sick of me,' Benji joked back.

I flushed because I wanted to say that I would never get sick of him, that I loved dancing with him and that he was the perfect partner and even more perfect at getting me to lighten up and have fun. I wanted to say that since he'd been my partner he'd become as important to me as my Silver Shoes girls and it made me so happy, how easy our friendship was now.

But I knew he would just think it was girly, so I didn't say anything.

By the time the Juniors' practice rolled round, I was feeling really positive and even excited.

I made sure Benji and I left our ballroom practice a little early and raced with him to studio one, where Ellie was already warming up in the mirror.

‘Hey Ellie,' I said, walking through the door.

She looked up from her side stretch in second position. ‘Hey Paige,' she said, then caught sight of Benji. ‘Oh. Hi there, Benji. What brings you to the studio with Paige?'

She was pursing her lips in a cheeky smile that I knew meant she understood exactly why Benji was following me into the studio (she'd kept trying to tell me Benji was madly in love with me and vice versa). I widened my eyes at her to shush her up.

‘Well, I'm here to help Paige out,' Benji said, speaking up for me. ‘We've got something to show you.'

‘Aww, aren't I lucky?' Ellie said, jumping up.

‘Yes,' I said, and cleared my throat. ‘I wanted to show you some stuff that I've come up with for our dance. Like, the kind of stuff I was telling you about the other day. I mean, it's just ideas and everything, but yeah …'

Ellie shrugged and leant back against the mirror. ‘Go on, then,' she said, with the same pursed-lip smile.

I quietly breathed a sigh of relief. She seemed to be taking it well. Maybe this would work, after all.

I dashed over to the sound system to put the music on. Benji's cousin had put it on a CD for me. It was a song called ‘Candyman' but a remix version that had a bit more of a jive feel to it, with a slightly more uptempo beat, to match the rhythm that the dance had to follow.

I took my place opposite Benji. I really, really hoped we'd both nail it.

Which we did, of course, because we were so excited about what we'd created together and keen to show it off. I'd kept note of Ellie's choreography from the last lesson and tried to jazz up the jive with a bit of her style, so it was a perfect blend of our two ideas.

So while Benji and I did our partner work, with the turns and holds and lifts, we also did a lot more moves on our own, like kicks and arm jives and hip shimmies, all of which we extended a little more, with slightly changed or exaggerated angles, to match the over-the-topness of Ellie's dance.

I really thought Benji and I were onto a winner.

At the end of the routine, Benji spun me out, and I turned into my final pose, grinning, looking towards Ellie.

I was so sure she'd be proud of me, that she'd be as excited as I was.

Instead, her face looked stormy and her chin had a familiar stubborn jut to it.

Uh oh.

‘I hate it,' she said.