Dance Till you Drop by Samantha-Ellen Bound Page B

the floor will never do. We better get you up and dancing, hey?’
    Benji gave her a weird smile that his eyes didn’t agree with.
    â€˜How are you, Benji?’ asked Mum. She kissed him on the top of his head, and the way he tried to duck out of it made me smile. ‘You ready to dance the waltz with my Paigey?’
    â€˜I guess,’ he said.
    â€˜I guess!’ Mum laughed again. ‘Well, I hope you guessed right, because we’re going to make you two state champions!’
    â€˜Great,’ I heard Benji mumble under his breath.
    Fleur is a nice teacher, but Mum usually ends up taking over. She calls out corrections from the chair at the side of the studio, or jumps up to partner Fleur to show us how it’s done.

    Most of the time I wish Mum would go away to fix up the costumes or something, because I don’t feel like I dance my best when she’s around.
    I think she forgets that Benji and I are only just learning ballroom. We haven’t been doing it for twenty years, like she did. And she keeps slamming us with new styles to learn when we really should be concentrating on just a few.
    Take this example. Fleur was getting Benji and me to do some slow circles around the studio, in a basic one, two, three; one, two, three box step. It was just a warm-up! But Mum called out, ‘Paigey, you’ve got to stand closer to Benji! He’s not contagious, sweetheart, you can’t be ten metres away from him – it ruins the line of your arms.’
    I know it’s meant to be encouraging, but I get nervous when she calls out stuff like that!And when I did move closer to Benji I got all stiff because I felt like it still wasn’t good enough.
    Plus I didn’t like being too near to Benji. I wasn’t sure which part of his face I was meant to look at. We were so close I could see a chip on his front left tooth. Imagine what he could see on mine! I hope I didn’t have a booger!
    Benji acts cool, but he’s really good at ballroom. His thing is hip hop, but his mum and mine know each other from the old dancing days, so they thought it would be a great idea to get us together as ballroom partners.
    Benji’s a natural. Sometimes he looks like he enjoys himself, even with me stumbling and turning the wrong way and treading on his toes.
    I couldn’t understand why I was so bad. I bet Riley or Ellie wouldn’t have the sameproblem. Mum would never yell things out at them!
    Great. So I’d miss Ellie’s birthday to do a ballroom competition that I wasn’t even good at. It just got worse and worse.

Chapter Three
    â€˜I’m so glad we made it in time! How are you going, sweetie? Closing soon?’ Mum asked the girl behind the counter.
    We were at the Danceworks store, and the girl (it was Ash’s big sister, Bridget) looked up from where she was tagging singlets.
    â€˜Half an hour,’ Bridget said. ‘Hey Paige.’
    â€˜Hello,’ I said.
    â€˜You guys know what you’re after?’
    â€˜Absolutely,’ said Mum. ‘Hairnets. Paige’s hair just won’t stay still! And a nice, plain leotard with a sweetheart neckline.’ Mum turned to me. ‘Paigey, that’s what I’m going to create your waltz costume around. Do we need anything else, bub? You excited?’
    â€˜I guess so,’ I said, but Mum was already flicking through the racks.
    I already had about five unused leotards at home, so I didn’t see why I couldn’t use one of them.
    â€˜We’re going for a music-box theme, Paigey,’ said Mum, holding up a long-sleeved number and then putting it back. ‘Benji’s mum and I were talking. He’ll be the soldier and you’ll be the music-box ballerina. We reckon a lovely, soft yellow for the base colour? Some emerald greens in the skirt – that’ll make your eyes pop. What do you think, honey?’
    â€˜Yellow’s nice,’ I said, yawning.
    There