Centre Stage: A Novel

be boring with Ally around!
    You know the way people say that time flies when you’re having fun? Well, the next two weeks seemed to go by at supersonic speed. Starting proper rehearsals was brilliant. The adults in the cast were really good fun. There was Maureen, an actress who used to have a part on Eastenders , who was playing the witch. She was really frightening on stage but really good fun off it; she always had sweets and she told us loads of stories about what the rest of the cast of Eastenders were like. Then there was Robin, a brilliant ballet dancer who was Mr Tumnus; Clive, who played Asian, and was really tall — he usually played giants in Christmas pantos; and Darren, who was a children’s TV presenter, was Mr Beaver. We started rehearsing at nine o’clock each day and when I wasn’t needed in scenes I had to do school-work that my teachers from Charles Hope had set me.
    It was very different from being in a film. And it wasn’t just the fact I had to do schoolwork — the whole atmosphere was different. On a film set there were often just a few actors and loads of technicians, and you spent ages getting made up and waiting around for a scene to be ready. But in the rehearsal room there were just two technical people — Velda and the deputy stage manager called Lauren — but lots of actors. We rehearsed scene after scene really quickly and there was hardly any hanging around. If I wasn’t acting or doing schoolwork, I was at a singing or dancing rehearsal. It was really good fun. Everyone got on brilliantly and there was loads of talking and joking. I was really pleased I’d made up with Justine, and even Samantha and Colette seemed slightly less frosty to each other.
    I was trying really hard with my dancing. Justine was helping me and so was Colette. I was getting better but I still made mistakes and it was sometimes difficult to find time to practise. There was so much else going on and when I got home in the evening I was much too tired to start dancing. It was all I could do to collapse in front of the TV and then drag myself to bed. I’ll be fine by the first night , I thought. But at the back of my mind there was the nagging thought, What if I’m not ?
    I hardly had time to think about school, although I did ring Harriet every night to see how she was getting on. She said Kelly and the others were still teasing her but she was trying to ignore it.
    ‘I can’t wait till tomorrow night,’ she told me on the Friday night before our sleepover. ‘It seems ages since I saw you. What are we going to do?’
    ‘Mum said we can get a video and have a takeaway pizza,’ I replied. ‘Are Ally and Eve still all right to come?’
    ‘Yeah,’ Harriet answered. ‘I think Eve’s really looking forward to it.’ I knew Harriet had been hanging around with Eve and Ally at breaktime.
    ‘It’ll be weird having her sleep over with us, though.’ I frowned.
    ‘It’ll be good,’ Harriet told me. ‘She’s really nice when you get to know her.’
    ‘Yeah,’ I said, but as I put the phone down I couldn’t stop thinking about the sleepover. What was it going to be like with four of us? I couldn’t imagine it. Please , I thought doubtfully, please let it work out OK.
    I needn’t have worried — the sleepover was just brilliant. Eve was really funny and I began to understand why Ally liked her so much. They had exactly the same silly sense of humour. First of all Eve started us off having a competition to see who could fit the most digestives in their mouth and then, just when Ally had her mouth stuffed full with three, Eve tickled her.
    Ally burst out laughing, spraying digestives everywhere.
    The rest of us all screamed and ducked the flying crumbs.
    ‘Got you!’ Eve grinned.
    ‘Not fair!’ Ally gasped and, picking up one of my old beanie babies, a shaggy orang-utan, she hit Eve over the head. ‘Take that!’
    ‘Ow!’ Eve squealed. She grabbed a lilac dolphin from my desk and began attacking Ally and the orang-utan with it. ‘I’m Dilly the killer dolphin from the deep. Die, evil monkey, die!’
    Harriet and I joined in and the next minute cuddly animals were flying around the room. By the time we stopped we were all red in the face and gasping with laughter.
    ‘I need a drink,’ I panted. ‘Who wants a Coke?’
    ‘Me!’ three voices exclaimed.
    As we headed on to the landing, Ally said, ‘I’m going to go to the loo. I’ll see you in a minute.’ She went up to the