‘Scissors? What do you want scissors for?’

The receptionist frowned over the counter at Charlie. She had long hair, worn loose, like everyone else.

‘I … um …’ Charlie didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t tell the receptionist what she was planning.

‘You’re the new girl, aren’t you?’ the receptionist said. But she wasn’t smiling.

Charlie nodded. She could hear the girls whispering and giggling as they walked behind her and into the studio.

‘Make sure you bring them back,’ the receptionist said. Then her voice softened. ‘OK?’

‘OK, thanks.’

Charlie took the scissors and rushed back into the toilets.

She had to work fast.

As she snipped, she thought about what her mum was going to say. But Charlie couldn’t worry about that now.

Making her mum mad was better than wearing ballet shoes to a modern dance class. There was no way Charlie was going to do that. Not in front of those trendy girls. She just couldn’t!

As she stepped into her leotard, Charlie thought about taking her hair out of its pony-tail and pulling off her headband. But she didn’t have time to fuss with her hair. She was already late for class.

Charlie put everything except the scissors back in her bag.

She took a deep breath. This was it.

Time to face the music.

‘Weeeeeeeelcome, Charlie!’ Rosie, the dance teacher, yelled above the music. As she clapped her hands, her nail polish glittered. ‘Just find a spot at the barre,’ she said.

The rest of the class stared at Charlie.

Charlie could feel all eyes on her, looking at her ponytail and her plain black leotard. Under that, she wore pink tights, cut off at the knees, and below that, bare feet. She felt her cheeks burning as she clutched the barre. She wished she could disappear. It was like being naked in front of a mob of cameras.

‘OK, warm up, girls.’

Rosie changed the music and started counting in time.

The rest of the class stopped staring, and started kicking and stretching at the barre.

‘Just copy the others, Charlie,’ Rosie called. ‘You’ll be fine!’

And for most of the class, Charlie was fine.

Once everyone started working and stretching together, Charlie stopped feeling quite so different.

She was surprised how similar this warm-up was to her old ballet warm-up. The kicks and stretches weren’t too hard at all.

The leaps across the floor were fine too. It was pretty much the same as ballet, except the rhythm was different. When the other girls leaped across the floor, they reminded Charlie of deer — leaping with strength and power.

But when it was Charlie’s turn, she felt light and pale. She didn’t know how to stop leaping like a ballet dancer.

The girl who had shown Charlie the toilets was easily the best dancer. Her name was Kathy, and she had a dynamic, punchy way of moving. She was balanced on the floor, but she seemed to fly through each leap.

Charlie couldn’t stop watching her. The way Kathy moved was exactly why Charlie wanted to learn modern dance.

But then it came time to dance in the middle of the floor.

As soon as they started a dance sequence, Charlie realised that modern dance was very different to ballet.

Everything was so fast. The other girls seemed to explode out of themselves, kicking, spinning, ducking. They all had a special way of flicking their head to the side with a rush of long hair.

Charlie fumbled and fluffed for a while.

Then she just stood at the back of the room, wondering how on earth she could ever dance like that.

‘Don’t worry, Charlie,’ Rosie called out. ‘We’ve been practising this for weeks.’

Some of the girls turned and sniggered.

But Kathy didn’t. She moved in front of Charlie and slowly went through the moves. Charlie smiled a thanks, and tried to copy Kathy.

But it was no use. Charlie just couldn’t get into the flow. She felt so out of place — she didn’t belong here at all.

Charlie had not expected modern dance to be easy, but she also hadn’t expected to feel like this — so very new and so utterly, completely different.