Billy Elliot Read Online Free PDF Page A

your muscles underneath the jump, you go up like a f***ing bird.
    So in the end I did have another go at it, after all. I thought, Just once. When I left the house I had no intention of doing it. Dad and Tony had their usual quarrel and went off to the picket line. I took my fifty pence off the fridge, got the gloves and off I went. But once I got into the changing rooms and I heard George going on, bang bang bang ... oh, my heart sank. I thought, Banging about in the ring and getting twatted by some dopey piece of shite – not for me, thanks. Michael was right, it’s stupid. So I hid in one of the cubicles in the changing room, waited until they’d all gone, and then sneaked down to the ballet class. It was downstairs this time so no one would ever know I’d been. It was just curiosity. I didn’t care that much. I just wanted to see how good I was at it, really. And I quite liked the girls all looking at me as well. And I didn’t half mind looking at them, either!
    It started off boring and embarrassing. They were doing all these moves one after the other and I had no idea what was coming next. I was going one way and they were going the other. How was I supposed to know what to do? They’d been doing it for ages. I bet I could have done any of those moves better than they could, but I didn’t know which one was coming next.
    Miss was going, ‘One two three, one two three, one two three,’ but how can you stay in rhythm if you don’t know what’s coming next? I had no idea what I was doing. I just stopped.
    ‘What’s this?’ she said.
    ‘I don’t know what to do, miss.’
    ‘Follow the others. Go to the back so you can watch – two three, one two three. Where’s those arms, two three, one two three.’
    I did me best, but I dunno. I was thinking, I’ve had enough of this. I was thinking it was more fun getting your head kicked in than being a prat here. But then she showed me the spin.
    I’d seen them before on TV. You know, someone spins round and round dead fast and then stops – comes suddenly to a dead standstill in exactly the same position as when they started off. It’s pretty spectacular, really. If you did that in a boxing ring, no one would know what was going on. You’d spin round really fast, and you’d come out of it with a punch – man, you’d knock your opponent flying! Anyway, it’s like all these things – there’s a trick to it, see. I never realised. You have to find a spot on the wall, stare at it, get your arms right – the balance is in the arms, see – then push off into your spin, really, really fast – and then stop so you’re staring atexactly the same point. It has to be exactly the same spot, mind – it’s not good starting off staring at a picture on the wall and end up looking at the lampshade. If you get it right, you go like a top. If you get it wrong, you end up on your back.
    Anyhow, I was crap at that too. She showed us it over and over. Some of the girls did it pretty well, really. I tried to imitate them, but she wasn’t having it.
    ‘Come on, Billy, you’re not a girl, are you? Put some strength into it! Spin it, spin it! You’re a man. You’ve got to go off like a rocket!’
    So I did. I span round so fast me feet slipped and I ended up sprawled out on the floor like a prat. The girls stared down at me. They didn’t dare laugh, though. She came down on anyone who laughed. You have to be prepared to be a bit of a prat when you start off learning these things, so you can end up good. Same as anything.
    ‘Practise at home,’ she said. And then we went to barre, which was a lot better because it was all slow and you could see the moves easily and I could do that OK.
    At the end of it I was knackered, but I felt great. That spin – I knew I could do it. It was just a question of practice. I was sitting on a bench pulling me jumper on and that Debbie was hanging around me again, watching like I was a TV set or something.
    ‘See,’ she said. ‘I