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First published in Great Britain 2017
by Egmont UK Limited
The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN
Text copyright © 2017 Beautiful Movements Ltd
Cover illustration copyright © 2017 Beautiful Movements Ltd
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First e-book edition 2017
ISBN 978 1 4052 87180
Ebook ISBN 978 1 7803 1793 9
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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For my nieces Alyson and Gracyn
Also available in the WEDA series:
Billie’s Big Audition
CONTENTS
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
TILLY’S SPOKEN-WORD POEM
About the Author
Q&A with Kimberly
It aws teh best of tmies, ti wsa the wosrt fo timse, ti was teh age of widsom, it aws the aeg of foloishness, it wsa the epohc of beleif, ti was teh epoch of incerdulity, it was eth saeson of lihgt, it was the season fo dakrness, it wsa the spirng of hope, ti was the witner of depsair.
Tilly stared at the words until her eyes burned and her head hurt, but the letters kept jumping about all over the page.
‘What are you supposed to say?’ Tilly pleaded with the letters. But it was no good, they still wouldn’t fall into their correct order. ‘I hate you, dyslexia!’ Tilly threw the worksheet on to her bedroom floor. It was so unfair. Nine out of ten people didn’t have dyslexia. Why did she have to be the one who did? At her last school she’d been given extra support in class, but since she’d got to WEDA she’d been trying to make out that she didn’t need it. She definitely didn’t need the other students feeling sorry for her or, even worse, making fun of her. Now, as she looked at the paper on the floor, she wondered if she’d been right to hide it.
Before Tilly and her fellow students at WEDA had broken up for the Christmas holiday, their English teacher, Mrs Jarvis, had given them ‘some fun reading for the holiday’. Apparently, the printout contained some of the best opening paragraphs of books ever written. But to Tilly, they might as well have been written in Chinese. She wished Billie was there to help her. Billie was the only person at WEDA she’d told about her dyslexia. Whenever they got set English assignments during term time, Billie would read them out loud for her. At least then she was able to understand what the jumbled-up letters meant.
As Tilly thought of her friend Billie, miles away in London, she felt a pang of sadness. If only Christmas was over already. Tilly frowned. You were supposed to feel homesick for your home, not your school. But for Tilly it was the other way round. In her first term boarding at WEDA she’d come to think of the dance academy as her home and her friends in her street crew, Il Bello, as her family.
Tilly got off her bed and walked over to the full-length mirror on her wardrobe door. She didn’t feel like herself when she was here any more – not her true self, anyway. She gazed at her reflection, at her bland brown hair and her pale, make-up-free face. She hated looking so colourless and plain, and how vulnerable it made her feel. But her parents didn’t like her dyeing her hair or wearing make-up and she didn’t want to do anything to annoy them right now.
Her mum had been really disappointed with Tilly’s first end-of-term report. Even though Tilly had got a glowing report in all of her dance classes, her mum was only interested in her academic grades. She was a lawyer and obsessed with how Tilly did in things like Maths and English. It had been hard enough getting her mum to agree to her going to WEDA – so if Tilly had to look like a boring loser to keep her mum happy over the Christmas holiday, it was a price worth paying. Tilly ran her finger over her cheek. Her skin was as lumpy as a mountain range. G-reat, she was about to have another break-out. Her spots always got worse when she was stressed, which only made her more stressed – leaving her in a vicious, spotty cycle. She glared at her reflection. I hate you, spots! I hate you even more than I hate dyslexia! She grabbed her concealer from her make-up bag, then remembered that her mum didn’t even like her wearing that. She took the cap off the concealer and drew an angry face with it on the mirror instead. Then she added a lightning bolt and a thundercloud. Tilly stepped back and grinned. Channelling her feelings into artwork always made her feel better.
Twenty One Pilots came on the radio and, instinctively, Tilly struck a pose, tilting