JULIA JONES - My Worst Day Ever! - Book 1: aged 9 - 12 by Katrina Kahler

This
is how it all started…
     
    The last thing I remember is the look of
horror on the faces of the audience. But what had caused me to feel the most
humiliation was when I noticed Blake Jansen, the coolest boy in our class, staring
down at me in disbelief.
    My memory of that night still fills me with
shame. Everyone says that I was lucky to get away with only a mild concussion
and a huge lump on my head. But the disgrace I had felt at being the laughing
stock of the whole school was still very fresh in my mind. I’d really like to
try and forget that entire day, erase it from my memory banks forever, but
right now it keeps coming back to haunt me. Loser with a capital L! That’s the
way I feel about myself right now. I still can’t believe the events of that
fateful day. If only it were a nightmare I could wake up from and never ever have
to think about again. But unfortunately, that is just not the case!
    Mom says that time heals all wounds and
that everyone else has probably completely forgotten the incident, but I think
it’s going to take quite a while for me to get over it. For some reason though,
I suspect that one particular girl in our class had something to do with it
all. Call it gut instinct or intuition, but I have a sneaking suspicion that
somehow she was involved.
    Thinking back before that doomed day, life
had been pretty good. My best friend, Millie and I had auditioned for the
school musical and we were both selected for major roles. Being in grade seven
gave us an advantage over the younger kids, that and of course the fact that we
were both dancers. The best part was that we’d also been asked to choreograph
sections of the performance and this was a huge honour.
    Miss Sheldon, the performing arts teacher
who was in charge of the production, had given us the responsibility of coming
up with some routines and teaching the other kids the dance moves they needed
to learn. We were so excited about this, especially because we’d been left in
charge. Miss Sheldon is the coolest teacher ever!

    There are some great dancers in our grade;
even some of the boys are particularly good. One boy named Alex has been
dancing pretty much his entire life and is probably the best dancer in the
whole school. When he was younger, he said that the other kids had bullied him
and called him a girl as well as a heap of horrible names that he really didn’t
want to mention. But I could see that everyone had finally developed a huge
amount of respect for Alex and those who were still unaware of his talents were
in for a big surprise. Hip hop is his specialty and he’s so cool to watch. I
kept telling him that when he’s old enough, he should audition for “So You
Think You Can Dance” and he told me that he’d really like to.
    As well as Alex, there’s another kid in our
grade who is kind of overweight and dorky looking. But it turns out that he has
an awesome voice. I had no idea that our school has so much talent and it certainly
came as a huge surprise to find out that Liam can actually sing really well.
The look of amazement when we heard his audition pretty much spread like wild
fire. I even caught the teachers raising their eyebrows in astonishment. It
just goes to show you that you can’t judge a book by its cover! I never really
understood what that meant until hearing Liam sing. Now, I don’t think I’ll
ever look at him in the same way again. It’s also a really big lesson for me.
From now on, I will never judge a person by their looks alone. I’ll wait till I
get to know them because I’ve found out that until you do get to know people,
you really don’t know what type of person they are or what hidden talents they
might have.
    Anyway, the musical was shaping up to be a
huge success. The dance troupe we had put together was really coming along and
we rehearsed during every lunch break and sometimes even after school. Then one
afternoon, an amazing thing happened; Blake Jansen, who I’ve had a secret