Secrets at Silver Spires by Ann Bryant Read Free Book Online Page B

of the books we’d looked at. It was full of short stories and we’d started one of them but hadn’t had time to look at more than the first paragraph. I was dying to know what happened next.
    â€œI’ll tell you what, I’ll photocopy that page for you, Jess, because I’m going to need the book this afternoon.”
    As I walked back to Hazeldean to put the precious sheet away somewhere safe in the dorm, I thought about Miss Cardwell and what she’d taught me, and I couldn’t help feeling happy and hopeful. It was just as though she could see right into my brain and she’d spotted a massive knotted ball of cotton and found the end. And now she was slowly starting to unravel it for me.

Chapter Six

    On Saturday mornings there are lessons at Silver Spires, but once they’re over, the weekend is nearly always packed with interesting and fun things to do. The houseparents are always telling us that we mustn’t feel obliged to fill the whole weekend with activities, though, if we just want to chill or do our own thing or catch up on work or anything.
    Sometimes there are outings or events that everyone has to join in with, like when we have international evenings and you dress up in the style of clothes from that country and eat food that is typical of the country, and maybe have dancing or singing or games, or all three. That’s always great fun. Then there are shopping trips organized every week, but Grace and I don’t often go on those unless we really need to buy something, because we’re not that into shopping – not like Katy, who’s so stylish and loves looking at all the latest fashions. It’s true that I dress differently from lots of other girls at Silver Spires, but it’s not so much that I’m into fashion, more that I just like putting interesting colours and styles together. And as for Grace, well she’s hardly ever out of her tracksuit!
    Grace often trains at the weekends actually, and I like to do my art, taking photos or drawing pictures, but if she has a match I usually go along and support her. Sometimes I have work to catch up on though, and Grace helps me. That was fine for the first term, but then during last term the work increased, and recently I haven’t known where to start, there’s so much. Everyone else seems to manage okay, but I feel as though I’m drowning in work because of the reading and writing taking me so long, and I can’t keep asking Grace for help when she’s got all her sports training to do.
    Once or twice I’ve had to pretend I’m not interested in going to the theatre or the ice skating rink, just because I need time on my own to try and catch up with all I have to do to get through the next week of lessons. But when I had to miss a museum trip once I was so depressed and upset that I couldn’t concentrate on the work anyway, so it was a waste of time.
    This weekend there’s an outing to the big bowlplex in town, and then the cinema later. And on Sunday there’s a trip to Shakespeare’s Globe. Georgie was over the moon about that and the others were going along too. I’ve been before with my parents, otherwise I would have loved to go, because the building is amazing. It’s been built with all the materials that actually would have been used in Shakespeare’s day.
    The main reason I didn’t want to go, though, was because I was desperate to have some time on my own to work on my project, but also to practise reading and to try and finish the story that Miss Cardwell had photocopied for me. There was one other thing that I wanted to do too. Ever since Miss Cardwell had mentioned that those two artists, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, both had dyslexia, I’d been thinking about that, wondering whether she was just saying it because she knew I was interested in art and thought it would make me feel better. After all, she could make up anything,