by Alesha Dixon
Thank you to Nuno Ramalhão for the cover art.
Katy Birchall, once again it’s fantastic to collaborate with you. One of the most talented multi-taskers I know! Thank you for your brilliance and for bringing STAR SWITCH to life!
Thank you to my super cool agent, Lauren Gardner, for your support and knowledge: you are amazing!
To all my friends and family, thank you for reading my books… or pretending too! Haha! Ruby, I know you have :) Thank you for your continued support.
To all the readers, I hope you enjoy STAR SWITCH! Continue to shine, be kind to one another and go for your dreams!
All my love
ALESHA
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Photo by John Wright
ALESHA DIXON first found fame as part of Brit-nominated and Mobo Award-winning group Mis-teeq, which achieved 2 platinum albums and 7 top ten hits, before going on to become a platinum-selling solo artist in her own right. Alesha’s appearance on Strictly Come Dancing in 2007 led to her winning the series and becoming a judge for three seasons.
Since then she has presented and hosted many TV shows including CBBC dance show Alesha’s Street Dance Stars, Children In Need, Sport Relief and BBC 1’s The Greatest Dancer. She is a hugely popular judge on Britain’s Got Talent.
Alesha and Katy Birchall also collaborated on the smash hit LIGHTNING GIRL series: the first book was the biggest-selling middle grade debut of 2018.
Photo by Aimee Stewart
KATY BIRCHALL is the author of the side-splittingly funny The It Girl: Superstar Geek, The It Girl: Team Awkward, The It Girl: Don’t Tell the Bridesmaid and the Hotel Royale series, Secrets of a Teenage Heiress and Dramas of a Teenage Heiress. Katy also works as a freelance journalist and has written a non-fiction book, How to be a Princess: Real-Life Fairy Tales for Modern Heroines.
Katy won the 24/7 Theatre Festival Award for Most Promising New Comedy Writer with her very serious play about a ninja monkey at a dinner party.
When she isn’t busy writing, she is reading biopics of Jane Austen, daydreaming about being an elf in The Lord of the Rings, or running across a park chasing her rescue dog, Bono, as he chases his arch nemesis: squirrels.
Look out for Katy’s brand new series, also out now:
DON’T MISS ALESHA’S HIGH-VOLTAGE, LAUGH-OUT-LOUD LIGHTNING GIRL SERIES:
Photo by John Wright
READ AN EXTRACT FROM THE FIRST BOOK!
No one ever warned me that when you get angry, bright sparks might explode from your fingertips.
But that’s exactly what happened. One minute I was watching some school bullies round on my little sister in the playground, and the next minute my hands went all hot and tingly and suddenly these beams of light came flying out from my palms, like a lightning storm.
I think I scared myself more than anyone else. No one actually saw where the sparks came from, just a flash of blinding light behind them, and then when they turned around, there I was staring wide-eyed at my hands and madly wiggling my fingers.
One of the girls snorted as she watched me bring my hand right up to my face, so it was almost touching the end of my nose, and examine my little finger closely.
“Isn’t that your older sister, Clara?” she sneered. “What on earth is she doing?”
“She’s as odd as you are!” sniggered another one, as they all looked me up and down. I gulped.
Getting them to pick on me instead of Clara wasn’t technically my original plan. I figured I would just tell them to leave her alone, rather than distract them by becoming a human firework. Still, they weren’t interested in Clara any more and it seemed that they weren’t all that curious about a random and inexplicable burst of light in the middle of the playground either.
So that was something.
“What do you want, Aurora?” a tall boy said to me, raising his eyebrows.
“U-um. . .” I stammered, my hands still held up in front of my face. “I was just, uh, looking at my . . . scar.”
I held out my left hand, so they could see the swirled scar across my palm.
“I was born with it. Weird, isn’t it? Scars appear when the skin tissue heals over a wound to protect and strengthen it. Interesting. Right?”
This was not my proudest moment.
Clara looked at me as though I had lost my mind. I tried to think of something else to say, something a bit more impressive than healing-skin-tissue facts, but I was still a bit in shock from shooting light beams out of my hands. It had never happened before. The ringleaders glanced at each other in confusion. The tall one opened his mouth to speak but luckily the bell rang sharply, signalling break-time was over.
“Saved by the bell! Come on, Clara. See you lot later – fun talking to you!” I laughed nervously, as Clara darted round them to stand next to me. I threw my arm round her and hurriedly dragged her towards the school building before they could say anything else.
Kizzy found it hilarious. I decided not to tell her about the whole sparks-coming-out-of-my-hands thing because I didn’t want her thinking her best friend was weird, but I needn’t have worried. She knew I was weird.
“Healing skin tissue?” she giggled, getting her favourite pen out from her pencil case and opening her notebook as we waited for Mrs Damsel to start our health class.
“It was the first thing I could think of,” I sighed, looking accusingly at my palm as though it was my scar’s fault that I’d said something so silly. “They’ll never let me live it down. I think one of them is in gymnastics club with Suzie Bravo, so I bet they’ll tell her all about it.”
Kizzy and I glanced across to where Suzie was sitting with Georgie Taylor. Georgie was showing Suzie her cool new backpack, which was black and covered in all these small neon flowers. I just knew it was the latest must-have accessory. Georgie was the trendiest person in our year, maybe even in the entire school, thanks to her mum who was in charge of publicity for loads of big brands, designers and celebrities. Georgie was always getting freebies and she was very creative with her style. I could hear her telling Suzie that she’d stitched on the flowers herself.
I once tried to sew a swimming badge on to my school blazer and somehow managed to sew the jumper I was wearing at the time to the blazer sleeve. I ripped the jumper and the blazer when I tried to detach myself.
Fashion is not my strong point.
“Well, who cares what Suzie Bravo thinks?” Kizzy said sternly, as she swept her light brown hair back into a smooth ponytail. “Clara is lucky to have a sister like you to stand up for her. It was very brave of you to face those bullies. I wouldn’t have been able to do it.”
I smiled. This was, of course, a lie. Kizzy is the nicest person in the world and I would know because we’ve been best friends for ever. She lives on the same road as me and we’ve been “joined at the hip” (as my dad says) since our first day at school. We’re both quite shy so it makes sense to just quietly stick together, while people like Suzie Bravo enjoy being the centre of attention.
But just because she’s shy and petite – one of the shortest girls in our year, in fact – it doesn’t mean Kizzy isn’t brave enough to stand up to bullies. At the beginning of term, I accidentally kicked a football at Mr Mercury, our grumpy new science teacher, and it bounced right off his big bald head. As he turned around slowly with this fierce expression on his face to see who the culprit was, Kizzy stepped forwards to apologize. I tried to protest but she told me very sternly to be quiet. And because she’s the nicest person in the world, Mr Mercury just told her to be more careful in the future and that was that. He even laughed. That’s the power Kizzy has over people. She can make the grumpiest science teacher on the planet laugh.
Later, she told me she took the blame because I’d already had a bad start with Mr Mercury. The week of the football incident, I had been shaking my pen to get it to work and accidentally flicked blue ink all over his crisp white shirt. She didn’t want me to get into even more trouble.
If that’s not bravery, I don
’t know what is.
As Mrs Damsel told us all to quieten down for the beginning of class, I tried to forget about my lame scar conversation and instead focus on the weirdness that had come shooting from my hands in the playground, and whether that was normal or not. I couldn’t recall anyone else in our year spark lightning at their classmates, but maybe it was just part of growing up and I was ahead of everyone else. Mum did say recently that I was looking taller, so maybe it was growing pains or something?
Scholastic Children’s Books
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First published in the UK by Scholastic Ltd, 2020
This electronic edition published by Scholastic Ltd, 2020
Text © Alesha Dixon, 2020
Front cover character art by Nuno Ramalhão © Scholastic, 2020
eISBN 978 0702 30128 5
A CIP catalogue record for this work is available from the British Library.
The right of Alesha Dixon to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
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