Chapter 1

Mam says that if Abby Horgan down the road decided to jump off a bridge, I’d want to do it too, which of course is totally not true, who goes around wanting to jump off of bridges? But Mam is always saying CRAZY stuff like that and that’s exactly what she said when I told her that I wanted to join the O’Brien School of Irish Dancing.

You see, it all began on a Monday morning when we were in our classroom learning where the different counties are situated on the map of Ireland, which everyone knows is totally the HARDEST thing you have to learn in Geography. Thankfully, just as we were about to begin learning the province of Leinster, with its whopping 12 counties, there was a knock on the classroom door.

Múinteoir Emer, who hates being interrupted during our lessons, did a huge SIGH and eye roll and shouted, ‘Tar isteach. But be snappy, I’m trying to EDUCATE people here.’

Anyway, the person at the door was Abby Horgan, who lives down the road from me.

She is a class above me and is totally cool and grown-up and is even allowed walk to the park and back on her own. And I like her because even though we are not really friends because of her being older and totally mature and brilliant, she still says hi to me sometimes and is always friendly.

So, Abby was standing there, and she said to Múinteoir Emer, ‘I’m here to show the class the MEDAL I won at the Munster Irish Dancing Championship at the weekend,’ and she came in and stood up tall with her arms by her side in front of the class, smiling at us.

Then I spotted it. Abby had a huge circular, gold medal hanging around her neck that dangled and glinted in the sunlight. It was the most AMAZING and totally beautiful thing I had ever seen. It was all twirly Celtic designs around the edges and a picture of a dancer standing on one leg, with the other sticking straight out at a 90-degree angle. It was hanging from a long, striped ribbon, the same colours as the Irish flag and I couldn’t take my eyes off it.

All the girls in my class were ‘oohing’ and ‘aahing’ and Múinteoir Emer was ‘oohing’ and ‘aahing’ too and it was then that I decided that I was going to become a WORLD CHAMPION IRISH DANCER and win loads of gold medals and silver trophies and maybe even join the Riverdance group I saw on television and meet Michael Flatley and be famous and everyone in Ireland would be like, ‘Oh you’re Milly McCarthy, you are such an amazing Irish dancer, can I take a selfie with you?’

So, then I turned to Laura, who is my BFF (Best Friend Forever), and I told her that I was going to be a World Champion Irish dancer, only she said, ‘But Milly, you don’t even know how to Irish dance.’ And then I remembered that Laura was right, but I decided that was only a small detail, so I got out my sparkle notebook and my best gel pen that is green and smells like apples and I whispered to Laura that I needed her help to make a plan.

To be continued ...