Geek Girl

  “What change of plans?”

  “They didn’t tell you? Oh, that’s just so like them. They told us while you were out the back, doing your little walking practice.” She looks at Rose. “So cute,” she adds, smirking.

  “What’s changed?” I can feel myself starting to tense up again. I’ve learnt everything by heart; I’m not sure I can just alter details at this late stage. This never happens in exams at school. It’s why we have revision guides.

  “Well, this is Moscow,” she explains as if I’m not aware of this already. “And we drive on the right here. So although Yuka’s not Russian, she’s decided last minute that models have to go right on the runway. Not left as they normally would. To make things more… realistic.”

  “Huh?” I frown.

  “I can’t believe they didn’t tell you. That was a close call.” Shola makes a face of massive relief. “Could have screwed everything up.”

  I take a deep, confused breath. Honestly, I don’t know whether to believe her or not. Is she telling me that so I make a mistake, or is she genuinely telling me so that I don’t make a mistake?

  Shola looks at me with massive, heavily made-up almond eyes. “We’re on the same side,” she says innocently. “Us models. We have to stick together. The better you look, the better I look, right?”

  I look at her for a few quiet seconds, my mind twirling like a ballerina in a music box. “OK,” I finally whisper. “Thank you.” Rose has gone on stage now and it’s nearly my time. My legs are starting to wobble and I can feel my feet shaking.

  “My pleasure.” And then Shola frowns. “What are you doing?”

  “Blowing a raspberry,” I explain, doing a funky chicken so subtle I’m not sure she can see it. “Sorry. I’m just trying to relax.”

  “Oh. Whatever,” Shola says, turning her back on me and rolling her eyes when she thinks I can’t see, and then she walks up the stage steps.

  This is it.

  I’m so terrified that when I try to lick my lips, my tongue doesn’t come out. Somewhere on the other side of the curtains is a huge audience, and in that audience is Dad, waiting for me to be amazing. It’s time to prove to him that I can be.

  And maybe prove it to myself while I’m at it.

  “You’re up,” the man with the headset says. “Good luck, Harriet.”

  And I climb up the stairs into the bright lights.

  or a few seconds, I can’t move.

  The theatre looks nothing like it did when I walked in. The lights are so bright I can hardly see anything, but there’s just enough visibility to ascertain that every single chair in the building is filled. Even the carved golden boxes near the ceiling have people in them, and if there were still tsars in Russia, I’d imagine that’s where they’d be sitting.

  I glance in terror to the right, where I can vaguely see Yuka sitting in the centre of the front row, her face like a mask. And, somewhere at the back, I think I can see Dad holding both thumbs up in the air.

  I stand there, paralysed, for a few seconds. Then I take a deep breath and I start walking.

  Apparently I’ve been walking since I was nine months old and hanging on to the bottom of Dad’s jumper, but it has never felt like this before. It’s never felt so difficult, or so surreal. It feels less like I’m moving forward and more like it’s the floor moving backward and I’m just trying to keep up. Like… ice skating. Or walking down the aisle of a moving coach.

  And as we know, I’m not so good at that.

  I keep my face totally blank and try to focus on the music. All I have to think about is just one foot in front of the other. Looking as bored as I possibly can.

  Somewhere near the bottom of the stage, I see Fleur, pausing and looking to the right and the left, just as I’ve been told to. Now that she’s at a distance I can appreciate what she’s wearing: emerald green, covered in little bits of floaty green material like a mermaid. And the biggest silver heels I’ve ever seen in my life. Bigger even than the red ones I had to wear in Red Square. She hasn’t even been given a wheelchair.

  Now that’s what I call a model.

  Fleur gives a little dignified toss of her head and starts walking back up the centre of the stage towards me, at which point something in my chest abruptly lurches in a panic.

  If I believe Shola, I go right. If I don’t believe Shola, I go left. So right or left?

  Left or right?

  I can trust Shola. I have to believe that human beings are essentially good. That girls don’t destroy each other just because they can. I start veering towards the right. Then Alexa’s face pops into my head. Alexa would send me in the wrong direction. She would want a collision. What if Shola is another Alexa?

  So I start moving towards the left. But if I start to believe that everyone is like Alexa, doesn’t it mean she’s won? If I start to lose faith in humanity, isn’t that worse than a million hands in the air? I can’t let that happen.

  I start veering towards the right again.

  We’re getting closer and closer and I can see a look of sheer panic starting to appear on Fleur’s face.

  I don’t know what I’m doing.

  Oh, God. Left or right? Right or left?

  I’m changing my mind by the millisecond, and as I walk, I’m making almost unnoticeable movements towards each direction. They’re so small, I don’t think the audience can tell. But Fleur can, and the look of panic on her face is getting more and more pronounced. It’s like we’re in a game of chess, trying to second-guess the other’s movements.

  We’re almost in the middle now and I still don’t know which way to go. I can feel myself starting to wobble. I’m going to lose my balance and topple, even on these low heels. And then it hits me: that’s what Shola wants. She doesn’t want a collision. She wants me to fall over.

  Which means I have to keep going. At which point everything starts happening in slow motion. Fleur starts to wobble too. She sways from side to side like a tree, except that her heels are much, much bigger than mine. And they can’t take it.

  Time almost stops.

  One of her ankles buckles completely.

  And – with the smallest of gasps – Fleur plummets like a stone on to the runway.

  ’m paralysed with horror. The whole audience has taken one loud, audible breath.

  I have just ruined an entire fashion show.

  And it’s all my fault.

  I stare numbly at Fleur, who is now desperately trying to stand up. Her heels keep slipping, and I can see her eyes filling with tears and her cheeks starting to flame, even under the thick make-up. And with a sick lurch of my stomach, I recognise the humiliation and shame, the disbelief and horror. It’s like looking in a mirror. I’ve just done to Fleur what I promised I would never, ever do to anyone.

  I’ve turned her into me.

  The entire audience is staring, but the only thing I know now is I have to do something to help her. Anything. Just so Fleur knows she isn’t on her own. So I take a deep breath and sit down on the stage next to her.

  There’s a stunned silence. And then, from somewhere at the back, comes the sound of one person clapping as hard as they possibly can.

  “Wooooooooo!” Dad shouts at the top of his voice. “That’s my girl! Woooooo!”

  The whole audience turns to look at him and Fleur grabs my hand. Slowly, we stand up.

  And together we walk off the runway, back behind the curtains.

  s soon as I’m backstage, I find the nearest table I can and crawl straight under it.

  I don’t know much about fashion shows, but I don’t think that’s how they’re supposed to go. And I have a suspicion I’m about to get into really, really big trouble.

  “Harriet?” a voice says after about forty minutes, and a pair of black trainers appears under the tablecloth.

  “Monkey-moo?” another voice says and a pair of shiny orange shoes with blue toes appears next to them. There’s a bit of whispering and then I hear Wilbur say: “Is it, like, some
kind of fetish? Is it just tables, or all types of furniture?”

  “She’s frightened,” Dad explains. “She’s done it ever since she was a baby.” And before I know it he’s crawling under the table next to me. “Harriet, sweetheart,” he says gently. “What you did was very noble. Nobody’s going to shout at you.”

  Wilbur sticks his head under the tablecloth. “That’s not necessarily true,” he amends. “Yuka’s on her way backstage now and I’ve never seen her lips so thin. The bottom part of her face looks like an envelope.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, with my knees pulled right up to my chest. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “Sorry?” Wilbur gasps and he puts his hand over his chest. “Baby-baby Panda, Baylee couldn’t have bought that much publicity if they’d hung Yuka Ito upside down from the chandelier with her trousers down around her ankles.”

  “Which they’re not going to do,” a cold voice says from somewhere beyond the tablecloth. Another pair of shoes appears: black and shiny and spiky. “I’m a fashion goddess. Goddesses don’t wear trousers.”

  “Yuka, darling!” Wilbur says, retracting his head. “I didn’t see you there! Mainly because I don’t have eyes in my bottom.”

  “Fascinating, William,” Yuka snaps. “Harriet? I am going to speak to you immediately. I would therefore prefer it if this conversation was not held with a piece of laminate wood.”

  I look at Dad, take the biggest breath I can find and crawl out from under the table. “I’m sorry, Yuka.”

  “I don’t recall asking you to do anything other than wear a dress and walk in a straight line. It really shouldn’t have been that difficult.”

  “I know,” I mumble. “Am I fired?”

  Yuka looks at Wilbur. “William? How did the front row react?”

  “It’s bur not iam,” Wilbur points out, sighing. “The editor of Elle said Harriet was fresh. Harper’s said she was delicious. Vogue thought she had unexpected warmth.”

  “My daughter’s not a loaf of bread,” Dad points out in surprise.

  Yuka raises an eyebrow at him and then looks at me. “In that case, Harriet, you’re not fired and neither is Fleur. But in future, if I want you to sit down, I shall ask you to sit down. I shall give you a step-by-step plan, an X on the requisite spot and a detailed description of how I want you to do it.”

  “OK,” I say, feeling my spirits starting to lift. The more I get to know Yuka, the more I like her. She reminds me of Annabel.

  Yuka looks at her watch. “There is an after-party being held in the penthouse suite of our hotel. The other models have gone there, and every important editor and celebrity in Europe is currently drinking my profits.”

  My stomach twists uneasily and Dad’s face starts to beam.

  “Yuka,” I start anxiously, “I’m not sure that—”

  “Obviously,” Yuka continues as if I haven’t opened my mouth, “you will be going straight to bed and you will go nowhere near it. If I so much as catch you out of your room for the rest of the evening, there will be a world of pain.”

  I sort of want to hug her. I’m so tired. This has probably been the longest day of my entire life.

  “Oh, what?” Dad moans under his breath. “This is so unfair.”

  “The same applies to you,” Yuka says to him sternly, narrowing her eyes. “A world of pain. Understood?”

  “Understood,” Dad says in a shamed voice, staring at the floor. Which makes me feel even more at home.

  Because that’s exactly what Annabel would have said as well.

  omehow, I manage to get a full ten hours of sleep. Despite Dad doing everything he possibly can to sabotage this. I’ve been given the queen-size bed and he has the sofa on the other side of the room “as befits a sidekick”.

  “You know,” he says as I’m brushing my teeth, “if I were to wake up in the middle of the night, say, and find you putting your make-up back on, I would assume it was a mirage and go back to sleep.”

  I nod sleepily.

  Ten minutes later, as I’m crawling under the duvet in my penguin pyjamas and yawning, Dad coughs. “And if I were to wake up in the middle of the night and see that your bed was empty, I would presume I was dreaming and put it down to an overactive imagination.”

  “OK, Dad.” I close my eyes and snuggle into the pillows.

  “And if you were to come back in, smelling of – say – celebrity party, I would say nothing of it the next day. To anyone.”

  “OK,” I murmur, starting to drift off. Suddenly the bedroom lights snap on.

  “Are you seriously telling me you’re not going to this celebrity party?” Dad says in loud disbelief. “You’re not going to sneak out for even a little bit?”

  “You can go if you want,” I mumble with my eyes shut. “I’m going to be asleep.”

  “Oh, great, just guilt trip away, why don’t you, Harriet? No, it’s fine. I don’t need to meet Liz Hurley. I’ll just sit here on the sofa and eat pickled cabbage.”

  I yawn again. What is this obsession with pickled cabbage? “OK, Dad. You do that.”

  “I will,” Dad says, turning off the light again. “Who needs a celebrity fashion party? I mean, who needs to meet Liz Hurley and drink Martinis and eat little olives and bits of cheese on sticks when you can just sit, wide awake, on a spare… sofa… and… eat… pickled…”And the word cabbage is replaced by the sound of Dad snoring so loudly it sounds like somebody is drilling through the wall next to my head.

  I open my eyes and look at the ceiling. Somewhere, floors and floors above us, a party is going on. A party full of beautiful people and important people and famous people: laughing, drinking, kissing the air, sparkling, having their photos taken. Wearing beautiful clothes and eating beautiful food – or pretending to. And I really couldn’t care less.

  I listen to Dad snoring his head off for a few minutes and then I close my eyes and join him.

  We have the entire following morning to look around Moscow. Yuka has told us that we’re “free to do whatever it is ordinary people do during daylight hours”.

  So we go to the Kremlin and look around the Cathedral of the Archangel where the Romanov tsars are buried, and the Ivan the Great Bell Tower which is covered in beautiful gold leaf and is thought to be the very centre point of Moscow. Then we go to the Peter the Great Monument and the Bolshoi, and a huge park where the lake is covered in ice and peeved-looking ducks. The amazing morning is only ruined by the fact that I keep having to lie to Nat by text and Annabel keeps ringing Dad up and crying.

  Which is disconcerting because Annabel never cries. Ever. This is the woman who watches gazelles get mauled by tigers on television and gives them marks out of ten for tidiness.

  “Sweetheart,” Dad says into the handset as we pay for some authentic Russian merchandise (I’ve got some hand-painted Russian dolls and a teddy bear that says I RUSHED THROUGH RUSSIA, and Dad has a T-shirt that says RUSSIA HOUR). “You’re wrong. I do understand.”

  There’s some squeaking on the other end of the phone. From a distance it sounds a bit like Dad is talking to a mouse.

  “But darling, it’s just milk. You can clean it up.” There’s more squeaking. “And we can buy you some more cornflakes.” More squeaking. “And a new bowl.”Squeak, squeak. “Yes, exactly the same shade of white, sweetheart. Now stop crying.”

  The Russian merchandise seller loudly asks Dad in broken English if he wants his ONLY FOOLS RUSSIA IN baseball cap gift-wrapped. There are a few more squeaks on the phone. “Hmm? Wrapped?” Dad says anxiously. “No, Annabel. That’s just the… coffee lady. She wants to know if I want my coffee… flapped.” Squeak, squeak. “It’s street talk for… cooled down.”

  Eventually, Dad puts the phone down, wipes his hand over his face and looks at me.

  “Phew. That was close,” he says after a long, strained pause. “Luckily I’m an excellent liar. Annabel’s gone all Sylvia Plath on us. What are we going to do?”

  I swallow guiltily and tug at my
shorn hair. “Not show her this?” I suggest.

  Dad nods. “We need to wait out werewolf season.” And then he thinks about it. “But Harriet… What if she’s just… crazy?”

  We both look at Dad’s phone, which has started ringing again. And then Dad looks at the stall in front of us, covered in huge furry Russian hats. “Let’s get you one of these,” he sighs eventually. “I’ll turn off the central heating and we’ll tell Annabel you have a cold head.”

  “Do you think she’ll buy that?”

  “No.” Dad looks at his phone again. “Take a good long look at my face, Harriet, because by tomorrow it’ll be chewed right off.” He opens his phone. “Darling?” Squeak, squeak. “Then throw the burnt bits away, sweetheart. And get some more bread.” Squeak. “I know it’s not the same.” And then he looks at me, puts his finger up to his forehead and twirls it. Bonkers, he mouths to me.

  And I swallow nervously and buy as many Russian hats as I can fit into my bag.

  By the time we get back to England, though, everything is starting to feel a lot more promising. My hair is covered with a nice big Russian hat – it’s very cosy and goes well with my orange snowflake jumper – and the world is looking brighter already.

  In fact, as we get off the train from London and start walking home – and I say goodbye to Dad and veer off to the shops to buy myself a Welcome Home Harriet chocolate bar – it feels like things are starting to go the right way finally.

  I’ve been to Moscow, I’ve had an adventure and I appear to have got away with it. OK, I haven’t really changed at all, except I’m now considerably less hairy and the owner of a Russian teddy bear. But it feels like life might be getting ready to improve. I mean, even caterpillars spend between four and nine days inside a cocoon before anything happens. And I do know some things I didn’t know a few days ago. Like, for instance, if you put primer on your eyelids, it helps eyeshadow last longer. And pink lipstick has a tendency to get on everything.