Geek Girl

  Maybe it’s just a matter of thinking positively. Believing that we can all change, if we try hard enough. Which is when it hits me. Because just as I’m reaching a point where the world is starting to make sense and happy thoughts are making me feel all sort of glowy on the inside, a yellow banana sweet comes flying through the air.

  And whacks me straight on the head.

  t takes a few moments to work out where the bananas are coming from. Within seconds, I’ve got sweets in my hat, in the collar of my jumper and a half-chewed one stuck to the sleeve of my coat.

  Inexplicably, I look upwards.

  “Hey, geek,” a voice yells. It’s only as I turn round that I realise the sky isn’t raining sweets after all. Alexa is standing on the other side of the road just outside the local shops with her hand in a paper bag. “Geek,” she shouts again and then she laughs.

  I freeze. Alexa has the single ugliest haircut I’ve ever seen on a girl in my life. Somehow I don’t think this is going to be a friendly encounter. A confused buzzing has started in the back of my head. Aren’t things supposed to be different now?

  “Leave me alone,” I say more firmly than I feel and start walking away as fast as I can.

  She follows me. “As if that’s going to happen.” Another banana smacks me hard on the back of the head. “I saw a documentary about monkeys last night and I think you look just like one, Harriet. And you move like one too. A little ginger orang-utan. All orange and hairy.” She looks at the bananas in the bag she’s holding. “You know,” she adds, “it’s lucky these taste like perfume or I’d probably just eat them.”

  “Umm,” I say. Does she want me to thank her?

  Alexa looks back at me and her lips pull back so I can see her teeth, except it’s definitely not a smile. “What do you think, Harriet? Do you like my hair?” And she points to her head.

  Don’t engage in conversation. It’s going to make it worse. “It’s, umm,” I say because yet again the connection between brain and mouth has snapped. “Very… snazzy.”

  “Yeah?” Alexa says. “Personally I’m not so keen.” She runs her hands through it. “In fact, I’m pretty hacked off about it.”

  I burst out laughing at the pun and then bite my lip in horror.

  “You think this is funny?” Alexa yells, suddenly losing her cool. Her face changes colour. “You think I’m laughing?”

  “No.” I put my suddenly sweaty hands around my satchel straps so that when I have to run, it doesn’t slow me down.

  “The hairdresser can’t fit me in until tomorrow. I’ve had to go to school like this for two entire days. Two days, geek. Do you know how many boys have stopped fancying me now?”

  “Two?”

  “It was a rhetorical question!” Alexa looks furious. “Nat said she did it for you. So I’m going to make you pay for it.”

  I take a few jittery steps backwards because she’s going to hit me. Finally – after years of vaguely promising it – she’s going to get down to bullying basics and smack me right in the face.

  I quickly run through the options.

  I’m so surprised that I nearly forget about the fifth choice:

  “Are you going to punch me?” I ask, feeling numb and strangely relieved. I wish she had done this years ago. Maybe then she’ll be finished with me.

  Alexa frowns and then laughs. “Punch you? Why would I punch you? What on earth would I get out of that, apart from a load of trouble?” Then she pulls something out of her bag. It looks a lot like a newspaper. “You forget, Harriet, that I’ve known you for ten years. I don’t need to punch you.”

  I’m so confused my whole head feels like it has been stuffed with cotton wool. And yet somehow I know that whatever it is Alexa’s about to do, I’m going to wish she’d just used her fist.

  I look at the paper. “W-w-what’s that?”

  “This?” Alexa looks at it. “It’s an article, Harriet. About some fifteen-year-old schoolgirl apparently. Took the fashion world by storm yesterday in… where was it? Moscow.”

  My entire body goes cold and I feel like I’m going to throw up.

  “That’s in Russia,” she adds. “In case you were wondering if I knew.”

  No. No. There’s no way this could have happened. It would have to have gone to print… Last night.

  Sugar cookies.

  Alexa smirks and moves close enough for me to see. There – in full glory – is a large photo of me yesterday. Sitting on the catwalk, with Fleur next to me. The headline says English Schoolgirl Knocks Fashion World Off Its Feet.

  “I…” I start mumbling, but my insides are ice and my ears are completely numb. “I… I…”

  “I, I, I,” Alexa echoes and then she looks at it again. “I know. It’s beyond me why anybody would want a photo of you.”

  At the back of my brain, I finally feel the horror of comprehension. “You haven’t… shown anyone, have you?” I whisper and my voice sounds like I’m being strangled. “You haven’t shown anyone else this article?”

  Alexa looks shocked. “Like who? Like our headmistress? Who’ll be interested to know why you haven’t been at school for two days? I went all the way back to school to hand her a copy especially. Punishment for taking time off school without permission is normally suspension, right? Or possibly,” and she looks at the paper again, “expulsion.”

  My head is starting to spin. I’m going to get suspended? I don’t get suspended. And I definitely don’t get expelled. I shake my head. There’s something more important. “Have you shown it to… anyone else?”

  Alexa crows. “What, Nat? The girl who has made every single class speech about wanting to model since we were seven? The girl who wouldn’t talk to anyone after The Clothes Show and has been crying in the loos ever since? The girl who told everyone you were sick with a cold for the last two days and seemed to believe it?” Alexa raises her eyebrows. “Why?” she says in a faux-innocent voice. “Was I not supposed to?”

  Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no.

  Nononononononono.

  “Did you tell Nat?” I shout at the top of my voice. “Did you tell her?”

  “No,” Alexa says. “I just dropped an extra copy of this page through her letterbox.” And she turns round and touches her hair. “It’s known as retribution, Harriet. Or requital. Vengeance. Comeuppance. Pick any noun you like.”

  And – just as quickly as it started fitting back together – my whole world falls apart again.

  run as fast as I can, but it’s no good. As soon as I turn my phone on, I know my life is in meltdown. I have fifteen voicemails from Wilbur and nobody else is picking up their phone.

  “Hello. This is Richard Manners. I’m probably with Liz Hurley right now, but leave a message and I’ll ring you back when she’s gone home. BEEP.”

  “Dad,” I gasp into his answering machine, still running. “We’ve been caught. Don’t let Annabel buy—” and I screech to an abrupt halt on the pavement. I have no idea what paper this article is in. “Don’t let her buy anything. Just stop her leaving the house. She can’t find out this way.”

  Then I recommence running. I need to get to Nat.Before the newspaper does.

  Apparently I’m the only person in the entire world with any sense of urgency. By the time Nat’s mum finally opens the front door, I’m screaming Fire through the letterbox and scratching at the paintwork.

  “Harriet?” she says and even in my panic I stop, confused for a few seconds.

  Nat’s mum is blue. Not a bit blue: totally blue. Like Annabel, she only really ever wears a dressing gown; unlike Annabel, she doesn’t just have one and it doesn’t have baked beans down the front. This one is a pale blue silk kimono. She also has a white towel wrapped round her hair and her face is painted in a pale blue face mask. When Nat’s mum doesn’t look like a giant Smurf, she looks a lot like Nat. Except twenty years older and modified by huge amounts of plastic surgery.

  “What’s going on? Are we all dying?”

  “Yes. I mean no.
Not immediately. Is Nat here, please?”

  “No idea. Four Botox injections and I can’t move a muscle. Look at this!” She makes a pained expression with her eyes.

  “I need to see her.”

  “Is everything all right?”

  “Not really.” I start removing my shoes so I don’t track mud into her white carpet. “Has anything been delivered to your house today?”

  Nat’s mum strains around the eyes again. “Not as far as I know.”

  I pause in the middle of a shoelace. The wave of relief is so powerful that for a second I think I’m going to fall over. Maybe Alexa got the wrong address. “Really?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  I take a deep breath and feel the panic starting to seep back out. I’m still going to tell Nat, but now I can do it gently, sensitively, apologetically, delicatel—

  “Unless you mean the envelope that came through the door half an hour ago.”

  My breath stops.

  “I took it up to her a few minutes ago. I’m not sure I’d call it a delivery exactly, but it seemed important. Handwritten and everything.”

  Oh, no, no, no.

  And before Nat’s mum can say anything else, I rip my shoes off and race upstairs.

  ’m too late.

  That’s the only thing I know for certain when I open Nat’s bedroom door. She’s sitting on her bed in her pyjamas with the newspaper next to her. And on her face is the most hurt expression I’ve ever seen on anyone. Ever.

  “Nat—” I start and then grind to a halt. “Nat, it’s not what it looks like.” Then I pause because actually, it’s exactly what it looks like.

  “What’s this?” she asks in a bewildered voice. She holds the newspaper up. “Harriet? What’s going on?”

  I’m not sure I’ve ever heard her sound so young. It’s like we’re five years old again. “It’s… It’s…” I say and then I swallow and look at the floor. “It’s exactly what it looks like.”

  “You haven’t been sick?”

  “No.”

  “You were in Russia?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re a model?”

  “Yes.”

  “I defended you…”

  “I know.”

  “And you left me to Alexa and didn’t even tell me why?”

  Oh God. “Yes.”

  “You’ve been lying about…” Nat pauses for a few seconds. “About everything?”

  “I was going to tell you, but I was looking for the right way to do it.”

  “Via national newspaper?”

  I stare at her in confusion and then the penny drops. I look at the envelope. On the front is printed in familiar red capital letters: NAT, IT WAS THE EASIEST WAY TO TELL YOU.

  Alexa really is a piece of work.

  “No,” I gasp. “You weren’t supposed to know for months.” Then I flinch. I’m not sure that’s the best thing I could have said.

  Nat’s eyes widen. “You were going to keep lying for months?”

  “Well, no… you know… just… a few more days,” but I’m not even sure what the truth is any more. Was I ever going to be honest, unless I was caught? Have I been lying to myself as well as everyone else?

  Nat’s cheeks are getting pinker and pinker. “Why?”

  “Because… Because…” It all made so much sense at the time, but it suddenly doesn’t any more. “You were so angry at The Clothes Show…”

  “Because you lied, not because you were spotted. I told you that.”

  “It would have hurt you.”

  “More than this?”

  I lick my lips. “I thought you would ruin it for me.”

  “You thought I would ruin it for you?” she repeats, amazed. “I’m your best friend, Harriet. Why would I ruin anything for you?”

  “You wouldn’t understand and… and… you wouldn’t want to be my friend any more.”

  The excuses are coming thick and fast. But the truth that I can’t even admit to my best friend is that I lied because it was easier.

  Because I’m a coward.

  Because I clearly don’t think very much of the people I love.

  Because all I was thinking about was me.

  Nat stands up and the hurt five-year-old suddenly disappears. “No,” she says abruptly. “Now I don’t want to be your friend any more. Get out of my bedroom.”

  “But…” I start. I open my mouth and promptly shut it again. All I’ve done is think about myself and lie compulsively. I don’t have a leg to stand on.

  “Now,” she yells, totally furious, and she starts rummaging in a plastic bag at the foot of her bed.

  “Nat, I’m sorry.”

  “Out,” she screams and I’ve never seen her so angry. “What are you waiting for, Manners? Soup? You still want soup?” And she pulls something out of her bag and throws it. A carton of green Thai soup hits the wall behind me and explodes. “There’s your bloody soup.” She rummages in her bag again, and before I know it for the second time this afternoon food is hitting my head. “And there’s the bread. I hope you feel better soon. NOW GET THE HELL OUT!”

  And – just as I think things can’t get any worse – Nat puts her hand in the air and looks at it. My chin starts to wobble: of all the hands in the air this week, I think this might finally be the hand I actually deserve.

  Then, because I’m frozen to the spot, Nat pushes me across the room and into the hallway.

  And slams the door behind me.

  ll I want to do is crawl into bed and cry, but I can’t. The minute I open the front door I know things are about to get even worse.

  Hugo’s lying in his basket with his chin on the edge. His eyebrows twitch unhappily and he immediately looks at the wall as if he’s blanking me. According to scientists, dogs can make approximately 100 facial expressions and it’s quite clear which one Hugo is using right now.

  “Annabel?” I whisper. “Dad?”

  There’s a long silence, so I put my bag down and tiptoe into the living room. Then I tiptoe into the kitchen, and the bathroom, and the garage, and the laundry room, and Annabel and Dad’s bedroom. It’s only when there’s nowhere else to tiptoe that I go into my own bedroom and find Dad sitting on the floor with his back against my chest of drawers.

  He looks at me desolately. “You know,” he says, “for somebody so organised, you’re incredibly untidy.”

  There are clothes everywhere: books strewn all over the floor, sweet wrappers across the bottom of the bed, teddybears stuck halfway behind the wardrobe, clothes scattered. He has a point. I’m just not sure it’s the most important one right now.

  “Dad, where’s Annabel?”

  “She’s gone.”

  “What do you mean gone?”

  “She’s gone, is what I mean. She’d gone by the time I got your message and managed to get back to the house. She took her bags with her and the cat.”

  “But why?”

  Dad shrugs. “It was her cat.”

  “No, why did she leave?”

  Dad reaches into his pocket. “She wrote this.” And he hands me a yellow Post-it.

  Then he pulls out the article from the newspaper. “This was next to it.”

  I stare at it, my heart making little sputtering sounds. “This is all my fault.”

  “Not really.”

  “Of course it is, Dad. What else would she be talking about?”

  “A couple of things maybe.” He reaches in his pocket and pulls out another piece of paper. “This was on the kitchen table too.”

  It’s a letter from The Clothes Show lawyers, addressed to my parents.

  “Dad, I…”And my voice breaks. “I’m sorry.”

  The amount I’m saying that at the moment, maybe I should just get a little MP3 track with it on loop so that I can simply press a button and offer out earphones.

  Dad shakes his head. “That’s not everything.” Then he looks at the carpet and rummages around in his pocket again. What he pulls out appears to be a tax f
orm. More specifically a P45. “This was also on the table.”

  I look at it in confusion.

  “I’ve been lying too, Harriet. I didn’t get permission from work to come with you to Moscow.”

  “But…”And when I look at him, I realise he’s been wearing the same clothes now for five days, he smells of vodka and he looks exhausted. In fact, he’s looked exhausted all week. I’ve just been too wrapped up in myself to notice.

  “I don’t understand, Dad. Why not?”

  “Because I didn’t need to, sweetheart. The agency lost their biggest client because of me and they fired me on Friday. On the spot.”

  “But you said…”

  “I know. I lied. I thought Annabel would be angry.”

  “Oh.”

  “It turns out she’s much, much angrier now.”

  It feels like the whole world has tilted up on itself and everything is falling off the top of it. “Oh,” I say again.

  “Yeah. Oh pretty much sums it up for me too,” Dad agrees and then he lies down on the carpet. “We’re not very good at this, are we, Harriet?” he says.

  And he closes his eyes.

  It’s only once I’ve helped him up and put him in front of the TV that I turn the yellow Post-it over.

  y name is Harriet Manners and I am an idiot.

  I know I’m an idiot because I’m lying in my bed, looking up other words to call myself. Ninny. Dunce. Blockhead. Twit. Ignoramus. Fool. Which is the origin of the word ‘geek’ so I think we’ve just come full circle.

  I’ve made a mess of everything.

  Alexa has won. Nat’s not talking to me. Annabel has gone. Dad’s unemployed. I owe £3,000. The entire population of England is laughing at me. My hair looks like a ball of orange fuzz.

  I don’t know if I’ve been suspended or not, but only because I’m refusing to go to school to find out. For the first time in my life, I’ve decided I don’t care about my education. It hasn’t made me any smarter at all. I’ve actually managed to transform in the opposite direction. I’m like a caterpillar that’s gone back to being an egg, or an unemployed Cinderella without even a hearth to scrub.