Geek Girl

  Which – as my spare leg gets caught in the door frame until Annabel unhooks me in peals of laughter – isn’t much.

  y door doesn’t slam nearly as loudly as it used to. I think my parents must have sanded it down. Which is very underhanded of them, and also suppresses my legal freedom to express myself creatively. I shut it three times to make up for it.

  Once I’m lying flat on my bed, though, I start to feel ever so slightly ashamed of myself. The thing is I broke the plans myself before I’d even got down the stairs. I’ve been thinking about Nat all morning. It was the first thing I thought about when I woke up, and that’s what I was doing for fifteen snoozes. Picturing Nat’s face when I tell her where I’ve been today. Imagining Nat’s expression when she realises I’ve stolen her dream, for all the wrong reasons. Not because I love fashion, but because it’s my short cut out of this.

  And I can’t get it out of my head.

  So, yes, I’m pretty irritated with my parents for going on about insects, and I’m also a bit frustrated that the inherent style I was hoping I might have is either not there or is so inherent that it’s never going to come out. Like the last bit of toothpaste.

  But mostly I’m just angry at myself.

  “Harriet?” Annabel says as I’m huffing and puffing and helping myself to one of the chocolate bars I keep stashed in my bedside table. “Can I come in?”

  She never normally asks, so this must mean she’s feeling quite sheepish.

  “Whatever,” I say in a sulky voice.

  “Now you know ‘whatever’ isn’t a grammatically correct response to the question, Harriet.” Annabel puts her head round the door. “Try again.”

  “If you must,” I correct.

  “Thank you. I will.” Annabel comes into the room and sits down on the bed next to me. Her arms are full of plastic bags and despite myself I’m curious. Annabel likes shopping about as much as I do. “Sorry we wound you up,” she says, brushing a strand of hair out of my eyes. “We didn’t realise you’d be so nervous about today.”

  I make a noise that is intentionally ambiguous.

  “Is something wrong?” she sighs. “You’re all over the place at the moment. You’re normally so sensible.”

  Maybe that’s the problem. “I’m fine.”

  “And there’s nothing you want to talk about?”

  For a few seconds all I can see in my head are thirty hands in the air. “…No.”

  “Then…” and Annabel clears her throat, “I’ve bought you a present. I thought it might cheer you up.”

  I look at Annabel in surprise. She rarely buys me presents, and when she does, they absolutely never cheer me up.

  Annabel unfolds a large bag and hands it to me. “Actually, I bought this for you a while ago. I was waiting for the right moment and I think this might be it. You can wear it today.” And she unzips the bag.

  I stare at the contents in shock. It’s a jacket. It’s grey and it’s tailored. It has a matching white shirt and a pencil skirt. It has very faint white pinstripe running through the material and a crease down each of the arms. It is, without any question of a doubt, a suit. Annabel’s gone and bought me a mini lawyer’s outfit. She wants me to turn up looking exactly like her, but twenty years younger.

  “I guess you’re an adult now,” she says in a strange voice. “And this is what adults wear. What do you think?”

  I think the modelling agency are going to assume we’re trying to sue them.

  But as I open my mouth to tell Annabel I’d rather go as a spider with all eight legs attached, I look at her face. It’s so bright, and so eager, and so happy – this is so clearly some kind of Coming of Age moment for her – I can’t do it.

  “I love it,” I say, crossing my fingers behind my back.

  “You do? And you’ll wear it today?”

  I swallow hard. I don’t know much about fashion, but I didn’t see many fifteen-year-olds last week in pinstripe suits.

  “Yes,” I manage as enthusiastically as I can.

  “Excellent,” Annabel beams at me, shoving some more bags in my direction. “Because I bought you a Filofax and briefcase to match.”

  he entire plan was a total waste of time. And Dad’s paper and printer ink.

  By the time I’m dressed up like some kind of legal assistant and my parents have stopped fighting about Dad’s T-shirt (“It hasn’t even been washed, Richard,”; “I won’t bow down to the rules of fashion, Annabel,”; “But you’ll bow down to the rules of basic hygiene, right?”), we’ve missed our train and we’ve also missed the train after that.

  When we eventually get to London, there isn’t time for a pain au chocolat or a cappuccino, and apparently, even if there was, I wouldn’t be allowed to have one.

  “You’re not having coffee, Harriet,” Annabel says as I start whining outside the window.

  “But Annabel…”

  “No. You are fifteen and permanently anxious enough as it is.”

  To make matters worse, when we finally locate the right street in Kensington, we can’t find the building: mainly because we’re not looking for a blob of cement tucked behind a local supermarket.

  “It doesn’t look very…” Dad says doubtfully as we stand and stare at it suspiciously.

  “I know,” Annabel agrees. “Do you think it’s…”

  “No, it’s not dodgy. I saw it in the Guardian.”

  “Maybe it’s nicer on the inside?” Annabel suggests.

  “Ironic, for a modelling agency,” Dad says, then they both laugh and Annabel leans over and gives Dad a kiss, which means they’ve forgiven each other. Honestly, they’re like a pair of married goldfish: squabbling and then forgetting about it three minutes later.

  “Well,” Annabel says slowly and she squeezes Dad’s hand a few times when she thinks I won’t notice. She takes a deep breath and looks at me. “I guess this is it then. Are you ready, Harriet?”

  “Are you kidding me?” Dad says, ruffling my hair. “Fame, fortune, glory? She’s a Manners: she was born ready.” And – before I can even respond to such a shockingly incorrect statement – he adds, “Last one in is a total loser,” and runs to the door, dragging Annabel behind him.

  Leaving me – shaking like the proverbial leaf in a very enthusiastic proverbial breeze – to sit down on the kerb, put my head between my knees and have a very non-proverbial panic attack.

  fter a few minutes of heavy breathing, I’m still not particularly calm.

  This might surprise you, but here’s a fact: people who plan things thoroughly aren’t particularly connected with reality. It seems like they are, but they’re not: they’re focusing on making things bite-size, instead of having to look at the whole picture. It’s procrastination in its purest form because it convinces everyone – including the person who’s doing it – that they are very sensible and in touch with reality when they’re not. They’re obsessed with cutting it up into little pieces so they can pretend that it’s not there at all.

  The way that Nat nibbles at a burger so that she can pretend she’s not eating it, when actually she’s eating just as much of it as I would.

  Despite my rigorous planning, I can’t break this down into any smaller pieces. Walking into a modelling agency and asking strangers to tell me objectively whether I’m pretty or not is one big scary mouthful, and the truth is I’m terrified.

  So, just as I think things can’t get any worse, I abruptly start hyperventilating.

  Hyperventilation is defined as a breathing state faster than five to eight litres a minute, and the best thing you can do when you’re hyperventilating is find a paper bag and breathe into it. This is because the accumulation of carbon dioxide from your exhaled breath will calm your heart rate down, and your breathing will therefore slow.

  I haven’t got a paper bag, so I try a crisp packet, but the salt and vinegar smell makes me feel sick. I think about trying the plastic bag that came with the crisp packet, but realise that if I inhale too hard, I’m going t
o end up dragging it into my windpipe, and that would cause problems even for people who weren’t struggling to breathe in the first place.So, as a last resort, I close my eyes, cup my hands together and puff in and out of them instead.

  I’ve been puffing into my hands for about thirty-five seconds when I hear a human kind of noise next to me.

  “Go away,” I say weakly, continuing to blow in and out as hard as I can. I’m not interested in what Dad thinks. He plays games of Snap with himself when he’s stressed.

  “This isn’t Singapore, you know,” a voice says. “You can’t just fling yourself around on the pavement. You’ll get chewing gum all over your suit.”

  I abruptly stop puffing, but I keep my eyes closed because now I’m too embarrassed to open them again. My suit is grey and the pavement is also grey; perhaps if I stay very still and very quiet, I’ll disappear into the background and the owner of the voice will stop being able to see me.

  It doesn’t work.

  “So, Table Girl,” the voice continues, and for the second time today somebody I’m talking to is trying not to laugh. “What are you doing this time?”

  It can’t be.

  But it is.

  I open one eye and peek through my fingers, and there – sitting on the kerb next to me – is Lion Boy.

  f all the people in the whole world I didn’t want to see me crouched on the floor in a pinstripe suit, hyperventilating into my hands, this one is at the top of the list.

  Him and whoever hands out the Nobel Prizes. Just – you know. In case.

  “Umm,” I say into my palms, thinking as quickly as I can. Hyperventilating doesn’t sound very good, so I finish with: “Sniffing my hands.”

  Which, in hindsight, sounds even worse. “Not because I have smelly hands,” I add urgently. “Because I don’t.”

  I take a quick peek through my fingers again and see that Lion Boy is lazily flexing his feet up and down and staring at the sky. Somehow – and I don’t know how he has done this – he has managed to get even better looking than he was on Thursday.

  “And how are they?”

  “A bit salty,” I answer honestly. Then I nervously blurt out: “Do you want to smell them?”

  I trawl through fifteen years of knowledge, passions and experience and the best I can come up with is: Do you want to smell my hands?

  “I’m trying to cut back,” he says, lifting an eyebrow. “But thanks anyway.”

  “You’re welcome,” I reply automatically and then there’s a short silence while I wonder if – in an alternative universe somewhere – another Harriet Manners is having a conversation with a ridiculously handsome boy called Nick without making herself sound like a total idiot.

  “So,” Nick says eventually. “Are you ready to go upstairs yet? Because your parents are waiting in reception, and judging by the look on your mum’s face five minutes ago, everybody up there may already be dead.”

  Oh, sugar cookies. I knew Annabel was going to start channelling Tomb Raider: she’s been in a scratchy mood all morning. “How do you know they’re my parents?” I ask coolly, hoping to pretend that I’ve never seen them before in my life.

  “Your mum is wearing exactly the same thing as you, for starters. And you have the same hair colour as your dad.”

  “Oh.”

  “And they keep saying, ‘Where the hell is Harriet?’ and looking out of the window.”

  “Oh,” I say and then I stop talking. My hands are shaking and I’m not sure I can handle any more shades of embarrassment. I’m already purple as it is. “You know,” I say, after giving it a little thought, “I think I might just stay here.”

  “Hyperventilating on the kerb?”

  I look up and see that Nick is grinning at me. “Yes,” I tell him curtly. He has no business laughing at breathing problems. They can be very dangerous. “I am going to stay here and I am going to hyperventilate on the kerb for the rest of the day,” I confirm. “I’ve made an executive decision and that is how I shall entertain myself until nightfall.”

  Nick laughs again, even though I’m being totally serious. “Don’t be daft, Harriet Manners.” He stands up and a little flicker of electricity shoots through my stomach because I’ve just realised he has remembered my name. “And don’t be nervous either. Modelling’s not scary. It can actually be sort of fun sometimes. As long as you don’t take it personally.”

  “Mmm,” I say because frankly I take everything personally. And then I watch as he starts wandering lazily back towards the building. Everything Nick does is slow, as if he lives in a little private bubble that’s half the speed of everything around it. It’s mesmerising. Even if it does make me feel like everything I do and say is too fast and frantic and sort of unravelling like the cotton on my grandma’s sewing machine.

  “And you want the really good news about modelling?” Nick says, abruptly turning round.

  I glare at him suspiciously and try and ignore the flip-flop feeling as my stomach turns over and starts gasping for air, like a stranded fish. “What?”

  “It’s an industry full of tables to hide under. If you decide you don’t like it, you can literally take your pick.”

  Then Nick laughs again and disappears through the agency doors.

  Forty-eight hours ago, the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me was having my hand accidentally touched by the least spotty boy in the local bookshop, and that was just because he was handing me a book. Now I’m expected to get off the pavement and follow the best-looking boy I have ever seen into an internationally famous modelling agency as if it’s the most natural, normal thing in the world.

  So let me clarify something, in case you don’t know me well enough by now.

  It’s not.

  wait as long as I can because it’s important to maintain a high level of personal dignity at all times and also to show that you’re not madly in love with someone by chasing them up the stairs. And then I get off the kerb and walk as fast as I can.

  It’s no use: Nick stays just ahead of me, as if he’s the carrot and I’m the eternally optimistic donkey. By the time I reach the reception of Infinity Models (three floors up) he has disappeared completely, and all that’s left is a slightly swinging door to convince me I didn’t just invent him in the first place.

  One quick glance, however, shows me that he was right and Annabel is totally fuming. While Dad bounds around the room, annoying the hell out of the receptionist, Annabel is sitting in total silence, bolt upright, with her back nowhere near the chair. The tendons in her neck are standing out like the bubbles in our living-room wallpaper.

  Then I realise why. Somewhere in the direction Annabel keeps looking, I can hear the distant sound of a girl crying.

  “Where have you been?” she demands as soon as I walk in, but I’m saved by Wilbur, who bursts through the reception door in an explosion of orange silk trousers and a shirt with paint splashes all over it, except they’re clearly not a result of anyone painting.

  “Gooooood mooooorrrnniiiinnng,” he squeals, clasping his hands together. “And if it isn’t Mr and Mrs Baby-baby Panda! Just right there in front of me, like two little matching pots of strawberry fromage frais! Ooh, I could just eat you both up. But I won’t because that would be terribly antisocial.”

  Annabel’s eyes have gone very round and her mouth has dropped open. Even Dad has stopped bounding and he takes a slightly frightened seat next to her.

  “What?” she whispers to him. “What did that man just call us?”

  “This is fashion,” Dad murmurs reassuringly, taking her hand gently as if she’s Dorothy and he’s the White Witch. “This is how they speak here.”

  “And it’s Mini-panda herself!” Wilbur continues obliviously, waving at me. “In a suit this time, no less! What’s the inspiration this time, Monkey-chunk?”

  I glance quickly at Annabel and see that she’s mouthing Monkey-chunk? at Dad, who shrugs and mouths Mr Baby-baby Panda? back. “My stepmother’s a lawyer,” I
explain.

  “My Stepmother’s a Lawyer,” Wilbur repeats slowly, a look of growing amazement on his face. “Genius! I’m Wilbur, that’s with a bur and not an iam,” he continues happily, semi-skipping over and grabbing Annabel and Dad’s hands, “and I am so thoroughly, thoroughly giddy to meet you both.”

  “It’s an – erm,” Annabel manages, and Wilbur holds his fingers up to her mouth to stop her speaking.

  “Ssssshhh. I know it is, my little Pumpkin-trophy. And I have to tell you I’m totally incandescent right now about your beautiful daughter’s visage. It’s special. New. Interesting. And we don’t get much of that round here. It’s all legs up to here,” (he points to his neck) “and eyelashes out here,” (he moves his hand a few centimetres in front of his face) “and lips out here,” (he keeps his hand in the same place).“Dull, dull, dull.” He turns to me, beaming. “You don’t have any of those things, do you, my little Box of Peaches?”

  I open my mouth to answer, and then realise he’s telling me I don’t have any of those things. Otherwise known as beauty. Fantastic.

  In the meantime, Dad is still staring at the hand Wilbur is holding. “Um,” he says, trying to tug it away as politely as he can.

  “I know,” Wilbur agrees, holding on tighter. “Doesn’t it feel like a whirlwind of adventure?”

  And before either of them can say anything else he pulls both Annabel and Dad to their feet and starts dragging them across the reception floor.

  ow I’d love to stand on ceremony,” Wilbur says as he physically pushes my parents into a little office at the back of the room. “But we don’t have a minute to lose. I have another engagement in six minutes. So let’s get this done speedio and make the magic happen, right?” He holds his hand up to Dad.

  “Right!” Dad says and high-fives him.

  “For crying out loud,” Annabel sighs as Wilbur shows us to little plastic seats. “Will somebody other than me please take this seriously? And you should know that I’m making notes,” she adds sternly, getting out her notepad.