Picture Perfect (Geek Girl, Book 3)

  That’s exactly how I feel.

  Every time the roller coaster slows down and the world stops spinning it’s only for long enough to blink back the tears and take one deep breath before it dissolves again.

  I’m not just dizzy.

  I’m not just disorientated.

  I’m hanging on to the metal pole in front of me so tightly my knuckles look like they’re about to poke through my skin, like a mini Wolverine.

  I am terrified.

  We twist and turn and roll and jolt; we rotate and warp and wind and zigzag. Finally, when I’m not sure I can handle any more, the train starts slowing down.

  Thank God thank God thank God thank—

  “Did we get it?” Nancy shouts over the gathering crowd around the base of the ride as I desperately try to work out which way up I am.

  In front of me, the photographer peers at the camera and then shakes her head.

  “One more time!” Nancy yells.

  And the nightmare begins again.

  We go round eight times.

  We go round until there’s dry saliva on my cheeks and my eyes are burning and my hands are dripping and wind has blown my hair into a wild fuzz over my head.

  We go round until there’s a point where I seriously consider just clambering out of the train at a high point and attempting to climb down the metal beams like Spiderman.

  Finally the photographer gives an almost imperceptible nod.

  “OK,” Nancy says. “That’s enough.”

  And the train slows to a stop.

  I, however, don’t.

  As I clamber out, the world continues to buckle. The clouds continue to spin; the floor continues to warp and rotate and move up and down.

  “Monkey?” I hear Wilbur say from a billion miles away. “Are you O—”

  And everything goes black.

  ’ve always wanted to faint.

  On my list of Romantic Moments Harriet Manners Would Like to Achieve, fainting is number two.

  Just under being the cause of a swordfight at dawn, and just above being rescued from a tower and then carried across a desert in a floaty dress.

  I’m supposed to faint delicately and then get caught by a handsome boy who is terrified that I might be dead and tries to breathe life back into me with a well-timed and medicinally dubious kiss.

  Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite work like that.

  When the world lights back up a few seconds later, I’m being held awkwardly by a struggling Caleb: one arm under my armpit, and the other grasping at my elbow.

  It’s not romantic.

  It’s humiliating.

  I scrabble with my legs on the ground, and he loses his grip completely and drops me heavily on the floor.

  “Ouch,” I say as my knee smashes the pavement.

  “I know I’m charming,” Cal says, smirking. “But we only met an hour ago. You weren’t supposed to fall for me that quickly.”

  I flush and try to stand up, at which point I realise that Wilbur is yelling. Just as I’m automatically getting my apologies ready, I realise it’s not aimed at me.

  “I said stop,” he shouts at Nancy. “I said stop six rides ago. What the fiddle cats are you playing at?”

  “I didn’t realise, OK?” Nancy says defensively. “I just wanted the right shot.”

  “Does that look right to you?” Wilbur snaps, pointing to me rolling around on the floor like Bambi on rollerblades. “Does that look like the right shot?”

  “Oh, God,” Nancy sighs. “All right, I got tunnel-vision. I’m sorry, OK?”

  Wilbur bends over and gently helps me up. “Are you back with us, my little Frog-bubble? We haven’t killed you, have we?”

  I tentatively shake my head.

  At any given moment, the earth beneath our feet is spinning at 465 metres a second. Right now, I can definitely feel every centimetre of it.

  “So,” I say shakily, and then I clear my throat. “What’s next? How about that?”

  I point at what looks like a small metal bucket being swung from over fifty metres in the air towards the ocean.

  Nancy and Wilbur look at each other.

  “Told you,” Wilbur says smugly. “My Baby-baby Panda is a total trooper.”

  “The big rides are over, Harriet,” Nancy says, patting my shoulder awkwardly. “We’ll keep you on the ground from this point on.”

  The rest of the shoot is completed without trauma.

  We ride a tiny children’s steam train with a smiling elephant painted on the roof. We sit inside enormous white and blue teacups; shoot water pistols at stuffed animals; dance on arcade games; whack plastic rats with bouncy hammers.

  And yes, at some point we’re put into the Wild River ride and drenched at the bottom of a fifteen-metre plunge, but after the roller coaster it feels like a sunset stroll along a promenade.

  Plus at least my dress gets a good clean while we’re at it.

  Finally the shoot is announced a success, and we’re led back to the changing rooms, dripping and exhausted and smelling slightly of stale cola.

  Fleur hasn’t looked at me the entire morning.

  At one point she was so busy ignoring me, her bracelet got caught in my dress and we were physically attached for eight minutes before the stylist disentangled us.

  But I’m still going to give friendship one more shot, because:

  “Umm,” I say as she starts hastily taking off her earrings and darts with her shoulders hunched into the cubicle next to mine. “Fleur?”

  “What?” She calls over the cubicle wall.

  “Would you, umm …” I clear my throat. “There’s an exhibition on Magritte at the Museum of Modern Art, and I was wondering if you wanted to come with me? He does pictures of pipes that say THIS IS NOT A PIPE because, you know, it’s not. It’s a picture.”

  Then as I wait for her to reply, I hear the sounds of her hurriedly getting changed.

  “Sorry, Harriet,” Fleur says finally as she dashes out of her cubicle. “But I’ve just got to get out of here.”

  And she starts heading back to the station without another word.

  y the time I emerge in my own clothes, Fleur has gone.

  In fact, I’ve been so distracted by the process of trying to clean my entire body with little cotton-wool pads, I’ve almost managed to forget that I’m not actually supposed to be here either.

  Almost, but not quite.

  I take my phone out of my pocket and fiddle with the power button anxiously.

  “I’m going to take you shopping,” Kenderall states as she picks up the end of Francis’s lead. He snorts reluctantly. “I’ve decided I’m going to make you my new project.”

  “Umm.” I frown suspiciously. “What kind of project?”

  The last kind of ‘project’ I did involved Sellotape, quite a lot of glue and ended up with me accidentally attaching myself to what was supposed to be a papier-mâché fairy-tale landscape.

  I’m not entirely sure I want to repeat that mistake.

  It took ages to get the glue off.

  “You,” Kenderall says, looking me up and down. “I’m training to be a stylist, so you’re my practice. I can’t be a model forever, and anyway: I need hyphenating.”

  I stare at her. “You need … what?”

  “Hy-phen-ating,” Kenderall intones. “Some girls are a model-hyphen-DJ. Others are model-hyphen-actresses. Some are even multi-hyphenators: sculptor or painter or underwear designer. I haven’t got a hyphen, so I’m branching out. I’m doing a course at college.”

  I try to work out what my hyphen is.

  Geek-hyphen-schoolgirl, maybe.

  Or geek-hyphen-idiot.

  “Plus,” she says. “You clearly need help with your amp, babe.”

  My brain quickly scans for definitions. “Like, my electricity? Or my excitement and energy levels?”

  Then I remember adenosine monophosphate which we studied in chemistry and add, “Or a white crystalline water-soluble nucleotide?”
>
  “Ump. Unique Modelling Point. We have to work out what your brand is. After all ‘to love oneself is the start of a life-long romance’, you know?”

  I blink, slightly startled. “Oscar Wilde?”

  “No, babe. It’s on a magnet I’ve got on my fridge. I think it’s from Target.”

  Right.

  “Shopping sounds … lovely,” I say, although obviously it doesn’t. I clench my phone a little more tightly in my hand. “But I need to go home.”

  “Sure thing,” Kenderall says, shrugging. “If you want to be forgotten, that’s your problem. More ump for me.”

  I watch her walk away, head gleaming.

  Then I press the power button on my phone. My morning of escape and adventure is over, and it’s time to deal with what’s coming next.

  I prepare myself for a barrage of angry text messages. Messages that tell me how selfish I am, how inconsiderate I am, how worried I’ve made everyone. Messages that specify in excruciating detail exactly how much trouble I’m about to be in and how long I’m going to be allocated bathroom cleaning on the family rota.

  I wait.

  And I wait.

  And then – just for good measure, because I don’t know what kind of reception you get at an American seaside – I wait a little longer.

  Then I peer at my screen.

  Nothing.

  Not a single message. Not a voicemail. Nada.

  A wave of relief sweeps over me so strong that the ground tilts again for the second time in one day.

  I did it! I got away with it!

  And then – almost immediately – a series of different waves, equally as strong, start following it. Waves that feel nothing like relief or happiness.

  It’s two in the afternoon.

  I’ve been missing for nine hours, and neither my parents nor my boyfriend have thought to ask where I am or what I’m doing?

  Nobody is worried that I may have been kidnapped, or murdered, or cut into a million pieces and fed to the approximately one million pigeons of New York City?

  Don’t they even care that I’ve gone?

  With a sinking stomach, I’m suddenly not sure which I like less. Getting in trouble for running away. Or not getting into any trouble at all.

  I stare sadly at my phone and another wave hits me. A wave so strong and abrupt it sweeps all the others away and I can’t think of anything else.

  “Kenderall?” I say.

  She stops and spins round. “Yeah, babe?”

  Defiantly, I put my phone back into my satchel. If nobody cares where I’ve gone, then I might as well stay away.

  “I’m coming with you.”

  ere are some things I like more than shopping:

  Mobile phones have eighteen times more bacteria than the average toilet handle. I would rather lick mine than spend the day making terrible decisions and being forced to pay for them. Only crazy people would do that.

  It’s called retail therapy for a reason.

  Back home, Nat is like some kind of purse-carrying tiger. Within seconds of entering a shop, she’ll go very, very still, quietly assessing her territory.

  “What are we looking for?”

  “Ssssshhhh,” Nat will reply. “I’m concentrating.”

  She’ll scan the room with eyes narrowed and eyebrows furrowed. Then she’ll lift her chin.

  “This,” she’ll say, walking forward with great purpose and grabbing a pair of spotted trousers. “And this.” She’ll march over to a lime-green jumper. “This.” She’ll make a graceful right angle. “Obviously this.” She’ll pick up a silk jacket with studs round the collar.

  “And this?” I’ll make some kind of hesitant gesture towards a rack, just to look like I’m participating.

  “No.”

  “But … Nat. It’s a jumper. It’s green. It’s identical.”

  “It’s not. It dips instead of falling straight, the neckline isn’t wide enough, it’s six centimetres shorter, the green is slightly too blue. What you’ve got there is a Mum jumper.”

  “Oh.”

  “Do you want a Mum jumper?”

  “Umm … No?”

  “Then come on.”

  And Nat will head to the till, pay for her items and emerge, glorious and triumphant, into the sunlight with her prey in shiny bags hanging from her wrists instead of her mouth.

  The torture is swift, merciless and over almost immediately.

  Kenderall is not a tiger.

  Within minutes of entering the shiny doors of Barneys on Madison Avenue, I can tell this isn’t going to be a speedy metaphorical death.

  She’s like an enormous brown bear. There’s no urgency, no direction, just contradicting opinions. She plods around the beauty section: picking things up, putting things down. Considering, pondering. Opining.

  Debating over and over and over and over and …

  In essence, she holds you down with her big paws, sits on your chest and slowly but carefully begins chewing on you while you’re still alive.

  And the last thing you hear before certain death is: “I’m not sure, I just think this lipgloss is too shiny.”

  But you know what?

  It’s still better than going back to Greenway.

  “Now,” Kenderall says when we’ve finally made it through the beauty section. “We need to decide what kind of apparel brand you are.”

  “Huh?”

  The bright lights, the gentle murmurs, the bow of the doorman in a neat little blue cap: it’s all a little overwhelming. For the first time in my life, words have the power to scare me. PRADA. GIVENCHY. STELLA McCARTNEY. LANVIN. ARMANI. RALPH LAUREN.

  Everything about Barneys is expensive. The smell: leather and perfume and wood floors. The lights: perfectly coordinated and glowing in the right places. The displays; the mannequins; the layout; the staff.

  As for the clothes, all I’m going to say is: I’m not touching anything.

  I either need to keep my hands in my pockets for the rest of the afternoon or consider cutting them off permanently.

  “Brand,” Kenderall says patiently, prodding a pair of $3,000 velvet hotpants. “If you don’t make yourself irreplaceable, somebody will replace you. Being different is being remembered. Being the same is being forgotten.”

  I nod. Sir Francis has been left with a man with a xylophone outside: Kenderall gave him twenty dollars to ‘pig-sit’.

  “I don’t think I have a brand,” I admit.

  “No,” she agrees. “You don’t. You walk into a room, and nobody is going to notice. Whereas me –” she points at herself – “I walk into the room, I am the room.”

  That literally makes no sense. The difference between a human and a four-walled space is quite big, even to an untrained eye.

  “OK,” I say doubtfully.

  The shop assistants are staring at my purple flip-flops. I think they might have some kind of alarm that goes off if you’re wearing anything that’s been recently vulcanised.

  “Importance is all in the mind,” Kenderall says firmly. “And you express that mind with your clothes and your mouth – understand?”

  Nope. “Uh-huh.”

  “These people don’t know who we are. I could be an heiress. You could be a Russian princess. Believe it, and it’s exactly the same as it being true.”

  I really hope it isn’t. I’d have been wiped out by the Russian Revolution in 1918, for starters.

  “Gotcha,” I say, trying to lift my head as regally as I can.

  “Live your truth,” Kenderall says. “Or whatever you want that truth to be, which is basically the same thing.”

  She starts stalking through the hall, prodding at things with a disgusted look on her face.

  “Gucci would approve of this layout,” she says loudly so that everybody can hear her. “I know his taste. We’re close family friends.”

  “Do you really know Gucci?” I say in a low whisper.

  I can’t help feeling a bit surprised.

  According t
o what Nat told me a few weeks ago, Guccio Gucci died sixty years ago.

  “Babe,” Kenderall says, “as far as everyone here is concerned, we know everybody.”

  e are condescending from that point on.

  We are rude in Jimmy Choo. We are supercilious in Oscar de la Renta. We are disdainful in Alexander McQueen and imperious in Michael Kors.

  At least, Kenderall is. I try to look as stern and Romanov-like as is physically possible.

  And it works.

  Not a single person glances at my flip-flops. Nobody asks me not to touch anything, or breathe on anything, or goes to the rail two seconds after me and rearranges everything with a pointedly tired facial expression.

  Not a single person treats us as if we shouldn’t be there.

  And I have to be honest, it’s quite nice being treated like you’re someone.

  “As your personal stylist, it is my job to make you stand out,” Kenderall calls over to me as she lumbers around the clothes racks. “As difficult as that may be.”

  Then she holds up a black leather pair of trousers.

  “You could be The Girl in the Black Leather. Everything you wear has to be made from leather. Jacket, trousers, shoes, shirt.”

  I look at the price tag. $2,500.

  “Umm. Primitive leather was made by immersing raw skins into a fermented solution of pigeon poo and allowing germs and bacteria to loosen hair.”

  “OK. Ew.” Kenderall puts the trousers quickly back on the rack. “Moving on.”

  Then she picks up a purple dress.

  “You could be The Girl Who Always Wears Purple.”

  That sounds more doable.

  Then I look at the label. $9,990.

  Maybe not.

  “Umm, it’s called purple because it is made from the mucus secreted by the Purpura, a spiny sea snail. Do you really want me to look like the snot glands of a gastropod mollusc?”

  “Scrap that,” Kenderall agrees.

  In quick succession she suggests diamante, lux-sports-wear, nightwear-for-daywear, and a dress made entirely out of paper (“although I think Molly already nabbed that one”), and I find scientifically accurate ways to reject all of them.

  Finally we get to the shoe section.