Picture Perfect (Geek Girl, Book 3)

I’m subtly edging away from my best friends in a little sideways crab shuffle.

  “Shopping sounds great, Nat,” I lie again as cheerfully as possible. “Maybe another time?”

  “Sure. I mean, I’m going to have lots on with college and stuff. But we’ve still got weekends, right?”

  “Right,” I say in a tiny voice.

  And I spin round and run home as fast as my legs will carry me.

  hich is faster than it used to be.

  Nothing makes you take up jogging quite like a brand-new baby and nowhere to escape to apart from the garden shed.

  “Annabel?” I say as I open the front door and Hugo barrels towards me, tail wagging. I bend down and give him a cuddle. “Dad? I thought you might like to know what I—”

  And then I stop.

  In the last hour and a half, the house has totally transformed.

  The curtains are wide open, the kitchen is almost clean, and there are half-filled cardboard boxes lying at random points around the hallway. Piles of shiny plates and saucers are in stacks on the table, and the mugs are out in neat, organised lines as if they’re getting ready to break into an impromptu can-can.

  The air smells of air freshener, and sunshine is pouring in through the window on to the huge suitcases still lying on the kitchen floor.

  This is more like it.

  My parents have finally decided to give my special day the respect it deserves and spring clean in my honour.

  Although they could have just used drawers and cupboards like normal people. Lining everything up on the table seems a bit excessive.

  “Harriet?” Annabel yells down the stairs. Tabitha has decided to recommence screaming. It only takes 100dB at the right pitch to break glass, and for once the windows in our house aren’t just in danger from my door slammings. “Is that you?”

  “Who else is it going to be?” Dad says, wandering in from the laundry room. “If only strangers would consider politely breaking in with keys. Maybe they’d dust while they took our valuables.”

  His arms are full of tiny pink things: little towels, trousers, onesies, cardigans, socks, bibs. It takes another glance to realise that they aren’t supposed to be pink. There’s a lone red sock on top of the pile.

  Dad gives me a look that indicates he knows just how much trouble he’s about to be in.

  “Harriet?” The screaming goes up a notch. “How did you do?” Annabel appears at the top of the stairs and Dad quickly lobs everything into a cardboard box and closes the lid.

  “It went really well,” I say as the screeches get louder.

  “What?” Annabel transfers Tabitha to a different arm and jiggles her up and down. “Say it again, Harriet.”

  “My exams went really well,” I say, holding my thumbs up in the air. “Better than expected, actually.”

  Dad climbs the stairs two at a time and takes Tabitha out of Annabel’s arms. “Pipe down, junior,” he says firmly, and my sister immediately goes silent.

  Annabel crumples against the wall as if she’s just been popped.

  “You’re like some kind of Baby Whisperer, Richard.”

  “Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin were all premature babies like Tabby,” Dad explains. “Genius recognises genius.”

  I hand Annabel my results and she looks at them and then beams at me. “Brilliant. Well done, sweetheart. You worked incredibly hard for them.”

  “Hard schmard,” Dad says, fondly scruffing up my hair. “Both my daughters are geniuses. I genetically gave them my fierce intellect, fantastic cheekbones and the ability to make great spaghetti bolognese.”

  “Marmite,” he adds, turning to the side and sucking his cheeks in. “The secret is Marmite.”

  “Did you genetically give them your laundry skills too?”

  There’s a long silence. Then Annabel lifts an eyebrow and looks at the tiny pink sock stuck with static to the side of Dad’s trousers.

  He coughs.

  “Maybe,” he admits. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

  I look around briefly at the tidiness of the house.

  It’s a lovely gesture of support and encouragement, but I think they’re overestimating how much I value seeing carpet. I haven’t seen the rug in my bedroom for weeks.

  “There’s quite a lot of extra space in my wardrobe,” I say, tucking my results back in my satchel. “If you need it.”

  Dad and Annabel look at each other.

  “Huh?”

  “I’ve got a spare drawer too, if you want it for some of Tabitha’s stuff. There’s no point boxing it while you clean.”

  “Umm, Harriet …” Dad starts, clearing his throat.

  “Thank you, darling,” Annabel says, raising her eyebrows at him whilst putting her arm around me. “It’s your big day. How would you like to celebrate?”

  I think about it.

  Starting the day again and making sure I do my satchel up properly doesn’t seem appropriately upbeat.

  “I’m going to go upstairs and speak to my boyfriend,” I say instead. “I bet he’s been trying to call me all morning.”

  “Young love,” Dad grins at Annabel as I start heading towards my bedroom.

  They lean over and give each other a little kiss.

  “Scientists have said that romantic love is only supposed to last a year,” I mumble, “due to diminishing levels of neurotrophin proteins in the blood. You guys are just making a mockery of statistics.”

  And, with my parents giggling away, I walk into my bedroom and close the door as quietly as I can behind me.

  t takes a computer with 700,000 processor cores and 1.4 million GB of RAM forty minutes to map just one second of human brain activity.

  Forty minutes.

  No computer in the entire world can do what we each do in our own heads every minute of the day. No computer is as complicated or as interesting.

  I bet they don’t get into anywhere near as much trouble either.

  Or write diaries and then drop them in the playground.

  The first thing I do is pull my T-shirt over my head and slide down the back of my bedroom door. Then in the stuffy, deodorant-scented darkness I pull out my phone and stare at the blank screen.

  No texts.

  No missed calls.

  No emails or Skype messages.

  Not a single light flashing anywhere to say Nick has tried to reach me. I turn it upside down, just in case any incredibly romantic and supportive texts want to fall out.

  They don’t.

  This afternoon, for the record, was supposed to go like this:

  Instead – on yet another pivotal day of my life – I’m hiding under a T-shirt on the floor of my bedroom.

  I knew I shouldn’t have used my new calligraphy pen to write the list. All the curly Es took ages.

  My phone beeps, and my stomach does a sudden unexpected backflip like a maverick seal on YouTube.

  You have such a vivid imagination, weirdo.

  Can’t wait for next week.

  A

  And it’s as if somebody has thrown a pebble straight into the middle of me: panic starts rippling from it in small waves.

  They start in my chest, and then they spread outwards. They spread to my shoulders, then to my arms and fingers. They spread through my stomach, into my legs and knees and toes until I’m full of undulating, pulsing ripples.

  The waves get bigger and stronger and the pebble gets heavier and harder until everything inside me is threatening to spill out.

  Which in a way it already kind of has.

  Apparently thirty-nine per cent of the world’s population uses the internet, and Alexa is on every social networking site available. With a few clicks of a button, she has access to everyone.

  There’s a knock on my door.

  “Harriet?” Annabel says gently. “I just downloaded a meerkat documentary narrated by David Attenborough. I thought you might quite like it.”

  Meerkats have really thin fur on their bellies so they
can lie flat like sunbathers and warm up in the sun, and I’m intrigued to see what David has to say about that.

  But right now, I just don’t care.

  So I do the only thing I can.

  “Oh, Nick,” I shout as loudly as I can into my dead mobile. “The monkey did what? How funny! Tell me more about it! You are just so hilarious.”

  “Say hi to Nick from me,” Annabel calls through my door.

  I don’t know why parents always want to send greetings vicariously. I think it’s their way of making sure they’re still watching us.

  “Annabel says hi,” I tell nobody. Then I wait a few seconds in horrible silence. “Nick says hi back.”

  “Great. I’ll go prepare your father by explaining that a meerkat is not, in fact, a real cat.”

  Annabel retreats down the stairs, and I grab a slice of the chocolate cake she’s thoughtfully left on my dresser.

  Eating cake on my own on my bedroom floor is not exactly how I planned to spend one of the biggest afternoons of my life.

  But it’s the only thing left on my list I can still tick off.

  he rest of the day is spent:

  eating cake

  lying flat on my back, trying not to be sick

  attempting to get brown icing off my duvet.

  When I was in Japan I learnt that Buddhist monks in training must eat every single grain of rice in their bowl or it represents ingratitude towards the universe.

  I’m pretty sure the same thing applies to chocolate cake.

  The next thing I know, it’s 7am and the doorbell is ringing.

  I sit up groggily and rub my eyes.

  I’m still in my Spider-Man T-shirt, and there is a melted chocolate button stuck to my forehead. My phone is still in my hand, from where I fell asleep gripping it like a small, hard and square stress-ball.

  “Annabel?” I shout. “Dad?” The doorbell rings again.

  There’s a silence so – grumbling slightly – I grab my dressing gown off the back of the door and start plodding down the stairs: heavily, so my parents know that on the Day After My Big Day I cannot believe I am expected to get out of bed and operate as some kind of family doorman.

  Then I swing the door open and stop scowling.

  I knew Nick hadn’t forgotten about me. I knew the big romantic gesture was coming: I just had to be patient and wait for it.

  I beam at the postman, and at the huge package he’s holding. Maybe it’s exotic flowers. Maybe it’s a carved African mask with a fascinating history, or indigenous jewellery with our names carved into a heart and—

  “Are you going to take it or what?”

  “Sorry?”

  “I’ve got a lot of things to deliver, missy. Please sign here and let me get on with it.”

  I don’t think this postman appreciates the level of grand romance he’s participating in.

  “Approximately 360 million items are sent by post every year,” I say sympathetically, scribbling my name. “You must be very tired.”

  The postman lifts his eyebrows. “I don’t deliver them all, love. I’m not Santa Claus.”

  Then he marches off down the pavement without even looking back to appreciate the joy on my face.

  The stamp is beautiful and exotic, and on the front is written in large, curly writing:

  Which is a bit weird.

  Nick gets on really well with my parents, but I think this might be taking integration a little too far.

  I rip open the package, and pull out a small piece of yellow fabric that says:

  A string of red beads that say:

  A tiny pair of silver cymbals, engraved with a dragon.

  Which sounds a bit dangerous. I’m not sure my father needs any help in that area.

  Finally, I pull out a beautiful little engraved golden bowl with a cloth-covered stick.

  This is the most inappropriate gift a boyfriend has ever sent anyone.

  What on earth was Nick thinking?

  Then I tip the package upside down and a card falls out.

  erve impulses bring information to the average brain with the same speed as a high-powered luxury sports car.

  Right now, mine feels like a milk float.

  I turn the card over four times, just in case I’ve missed a pivotal piece of information. A code or perhaps a translator.

  I’m just turning it over for the fifth time when there’s a heavy shuffling sound behind me.

  Annabel pauses in dragging another suitcase down the stairs and flushes slightly. “Harriet, I didn’t expect you to be awake so early.”

  I look at the suitcase, and then at the hallway. There are even more boxes everywhere; the bookshelves have been cleared; the taps in the kitchen are shiny. Dad’s loudly singing the wrong lyrics to ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ by Queen, which is what he always does when he’s cleaning the oven.

  “What’s going on?” I say, thrusting Bunty’s card at her. “Why is Grandma coming back? What adventure? And what does she mean by next year?”

  Annabel goes a darker shade of pink and mutters, “Oh, God. Nice timing, Mum.” Then she clears her throat.

  “Well, we were going to tell you yesterday, Harriet, but it was your big day – it’s all been very last minute – and …” She pauses. “Richard? Can you get out here, please?”

  My eyes widen. Annabel never asks for Dad’s help in anything. Ever.

  Through the kitchen door I see Dad use the cooker to pull himself up.

  “Ouch,” he says, staggering into the hallway. “Maybe I should start doing yoga. Or pilates. Which is the most manly, do you think? Which would Batman do?”

  “Can somebody please just tell me what’s going on?”

  “Well,” Annabel says, going even more red. “There’s this thing … The fact is … Actually, you wouldn’t believe what’s … We were just thinking that …”

  I’ve never seen Annabel unsure how to word anything before. It’s like watching a tiger paint its nails.

  I look at the suitcases.

  Then at the bulging cardboard boxes. The clear shelves. The cleanness of the kitchen. The masking tape and marker pens and Tabitha’s crib, dismantled and propped up against the living-room wall.

  Oh sugar cookies.

  They’re not cleaning at all.

  They’re leaving.

  “We have news, Harriet,” Dad confirms, grinning and putting his arm around my shoulders. “Massive news. Epic news. In fact, it’s the most epic-est news that’s ever happened ever.”

  Epic-est?

  “Will you please just tell me!”

  “Harriet,” Dad shouts, exploding into the air like a firework: “WE ARE MOVING TO AMERICA!”

  e each blink approximately 15,000 times a day. In the following silence I use up a week’s worth, minimum.

  I’m desperately trying to piece that sentence into an order that makes sense, but it’s not working. AMERICA TO MOVING ARE WE. TO AMERICA WE ARE MOVING. WE TO AMERICA MOVING ARE.

  With the best grammar skills in the world, they all kind of mean the same thing.

  “B-but you can’t just leave me here,” I stammer. “I don’t know how to work the oven properly. I don’t know the code for the burglar alarm.”

  “31415,” Dad says promptly.

  “The first five numbers of pi?” At least that should be easy to remember.

  “You’re coming with us, Harriet,” Annabel says calmly. “How ridiculous do you think we are?”

  Dad has a piece of burnt pizza stuck to his knee.

  I’m not going to answer that.

  “But there isn’t time,” I state stupidly. “School starts next week.”

  “It’s not for a holiday, sweetheart. It’ll be for six months, at least.”

  “I got a job!” Dad shouts, jumping into the air again. “I’m going to be head copywriter at a top American advertising agency! I am no longer a draining sap on the life-source of this family!”

  I thought Dad quite enjoyed sitting around in his dressi
ng gown, losing his temper at people on the television and eating red jelly out of a big bowl.

  “But when?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon,” Annabel says, face getting blotchier by the second. “Sweetheart, we didn’t have a choice. It was that or they’d give it to another candidate. We’re leaving a lot of stuff here and Bunty’s going to take care of the house.”

  I don’t think ‘Bunty’, ‘house’ and ‘care’ have ever been put together in a sentence before. She’s going to sell it, or burn it down, or cover it with glitter paint and glue feathers to the windows.

  I’m definitely going to have to hide the cat.

  “Your father’s new company is getting you a tutor,” Annabel continues gently. “That way you won’t miss anything and you can slip straight into sixth form when you get back.”

  I blink at her a few more thousand times.

  “Your father has to take it, Harriet,” Annabel adds when I still don’t say anything. “He’s been out of work for nine months, and New York will give him the break he needs. Plus –” she clears her throat – “we’ve, umm, run out of savings. We can’t afford for both of us to be out of work any longer.”

  “New York? The job is in New York?”

  What am I supposed to say?

  That I’ve spent the entire summer making carefully laminated plans and timetables for the next academic year?

  That I have a pencil case full of brand-new stationery I haven’t used yet?

  That their timing couldn’t be worse and I hate them I hate them I hate them?

  I’m just opening my mouth to say precisely all of that when I see a familiar expression on their faces. The Harriet’s-About-to-Throw-a-Tantrum look. The Hide-the-Breakables look. The We’ll-Need-to-Buy-New-Door-Hinges look.

  And then I see what’s underneath it.

  Under the nerves, they both look sad. Worried. Tired.

  Dad’s excitement suddenly doesn’t look so real any more. It looks like he’s faking it, to try and make us all believe in it. Including him.

  They don’t want to leave.

  They have to.

  “I think,” I say, taking a deep breath. “That I may need a few minutes to think about this.”