Some comfort. Not lots.
He’s still not calling her names or refusing to eat any of her home-made peanut butter biscuits. Despite my best efforts, he hasn’t touched a single one.
“Whatever,” Alexa snaps absently, still staring at the screen of her phone. “Bye bye, mutant eyes.”
Then she presses a final button and looks up.
Slowly, she scans the common room with a bored expression until her eyes finally alight on my corner.
“Oooh,” she says, stalking over to me and wrinkling her nose. “Are you selling upside-down ferret biscuits, geek? How adorable.”
Excuse me? Upside-down ferret biscuits?
I indignantly draw myself up to my biggest possible size and make my voice as confident as possible.
“They’re Sauropods, actually, Alexa. It means lizard-footed, and they were dinosaurs originating in the Triassic period with long tails and long necks. Diplodocus and Brontosaurus are the most famous versions, although technically the latter was a mistaken Apatosaurus and so has never actually existed. It is a dinosaur myth.”
“Still looks like an upside-down ferret,” she says, putting one in her mouth. “Tastes a bit like one too.”
Actually, now I’m looking at them again I suppose they kind of do. Bat poop. I might need to invest in some proper cookie cutters.
Alexa turns to her minions.
“What are you all doing in here? I told you to meet me on the tennis courts. There’s a year ten and she’s totally losing it with her boyfriend. It’s hilarious. I want to go heckle.”
She spins and starts sauntering out of the room again.
“And I thought I told you not to bother with her any more,” she calls over her shoulder as Ananya and Liv stand up to follow her. “Let’s go. As in, now.”
Except – as she pushes open the sixth-form door – for the second time in two days my nemesis doesn’t get quite the exit she was hoping for.
“No,” a sharp voice says from behind me. “Actually, Alexa, we’re not going anywhere.”
rayfish warn each other by emptying their bladders at the first sign of danger. As the scariest person I’ve ever met slowly turns to face us, I’m a bit concerned I’m about to do the same thing.
I’ve known Alexa Roberts for eleven years, and I’ve never seen this expression before. Her face is very still and calm, but I’m pretty sure something is about to burst through the surface.
Like, maybe an alien or a great white shark.
“Excuse me? Would you like to repeat that, new girl?”
“Which of those seven words are you struggling with?” India says coolly, picking a little silver ball off a biscuit and sticking it in her mouth. “I’d imagine it’s no, so I’ll give you a few more pointers. We are going to stay here with Harriet today. All three of us. Is that any clearer, or would you like me to draw you a picture?”
Ananya and Liv are now frozen in the space between us mid-step, like enchanted forest fawns turned to stone.
They glance at Alexa, then India, then Alexa again.
Then at me.
Until it looks like they’re watching a really confusing and awkward game of ping-pong.
Finally Ananya clears her throat.
“Actually,” she says slowly, unfreezing and taking a small step back, “Indy’s right, Lexi. It’s a bit cold outside today. Maybe we should stay here. What do you think, Olivia?”
“Like, totally.” Liv folds her arms and takes a step towards me as well. “Also, I think you might be a bit over right now, Lexi. Sorry.”
For the first time in history, my nemesis and I now have exactly the same facial expression. A mirrored series of Os: two for eyes, one for a mouth and two tiny ones for shocked, flared nostrils.
She turns slowly towards me, and I’m just about to leave a terrified, Harriet-Manners-shaped hole in the wall when her face abruptly changes.
Muscle by muscle, Alexa relaxes.
Her shoulders lower, her eyes normalise, her nose wiggles, her mouth twitches and a small bubble of sound pops out of her mouth. My entire stomach twists into the shape of a fresh pretzel.
Worse than anger, more dangerous than vengeance.
Is Alexa actually … laughing?
“Oh,” she says, putting a hand over her eyes. “Oh, of course. I get it now. This is brilliant. How stupid are you? You actually think a bus stop is going to change things? That everything will be different now?”
“A bus stop?” I echo in confusion. “I’m not a bus stop.”
At least, I don’t think I am. I’m so discombobulated right now, though, I wouldn’t put any money on it.
But Alexa’s not even looking at me any more: she’s focused intently on Ananya and Liv. “She’s still Harriet Manners. The geek who once brought a woodlouse to school and tried to make us hold it.”
OK: I was six, his name was Malcolm and I thought he was cute.
“That was a really long time ago,” Ananya says, taking another step towards me. “People change.”
“Yeah,” Liv adds. “Maybe we actually like her.”
“Nobody actually likes Harriet,” Alexa laughs. “Even her creepy little stalker is nowhere to be seen any more. She’s on her own for a reason.”
My stomach pretzels a little bit further.
“That’s your opinion,” India says firmly. “We don’t agree.”
“Exactly.” Ananya takes another few steps until she’s right next to me. “And this is getting a bit boring, Lexi. It’s the same old thing, over and over again.”
“Yeah,” Liv says, standing on my other side. “Also, hanging out on the tennis courts is so Year Eleven. Move on, babe. Let it go.”
I’m staring at this exchange in bewildered silence.
I’d always seen the Underlings as faceless, voiceless henchmen: existing purely to provide background and visual support, but without identities of their own.
I was obviously very, very wrong.
I’m kind of expecting Alexa to break now the way I would – going red, possibly crying and hiding under a table – but she still looks intensely amused. I can’t help being slightly impressed, in spite of myself.
That is pretty majestic self-confidence.
“You’re right,” she says finally, shrugging. “Things were getting a bit boring, weren’t they? This way is so much more fun. Let’s shake it up a bit.”
I blink at her. What? What are we shaking?
Oh, God. I bet it’s me, isn’t it.
“See you around, Harriet Manners,” she continues as I stare at her in amazement. “Enjoy.”
And the girl who likes me least in the world blows a kiss in my direction and exits the room.
Leaving her three closest friends with me.
ere are some things I know:
Unfortunately, what the hell is going on is not on that list.
Call me deeply intuitive – although nobody ever does – but something is starting to tell me that this isn’t all about biscuits.
I wait until the bell for the end of school rings and the girls leave in a wave of enthusiastic kisses and hugs. Then I reach forward and break the tail off a Camarasaurus. Or it could be a Giraffatitan: honestly, they all just look like upside-down ferrets now.
It’s not great.
In fact, I’m going to be honest with you: on a scale of biscuits I’ve ever eaten (which is a lot) it’s pretty near the bottom. Plans to bolster my future palaeontology earnings with a bakery probably won’t be materialising.
Frowning, I pull my phone out of my satchel and my ears suddenly go numb with shock. There are ten missed calls from Nat and eight from Stephanie at Infinity Models.
RING ME NOW THIS IS INSANELY URGENT. Nat x
Hands starting to sweat, I hit 1 on Speed Dial. Nat picks up on the first ring, and that’s when I know it’s serious.
“Meet me in town,” she says. “Now.”
“But—”
“Seriously, Harriet. You need to see this.”
don’t even make it to the fountain.
Next to where a large proportion of my year hangs out after school, eating crisps, throwing the packets into the water and then being forced by passers-by to pick them back out again, is a bus stop.
It’s where most of the buses pass through on their way to school, on their way home from school, on their way to the shops, to the hospital, to rollerskating, to … anywhere, actually.
In other words: it’s right in the middle of everything.
As I slowly approach it, I see a girl I recognise.
Her face is very white and freckled, her eyes are wide and bright green, her nose and chin are slightly too pointy for comfort and her hair is pale red and unbrushed: hanging in a fluffy, knotted mass around her shoulders.
She’s sitting in a lake, surrounded by glitter.
Her white dress is sparkling with a thousand tiny flashes of light, the water is glowing and shimmering around her, and a purple sky is starred above. Behind her is an enormous, pointed mountain with a white tip and a few glowing clouds spiked on top of it. Her eyes are shining, and she’s enormous: at least fifteen foot tall, if she stood up.
And next to the sparkling girl is another, much smaller one I also recognise. This one is leaning against the bus stop, against the poster. Her brown eyes are narrowed and her eyebrows are drawn together in consternation.
I reach them both in silence.
“That’s not even everything,” Nat says after a few seconds, grabbing my hand. “Just wait ‘til you see the rest of it.”
I am literally everywhere.
There’s a huge poster of me in the designer section of the local department store: this time floating in Lake Motosu, hair and lights swirling round me as if I’m the Lady of Shalott, except set on fire.
In the make-up department is another photo: me, locked in a glass box in Akihabara, with pale pink hair, gigantic green manga-eyes and bright pink, glossy lips.
The bus-stop photo where I’m crouched in front of Mount Fuji has been turned into shiny flyers and is now being distributed outside the shopping centre to anyone who walks past.
In the window of the local chemist’s is an extreme close-up of my face: eyes bright and burning and fixed slightly to the left, as if I’m staring at somebody important that the camera can’t see.
Which – obviously – I was.
Nick was standing slightly behind the photographer, and he had just kissed me in the middle of a lake at sunset: I was finding it quite hard to concentrate properly.
With a shake of her head, Nat clicks on Facebook and holds her phone up in silence. I’m running in long adverts down the side of the page, wearing a gold tutu with gold paint all over my face (and tiny physics revision stickers – which I had all over my arms at the time – presumably Photoshopped out).
This doesn’t make any sense. At all.
The majority of these are shots I did for designer Yuka Ito’s new fashion line – clothes, accessories, make-up, the lot – in Tokyo last summer. Except that was cancelled: the whole campaign was shut down after fashion-house Baylee found out Yuka had broken her contract with them to set up her own label.
So what am I now doing all over everything?
With a sudden brain-click, yesterday’s text abruptly makes sense: as if I’ve just plugged it into Wilbur-Translate on Google.
The Alvinella Pompejana, commonly known as the Pompeii worm, grows a layer of bacteria around it that protects it from high temperatures, allowing it to survive at 80oc. It is the most heat-tolerant animal on earth. Judging from the state of my cheeks right now, I may need to turn into one before I burst into flames completely.
Today’s conversations are starting to replay in my head, except now they suddenly sound slightly different.
Or – you know. A lot.
Oh, there are huge amounts of dough involved. Ridiculous quantities. Masses. You really need to focus on making the dough. That’s the important part.
You just need to stay as cool as possible.
I am sometimes very hot, yes. Baking, in fact. [I snort with laughter.]
Oh my God. We weren’t talking about biscuits at all.
I stare at Nat in silence with my cheeks flaming. Why isn’t there some kind of magic potion I can drink to stop me being such an idiot? Or at least make me very tiny so I can climb under a toadstool where nobody will hear me say things.
“Hey!” a girl exclaims as she walks past and double-glances at the enormous poster directly behind me. “Oh wow! Is that you?”
She points at the girl in the lake: Photoshopped and glossed and de-flawed, but – thanks to the bright orange hair, pointy nose and lack of make-up – still recognisably me.
That and the blank expression, obviously.
“Umm,” I say, swallowing anxiously. “I guess so. Yes?”
“That is so cool! You’re, like, famous!”
And before I can stop her, the girl snaps a photo of me with her phone and walks off.
Panic is starting to rise up like an icy tidal wave.
What is she going to do with that? American Indians used to believe that every photograph stole a part of your soul, and it suddenly feels like I’ve just given an irreplaceable bit of mine to a total stranger with a crystal heart stuck on the front of her bag.
Oh God. Oh God oh God oh God oh—
“Harriet?” Nat says, grabbing my arm. “Are you OK?”
“Uh-uh,” I say blankly as the panic keeps rising: to my ankles, to my knees, to my stomach and my shoulders. “Mmmm. Brilliant. Superbo.”
“Totally not a word,” Nat says gently, patting me as if I’m a small puppy on firework night. “This is freaking awesome, H. I’m so proud of you.” She strokes my arm a few more times – eyes shiny and far away – and then adds in a burst of triumph: “I knew you’d be a megastar eventually.”
And that does it.
Panic washes up from my shoulders, into my throat and over my head until I can’t breathe. Leaving me with no other option but to abruptly crouch down on the floor outside the chemist’s, put my head between my knees.
And have a very un-awesome panic attack.
xperts say that the best way to stop a panic attack is to find something else to think about.
Unfortunately, there’s a massive flaw in this logic.
I’m now so anxious about finding something else to think about I can’t inhale at all.
In desperation, I close my eyes and begin reciting the periodic table loudly: starting at the alkali metals and working to the right until I can feel myself beginning to calm down again. Lithium. Sodium. Potassium. Rubidium. Then Alkaline earth metals. Beryllium, Magnesium, Calcium, Strontium. Then Transition metals: Scandium, Yttrium, Titanium.
I’m all the way into the noble gases before I’m stable enough to look up again.
The irony of which does not escape me.
“You know …” Nat says, sitting on her coat next to me. She hands me half a chocolate-chip biscuit she must have found at the bottom of my satchel. “You may be the only supermodel in the world who repeats the entire periodic table when stressed.”
“It wasn’t the entire thing,” I admit sheepishly. “I still had lanthanoids and actinoids to go. And ununoctium.” Then I stuff the entire cookie in my mouth and anxiously spray: “And I’m not a supermodel, Nat.”
Except it comes out nmnaspamdlnatttt.
“Maybe not quite,” Nat agrees, grinning with excitement. “But you’re definitely about a million steps closer.”
A few more waves of terror ripple through me.
You know what’s utterly ridiculous?
I’ve been modelling for nearly a year now – since I was unintentionally spotted at a fashion event that Nat dragged me to. Ten full months of getting paid to stand in front of a camera and wear beautiful clothes in foreign countries – first Russia, then Japan, then New York – and this is the first time it’s actually felt real. All this time, I’ve used modelling to run away,
to run towards – to escape, find myself, lose myself, transform – but never as an end in and of itself. I’ve been so focused on the verb – modelling – that it never once occurred to me that I’m also the noun.
Harriet Manners: model.
Or that my face might actually one day be used in public to, you know: sell things.
Because apparently I’m an intelligent girl with no grasp of cause and effect, who thought she could have all these great fashion adventures and then the evidence would just up and vanish as soon as she was done.
Poof! Like the magical fairytales they were.
Seriously. I’m supposed to be getting smarter as I get older. Nobody told me it would be the other way round.
“What is this dress even made of?” Nat continues, staring at the leaflet. “How does it light up like that?”
“It’s thin woven optical fibres,” I say distantly. “They’re hollow, which allows photons of light to bounce down the centre of them and—”
A sudden memory flashes.
Nick, looking like the world’s most beautiful banana in yellow wellies and a yellow waterproof coat. I can remember the exact coldness of the water, the precise warmth of my stomach and fingers and toes. The position of the stars and the lights; the shape of the mountain and the lake. The happy glow in his eyes.
The happy glow in mine.
Now immortalised and stuck all over town to remind me of exactly what I don’t have any more every time I need to buy deodorant.
Without equal.
Oh my God: of all the shoots I’ve ever done, why did they have to stick this one in the window of the chemist? I’m going to smell for the rest of the year.
Wobbling slightly, I get to my feet.
Abruptly, I need to get as far away from both the shopping precinct and this particular photo as fast as physically possible.
“Harriet,” Nat says, jumping up too, “I know you’re freaking out right now, but I honestly think you just need a little time to process how amazing this is. This is huge, H. It’s epic. You’ve really made it.”
I stare at my best friend blankly.
“Here,” she adds, thrusting a leaflet into my hand. “I’m so sorry, but I need to run back to college for a late class on evening gowns. I only popped out to pick up some extra material.”