All That Glitters (14 page)

In fact, I don’t want to sound smug but I may need to rethink my career objectives. Had I known my baking talents were this prodigious, I’d have taken home economics instead of woodwork.

Unless you intend to be an undertaker, there are only so many wooden boxes a girl needs to make.

During double maths, Raya sits next to me and asks “how I did it” because “it’s the sort of thing she’s
always
wanted to do but never had the confidence.”

“Well,” I say. “It’s actually surprisingly easy.”

Then I explain all about the importance of making sure the room is cool and how it’s essential to really focus on the dough. “Although you don’t want to work it too hard,” I add helpfully. “It’ll make it tough.”

Raya shakes her head in amazement. “I’ve
heard
that it can be tough,” she says with wide eyes. “Is there … you know. A
lot
of dough involved?”

“It depends,” I say, thinking about it honestly. “On this particular occasion, huge amounts. Like, ridiculous quantities. Masses.”

I mean, it was 300 cookies, after all.

During breaktime, the girls from the netball team tell me how “lucky” I am because they’re “so amazing”.

“Thank you, but it’s not really luck,” I say as modestly as I can. “There’s an awful lot of hard work involved and a lot of horrible ones get thrown out in the process. I have to stop my dog eating them.”

“Your
dog
? How does that work?”

“I lock him in the laundry room for an hour or so.”

“Huh.”

By lunchtime, I’ve been asked to go ice-skating, offered an “ironic” pen with a plastic, fluff-coated unicorn coming out of the top, and gifted a bracelet made out of pink and yellow rubber bands.

I obviously make the best biscuits in the world.

Seriously.

Recent studies have shown that a combination of fat and refined sugar can reduce levels of neurofactors produced by the hippocampus, thus slowing brain capabilities. I’m slightly concerned I may have chemically damaged my classmates permanently.

Let’s put it this way: I may postpone trying any until I’ve at least finished my AS levels and maybe graduated university.

Plus I offered Toby one and he didn’t take it.

I think enough said.

By the final period, I’ve basically set up my own market stall in the corner of the common room. There’s a flurry of people lounging around it: chatting and eating and laughing merrily, covered in a fine layer of icing sugar like plastic snowmen.

“Harriet! Want to go shopping this evening?”

“Or down to the local park?”

“Hey, Harriet! How about we go to the cinema and watch something with …” Robert looks me up and down. “Talking cartoon penguins in it?”

I beam at him. I do
love
a good cartoon penguin.

“That’s hilarious,” Ananya says flatly, taking his sixth biscuit off him. “Are you actually kidding? I think Ret’s got slightly higher standards than a sixteen-year-old schoolboy with a face she could buy in Pizza Hut
,
thanks very much.”

Liv appears from behind her.

“I mean, as
if
you could ever compete. Make a wish, fall asleep and dream on.” She starts giggling. “OMG, that’s brilliant. I’m so funny.”

India looks up from the sofa and stares at Robert levelly in silence for a few seconds. “Don’t be so creepy,” she says coolly. “Also, consider holding back on the hair gel. It’s not a dangerous weapon.”

Robert glances at all three girls, and then shrugs.

“Oooh, I’m so
intimidated
,” he says, taking another biscuit. “Hubble bubble. Laters, witches.”

He wanders out of the door, winking at me and still munching away, and I blink at the girls now flanking me: one in front, and one to either side.

Quietly, the rest of the group around the table is dispersing: four girls make an impromptu trip to the vending machine, Christopher decides he has a monologue to learn somewhere far away and Raya apparently needs to redo her make-up in a different room.

Why does it suddenly feel like I’ve got another three-headed Cerberus? And – much more importantly – what on earth are they talking about and what is going on?

“Umm …” I say awkwardly. “I’m not sure you had to be that …”

Unkind
, I’m about to say when I spot two differentcoloured eyes in the corner of the room, fixed firmly on mine. There’s a plant called the
Mimosa Pudica
that curls up abruptly when touched: folding in on itself to protect itself. It suddenly feels like that’s what my stomach is doing too.

Jasper and I stare at each other for a few seconds as my insides retract sharply.

Then he looks away with a scowl, picks up his bag and starts pounding with a rigid back towards the door of the common room. At which point it flings open and Alexa storms in, staring at her phone.

“Hey,” he says, dodging to the side. “Be careful where you’re—”

But it’s too late.

Alexa keeps walking and – with an enormous crash – the two people who like me least in the world collide.

Straight into each other.

here’s a very good reason why anacondas and crocodiles aren’t kept in the same zoo enclosure.

The same logic should probably extend to these two.

Jasper’s art bag has fallen open and paints have gone everywhere: smashing into little pieces all over the floor. Reds and blues and greens and yellows are spread in a powdery, wet rainbow across the carpet. A couple of sheets of white paper have fallen out, and they’re soaking it all up like soggy rectangular butterflies.

“Brilliant
,
” he sighs, bending down. “Just … brilliant.”

He holds the paper up, and for a few seconds I catch an incredibly beautiful pencil sketch of a large orange leaf with an autumn forest drawn inside it: browns and oranges and reds, now ruined by a thick splodge of black and purple.

In the meantime, Alexa is still finishing her text.

“Watch where you’re going,” she says without looking up. “Freakazoid.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.” Jasper throws his paints back in his bag. “I hadn’t realised I was the invisible man. Huge apologies for your inability to walk straight through me. I’ll look into a way of rectifying that as soon as possible.”

Then he flings his bag back over his shoulder, crumples up the ruined pages, throws them into a nearby bin and thunders out of the door. Honestly, there’s some comfort to be taken from seeing that Jasper seems to dislike Alexa nearly as much as he dislikes me.

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.