Geek Girl (11 page)

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 to 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.