Model Misfit (22 page)

I politely tug my arm away.

Nick’s staring at his hand. Then he blinks and looks back at me. “Umm …” He blinks again then shakes himself. I’m slightly worried I may have actually electrocuted him. “What I mean is … don’t go through the front door. You need to go through the side entrance before Yuka sees you.”

Oh, sugar cookies. I’d totally forgotten about modelling.
Again
. Wilbur’s right, I really need to learn how to focus.

“Sh-she’s that angry with me?”

“I’ve seen her happier,” Nick says, pulling a face. “We need to get into the ring pronto. That way you might survive until lunchtime.”

Every romantic thought is swept away in a sudden flood of panic. “Did …” My mouth is paper dry. “Did you just say into the ring?”

“What did you think we were doing here?”

I’m going to be sick.
I’m actually doing sumo?
I didn’t even have the coordination necessary to take part in last term’s Year Eleven Dance. They said I wasn’t ‘physically equipped to move in public’. “We?”

“I’m doing the shoot too. With you. At a distance, though, I’m just in the background. A boy-shaped prop.”

Oh my God. I may not know much about ex-boyfriends, but I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to throw yourself at them. Especially not physically, on a stage.

“Just me and you?” I know, shock is playing havoc with my grammar.

Nick shakes his head, and suddenly I can’t breathe very well.

“Not any more,” he says, opening the stadium door. “That’s what you get for having a lie-in.” He points to the biggest crowd that has ever existed in the history of the world, ever. “No biggy.”

s my PE teacher will happily testify, I am not a very fast runner. But I still manage to get at least ten metres away before Nick catches me. He has to push me back into the stadium like I’m startled cattle.

Actually, I’m shaking so hard that if I
did
contain milk, I’m pretty sure it would now be butter.

“There was supposed to be nobody here,” Nick explains when I’ve finally stopped waving my arms and legs in every direction, like an upside-down beetle. “They’re here for a sumo match that starts in an hour. If you’d been here on time, it would have been empty.”

I peer through the swing doors into the arena; there are chairs all the way up to the ceiling, and almost every single one is full. “I can’t do it,” I say almost inaudibly. “Nick, please don’t make me do it.”

I look desperately at the floor. If I can just find a crowbar I might be able to pull a few floorboards loose and crawl under them. I can live there forever, like a mouse or a rat. Or a really big and totally pathetic woodlouse.

“Of course you can do it,” he says. “They’re strangers you’ll never see again. Who cares what they think of you?”

I look at the crowd again and the distant stage, and my stomach folds in half.
Nobody
can transform that much in six months. This isn’t a few strangers. This is thousands of strangers. Thousands and thousands of strangers. Thousands and thousands and thousands and …

“Me,” I decide. “I care.”

“They’re here to watch sumo, Harriet. Not us. They won’t be paying any attention. We get up there, do our thing for half an hour, and then come down again. It’ll be …” He twinkles at me. “Coolioko.”

I glare at Nick and then sigh in resignation. This is what I signed up for: live catwalks and live television and live octopi and live sumo. Everything in modelling is
live
. There’s nowhere to hide.

Plus unless I want to be disembowelled on the spot I don’t think I should push Yuka’s patience any further.

I nod grimly.

“Excellent,” Nick says. “I’ll be there, so don’t worry, OK?”

That is simultaneously the best and worst sentence I’ve heard in the last two months. “Uh-huh.”

Nick turns to a chair behind him and picks up what looks like a huge white scarf and a very large safety pin. “Here’s your costume. See you out there.”

And he winks at me then disappears through the doors, into the crowd.

stare at the scarf in horror.

It’s a traditional Japanese sumo loincloth, known as a
mawashi.
It’s thirty foot long, two feet wide, made of silk and is passed repeatedly around the stomach and between the thighs and secured over the – you know. Front area. And it’s worn by
men.

But I can’t afford to make Yuka any angrier, so I take a deep, professional breath as I walk into the changing room, then experimentally wind the scarf up over my penguin pyjamas and secure it with the enormous safety pin. I untie it and wrap it a little higher. Finally, I criss-cross the silk over my entire body and pin it so I’m completely mummified.

That’s better.

Now I look like the world’s most prudish baby.

I’m on the floor, trying to tug off my pyjamas from underneath it, when the door opens. A young Japanese woman with blue raccoon stripes in her hair walks into the room, followed by a large group of people wearing black.

People with brushes and lights and boxes and folded-up tables.

People with the serious, focused expressions of highly experienced professionals.

They stare at me, and then the woman with the stripes holds out a beautiful dark blue dress. It’s floor-length and silky, with little holes punched in the bottom so that the light shines through it like stars. It has little straps, and a slit up each side. It’s beautiful, my size, and exactly the sort of thing Yuka designs.

I am
so
gullible.

“Hello,” I say with as much dignity as I can muster. Then I wait patiently for the floor to open up and swallow me whole.

“My name is Shion,” the girl says, grinning. “I’m the new stylist.” She looks me up and down. “You must be Harriet Manners.”

Right.

I am going to kill Nick. That was so
not
funny.

Unfortunately, nobody else agrees with me. I spend the next ten minutes having my hair speedily gelled into a neat bun by a giggling hairdresser, my shoulders sprayed with sparkly sticky stuff by a snorting stylist and my eyes heavily painted in dark blue glitter by a shuddering make-up artist. By the time they’ve finished with me, I’m so embarrassed by all the giggling and snorting I’ve actually forgotten to be nervous.

Plus I’m far too busy working out the various forms of punishment I can wreak on my ex-boyfriend. Enormous seagulls I can train to attack him; lime-flavoured sweets I can eat without offering him any. Ominous-looking rain clouds I can get to follow him around.

That kind of thing.

Shion points me down a long corridor in the direction of the stage doors, and I’m so focused on revenge that I’m totally calm. A quick peek through the doors proves that everybody in the crowd really is just minding their own business: chatting, eating, laughing, drinking. Getting ready for the show they’ve actually paid to see.

Which means I can do this.

Quietly, I slip through the doors into the arena. At the bottom of the stairs leading up to the stage is a pair of amazing, bright pink, glittery high-heeled shoes with six tiny red straps. Attached to them with tape is a little note that says:

It’s the shortest possible distance. x

I laugh, bend down and flick the note on to the floor. The shoes are a bit too small, but I manage to wedge my feet into them and get the straps tied.

Then I straighten up, square my shoulders and walk up the stairs on to the stage.

he first thing I see is Nick.

He’s standing on the other side of the enormous square stage in a pair of dark blue silk trousers and a dark blue shirt buttoned all the way to the top. His head is down and facing away slightly, his skin is glowing, and for the first time I realise – with a painful pang – that even though most of his hair has gone, he still has that tiny curl at the back like a little duck tail.

Then I notice Yuka. She’s partially hidden behind an enormous screen next to scowling photographer Haru: hands neatly crossed in front of her, black lace dress on, little black hat perched, face hard and white.

And then I notice the sound of my heart.

Because, as I step towards Nick and he turns and steps towards me, this is all I can hear:

The drum of my heart.

My heels against wood.