Model Misfit (26 page)

At one stage, I see a game featuring live lobsters and a large foam bottom being smacked by a pair of teenagers. A yellow mist hangs in the air, the walls are flashing bright red, and the pale, blank gazes of gamers are everywhere, like zombies.

It’s not unlike a sort of twenty-first-century high-tech version of Dante’s nine levels of Hell. Except with much better refreshments and clearly marked exit signs.

By the time we make it to the sixth floor, I’m so disturbed by some of the things I’ve seen that I’m genuinely relieved to be pushed back into a giant cupboard. Except that this one has no chocolate in it and smells quite strongly of cleaning materials.

Bunty follows me in, then sniffs the air, pulls a face and heads straight back out.

“Sweetie pies,” she says. “I’m far too old to get into a dark box voluntarily.” She turns round and spies a food counter. “Ooh!” she says. “Slush Puppies! I must go dye my insides into a rainbow.”

If Annabel isn’t a persuasive argument for nurture versus nature, I don’t know who is.

Apart from me, obviously.

“Umm, what should I do now?” I politely ask Yuka.

“Exactly what I tell you, Harriet,” Yuka says, as in troops her team of stylists and hairdressers. “Do you think you can manage that?”

Here are some interesting facts:

• Manga is the Japanese word for ‘whimsical picture’.
  
• The Manga industry in Japan is worth 420 billion yen every year, which is two and a half billion British pounds.
  
• It has been a style of Japanese art since the nineteenth century.
  
• People in Japan consume more paper as Manga than they do as toilet roll.
  
• Pink lace really itches.
  

I know this because I’ve just been turned into a Manga Girl. And also because I asked the stylists and the internet a lot of irritating questions.

My face has been bleached out with bright white foundation, and then given rosy cheeks and dark brown painted freckles. My eyes have been made cartoon-enormous with clever application of eyeliner and fake eyelashes and electric-green contact lenses significantly bigger than the pupil they’re stuck to. I’m wearing a pale pink waist-length shiny wig with a shiny fringe that skims my eyebrows, and my dress is pale pink lace covered with hundreds of pink ruffles and bows and diamanté and ribbons and beads and feathers.

There are diamonds and pearls wrapped round my neck and wrists, and on my feet are little lacy white socks with baby blue shoes covered in sparkly silver stars. I even have frilly knickerbockers on, which reach nearly down to my knees and make me look like a Victorian lady at the seaside.

There’s no doubt about it: I’m as
kawaii
as a human gets. Rin would be so proud.

Yuka makes a few last-minute tweaks, adjusts my wig and then stalks back out of the makeshift changing room to where Bunty is leaning against a wall with a laser gun in her hands. Bunty’s missing every single vampire target, and when I raise my eyebrows she says, “I’m a pacifist, darling. The fact that these poor creatures do not happen to be real is neither here nor there.” Then she grins. “Yuka, how lovely and talented you are. It looks like you’ve been having an immensely good time with a glue gun.”

In fairness, I do look like a massive
Blue Peter
project. My outfit is phenomenally heavy. All I’ve done is walk through the door and I’m exhausted.

I really need to start doing some proper exercise. It’s not a good sign when a dress wears your muscles out.

Haru and Naho are waiting in the corner, where six or seven huge lights have been set up. Everything’s pointing towards a large glass and metal case, with buttons and a silver metal claw hanging from the ceiling. The whole thing has been painted bright pink, like the world’s most girly Tardis. It’s what Dr Who would travel in, if Dr Who was also Barbie.

As I get a little closer I realise with a start that the case is full of hundreds and hundreds of tiny dolls. Every single one has pink hair and freckles. Every single one is wearing a pink lacy dress and pale blue shoes. Every single one has massive, staring green eyes.

It’s intensely creepy.

“Oh,” I laugh nervously, trying not to notice that the eyes of the dolls are following me when I move. “That’s me. In the arcade game. I see what you mean.”

“Do you?” Yuka says. “Excellent. Now get in.”

he word ‘phobia’ is a derivative of the Ancient Greek word
phobos
, which means fear.

Humans can be scared of literally anything. For instance, fear of dust is called
amathophobia
. Fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth is called
arachibutyrophobia
. Fear of looking up is
anablephobia
and fear of space is
astrophobia
.

And that’s just the As. Go on through the alphabet and there’s even
phobophobia
, fear of having a phobia. Which I’d imagine then leads to a fear of irony (I’m not sure what that’s called).

I’m not scared of small spaces (
claustrophobic
) or suffocating (
pnigophobic
) or glass (
crystellophobic).
I’m not scared of dolls (
pediophobic
) or things that look like humans but actually aren’t (
automatonophobic
). I’m not even scared of sharp, automated metal claws hanging just above your head in a way that could feasibly pierce through your skull and kill you in a matter of seconds.

But put them all together in front of an audience?

Terrified.

I barely fit into the box. Shion, Naho and Haru have to lift me in, shove me from behind and then lock the glass cabinet so I don’t fall back out again. I can still breathe – there are tiny holes punctured into the top – but that’s pretty much it. There’s barely room to move, and certainly not enough to do more than crouch with my knees by my shoulders.

I feel like Alice when she drinks the potion in the White Rabbit’s house. Except that this time there’s no chimney or window to stick an arm or leg out of, no cake to eat that will make me smaller, and no lizards running around, yelling at me.

Actually, I’m quite glad about that last point. I don’t think shouting lizards tend to help situations like this.

I look anxiously at the expressionless dolls, staring at me. Then at an expressionless Yuka, staring at me. I look at my expressionless grandmother, carefully studying a piece of food stuck to the front of her dress.

I take a deep breath.

Then I take an even deeper breath and remind myself that I have to do this. Because if I don’t, I’m going straight home.

And I give it everything I’ve got.

omething I’ve learnt over the last six months must have finally stuck.

My body and my brain are actually working together, instead of reluctantly with open hostility, like two work colleagues who secretly hate each other.

I slouch carefully against the glass sides of the box, tucking my knees in and poking my elbows out. Then I move so that one arm is over my head, pressing against the roof of the box. I draw my feet up so that they’re stretched in the opposite direction and my head is at a right angle. I use the dress and the edges of the glass: leaning and pressing and bending and unwinding and bending again.

At one point, I’m actually almost upside down: legs in the air, feet on the ceiling, head on the floor, doll clutched in my hand. And – throughout – I try to keep my face as still and as wide-eyed and as expressionless as I possibly can.

Every time I move into a new position, my grandmother pays less attention to the food on her collar. Shion starts bobbing around like a happy stripy pigeon and Naho high-fives the hairdresser. Even Haru looks mildly jolly.

“
Sugoi, jyan?
” he shouts. “
Kore wa subarashi desu! Iketeru jyan!
”

“Haru says you’re doing brilliantly,” Naho says straight away. “The photos are incredible.”

I flash a quick grin at Naho, and then look at Yuka. With every click of the camera, something is happening to the corners of her mouth: they’re starting to move almost imperceptibly upwards.

Yuka Ito is actually
smiling
. In a few clicks, the skin around her eyes might even crinkle.

I’ve finally done it. I’ve finally achieved something on my own.

Filled with a bright, hot sense of relief, I’m just shifting my position when something moves.

Something
in the box
moves.

OK. This is precisely the kind of thing that happens when you’ve watched
Toy Story 1, 2
and
3
too many times, and then written a letter to Pixar asking when the fourth one is due.

I crouch between the dolls with my arms out at the side, and stretch my neck upwards. I’m just reaching out a hand to lean carefully against the other side of the box when the doll nearest it does a little jiggle.

I’m going to say that again. The doll
does a little jiggle.

I squeak and grab my hand back.

“What’s going on?” Yuka snaps.

“The doll,” I say before I can stop myself. “It jiggled.”

My grandmother looks fascinated. “Did it say anything, sweetie? I make a point of listening to anything inanimate that tries to communicate with me.”

Yuka shoots her a look of death and then turns back to me. “Dolls do not move, Harriet.” The corners of her mouth are back in their normal position. “Get on with it.”

I nod and go back to what I was doing before, except with one small alteration: I’m now numb with fear.

The doll moved.
I saw it
.

Apparently forty per cent of all British people believe in ghosts, and I think I’m now one of them. What if these are the trapped souls of hundreds of children? What if I’m in a haunted arcade game?

Chilled to the core and filled with visions of hundreds of tiny, cold, grasping fingers, I try to keep my face still and make my arms graceful, my legs less rigid, my movement fluid …

Something starts tickling my ankle.

Dolls don’t jiggle
, I start repeating under my breath as Yuka’s eyes narrow until they’re almost shut.
Dolls don’t jiggle dolls don’t jiggle dolls don’t jiggle dolls don’t jiggle dolls don’t jiggle.

But the tickling gets more and more pronounced, until I can’t take it any more.