Model Misfit (32 page)

Then I think, Wilbur was uncannily prescient and I’ve just burst into flames.

It’s only when Nick pulls away and I look down that I realise the light’s coming from the dress. Every single fibre of the material is a hair-thin LED, woven tightly together, and the whole dress is now shining neon white with tiny clustered knots of light around the neckline like stars.

I am glowing and glittering all over, and the light is spreading through the water and swirling around me.

Never mind metaphors. Never mind lightning bugs.

Nick has
literally
just lit me up.

Above me, the sky is starting to change colour into a dark, gold-ish pink, brightening to red at the horizon, and tiny dots of stars are forming in the blackness. In front of me, lights from the car park are bouncing off the water and an assistant is holding a soft golden light over my head. And below me, my dress is reflecting and shining through the water.

There is light everywhere. I’m surrounded by it, and covered in it, and full of it.

At some point I’m going to have to come back down to earth again. But for a few minutes, I’m going to stay exactly where I am.

Suspended somewhere a few metres above it.

“
Jyunbi ha iikai?
”

“Ready, Harriet?”

I nod blankly and silently lower myself into the freezing-cold water. Now that Nick’s no longer touching me, it’s incredibly, ridiculously cold.

And I don’t care in the slightest.

“
Kirei dane?
” Haru says, gesturing around as the camera starts clicking and I stare into space somewhere over his left shoulder.

“Yes. Beautiful.” Nick nods and looks at the mountain carved against the horizon behind me. “Without equal.”

And then he looks directly at me.

hatever Wilbur has done to protect me, it works.

The shoot goes perfectly. I sit quietly in the cold water for ten minutes, then bend into it, then lean forwards on my elbows. Finally I lie down completely so that Haru is shooting directly over me and my wet hair and glowing skirts are swirling around my head like I’m a water nymph trapped in some kind of magical, ghostly seaweed. I even manage not to inhale water into my lungs or drown.

Everyone is utterly delighted.

“
Shashin kara kannjyou ga afurete kuruyo, Harriet. Kimino kokoroga mieruyouda.
”

“There’s so much
emotion
in these pictures, Harriet,” Naho translates happily. “Haru says it’s like he can see right into the middle of you.”

Sugar cookies
.

I quickly blink and try very hard to be a little less transparent.

Finally, Haru gives a satisfied nod, Naho wraps a towel around my freezing shoulders and we all splash and slip back out of the lake again, where Yuka is waiting for us.

I’m not even vaguely surprised. I’m going to guess she got less than three metres down the road before spying with her night-vision binoculars.

“
Umaku ittakashira
?” she asks Haru stiffly.

“
Sugoiyo
,” Haru says with a nod, and I beam. That means ‘excellent’. “
Honntouni sugoi noga toretayo
.”

And then it happens again – Yuka’s smiling. No, Yuka Ito is
grinning
.

Even Nick looks startled.

“Excellent,” Yuka says, smoothing down her dress and carefully composing her face. She looks me up and down and then clicks her fingers. “What are we standing around for? I’m not paying anyone to catch pneumonia. Get my model dry.”

Wilbur is going bonkers on the beach behind us. He’s shouting and spinning in little circles with his pink jacket pulled over his head. “BOOM! I told you, Peaches! I told you my little Frankie-chops would knock it right out of the park!” He bends down and starts attempting Russian dancing on the pebbles.

Yuka frowns. “If you’re going to be working directly for me, William, I strongly suggest you stop that immediately.”

Wilbur pauses in his crouch-jumping. “For the bajillionth time,” he says indignantly: “It is Wilbur, with a bur and not an iam, and I would thank you to—” Then he stops and stands up straight. “Working for you?”

Yuka gives an almost imperceptible nod as she climbs back into her waiting car.

Wilbur’s face goes all red and shaky, and then he physically explodes. “OH, MY MINI-HUMMINGBIRDS, THIS IS THE BEST DAY THAT HAS EVER BEEN BORN IF DAYS WERE BORN WHICH THEY’RE PROBABLY NOT BUT WHO CARES I MADE IT! I’M IN! I’M FINALLY IN PROPER FASSSHHHIIIOOON.”

And he grabs my arm and starts swinging me round in manic giant circles. The way Nat and I used to spin years ago before I slipped and smashed into a park bench and had to be taken to hospital to get eight stitches in the back of my head.

I blush and spin, giddy and pink-cheeked.

I can’t believe it: everything’s going to be OK. The campaign’s a success and nobody’s angry with me. Wilbur’s got his big job, and I’ve kept mine.

And Nick?

Nick
kissed
me.

Which I can’t even think about until I’ve stopped being spun in nauseating circles. There’s only so much discombobulation a brain can handle.

Wilbur finally lets go of me and I dizzily stagger a few metres into the nearly empty car park.

Nick is on the phone, facing the other way. He’s talking quietly but I can still hear him.

And I really wish I couldn’t.

“Poppy?” His voice sounds tight. “What are you talking about?”

There’s a silence while my inner ear rebalances and the world slowly stops dipping and diving and gyrating around me. I think I’m going to be sick.

He’s on the phone to her
already
?

“Of
course
I care,” Nick continues impatiently. “You know I do. Don’t be ridiculous.”

Suddenly, all at once I’m aware of the water dripping from my hair down my nose and on to my top lip, and the icy droplets running down my arms and legs on to the floor, and the sogginess and dampness of my towel.

Apparently 300 million cells in our body die every single minute, and for the first time in my life I can actually feel them: shrinking and shrivelling all over me.

“I’m coming back now,” Nick says. “Stay there.”

And without even looking over his shoulder, Nick puts his phone back in his pocket, climbs on to a scooter and drives away.

Leaving me, unseen and speechless, behind him.

ere are a few new equations for you:

LOVE = 1 first kiss + 400 plus subsequent smaller kisses + 182 days + 278 daydreams + 186 phone calls + 2,087 texts + 1 last kiss.

LOVE = 4 nights spent crying – 2 months waiting for him to come back – 8 weeks of not being able to open a magazine or watch television in case he’s in it – 63 days of getting sad every time you see a seagull or a lion or a raindrop – 11 days of pretending you’re over him – a lifetime of never being able to eat lime-flavoured sweets, ever again.

LOVE = nearly ruining your GCSEs because all you’re thinking about is him.

LOVE = turning into a total idiot.

I have wasted six
whole months
on Nick Hidaka.

In the space of six months, Mercury has gone round the sun
twice
. In six months, I could have walked all the way across the width of Russia, or cycled over America, or sailed to Brazil. It took Jack Kerouac three weeks to write
On the Road
,
and Charles Dickens six weeks to write
A Christmas Carol
. I could have written
five classic novels
in the time I spent thinking about a boy. I could have spent 444 days on Jupiter, and 391 days on Saturn and 1.4 really luxurious days on Venus.

Instead, I filled my head with big black curls and lips that curve up at the corner; with green smell; with shouted laughter; with a boy who disappears whenever he feels like it and says whatever he wants and only ever thinks about himself.

You know what?

I am never liking a boy again, ever. When I get back to school, I’m going to invest all the extra time and brain space into learning Apalachee or Tsetsaut or Susquehannock, or some other language that has been totally dead for more than a hundred years.

And it will
still
be more productive.

“Done, my little Twinkle-bottom?” Wilbur says, tapping me on the shoulder. I take one last look at the space Nick has disappeared into the way he always does, like the proverbial genie.

Am
I done? Is that it? Am I finally ready to let go?

“Yep,” I say, turning to Wilbur and taking a deep breath. “This time I think I am.”

I spend the rest of the journey back to Tokyo quietly staring out of the Shinkansen window at little lights scattered at random through the fields, while Wilbur lightly snores beside me.

By the time we pull back into Tokyo station, all I want is to have a hot shower, pull my penguin pyjamas back on and climb into bed with a crossword puzzle.

But it doesn’t look like that’s an option.

“Poppet-cakes,” Wilbur says in a daze as the train pulls to a stop. He rubs his eyes. “I know I have a
super
vivid imagination, but is that who I think it is?”

I look out of the window at a small huddle of people in black. Shion, Naho, Haru and a few assistants. And – almost entirely hidden in the middle – Yuka. Like some kind of tiny, fiercely protected, Faerie Queen.

“Perhaps they’re here to give us presents?”

Maybe that’s how modelling works. Maybe when you do a really good job at a shoot they all rush back to greet you at the station with a surprise basket of cupcakes or kittens and maybe a few celebratory personalised banners.

Then I see Wilbur’s face. It’s gone very white and very wobbly, as if all the bones have just been whipped out through his nose.

“My little Bumble-bee,” he says. “Maybe I’m not such a good meerkat after all.”