Picture Perfect (25 page)

Lunatic Park
.

Sounds about right
.

am very fond of gravity.

Gravity keeps the Earth and the other planets in orbit around the sun. It keeps the moon in orbit around the Earth. It creates tides and waves. When you drop a pen, gravity is what makes it hit the ground; when you jump, gravity is what stops you flying into space.

Without gravity, the entire world would literally spin out of control.

If I wanted that kind of unregulated, unmanageable nonsense, I’d go to Pluto where I would weigh nine pounds and could just float around like Peter Pan.

Over the last ten years, I have been to five funfairs with Nat who insists on going on the wildest, fastest rides possible while I stand, terrified, at the bottom holding her coat.

This is my punishment for running away again.

I thought I understood
karmic retribution
, but the universe obviously works faster than I thought it did. You couldn’t cook a casserole in the time it’s taken for me to get my cosmic comeuppance.

“I wasn’t sure about this initially,” Nancy smiles as we approach the fairground. “But you might actually be some weird kind of genius, Wilbur.”

“
Mais bien sûr
,” he says in mock surprise. “Who said I wasn’t? Was it Stephanie at Infinity Models? I once said she couldn’t pull off leggings and she’s hated me ever since.”

I stare at the entrance gates in shock.

It’s an enormous, ten-metre clown face, moulded in peach-coloured plaster.

The eyes are wide open and bright blue; the cheeks are bright pink and the lips are bright red and also open. There’s a spiky yellow crown and two brightly coloured turrets on either side. And in the gaping, wide mouth are huge white teeth: rectangular and flat, like a row of shiny headstones.

We’re expected to enter Luna Park through the mouth of an insane clown, apparently.

And Nat wonders why I don’t like fairgrounds.

“Look, Munchkin,” Wilbur says, pointing upwards. “The teeth and eyes light up at night-time. Isn’t that just
fabadoozy
? I wish mine did that.”

I can feel the palms of my hands getting damp.

Since when have lit-up eyes and teeth ever made
anything
less scary?

I take a deep breath and run under the teeth with my hands over my head just in case the jaws suddenly decide to come alive and clench down. Of all the many ways I do not want to die, Eaten by a Clown is pretty high up the list.

Just underneath is having my legs chewed off by a vampire zombie-shark and being made to spend the afternoon in TopShop.

“Harriet,” Nancy says, touching my shoulder as I quiver on the other side, arms still wrapped around my head. “Do you want to follow Marianna? She’s your stylist this morning.”

She points at a small woman with glossy black curls, shiny pink lips and an enormous black bag.

“Uh-huh,” I say blankly, eyes widening even more. I’ve just noticed the pods revolving around the Ferris wheel. They’re red and blue and green, with metal grids all the way round them. Like tiny cheerful little birdcages.

If you’re being optimistic.

Swinging death prisons, if you’re being less so.

“You’re not afraid of heights, are you?” Nancy says, frowning. “I should probably have checked that with you yesterday.”

Am I afraid of heights? No.

Am I afraid of being secured into a blue metal ball, attached to two bits of elastic and catapulted fifty metres into the air at 90mph?

Absolutely.

“Nope,” I lie, tucking my hair behind my ears and grinning so hard my ears start to ache. “I am very much looking forward to this exciting and unprecedented experience.”

Because I am a professional model.

Because I agreed to this job.

Because I don’t want to let anyone down or for anyone else to be angry with me.

But most of all, because otherwise I’ll be sent straight back home to my parents.

And frankly I think a ride called Slingshot will be absolutely nothing in comparison to what they are going to do to me when I see them next.

etting ready has always been my favourite part of any fashion shoot.

It’s the bit where – with a few splashes of lotions and potions – I’m transformed into somebody else.

Somebody glamorous. Somebody pretty.

It’s a bit like alchemy, except that instead of turning base metals into gold they somehow manage to get a freckly, awkward schoolgirl to look vaguely presentable in front of a camera.

Unfortunately Marianna doesn’t appear to have the same alchemical ambitions.

“Nobody said you’d be this pale, redhead,” she grumbles as she starts emptying the contents of her black bag all over a fold-up table in the changing room. “They could have given me warning.”

My face obediently starts changing colour.

“0.5 per cent of the world’s population has red hair,” I say slightly defensively. “That’s nearly forty million of us.”

“Your
hair
is not the problem.” She picks up a few different pots of cream liquid and starts aggressively mixing them on the back of her hand. “
You
try covering up a trillion freckles without any preparation.”

Then she starts her assault.

She attacks me with a foundation brush and three different shades of foundation. She attacks me with a coarse eyeshadow brush and stabs enormous quantities of dark grey into my eyelids. She rubs a toothbrush along my lips and applies a gel that burns. She starts back-combing my hair so vigorously I decide to put Death by Hairbrush just below Death by Clown on my list of ways I don’t want to perish.

At one stage, she bends down on the floor and picks up some mud which she then starts smearing on my face.

She also adds to this physical onslaught snippy little comments, like: “God, but your eyelashes are
non-existent
,” and “Have you even
heard
of tweezers?” and “What a
nose
. You could find ants with that thing.”

Finally she sprays me with an enormous can of hairspray until I start choking.

“I’m
sorry
,” she says stiffly. “Is the model finding getting paid to sit still and do nothing
difficult
?”

I blink a few times in surprise. “Sorry.”

Which is another huge mistake.

“
Brilliant
,” she says, getting a cotton-wool bud out and dipping it in eye make-up remover. “The mascara wasn’t dry. So I’ll just start again, shall I? It’s not like I’ve got anything better to do.”

Finally, when I’ve been satisfactorily beaten to a pulp, she goes to the corner and pulls out a bit of fabric.

It’s shapeless and small and grey. It’s ripped and shredded, and has bits of loose thread hanging off the edges. There’s a dark smudge running across the front of it, and when she holds it out a rusty-looking safety pin falls to the floor with a
clink.

For the first time, I
really
miss Yuka Ito.

“Do you have an
opinion
?” Marianna snaps as I blink at it.

I shake my head. “No-o-o. It’s very …”
Likely to give me tetanus.
“… multi-textural.”

“Just get into it.”

I obediently do as I’m told. Then I’m led out of the room to where Wilbur is waiting for me.

“
Oh
,” he says, clapping his hands together. “Oh oh
oh.
It’s amazing, my little cat-flip-flops! It’s
exactly
what we wanted! Do you want to see your gloriousness?”

I look down at my ratty furry slippers: the kind old ladies leave outside the bathroom.

“Sure,” I say doubtfully.

Wilbur picks up a cracked mirror and holds it aloft for me.

My eyes are dark grey and swollen and pink around the edges. My skin is the wrong colour. There’s mud on my cheeks, and my hair looks like something hamsters make in the corners of their cage.

I don’t look like I’ve been transformed into a glamorous funfair-loving model. I look like I’ve been sleeping under one of the rides for the last five years.

“Don’t you just
love
it?” Wilbur says, laughing delightedly. “You look
just edible.
It’s by a new designer in Brooklyn so
hip
almost nobody has ever heard of him. Never to be made again.”

I can see why.

“Umm, Wilbur?” I check as I’m led back into the sunshine. “Exactly how many people read this magazine?”

“Three,” he says cheerfully. “Maybe three and a half.”

“Thousand?”

Wilbur shouts with laughter. “Oh my little poo-nut, where do you think we are – the Pitcairn Islands? Three and a half million, give or take one or two.”

Three and a half million.

Three and a half
million
people across America are going to see me looking like somebody who gets killed quite early on in
Les Miserables
.

I guess karma isn’t finished with me yet after all.

enderall is the first thing I see when I return to the fairground.