Picture Perfect (32 page)

“How about here?” he says, taking my hand and pulling me towards the back row. “The view is better.”

That makes no sense. Surely that’s kind of the point of a three-dimensional screen?

I shrug and take my seat, and then focus on sitting with my face pointing upwards so I don’t have to acknowledge how close Cal is. Armrests are there to provide a natural divide, and he isn’t paying attention to
either
of them.

“Hey,” he whispers in the darkness, leaning over so I can feel his breath on my cheek. It smells weird. Orange-y. As if he’s been eating mandarins. “I think you might have something in your eye.”

He reaches forward.

“Oh,” I say, quickly blocking him with my hand. “No, it’s just astigmatism. There’s an irregular curve in my lens so I get a bit squinty when I’m tired.”

“Are you sure it’s not a twinkle?”

I turn to look at him.
What?
“No, it’s definitely astigmatism.”

“Right.” He leans back in his seat and puts his hands behind his head. “Good to know.”

The crowds are settling down with incredible slowness. Why aren’t they hurrying up? When is this show going to start? How long do I have to talk to Cal for?

“Speaking of which,” I say as the silence stretches out for what feels like eternity, “did you know that stars don’t actually twinkle? They only
look
like they do because the light passes through different densities of the earth’s atmosphere which makes it wobble.”

Silence.

“And on a good night,” I add, “you can see twenty quadrillion miles with the naked eye.”

Suddenly Cal sits forward.

“Huh?” He pushes his hand through his hair. “You know, stars are really beautiful. Almost as beautiful as yo—”

“Will you
shut up
,” the woman behind us snaps loudly. “I came here to see the universe in all its glory, not two teenagers trying to make out.”

I’m glad it’s pitch-black: maybe I can slip to the floor and slide on my belly all the way to the exit, like some kind of seal.

“Oh no,” I say, turning round as apologetically as I can. “We’re just friends.”

“
Exactly
,” Cal agrees, grabbing my hand. “
Good
friends.
Great
friends. Really, really
close
friends.”

I’m still trying to work out how to make him let go without having to chew off my own hand when a loud voice booms:

“Thirteen billion years ago, the very first stars were born.”

And the universe explodes around us.

ew York has officially disappeared.

But as a piano starts tinkling, the darkness above us is suddenly replaced with a bright, vivid-blue sky. White clouds race across what used to be the ceiling as the sun sets over the spiked Manhattan skyline. People in time-lapse picnic in Central Park, then scurry and jitter across it like a thousand tiny ants in jeans and T-shirts.

Then we pull backwards, until all that’s left is a silent, spinning Earth and blackness.

We hang there for a few seconds.

Then the sky shatters into colour and sound: blues and greens and yellows and purples, pianos and cellos and harps. Supernovas explode and swirling cosmic dust pulls together in huge pulses of light. Comets streak across the sky and nebulas glow blue and yellow; planets spin and pulsars flare red. Suns flash and galaxies spiral. Stars are born and die.

As drums beat and a violin lifts and soars, we rush across the known Universe, around solar systems; orbit around the moon; through the Milky Way and out again.

A gentle voice tells us how everything we are built from came from the nuclear fusion at the centre of a sun. How every element of Earth was formed there.

How we are all made of stars.

And the air in my chest swells and swells until it feels like I’m about to explode into colours and lights too.

By the time the humming, dull neon lights of the planetarium are turned back on again forty minutes later, I have no idea where I am. And even less idea what Cal’s doing still holding my hand.

I’d kind of forgotten I had one in the first place.

“Are you OK?” Cal says, slipping his arm around my shoulders. “It looks like you’ve been crying.”

I touch my wet cheeks in surprise.

“That was …” There are 1,025,109 words in the English language, and at this precise moment I cannot find a single one of them. “Beautiful.”

Cal smiles. “Just like you then.”

And the real world comes back to me with a BANG.

I stand up so quickly my knee smashes into the seat in front of us.

“I think …” I say, wrenching my hand from his and looking at the door. “I think I should go home.”

Cal’s face falls.

“Oh,” he says flatly. “Sorry if I offended you.” He looks at the screen around us. “I was just trying to make up for you missing the photo shoot.”

My insides twist.

I am a horrible, ungrateful person. This boy has just given me forty amazing minutes of one of my favourite things ever, and my response is to run away.

“I’m so sorry,” I say, flushing. “Thank you
so
much, Cal. It’s just …”

You’re not Nick.

“I have to get home, my parents are going to be worried, I’m supposed to be grounded …”

“Don’t worry about it,” he says, shrugging. He stands up and starts walking past me to the exit.

“But …” He looks so hurt. So deflated. “Cal …”

“I said don’t worry about it,” he snaps. “Let’s go.”

I follow Cal in meek silence to the exit.

I’m so ashamed of myself, but I don’t know how to make it right. And now there’s just this awkward space between us where something else is supposed to go.

Except I’m not sure exactly what that is.

“Well,” I say nervously as we stand on the steps of the American Museum of Natural History.

The sky has clouded over and it looks like it’s about to rain.

Maybe there’s about to be a rainbow after all.

That’s embarrassing.

“Catch you later,” Cal says in monotone as I search for a suitably irrelevant fact to fill the silence with.

And without another word he turns and walks away.

watch Cal leave with a guilty lump in my throat.

Miss Hall was right: I really need to work on my first impressions. And my second, and my third. Fourth might need a good hard think about too.

It’s probably best if I find another subway stop to get back to Grand Central station. I don’t think that awkwardness needs to be extended to standing on the same platform together.

My phone vibrates and I grab it quickly.

OK. Flying to California for a last-minute shoot. Back in a few days. Nick

Moths don’t have stomachs, and I suddenly know exactly how they feel. As I stare at the message, mine disappears completely.

There’s no kiss. No LBx. No PS.

Just ‘Nick’.

As if his name isn’t in my phone and I can’t see it at the top of the message. As if I didn’t learn every digit of his phone number off by heart months ago, along with his agency number, email address and precise height in centimetres.

Whatever it is Kenderall wanted to achieve today, it clearly hasn’t worked. Nick is just getting further away.

I’m losing him completely.

In a burst of panic, I hit a few buttons with sweaty fingers.

“Kenderall,” I say breathlessly, “I don’t know what you wanted to happen but it didn’t and now I don’t know what to do and Nick sounds really angry and …”

“Whoa there,” Kenderall shouts. “First. Are you wearing
culottes
? That is
not
a look your stylist encourages.”

I thought they were pretty jaunty, as well as multipurpose: they double as both shorts and a skirt.

“You’re not
listening
,” I say, tugging impatiently at them. “Nick isn’t happy
one
bit
. He said he’s gone away and he didn’t call to say goodbye, and …” I stop. “How do you know what I’m wearing?”

There’s a sharp whistle and Kenderall stalks towards me in bright orange leggings, silver high heels and a neon-orange crop top. She has an enormous gold bag slung over her shoulder.

“Seriously, babe,” she says loudly into her phone, even though I’m stood right here, “you are making this an
uphill battle
for me. My hyphen is at risk here. These don’t make me look good.”

I stare at Kenderall. How did she know where I was?

“So,” she adds, putting the phone down and air-kissing a metre from my cheek as per usual. “Let’s see this text.”

I click on Nick’s reply and hold it up.

“He’s furious,” she agrees happily. “That is one unhappy guy, right there.”

Sugar cookies.

“I should ring him and apologise,” I say, grabbing my phone back. “I should explain who Caleb is. No, I should get a taxi to the airport and run through the departures lounge with I’M SO SORRY written on a big white board and he’ll see it and all the airport staff will start singing and—”

“My God,” Kenderall says. “No wonder you British girls lose your guys. Talk about
needy.
”

Oh. “So what should I do?”

“Nothing, babe. He gets angry, then he gets jealous, then worried. When he’s terrified he’s lost you, he realises he loves you. This is how it works.”

That seems like an awfully long sequence of emotions to predict accurately, given that each of us has our own chemical make-up.

“Right,” I say doubtfully. “But isn’t that …” I try to find a word that doesn’t sound accusatory. “
Manipulation?
”

“Exactly,” Kenderall says cheerfully. “And while we wait for this
Nick
boy to sort his feelings out, we’re going to party.”

She hands me an envelope. Inside it is a piece of cream card stamped in the middle with swirly gold and silver letters saying: