Authors: Holly Smale

Picture Perfect (41 page)

“Keep it,” I say. “There’s nothing in that book I’m ashamed of.”

Because there isn’t.

Every single bit of it is me. The good stuff and the bad stuff. The geeky stuff and the girly stuff. The silly stuff and the serious stuff and the embarrassing bits and the bits I’m proud of.

It’s all me.

Because I am, and always have been,
somebody.

“Wait,” Alexa says as I start calmly handing out the photocopies to students coming out of the gates. “What the hell do you think you are
doing
?”

“Helping out,” I say, shrugging. “You want everyone to know who I am before I start sixth form, don’t you? I mean, you obviously don’t want them to forget about me.”

And I spin round and hand out another two to students I don’t recognise.

“
Leaflets
, Lexi?” one of her minions says in a low voice. “You photocopied her diary and made
leaflets
? That’s a bit much, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” another girl says, frowning and looking at one. “Talk about getting carried away, Lex.”

And – though it’s barely noticeable – the group around Alexa take the smallest, tiniest step away from her.

Alexa’s entire face slowly drains of colour.

“It was a
joke
,” she says loudly. “What’s
wrong
with you people? God, hasn’t
anyone
got a sense of humour these days?”

“Oh, I do,” Nat says, taking a few steps forward and snatching the diary out of Alexa’s loose grasp with a threatening growl. “How about
this
for a laugh?”

And then she holds out a huge roll of paper.

“I got it made into an A2 poster last week,” she says, winking at me. “Thought it might come in handy at some point.”

Nat unrolls it and holds it up high.

It’s an enormous photo of me and Nick. He has one arm around me, and he’s laughing so hard his head is thrown back and you can see the little mole at the base of his throat. His curls are matted, his canine teeth are pointy, and his eyes are shut so his dark lashes are throwing shadows across the top of his cheeks.

I’ve got my eyes crossed and my tongue out, because Nat kept telling me to ‘work the camera, babbbyyy’ and it was really irritating me.

“Funny, huh?” Nat snaps. “Isn’t that just
hilarious
?”

Alexa is still staring at the picture.

“Photoshop,” she says briskly, face now ashen. “You can fake anything these days.”

I think about New York.

I think about Kenderall and her oversized miniature pig and her undersized knowledge of relationships, and Caleb and his artificial charm. I think about Miss Hall and her fraudulent CV, and Fleur and her brittle unhappiness.

Then I think about my family, and my friends, and the boy in the photo in front of me.

And how I feel about all of them.

“No,” I say, looking straight at Alexa. “Not
anything
, you can’t.”

And then, with Nat and Toby on either side of me and the giant photo tucked safely under my arm, I start walking home.

My phone beeps and I pull it out of my pocket.

It’s not the end, Table Girl. We’re just hitting pause.

LBxx

PS ILY

I smile.

Apparently a butterfly’s wings are actually transparent, but thousands of tiny scales reflect light at different wavelengths. In my stomach now, I can suddenly feel them: glinting and flickering inside me. Every colour of the rainbow.

I kiss my phone, put it back in my pocket and hug my friends a little bit tighter.

Because that’s the thing about love.

You can plan it, and schedule it, and map it out. You can tell it how you want it to be, and where you want it to go, and what it’s supposed to do. You can try to make it fit you.

But it won’t listen to any of it.

Love puts itself first, and makes its own plans. It maps you out instead.

Maybe that’s what makes it perfect.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to my editor, Lizzie Clifford, who has understood Harriet completely from the start: these books would not be the same without you. Thanks to my agent, Kate Shaw, my very own army of one, and to Em Manchee, for helping the numbers make sense.

Thanks to my darling grandma, who was always so proud of me, despite not being Agatha Christie. Thanks to Grandad, for believing I can do anything and making me believe it too; to Mum, whose support and kindness are never-ending (and whose scrapbook-making skills are exemplary); to Tara, my little sister, my best friend, my non-kissing soulmate, and to Dan, for looking after her for me. Thanks to Dad, who can always inspire and make me laugh: your pies (and patios) are really something.

Thanks to Caro, Vero and Louise, for giving me a home in another country, and to Aunty Judith, who will always be there too. Thanks to Lucy, for not putting her hand up, and to Anna and Lucie: you have made long days at a computer seem so much shorter.

Thanks to everyone at HarperCollins for working so tirelessly and creatively behind the scenes: in particular Rachel, Sam, Abby, Geraldine, Nicola, Hannah, Lily, Kate, Elorine and Mary. You have made me a part of the team, and I am so very grateful.

Finally, to everyone I have ever loved, or been loved by in return. It is – and will always be – the thing in the world most worth writing about.

Thank you. x

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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins
Children’s Books
in 2014

HarperCollins
Children’s Books
is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

77-85 Fulham Palace Road,
Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Cover photography ©
Shutterstock.com
;

Cover typography © Mary Kate McDevitt;

Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers 2014

Holly Smale asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007574568

Version: 2014-05-08

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