Model Misfit (12 page)

I suddenly feel a bit sick. You can look at it any way you like, but last time I attempted to model I ended up covered in gold paint and attached to a curtain rod. “She’s launching her new label with me?”

Wilbur starts giggling. “Oh, bunny, you
do
crack me down the middle. Can you imagine?”

I patiently wait for him to stop being so insulting.

“No: the main” – he pretends to cough –
“
taller
models are being flown out today to China, Hong Kong, Macau, South Korea …”

“Mongolia and Taiwan?”

He abruptly stops laughing. “How do you know that?”

“They’re the seven countries in East Asia, excluding North Korea.” Wilbur’s gone a strange, pale shade of mustard. “It was just a guess. Are you OK?”

Wilbur breathes out hard. “This is all top secret, Moo-noo. We need to get the campaign done before Yuka tells Baylee she’s leaving. If I can just organise it” – he leans forward slightly and grabs my shoulders – “Poodle, it might be my way out of here.”

“Yuka won’t let you out of the
airport?
”

Wilbur starts giggling again. “Out of
agenting
, my little Nutmeg. She’s
finally
going to give me a position with her new label.”

I don’t know why I’m so surprised. Adults almost never like doing their jobs from what I can tell.

“I like being an agent, but I’m shockingly bad at it, Muffin-top. Anyway, I didn’t get a degree in fashion so I could sit at a desk, trying to talk to pretty women. If I wanted to do that, I’d have got a job in a normal office.”

Wilbur straightens out the waistcoat. “This is our chance, Bunny. Yours, and mine.” He pauses. “Mostly mine, because let’s be honest: I’m an adult with a proper career and I’d imagine your shelf life as a teen model is almost over.”

For the last twenty-four hours, I’ve thought about a lot of things. I’ve thought about how far away Japan is (5,937 miles), and how bad I am at eating with chopsticks (very) and my chances of dying in an air crash (1 in 10.46 million). I’ve thought about how many Hello Kittys I’m going to buy for Nat (zero: they creep her out) and how many vending machines there are for every person in Japan (23).

But it hadn’t occurred to me that I might actually have to
model
when I got there. That it would be important to a lot of people. Or that I would be totally out of my depth.
Again.

“OK,” I stammer nervously. “I’ll try my very hardest.”

Wilbur sighs. “I know you will, Baby-baby Panda,” he says, pinching my cheek. “And that is
exactly
what I’m worried about.”

y the time we get through the security gates, I’m so excited and nervous, I feel like a shark. As if I can’t stop moving or I’ll die.

Or talking, for that matter.

Which is less like a shark, but does a similar job in making people try to get away from me as fast as possible.

“I’m going to Japan,” I tell the man standing by the electric buggies. “I’m going to Japan,” I tell the lady behind the counter at Boots. “I’m going to Japan,” I tell the man who gives me a sandwich at Pret A Manger.

“I’m going on my lunch break,” he replies, immediately entering into the spirit of things.

Everything
is suddenly fascinating. The air-hostess uniforms. The scarily round bread rolls. The little packs with free socks and toothbrushes. The fact that you can pop the edges of the headrests out. Even the in-flight safety procedure brochure is – you guessed it – fascinating.

I think I may be over-stimulated.

“Haven’t you been on a plane before?” Bunty laughs when I finish breathlessly pointing at random landmarks below us so that I can click the cup holder in and out of the seat in front of me repeatedly.

“I have, but never without—” I swallow.
My parents or Nat.
“Not long distance before. Did you know that the chances of being in a plane crash are less than 0.00001 per cent? That means that you’re more likely to be killed by a donkey or to naturally conceive
identical
quadruplets.”

Bunty pulls a blanket over her knees. “Is that so?”

“Uh-huh.” The lights of London are starting to melt below us into a large, sparkly neon puddle. “They test plane windscreens by throwing chickens at them at five hundred miles per hour so they know they can resist errant flying birds. Once a chicken went
through
the window and smashed the pilot’s chair in half. They realised afterwards they’d accidentally catapulted a frozen one.”

Bunty chuckles. “You’re so much like Annabel was at your age, darling. Fascinated by the little things.”

I immediately look out of the window so Bunty can’t see my expression. “Actually, everyone likes facts. Apparently three million people Google the words ‘interesting facts’ every single month.”

Bunty looks at me then twists up her nose and closes her eyes. “Funny,” she says. “That’s just what she would have said as well.”

And before I can respond, my grandmother is fast asleep.

I fully intend to stay awake for the next fourteen hours. I have a special Flight Bag I put together to keep me entertained: maps to study and crosswords to fill in and quizzes about the flags of Asia (you never know when somebody abroad is going to test you on something like that).

But I get over-excited about the little butter tubs at dinner, peak early and pass out before we’ve flown over France.

And the next thing I know…

I’m in Japan.

P
laces I Want to Visit

Japan

Burma
 Myanmar

Russia

’ve wanted to come here for so long that when I get the list out of my satchel I can see where I struggled to join up the
a
and the
n
and there’s blue glitter in the creases from when Nat threw it over everything for a term at primary school.

I’m finally here.

Within minutes of landing, it feels like I have new eyes, new ears, a new nose, a new tongue, new skin. People are talking in a language I don’t understand, making gestures I’ve never seen before and eating food I don’t recognise. There are signs I can’t read, and smells I can’t place, and a hum that sounds entirely different to England. Even the colours look different: there’s a slightly golden glow to everything, instead of the silveriness of a summer in England. I may as well have landed on the moon.

Apart from the whole gravity element. Or I’d just be floating through the airport and it would be really hard to hang on to my suitcase.

“Enormous fun, isn’t it?” Bunty says as I stand, blinking, in the middle of a tiny shop. She waves a couple of bright pink snacks with angry cartoon octopuses drawn on them at me. “Have one of these. It will blow your mind.”

I’ve just seen a sandwich filled with whipped cream and strawberries, a drink called ‘Sweat’ and an entire dried squid vacuum-packed into a bag. The inside of my head has already exploded.

In a daze, I take the snack from her – it’s like an enormous, fishy Wotsit – and then watch a group of schoolgirls roughly my age, standing in a little huddle in a corner. They’re all wearing
exactly
the same outfit: the same skirts at the same length, the same socks, the same shirts, the same shoes, the same backpacks. They have no make-up on and one of two hairstyles: black, with a fringe in a ponytail, or black, cut short and pushed behind their ears. There’s no cunning personalisation; no fashionable editing or skirt-rolling or high-heel wearing or lipgloss sneaking. It’s stupidly disorientating, considering it’s the precise definition of the word
uniform.

They’re all studying maps and staring, wide-eyed, around them, so I don’t think they’re from Tokyo. Then they spot me and their eyes get even bigger. A few start squeaking
kawwaaaaiiiiiiii
and giggling. I promptly fall over my suitcase and am met with a collection of even louder giggles, and a few squeaks of
chhhoooo kawwaaiiiii, ne
?

I have no idea what they’re saying, obviously, but it doesn’t feel mean.

I blush slightly and give a little shy wave. They blush and start waving shyly back. Then I notice that one of them has a little dinosaur key ring hanging off their satchel. Another has a little Winnie the Pooh, and a third a small fluffy duck.

Oh my God: is
this
where I belong? I have spent an entire lifetime struggling to fit in only to discover that all the other tidy, shy teenage girls with neat ankle socks and no make-up and a fondness for satchel accessories live on the other side of the world.

Maybe I’ll ask if one of them can adopt me.

I give another shy wave and then follow Bunty outside.

We walk through a wall of intense, pulsing, dense heat and climb into the back of a taxi.

Then we start the slow, winding drive into the heart of Tokyo.

I have literally never seen a city more
awake.

Lights are flashing. People are everywhere. The smell of frying is coming from all directions. Everything is pushed together and jumbled up: streets and paths and roads, winding up and down and over each other like an enormous Scalextric set. The buildings get taller and taller, and – tucked away like secrets – there are tiny wooden temples and flowers and trees, peeking out like grass between pavement slabs.

Everything is moving and glowing and beeping: signs, shops, restaurants, T-shirts, pedestrian crossings, all flickering and lit up and coloured and singing.

It’s as if the entire city and everything in it has just drunk eight cups of coffee and is going to spend the rest of the night shaking, feeling really sick and staring at the ceiling. (I did this with Nat a few months ago. It wasn’t as much fun as we thought it would be.)

As I stare out of the window to my left, there’s a shop display with a purple unicorn in it, wearing tiny orange trainers and a rhinestone saddle. A few minutes later there’s a car covered in thousands of diamonds. To my right, ballerina mannequins hang from silver threads.

A group of men wearing grey suits walk past, with a man wearing red tartan in the middle.

A woman dressed as a rabbit waves at us.

And every time the taxi stops at a light, it’s all I can do not to open the car door, jump out and swirl around the middle of the road with my hands stretched out, like Julie Andrews in
The Sound of Music.
Except with a much greater chance of being hit by a car and a much smaller chance of falling off the top of a mountain.