Model Misfit (16 page)

“No.” Her head pops back into the screen. “I’m packing my bags and coming to get you.”

I smile. Toby was right: Nat is my non-kissing soulmate. I want things to stay exactly how they always have been: like salt and pepper, strawberries and cream, cheese and Marmite. Two halves of the same teddy-bear-shaped friendship necklace.

Although Nat might be being slightly optimistic. She has no transport and no money and she’s in deepest, darkest France. At 11 mph it’s going to take the poor pig nearly a month to get here.

“D-don’t be silly,” I hiccup, feeling a little bit calmer already. “Your mum will ground you for the rest of your life and then she’ll ground your ghost. I’ll be OK.”

Nat pauses, and then throws her passport on the floor with a
frustrated growl. “Ugh. Seriously: what is
wrong
with boys?”

We both ponder this important question. It feels like one of the ancient, unanswerable ones. You know:

Why Are We Here?

How Big Is The Universe?

Is There A God?

What Is Wrong With Boys?

“S-s-so …” I sniffle on to my hand. “What do I do, Nat? Tell me, and this time I promise I’ll listen.”

We sit in comfortable silence while my Best Friend thinks about it. When we were little we would do this every time one of us fell over and scraped a knee, until it didn’t hurt any more. As if – just by being together – we could somehow share the pain. As if in some way we still can.

Finally, Nat makes a decision. “Pretend you don’t care, Harriet. Pretend you never have.”

I frown. “Nat … I didn’t even have the thespian skills required to play a tree in our Year Two performance of
Snow White
, remember?”

Nat laughs. “You fell off the stage and just lay there, waving your branches around until your dad came and stood you back up again. It was hilarious.”

It really was not. I couldn’t look Miss Campbell in the eye for months. She said I ruined the entire performance and maybe she would take that Drama job in Scunthorpe after all. “I don’t think I can do it,” I admit quietly. “It’s …” How do I even put this? “It’s
Nick
.”

“Which is why it’s even more important.” I can see Nat’s furious rash climbing up her neck again. “We can’t let him win. He’s not ruining this for you. Let me remind you, Harriet, YOU ARE MOD-EL-LING IN TOK-Y-O. You’re the luckiest girl ever. EVER. You pretend, and you pretend as hard as you can.”

This is all so confusing. One minute I’m being taught that lying is bad and I should never do it, and the next I’m being told to do it as convincingly as possible. Clearly when it comes to boys, every lesson I’ve ever learnt is supposed to be inverted. Why wasn’t there a class in this at school?

I cannot believe I wasted three years of my life doing woodwork.

“Harriet, listen to me. Will you please just trust me?”

I look at the floor and nod. If I had listened to Nat in the first place I’d now be two months into getting over Nick. I’d be much, much closer to being fine. “OK,” I agree. “I’ll pretend.”

“Good,” Nat says. “I didn’t want to be right, Harriet. I just didn’t want
this
to happen. I didn’t want him to hurt you.”

I’m so glad I don’t have to do this on my own.

“I miss you, Nat,” I say in a tight voice. “Can we never, ever fight, ever again?”

Nat laughs. “Of course we’re going to fight again. That’s what we do. I’m going to kick your skinny butt for the rest of eternity.” She looks at her nails. “Call whenever you need me. All I’m doing is trying not to milk cows.”

“Really? What’s it like? Is it all squidgy?”

“No idea. I keep telling people I’m not touching a cow’s boob like a big cow lesbian so I have yet to find out.” Nat grins and blows me a kiss. “This feels weird to say because it’s totally broad daylight here, but: go to bed, Harriet. Things will look better in the morning. They always do.”

I yawn and nod, suddenly feeling exhausted and drained. But also as if I’ve abruptly let go of something heavy. Or maybe something heavy has let go of me. By the time we say goodbye and I crawl back into my enormous bed – puffy but totally dry-eyed – I know exactly what my New and Infinitely More Glorious Summer Plan 3 (NAIMGS3) plan is:

Lie.
Again.

This is my big adventure. I have travelled 6,000 miles and fifteen years to get here. I came to Japan to have the best summer of my life, and I am going to have it.

And no
boy
is going to ruin it for me.

Experts say that people with abnormally high IQs often have problems sleeping. Which is no doubt why I’m snoring within thirty-five seconds.

“Harry-chan?”

Something tiny and soft prods my face. I roll over, open my eyes and promptly shoot straight into the wall behind me. It’s almost totally pitch-black, but I can vaguely see the outline of Rin’s face, two centimetres from mine. She leans slightly closer and inexplicably prods me with her finger again. “Harry-chan,” she says. “You are squeaking like tiny mouse. Bad dreaming?”

“Mnnneugh,” I mumble. “Whatimezit?”

“Four am.” Rin says this as it looks:
4am.

“M’so sorry,” I yawn, sitting up straighter. “Did I wake you up?”

“No.” Rin perches on the end of my bed, picks up a still-sleeping Kylie and points to the huge earphones hanging around her neck. “I sleep super soundly. I listen to
nandakke …
Scotlands. Whales. But battery passes on and man wakes me. For you,
boom boom boom
at door.”

I sleepily try to rearrange the sentences. “There’s a man at the door for
me
?”

“Yes. So I came to awaken you up.” Rin beams proudly and prods my face again. “I did good job,
ne
?”

Blinking, I grab my blue dolphin hoody and press the light on my Winnie-the-Pooh watch. It’s just after 4am. I can’t count out the possibility that I might still be dreaming. Although – if I am – I’ll have to reassess what I eat before bedtime. It’s certainly not one of my better ones.

In a daze I stumble through the corridor, open the front door and stare in bewilderment at the man standing there. He’s wearing white gloves, a black suit and a black hat. I peer down at his little white socks. “Michael Jackson?”

“No. My name is Shinosuke. I am your chauffeur. The car is waiting outside to take you to the first photo shoot. You have five minutes to get ready.”

I look at my watch again. “
Now
?”

“Not now,” Shinosuke says, frowning. “I just told you. In five minutes.”

OK: are they kidding me? Yuka wants me to do my first shoot at 4am? When I landed in the country nine hours ago? After a fourteen-hour flight? On four hours of sleep? With jetlag and a badly broken heart?

On second thoughts, I don’t know why I’m surprised. This is the heartless world of fashion: I’m actually quite touched Yuka didn’t drag me there straight from the airport by my eyebrows.

I nod briefly, race into the bedroom and grab my suitcase. I still haven’t unpacked, so I drag everything into the bathroom so I don’t wake up Poppy or Rin (she’s already back in her bunk, snoring quietly with Kylie lying across her stomach). I quickly dress in whatever’s at the top of the pile – my black and yellow stripy leggings and my Batman T-shirt – and tie my hair in a ponytail. Then I rally my inner model and glance briefly in the mirror.

Flaky skin, swollen eyes. A red dent from a pillowcase button on my cheek, an ink blob on the end of my nose and two enormous stress spots erupting by my mouth. And I still haven’t cleaned the gravy off my chin.

Yet again, my inner model has clearly decided to stay there.

A couple of seconds later I’m running through the flat while brushing my teeth then out of the front door while cramming a chocolate biscuit into my mouth (I realise I got the biscuit and the toothpaste the wrong way round).

There’s a huge black limousine waiting outside, and as soon as I appear it moves forward ominously by a couple of centimetres and the door swings open.

“Four minutes fifty seconds,” I mumble through my mouthful, looking at my watch and clambering into the back seat. “Totally nailed it!”

“Congratulations,” a cold voice says from a metre away, wiping a spray of chocolate crumbs off her face. “If only we could say the same for your personal hygiene.”

A light switches on over my head.

And there – staring at me – is Yuka Ito.

elieve it or not, the last time I saw Yuka Ito is actually the last time you saw Yuka Ito.

After I humiliated her on national television, kissed her nephew and nearly destroyed the entire Baylee brand, I haven’t run into her since. She’s stayed in what I would imagine is a tower made out of fairy skulls, surrounded by molten lava and the bodies of aged models, and I’ve stayed buried under books in a semi-detached, three-bedroom house in Hertfordshire.

Which – I’ll be totally honest – is exactly how I like it.

Swallowing my biscuit as quickly as I can, I squint upwards at the spotlight and then back at Yuka. She’s so tiny, and so pale, and so completely dressed in black from head to toe that she totally disappears into the car seats, and all you can see is a small white face, hovering in the air. There’s a faint iciness around her, and I’m not entirely sure it’s all down to the air conditioning.

Yuka Ito looks at me, and then switches the light off. I think this might be going quite badly already.

“Harriet Manners,” she says in a clipped voice, looking straight at my spots. “I thought we had agreed that you were to stop producing pus. It was part of your new contract.”

I try to cover as much of my face with my fingers as I can. “I’m really sorry.” The apologies have started already, and I haven’t even properly sat down yet. “I don’t really know where they come from.”

Yuka looks pointedly at the remnants of the chocolate biscuit in my hand. “I can offer a few suggestions.”

“Actually,” I say, “there are numerous scientific studies that show that chocolate isn’t actually a cause of acne and that it comes from hormonal—”

Yuka narrows her eyes and my survival instinct finally kicks in. I shut up, put the rest of the biscuit in my satchel and anxiously clear my throat.
Change the subject, Harriet.
“I – umm – didn’t think you would be here, Yuka. I thought you would be” –
arranging your winged monkeys –
“with the other models. In one of the other countries.”

“Everybody else I employ knows how to organise themselves,” Yuka says, folding her hands neatly in front of her. “That’s why I employ them.”

I try not to notice the implication now hanging in the air. “Well, it’s very nice to see you again,” I lie. “How is your … umm …”
Think fashion. Think emotional connection. Think mutual interests.
“… hat feeling?”

How is your hat feeling?
It’s not one of the all-time great conversation starters.

“Harriet. What is a model?”

Oh, God. She’s testing me already. It’s a good thing I’ve looked it up in the dictionary quite a few times over the last few months, just to check what it is I’m supposed to be doing. “A standard or example for imitation or comparison?”

“Precisely.” Yuka lowers her eyes. “The world’s female population does not want to look like a crime-fighting bumblebee.”