Model Misfit (19 page)

I cannot believe I’ve managed to screw up already and the shops aren’t even open yet. That’s speedy, even by my own standards.

All I really want to do is go straight back to bed, pull the duvet over my head and wait for the day to end. Again.

So that’s precisely what I do.

n my dreams I’m fighting octopuses and pink unicorns and Japanese-speaking seagulls, and finally one lands on my shoulder and starts screeching in my ear. I open my eyes with a start.

It’s not a seagull.

A thick wave of dense black smoke is pouring under the door, and the only working fire alarm is having a loud panic attack in the living room.

“Rin?” I yell at the top of my voice, coughing hard. “Poppy?”

There’s no response, so I leap out of bed and run straight into the kitchen. I switch the grill off, open a window and pull out the burning toast. Both pieces look just like Hello Kitty, except totally black and smoking. One of them has an ear on fire.

I really hope Rin never takes up arson as a hobby. They’d catch her within seconds.

“Rin?” I shout, running Hello Kitty under a cold tap until she goes soggy and her bow falls off. Then I stagger into the living room, turn off the alarm and flap my arms around to dissipate the smoke, even though I know that’s not actually how smoke or arms or flapping works.

Suddenly I hear a screeching, desperate sound coming from the bathroom, and race to the door in a panic. “
Rin? Are you all right?
”

“Lalalala,” somebody is singing at the top of their voice. “
No
I
won’t,
be a Craig, no I-I-I-I won’t be a Craig, just as l-oong as you stabby, stabby me. Lalalalalalala
me
, dddddaahly daaahly.”

The bathroom door abruptly opens in a wave of steam, and a slim blonde figure pushes past me and past the girl emerging from the bathroom.

Without a word, Poppy slams the door behind her.

“
Stabby Me
is favourite Australian song,” the girl states happily, drying her hair with a towel. “But who is Craig? And why does nobody want to be him?” Then she frowns and sniffs. “Are you smoking, Harry-chan? That is super bad for you. You should reassess this.”

“
Rin?
”

The girl in front of me looks nothing like Rin. The curls have gone, and her hair is straight and in a short, ear-length crop. Her eyes are clean and shaped like a kitten and her skin is flushed pink and pearly. I look down and stare at the huge T-shirt she’s wearing:

“English is magical,
ne
?” she says, beaming at my stunned expression. “Harry Potter. Cute Australian with shiny stick and glasses. Pow pow.”

“Rin … I didn’t even recognise you.”

She looks heartbroken. “
Hai
. Yes.
Pretty stuff is back in box. Models not allowed sparkliness. It’s
nandakke
… non-professional.” She pulls on her T-shirt and makes a vomit-face. “Now I look just like boy.”

“You don’t.” Without all the attachments and plastic accessories, Rin gives Poppy a run for her money in the looks department. “You’re so beautiful.”

Rin giggles and pats me on the head, reaching up on her tiptoes because I’m considerably taller than she is.

“Foreigns are crazy,
ne
? Don’t worry about Poppy, Harry-chan.” She looks at the bathroom with a shake of her head. “In the morning, she is –
nandakke
. Mean like God.”

“Mean like
God
?”

Rin puts two fingers up to her forehead like horns. “
Meh meh
. Eat grass.”

“Goat?”

“Yes. God. Bites and booms with head.” Rin taps her forehead. “Super perfect at modelling, though. Poppy, not God.”

She frowns and looks me up and down. “Harry-chan, in English is cute to look like
Avatar
?” She touches my face cautiously, looks at her finger and rubs a little blue ink experimentally on her own face.

I smile awkwardly. “Yesterday’s shoot went pretty badly, to be honest.”

“Then we must fix this,” Rin says. She takes my hand and starts pulling me into the bedroom. “If you are unobstructed today, I will show you Tokyo.”

“I think I’m free, actually.” Yuka’s going to need at least twenty-four hours to calm down, I reckon.

“Free?
Chotto matte.
” Rin gets a little computer out of a pocket in her T-shirt, and a few seconds later says, “Without charge? Will you normally charge me for friends, Harry-chan? Why?”

I laugh and the bathroom door opens. “Are you going out?” Poppy calls. “Can I possibly come too? Chanel’s given me the day off so I’m going to be so
bored
.” She wanders into the hallway and grimaces. “Sorry for queue jumping, Harriet. I was desperate for a pee and you were kind of standing in the way.”

Rin makes goat horns and pretends she’s eating grass behind Poppy’s back.

I grin, but my stomach’s starting to flip anxiously over and over. Poppy’s lovely, but I’m not sure I want to spend the entire day with her. She’s what Nat calls an MBF-er: a girl who refers to ‘My Boyfriend’ every twelve seconds, just in case anyone makes the hideous mistake of thinking she’s single and unloved and unwanted. Even though people who look like Poppy never are.

I’m not sure I can cope with this. I like to think of myself as existing on the nicer end of the human spectrum, but I’m not Mother Teresa.

“Erm …” I start doubtfully.

“You come,” Rin tells Poppy, promptly deciding for me. She sticks her tongue out at a pair of black jeans and a simple black vest and then pulls them on. “We will spend day together as three new BFFs.” She says this
biffs
. “I shall show you the many wonders Tokyo and …
Dame! Kono itazura neko!
” She grabs Kylie, who’s pouncing around a box in the corner of the room. “
Gokiburi wa tabenaino!
”

“What’s that?” I bend down and pick the box up. It’s a little cardboard house, with painted roof tiles, tiny drawn bricks, flowers and a little white picket fence. Out of one of the windows, between bright pink curtains, is a smiling cartoon beetle, waving happily. Over the door it says – in English –
WELCOME
.

“It’s a Japanese cockroach trap,” Poppy explains as I drop it on the floor. “They’re huge and sooo gross.” I look a little closer at it.

Under the word
WELCOME
it says – in small yellow letters –
TO YOUR DEATH
.

I guess we have to hope our cockroaches either don’t speak English or have really bad eyesight.

“Cockroach climb in,” Rin says perkily. “Cockroach pass out.” She frowns. “
Nandakke.
Pass on.” Then she looks back at me and adds, “Go shower, Harry-chan. You smell of fishes. We will begin Japan from new for you.”

She pushes me gently towards the bathroom, and the warm feeling in my stomach starts to glow again. Poppy and Rin start taking photos of themselves holding up Kylie so they look like they have furry beards, and Kylie desperately tries to get back on to the bed again.

Friends,
I think as I laugh and close the bathroom door behind me. After fifteen years, maybe I’m finally starting to understand how to make them.

I ♥ Japan.

By lunchtime, I am incoherently, head-over-heels in love with Tokyo. As my brand-new T-shirt, baseball cap, pen and pencil, and badge will tell you.

I ♥ the strangeness and the noise and the height of it.

I ♥ the politeness and how simultaneously ordered and manic it is.

I ♥ the two-storey-high televisions stuck to buildings, and the way the shop assistants bow and sing
irrashaimmaasseee
!!! (welcome!), as if you’re royalty.

I ♥ the fact that you can throw coins in a ticket machine any way you like and it still counts them properly, and the way people fall asleep on the tubes against the shoulders of strangers.

I ♥ the electric toilets with warm seats that play music and spray water at your bottom and pretend to flush while you’re peeing so that nobody can hear you.

I ♥ people who actually wait on the side of the road for a green light, even when there are no cars coming.

I ♥ the sense that I could never be bored, not if I lived in Japan for a billion years.

And, more than anything:

I ♥ how ignorant I am here.

I can’t read, I can’t write, I can’t speak. All I can do is marvel with wide eyes at just how insignificant and tiny I feel.

Bunty was right: I even feel temporarily free from being me.

“Tokyo’s OK,” Rin concedes with a casual shrug. She’s been racing us through tourist attractions as if there’s a twelve-hour deadline before the entire city falls down. We’ve been up the enormous Tokyo Skytree; lit incense at the Asakusa Kannon Temple; wandered through Ueno Park and watched the jugglers. We’ve eaten bits of chicken on sticks and coffee jelly and tuna mayonnaise wrapped in rice and seaweed and bits of fried octopus in balls of batter (sorry, Charlie).

We’re now in Harajuku, having crêpes on Takeshita Street, and it’s taking every bit of my inner dignity not to attempt a joke that – frankly – I’m too old to be making.

I stare at Rin over the top of my strawberry, banana, ice cream and cheesecake pancake. “Rin, Tokyo is incredible.”

“Not like Sydney” – Rin shakes her head – “There is no aces beach and BBQ and flaming gallahs.”

I laugh. “Did you know that there are more people in this city than there are in Australia and New Zealand put together?”

Poppy sighs. She’s picking off bits of strawberry, wiping cream on her napkin and then flicking it on the floor. “I find it all a bit much, really.” She points at a tiny, fluffy dog walking by in a green dress with a bright green, lit-up, pulsing lead. “I mean, what exactly is the point of that?”

“But that’s what’s so brilliant,” I say in surprise. “There isn’t one.”

We watch a couple of Japanese girls wander past. One has bright pink hair with blue tips, a purple tutu, green stripy tights, a camouflage-pattern jacket and yellow shoes. The other is covered – head to toe – in cuddly pink toys, as if she’s doused herself in glue and run really fast through a toyshop. I turn back to Poppy with a huge smile. “How lucky are we?”

“I’ve been a successful international model since I was fourteen,” Poppy says, pulling a bit of chocolate off her pancake, sniffing it and then wiping it on the bench. “The world gets boring pretty quickly.”

I suddenly feel a pang of pity for her.

Toyshop girl and her friend notice Poppy and I, and stare at us. “
Kaaawwaaaiiiiiiiii
,” they squeak. Then they dissolve into giggles and skip down the street, glancing back so that they can collapse in hysterics again.

I turn to Rin. “What does
kaaawwaaaiiiiiiiii
mean?”

“Cute.
Kawaii
mean cute.” Rin looks with open loathing at her black jeans and vest. “You are wrong, Harry-chan. There is point. Cuteness is point.”

Everything surrounding us is fluffy, or pink, or sparkly, or covered in hearts. Everything has a face: gloves, umbrellas, crisp packets, mascara. Rin’s bank card is pink. Even the poles holding up the building works opposite have yellow bunnies drawn on them. “In Japan, all must be cute,” Rin explains firmly, “or …”