Geek Girl and Model Misfit. Holly Smale
sighs. “Anyway, what they want is irrelevant. As we discussed, Harriet’s not doing it. She doesn’t even want to do it.” Then she looks at me. “Right?”
There’s a long silence.
“Right?” Annabel repeats in confusion.
I look at my parents – Annabel with her hands on her hips and Dad bobbing around like a happy little duck – and suddenly I can’t really see them. I can’t really see anything at all. It’s as if the whole world has just gone strangely dark and quiet and I’m standing in the middle, waiting for everything to start making light and noise again.
And then it hits me, like a metaphorical train or a hammer or a fist or something fast and heavy and absolutely inescapable. And it’s so clear I don’t know how I didn’t see it before, except that maybe I couldn’t because I didn’t need it like I need it now, at this exact moment.
This is it.
This is what I can do to change things.
This could be my metamorphosis story, like Ovid’s or Kafka’s, or Hans Christian Andersen’s The Ugly Duckling or even Cinderella (originally called Rhodopis and written in Greece in 1BC). I could go from proverbial caterpillar to butterfly; from tadpole to frog. From larva to dragonfly (which is actually only a half metamorphosis, but still – I think – worth mentioning).
MODELLING COULD TRANSFORM ME. And I’d no longer be Harriet Manners – hated, ignored, humiliated. I’d be… someone else. Someone different. Someone cool. Because if I don’t do something now, I’m going to be me forever. I’m going to be a geek forever. And people are just going to keep hating me and laughing at me and putting their hands up. Forever. And things will never, ever change.
Unless I do.
“I…I…” I start stammering, and then I stop and swallow because I can hardly believe what I’m about to say.
“Well?” Annabel and Dad say, except with totally different tones.
“I… think maybe I want to see them.”
There’s a stunned pause. “What?” Annabel finally gasps. “You want to what?”
“I want to see them,” I repeat, but this time my voice is clearer. For a few seconds, Nat’s face flicks into the back of my mind. My Best Friend’s tense, flushed, miserable, heartbroken face. And then Alexa’s flicks up next to it like a double slide show and I switch them both off. “I want to go and see the modelling agency,” I confirm.
Dad jumps up in the air. “You said, Annabel!” he crows. “Do you remember? We fought and I won and you said if she wanted to do it, we’d go and see them!”
“I didn’t think she’d actually want to,” Annabel huffs. “You tricked me, Richard. I can’t believe you tricked me.”
“Please?” I say, looking at her with my widest eyes. When I look to the side, Dad’s doing the same thing. “Just to see? Please, Annabel?”
Annabel opens her mouth and then shuts it again. She’s looking at my face as if it’s a maths sum and the answer is harder than she was expecting it to be. “You actually want this?” she asks in a totally shocked and slightly disgusted voice, as if I’ve just said I’d like to pick fleas from stray cats for the rest of my life, and possibly eat them. “Clothes, Harriet? Photographs? Fashion? Modelling?”
“Yes,” I say and I look her straight in the eye. “Maybe,” I clarify.
Annabel looks straight back for a few seconds and then sighs and puts her head in her hands. “Has the world gone topsy-turvy?”
“Definitely,” I confirm.
“Then…”And Annabel breathes out crossly. “Well, I’m sort of trapped by my own integrity, aren’t I?”
“Yesssss,” Dad shouts as if he’s just scored a goal, and – when Annabel gives him a short, sharp look – he clears his throat. “I meant, good decision, darling. Excellent. Very sensible.”
“Don’t get carried away, Richard,” Annabel snaps. “I said we’d see them. That is all. I’ve made no other promises. I’m not agreeing to anything right now.”
“But of course,” Dad says in an apparently insulted voice. “That’s also very sensible, darling.”
But as Dad winks at me and runs off into the kitchen to do a celebration dance, I realise I’m not really listening. Because all I know is – after ten years – I’m finally doing something to make things better.
And – frankly – it’s about time.
And if that plan happens to be in a bullet-pointed list, typed out and then printed from the computer in Dad’s ‘office’ (the spare room) then so much the better.
It goes like this:
Plan for Today
Wake up at 7am, and press the snooze button precisely three times.
Don’t think about Nat.
Find an outfit from my wardrobe suitable for a visit to a modelling agency.
Go downstairs wearing said outfit. My calm and supportive parents say things like ooh and aah and tell me they didn’t realise I had so much inherent style.
Blush prettily and agree because I probably do have inherent style.
Don’t think about Nat.
Leave the house at 8.34am on the dot, to catch the 9.02am train to London.
Arrive just in time to eat a pain au chocolat and drink a cappuccino in the local café because this is what models do every morning.
Get transformed into something amazing.
Admittedly, the last point on the list is a bit vague – because I’m not quite sure what they’re going to do, or how they’re going to do it – but it’s fine. As long as I have control over the rest of my plan, everything should go exactly as it’s supposed to.
Unfortunately, nobody else appears to have read it.
“Richard Manners,” Annabel is shouting as I come down the stairs. It’s already not going well: I pressed snooze fifteen times, and finally got out of bed to the calming, dulcet sounds of my parents trying to scratch each other’s eyes out. “I cannot believe you ate the last of the strawberry jam!”
“I didn’t!” Dad is shouting back. “Look! There’s some here!”
“What use is that much strawberry jam to anyone? Do I look like a fairy to you? With little tiny fairy pieces of toast? I’m five foot ten!”
“How do I answer that without accidentally calling you fat?”
“Be very careful what you say next, Richard Manners. Your life depends on the next sentence.”
“Well… I… Harriet?” and Dad turns to me. I’m not sure how the argument’s turned to me when I’m barely in the room, but apparently it has. “What the hell are you wearing?”
I look down indignantly. “It’s a black all-in-one,” I say with my nose as high as I can get it. “I don’t expect you to understand because you’re old. It’s called fashion. Fash-ion.”
Now it’s Annabel’s turn to look confused. “Is that last year’s Halloween