not really a crier, though, and there’s a good chance my parents won’t understand what I’m doing, so I scoot into the bush outside my house until I can be absolutely certain – without a shadow of a doubt – that I can breathe without either hiccuping or a bubble of snot coming out of my nose. Then I sit in the bush in the hole that Toby’s made for himself in four years of stalking and sob quietly into the sleeve of my school jumper.
I’m not sure how long I cry for: it’s like a never-ending circle of tears because every time I calm down and look up, I catch sight of the red letters on my satchel and it sets me off again. It even feels like they’re getting bigger and bigger, although rationally I know they must be staying the same size.
GEEK
GEEK
GEEK
GEEK
GEEK
And I can’t pretend it doesn’t matter any more because it does. Because they just won’t leave me alone.
I’m so tired of it all. I’m tired of not fitting in; of being left out; of being hated. I’m tired of having everything I am ripped up and strewn around the room the way a puppy wrecks an abandoned toilet roll. I’m tired of never doing anything right; of constantly being humiliated; of feeling like I’m just not good enough, no matter what I do.
I’m tired of feeling like this. And most of all, I’m tired of being a polar bear, wandering around the rainforest on my own.
When the letters are two metres high and flashing, I finally lose it completely. I give a little scream of frustration and attack the word with my belt buckle until the material’s so ripped you can’t read anything. And then – finally calmer – I curl out of a ball, climb out of the bush, wipe the mud off my uniform and try to pretend that I’m behaving in a totally rational way for 4pm on a Friday afternoon.
I sniff my way to the front door.
“Dad?” I say quietly as I open it, wiping my nose on my sleeve. “Annabel?” Then I stop, startled. Because Annabel, Dad and Hugo are all standing in the hallway.
And they all appear to be waiting for me.
Now that I just want to go straight to bed without being hassled my parents have finally started working on the house’s welcoming atmosphere?
“What’s going on?” I ask, embarrassed and quickly rubbing my eyes with my hand. Hugo jumps up at my trousers and starts experimentally licking at the mud. “Is everything all right? Dad, did you have your meeting?”
Annabel frowns and peers at me. “What’s wrong, Harriet? Have you been…” And then she stops, confused. I can see her searching her mind for a word that matches my face. “Crying?” she finishes uncertainly.
“I have a cold,” I explain firmly, sniffing. “It started this morning.” And then I look at Dad, who has his mouth clamped shut. “Dad? Your important meeting? Did it go OK?”
“Huh?” Dad makes a face. “Yeah, no problem. They said I was a maverick like I predicted they would, but I asked for a pay rise and they said no.” Then he looks at Annabel and bounces up and down on his toes a couple of times. “Tell her, Annabel.” Dad nudges her with his elbow. “Tell her.”
“Tell me what?” I look at Annabel and she stares back in silence. “What?”
Annabel sighs. “They rang, Harriet,” she finally says in a reluctant voice. “The modelling agency. They rang. While you were at school.”
My mouth opens slightly in shock. “They rang? But…” I stop for a few seconds in total confusion. “I didn’t give them my number. How could they ring?”
“Well, they found it anyway and they rang!” Dad shouts, exploding and punching the air. Hugo responds by taking a few steps backwards and barking. “Infinity Models, Harriet! This is massive! This is more massive than massive! This is massiver! They rang and they said they love the photos and they want to see us all! Tomorrow, first thing! In the agency! With them! And us! And them again!”
“Massiver is not a word, Richard,” Annabel 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
