alt="Image Missing"/>y name is Harriet Manners, and I am an idiot.
I know I’m an idiot because:
1. One half of me is inside a cupboard, and the other is not.
2. I can’t move more than two centimetres either backwards or forwards.
3. My feet aren’t touching the ground.
4. The shelf I used to climb up to this windowsill collapsed at least forty minutes ago.
5. I keep saying, “Help, help, I’m stuck,” even though nobody can hear me.
Clearly my spatial awareness is every bit as terrible as my dance teacher said it was after the Year 10 performance where I accidentally kicked another student in the face during an enthusiastic but badly executed can-can.
I don’t fit through this window.
At all.
Frankly, the fact that I even thought I might is a cause for serious concern. Recent studies have revealed that domesticated chickens have finely honed sensory capacities and an ability to think, draw inferences, apply logic and plan ahead in more advanced ways than those of a young child.
So, as I’ve been wedged firmly into the semi-open window of a cleaning cupboard in Infinity Models for forty minutes now, I can’t help thinking something, somewhere has gone very badly wrong.
It doesn’t say much for your IQ levels when you’re a fifteen-year-old girl with less common sense than poultry.
That’s what you want to know.
How a person with over 6,000 days of life experience and an IQ of 135 ended up stuck in a hole like Pooh Bear after a particularly enthusiastic honey session.
And, frankly, I don’t blame you.
I’m still kind of trying to work that out myself.
Two hours ago, I was exactly where I was supposed to be: waiting quietly in the reception of Infinity Models.
“Hello,” I said as I approached the front desk and tugged at the too-long arms of my stripy jumper. “I’m Harriet Manners. It’s nice to meet you. I’m here for a casting.”
There was a silence.
“For Brink magazine.”
Another silence.
“I’m an … erm … model?” I cleared my throat. “A fashion one.” In case they thought I meant a small paper aeroplane.
Then I held out my hand.
I’ve only been in the modelling industry for three months and last time I did this the receptionist assumed I was the work-experience girl. I’d made twelve coffees, six teas and some headway into cleaning the floor of the photocopying room before anybody had ascertained otherwise.
This time, she didn’t even look up.
“Just take a seat, yeah?” she said, waving her hand at the room. I could see from the reflection in the window that she was on a social-networking site.
“Oooh,” I said enthusiastically, leaning forwards. “Did you know that particular website contains 140 billion photos, which is four per cent of the number of photos ever taken?”
She looked up and scowled. “Excuse me?”
“And you’ve spelt depressing wrong,” I said helpfully, pointing at her status update. “This job is so depressing. It only has one p. You’ve got two.”
She quickly closed the screen and glared at me.
“I think I’ll sit down now,” I said, flushing. She was still glaring. “I’ll be just over here if you need any more help.”
Maybe I shouldn’t have convinced Dad to let me do this casting alone after all. It was looking like I’d need armed protection.
I abruptly took a seat in between a beautiful, tanned brunette girl with cropped hair and a blonde with incredibly pale skin and black eyebrows. Then I gripped my hands together tightly so nobody would see they were starting to get clammy.
I hadn’t learnt much about fashion, but I knew you had to pretend you belonged there or somebody would immediately realise you didn’t and throw you back out again.
So I plastered on my brightest smile.
“Hello,” I said. “I’m Harriet Manners. Are you both here to see Brink too?”
“Uh-huh.” The blonde looked me up and down. “What are you wearing?”
I looked down in confusion. Just how literal did she want me to be?
“A striped jumper,” I said anxiously. “And a pair of striped leggings.” I paused. “And underwear, obviously, and two socks. And green trainers.”
“Uh-huh,” she said again.
Quick, Harriet. Change the subject.
“Is that you?” I said, pointing at the open folder in the brunette’s lap. There was a stunning black and white photo of a very beautiful girl in a bikini, with an enormous cat wrapped around her neck.
She lifted her chin slightly. “Obviously.”
“Cats are so interesting, aren’t they? Apparently they have a brain the same size as a great white shark’s, and jaws with the same strength as a Komodo dragon.”
Yup. It’s this kind of conversational dynamite that makes not many people want to sit next to me at lunchtime.
The brunette looked at me, and I was saved from my third “uh-huh” by a door swinging abruptly open.
“Baby-baby koala!” my agent, Wilbur, shouted, holding his hands out wide so that the pink sequinned poncho he was wearing made him look like some kind of disco bat. “Come and give me a big cuddle! Not literally, obviously. This is Versace,” he said, indicating his outfit, “and it would totally crush my sparkles.”
“Hi, Wilbur,” I mumbled as he dragged me off my seat and started trying to spin me around in circles as if we were at some kind of shiny country dance.
“Munchkin, I’m so glad you’re here. This photographer is just a desperationist to see you.”
I flushed with surprise. “Really?”
“For
