Picture Perfect (27 page)

When the world lights back up a few seconds later, I’m being held awkwardly by a struggling Caleb: one arm under my armpit, and the other grasping at my elbow.

It’s not romantic.

It’s humiliating.

I scrabble with my legs on the ground, and he loses his grip completely and drops me heavily on the floor.

“Ouch,” I say as my knee smashes the pavement.

“I know I’m charming,” Cal says, smirking. “But we only met an hour ago. You weren’t supposed to fall for me
that
quickly.”

I flush and try to stand up, at which point I realise that Wilbur is yelling. Just as I’m automatically getting my apologies ready, I realise it’s not aimed at me.

“I said
stop
,” he shouts at Nancy. “I said
stop
six rides ago. What the
fiddle cats
are you playing at?”

“I didn’t realise, OK?” Nancy says defensively. “I just wanted the right shot.”

“Does
that
look right to you?” Wilbur snaps, pointing to me rolling around on the floor like Bambi on rollerblades. “Does
that
look like the right shot?”

“Oh, God,” Nancy sighs. “All right, I got tunnel-vision. I’m sorry, OK?”

Wilbur bends over and gently helps me up. “Are you back with us, my little Frog-bubble? We haven’t killed you, have we?”

I tentatively shake my head.

At any given moment, the earth beneath our feet is spinning at 465 metres a second. Right now, I can definitely feel every centimetre of it.

“So,” I say shakily, and then I clear my throat. “What’s next? How about that?”

I point at what looks like a small metal bucket being swung from over fifty metres in the air towards the ocean.

Nancy and Wilbur look at each other.

“Told you,” Wilbur says smugly. “My Baby-baby Panda is a total trooper.”

“The big rides are over, Harriet,” Nancy says, patting my shoulder awkwardly. “We’ll keep you on the ground from this point on.”

The rest of the shoot is completed without trauma.

We ride a tiny children’s steam train with a smiling elephant painted on the roof. We sit inside enormous white and blue teacups; shoot water pistols at stuffed animals; dance on arcade games; whack plastic rats with bouncy hammers.

And yes, at some point we’re put into the Wild River ride and drenched at the bottom of a fifteen-metre plunge, but after the roller coaster it feels like a sunset stroll along a promenade.

Plus at least my dress gets a good clean while we’re at it.

Finally the shoot is announced a success, and we’re led back to the changing rooms, dripping and exhausted and smelling slightly of stale cola.

Fleur hasn’t looked at me the entire morning.

At one point she was so busy ignoring me, her bracelet got caught in my dress and we were physically attached for eight minutes before the stylist disentangled us.

But I’m still going to give friendship one more shot, because:

“Umm,” I say as she starts hastily taking off her earrings and darts with her shoulders hunched into the cubicle next to mine. “Fleur?”

“What?” She calls over the cubicle wall.

“Would you, umm …” I clear my throat. “There’s an exhibition on Magritte at the Museum of Modern Art, and I was wondering if you wanted to come with me? He does pictures of pipes that say THIS IS NOT A PIPE because, you know, it’s not. It’s a picture.”

Then as I wait for her to reply, I hear the sounds of her hurriedly getting changed.

“Sorry, Harriet,” Fleur says finally as she dashes out of her cubicle. “But I’ve just got to get out of here.”

And she starts heading back to the station without another word.

y the time I emerge in my own clothes, Fleur has gone.

In fact, I’ve been so distracted by the process of trying to clean my entire body with little cotton-wool pads, I’ve almost managed to forget that I’m not actually supposed to be here either.

Almost, but not quite.

I take my phone out of my pocket and fiddle with the power button anxiously.

“I’m going to take you shopping,” Kenderall states as she picks up the end of Francis’s lead. He snorts reluctantly. “I’ve decided I’m going to make you my new project.”

“Umm.” I frown suspiciously. “What
kind
of project?”

The last kind of ‘project’ I did involved Sellotape, quite a lot of glue and ended up with me accidentally attaching myself to what was supposed to be a papier-mâché fairy-tale landscape.

I’m not entirely sure I want to repeat that mistake.

It took ages to get the glue off.

“
You
,” Kenderall says, looking me up and down. “I’m training to be a stylist, so you’re my practice. I can’t be a model forever, and anyway: I need hyphenating.”

I stare at her. “You need …
what
?”

“
Hy-phen-ating
,” Kenderall intones. “Some girls are a model-hyphen-DJ. Others are model-hyphen-actresses.
Some
are even
multi-hyphenators:
sculptor or painter or underwear designer. I haven’t got a hyphen, so I’m branching out. I’m doing a course at college.”

I try to work out what my
hyphen
is.

Geek-hyphen-schoolgirl, maybe.

Or geek-hyphen-idiot.

“Plus,” she says. “You clearly need help with your
amp
, babe.”

My brain quickly scans for definitions. “Like, my electricity? Or my excitement and energy levels?”

Then I remember
adenosine monophosphate
which we studied in chemistry and add, “Or a white crystalline water-soluble nucleotide?”

“
Ump
. Unique Modelling Point. We have to work out what your brand is. After all ‘to love oneself is the start of a life-long romance’, you know?”

I blink, slightly startled. “Oscar Wilde?”

“No, babe. It’s on a magnet I’ve got on my fridge. I think it’s from Target.”

Right.

“Shopping sounds … lovely,” I say, although obviously it doesn’t. I clench my phone a little more tightly in my hand. “But I need to go home.”

“Sure thing,” Kenderall says, shrugging. “If you want to be forgotten, that’s your problem. More
ump
for me.”

I watch her walk away, head gleaming.

Then I press the power button on my phone. My morning of escape and adventure is over, and it’s time to deal with what’s coming next.

I prepare myself for a barrage of angry text messages. Messages that tell me how selfish I am, how inconsiderate I am, how worried I’ve made everyone. Messages that specify in excruciating detail exactly how much trouble I’m about to be in and how long I’m going to be allocated bathroom cleaning on the family rota.

I wait.

And I wait.

And then – just for good measure, because I don’t know what kind of reception you get at an American seaside – I wait a little longer.

Then I peer at my screen.

Nothing.

Not a single message. Not a voicemail.
Nada
.

A wave of relief sweeps over me so strong that the ground tilts again for the second time in one day.

I did it! I got away with it
!

And then – almost immediately – a series of different waves, equally as strong, start following it. Waves that feel nothing like relief or happiness.

It’s two in the afternoon.

I’ve been missing for
nine hours
, and neither my parents nor my boyfriend have thought to ask where I am or what I’m doing?

Nobody is worried that I may have been kidnapped, or murdered, or cut into a million pieces and fed to the approximately one million pigeons of New York City?

Don’t they even
care
that I’ve gone?

With a sinking stomach, I’m suddenly not sure which I like less. Getting in trouble for running away. Or not getting into any trouble at all.

I stare sadly at my phone and another wave hits me. A wave so strong and abrupt it sweeps all the others away and I can’t think of anything else.

“Kenderall?” I say.

She stops and spins round. “Yeah, babe?”

Defiantly, I put my phone back into my satchel. If nobody cares where I’ve gone, then I might as well stay away.

“I’m coming with you.”

ere are some things I like more than shopping: