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Nat, however, went the other way. And suddenly the sheep and the angel – who hung out quite happily in the fields of Bethlehem together – didn’t have as much in common any more.
We’re still Best Friends. She’s still the girl who lost her first baby tooth in my apple, and I’m still the girl who stuck one of her sunflower seeds up my nose in primary school and couldn’t get it out again. But sometimes, every now and then, the gap between us gets so big it feels like one of us is going to slip through.
Something tells me that today that person is going to be me.
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nyway.
What all this means is: I’m not thrilled to be here. I’ve stopped whining, but let’s just say I’m not spinning round and round in circles, farting at intervals, like my dog Hugo does when he’s excited. In fact, I did two years of doing woodwork specifically so I didn’t have to come on this textiles trip. Two years of accidentally sanding down my thumbs and cringing to the sound of metal on metal, purely to get out of today. And then Jo eats prawns and does a little vomiting and BAM: here I am.
The first step on to the coach is uneventful, just one step, directly behind Nat’s. The second step is slightly less successful. The coach starts before we’ve sat down and I’m thrown sideways, in the process kicking a nice fluffy green bag the way I’ve never, ever managed to kick a football in my entire life.
“Moron,” Chloe hisses as she retrieves it.
“I’m n-n-not,” I stutter, cheeks lighting up. “A moron only has an IQ of between 50 and 69. I think mine’s a little higher than that.”
And then it all goes wrong. On the third step, the driver sees a family of ducks on the road, hits the brakes and sends me flying towards the end of the bus. I instinctively grab whatever will protect me from slamming my face on the floor. A headrest, a shoulder, an armrest, a seat.
Somebody’s knee.
“Ugh,” a voice shouts in total disgust, “she’s touching me.”
And there – staring at me as if she just sicked me up – is Alexa.
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lexa. My nemesis, my adversary, my opponent, my arch-enemy. Whatever you want to call somebody who hates your guts.
I’ve known her three days longer than I’ve known Nat and I’ve yet to work out what her problem is. I can only conclude that her feelings towards me are very similar to what I’ve read about love: passionate, random, inexplicable and totally uncontrollable. She can’t help hating me any more than Heathcliff could help loving Cathy. It’s simply written in the stars. Which would be quite sweet if she wasn’t such a cow all of the time.
And I wasn’t totally terrified of her.
I stare at Alexa in total shock. I’m still clinging to her tight-covered leg like a frightened baby monkey clinging on to a tree. “Let go,” she snaps. “Oh my God.”
I scrabble away, trying desperately to stand up. There are approximately 13,914,291,404 legs in the world – over half of them in trousers – and I had to grab this one?
“Ugh,” she says loudly to anybody who will listen. “Do you think I might have caught something? Oh, God, I can already feel it starting…” She cowers in her seat. “No…The light… It hurts… I can feel myself changing… Suddenly I want to do my homework… It’s too late!” She puts her hands over her face and then pulls them away, crosses her eyes, protrudes her teeth and pulls the ugliest expression I’ve ever seen on public transport. “Nooooooo! I’ve caught it! I’m… I’m… I’m a geeeeeeeeeeeeek!”
People start sniggering and from somewhere on the left I can hear a little ripple of applause. Alexa bows a couple of times, pulls a face at me and then goes back to reading her magazine.
My cheeks are flushed, my hands are shaking. My eyes are starting to prickle. All the normal responses to ritual humiliation. The thing I want to make really clear right now is that I don’t mind being a geek. Being a geek is fine. It’s unimpressive, sure, but it’s pretty unobtrusive. I could be a geek all day long, as long as people left me alone.
The thing is: they don’t.
“Seriously,” Nat snaps in a loud voice from a few metres in front of me. “Did you sniff wet paint as a child or something, Alexa?”
Alexa rolls her eyes. “Barbie talks. Run away and play with your shoes, Natalie. This has nothing to do with you.”
I’m trying desperately to think of something clever to say. Something biting, poignant, incisive, deeply wounding. Something that will give Alexa just an ounce of the hurt she gives me on an almost daily basis.
“You suck,” I say in the tiniest voice I’ve ever heard.
Yeah, I think. That should do it. And then I hold my chin up as high as I can get it, walk the rest of the way down the aisle and sink into the seat next to Nat before my knees give way.
I’m in my seat for about three seconds when the morning promptly decides to get worse. I barely have time to open my crossword book first.
“Harriet!” a delighted voice says, and a little pale face pops over the back of the seat in front of me. “You’re here! You’re really, actually, actually here!” As if I’m Father Christmas and he’s a six-year-old whose chimney I’ve just climbed down.
“Yes, Toby,” I say reluctantly. “I’m here.” And then I turn to scowl at Nat.
It’s Toby Pilgrim.
Toby “my knees buckle when I run” Pilgrim. Toby “I bring my own Bunsen burner to school” Pilgrim. Toby “I wear bicycle clips on my trousers and I don’t even have a bike” Pilgrim. Nat should have told me he’d be here.
I’m now following my own stalker to Birmingham.
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magine you’re a polar bear and you find yourself in the middle of a rainforest. There are flying squirrels, and monkeys, and bright green frogs, and you have no idea how you got there or what you’re supposed to do next. You’re lonely, you’re lost, you’re frightened and all you know – for absolute certain – is that you shouldn’t be there.
Now imagine you find another polar bear. You’re so happy to see another polar bear – any polar bear – that it doesn’t matter what kind it is. You follow that polar bear around, just because it’s not a monkey. Or a flying squirrel. Because it’s the only thing that makes it OK to be a polar bear in the middle of a rainforest.
Well, that’s how it is with Toby. One geek, incoherently happy to find another geek in the middle of a world full of normal people. Thrilled to discover that there is someone else like him. It’s not me he wants. It’s my social standing. Or lack thereof.
And let me get something straight: I’m not going to have a romance with someone just because they’re made out of the same stuff as me. No. I’d rather be on my own. Or – you know – in unrequited love with a parrot. Or one of those little lemurs with the stripy tails.
“Harriet!” Toby says again and a little bit of bogey starts dripping from his nose. He promptly wipes it on his jumper sleeve and beams at me. “I can’t believe you came!”
I glare at Nat and she grins, winks and goes back to reading her magazine. I am not feeling very harmonised with her at the moment, if I’m being totally honest. In fact, I sort of feel like hitting her over the head with my crossword puzzle.
“Yes,” I say, trying to edge away. “Apparently I had to.”
“But isn’t this just wonderful?” he gasps, clambering up on to his knees in his unbridled enthusiasm. I notice that his T-shirt says THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE 127.0.0.1. “Of all the buses in all the towns in all the world, you walk on to mine. Can you see what I did there? It’s a quote from Casablanca, except that I replaced the words gin joints with bus and the word into with on to.”
“You did, yes.”
Nat makes a snuffle of amusement and I subtly pinch her leg.
“Do you know what I learnt this morning, Harriet? I learnt that the phrase rule of thumb came from a time when a man was only legally allowed to beat his wife with something the width of his own thumb. I can lend you the book, although there’s a pizza stain on page 143 which you might have to read round.”
“Erm. Right. Thanks.” I nod knowingly and then lift my book so that Toby realises the conversation is over.
He doesn’t.
“And,” he continues, holding it down so he can see me properly. “You know the most unbelievable thing?”
It’s funny, when Toby behaves like this, I can suddenly see why I’m so annoying.
“Well, did you know that…” The coach swerves slightly into the middle lane. Toby swallows. “That…” he continues and licks his lips. The coach swerves back into the slow lane. “That—” Toby’s face goes abruptly green and he clears his throat. “I don’t want you to think I’m easily distracted, Harriet,” he finally continues in a little voice, “but I’m suddenly not feeling so well. I don’t take too kindly to vehicles, particularly the ones that move. Do you remember the ride-on lawnmower in Year One?”
I look at him in horror and Nat immediately stops smirking. “Oh, no,” she says in a dark voice. “No, no.” Nat obviously remembers it too.
“Harriet,” Toby continues, licking his lips again and going an even stranger colour. “I think we might need to stop the bus.”
“Toby,” Nat snaps in a low, warning voice. “Breathe in through your nose and out through your—”
But it’s too late. The coach makes one more sudden movement and – as if in slow motion – Toby gives me one look of pure apology.
And vomits all over my lap.
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n case you were wondering, that’s what Toby did on the ride-on lawnmower in Year One too. Except this time he manages to broaden his horizons in the most literal sense and hit Nat too.
She’s not happy about it. I mean, I’m not happy about it either. I don’t relish being hit by the contents of other people’s digestive tracts. But Nat’s really not happy about it.
She’s so unhappy about it that when the coach finally pulls up to The Clothes Show at the NEC, Birmingham – two and a half hours later – she’s still shouting at him. And Toby’s telling both of us how much better he feels now because, “Isn’t it funny how it feels OK when all the vomit’s gone?”
“I don’t believe this,” Nat is still snapping, stomping across the carpark. We’re both now wearing PE kit: luckily two of the boys had football practice straight after the trip, so – after a lot of whining – Miss Fletcher managed to convince them to lend us their kit. We’re wearing orange football shirts, green football shorts and white knee socks.
I quite like it. It’s making me feel quite sporty. Nat, on the other hand, isn’t so keen. We were forced to keep our shoes on, and – while my trainers look quite normal – Nat’s red high heels… don’t.
“Do you know how long it took me to choose my outfit this morning?” she’s yelling at Toby as we approach the front doors.
Toby contemplates this like it’s not a rhetorical question. “Twenty minutes?” he offers. Nat’s face goes slightly puce. “Thirty?” Nat’s jawline starts flexing. “An hour and a half?”
“A really long time!” she shouts. “A really, really long time!” Nat looks down at herself. “I had a brand-new dress and leggings from American Apparel, Toby. Do you know how much they cost? I was wearing Prada perfume.” She picks up a piece of green nylon between her fingers. “And now I’m wearing a boy’s football kit and I smell of sick!”
I pat her arm as comfortingly as I can.
“At least my vomit was sort of chocolatey,” Toby says cheerfully. “I had Coco Pops for breakfast.”
Nat grits her teeth.
“Anyway,” Toby continues blithely, “I think you look awesome. You both match. It’s super trendy.”
Nat scrunches her mouth up, clenches her fists and furrows her brow right in the centre. It’s like watching somebody shake a bottle of fizzy drink without taking the lid off. “Toby,” she says in a low hiss. “Go. Now.”
“OK,” Toby agrees. “Anywhere in particular?”
“Anywhere. Just go. NOW.”
“Toby,” I say in a low voice, taking him by the arm. I’m really, genuinely scared for his safety. “I think maybe you should go inside.” I look at Nat. “As quickly as possible,” I add.
“Ah.” Toby contemplates this for a few seconds and then nods. “Ah. I see. Then I shall see you both anon.”
And – giving me what looks disturbingly like an attempt at a wink over his shoulder – he skips off through the swing doors.
When he’s gone and I know that Nat can’t rip his head off and feed it to a large flock of pigeons, I turn to her.
“Nat,” I say, chewing on a fingernail anxiously. “It’s not that bad. Honestly. We smell fine. And if you put my coat on over the top, nobody will see what you’re wearing. It’s longer than yours.”
“You don’t get it,” Nat says and suddenly the anger pops: she just sounds miserable. “You just don’t get it.”
I think Nat underestimates my powers of empathy. Which is a shame because I am a very empathetic person. Empathetic. Not pathetic.
“Sure I do,” I say in a reassuring voice. “You don’t like football. I get that.”
“It’s not that. Today was really important, Harriet. I really needed to look good.”
I stare at her blankly. After a few seconds, Nat rolls her eyes and hits herself on the forehead in frustration. “They’re in there.”
I stare at the revolving doors. “Who’s in there?” I whisper in terror. I think about it for a few seconds. “Vampires?”
“Vampires.” Nat looks at me in consternation. “You have got to start reading proper books.”
I don’t know what she’s talking about. Just because I own a lot of books about things that don’t actually exist in real life in no way indicates that I’m not connected to the real world. I totally am.
Nat takes a deep breath. “I put the prawns in Jo’s dinner,” she says, avoiding my eyes.
I stare at her. “Nat! Why would you do that?”
“Because I need you today,” she says in a tiny voice. “I need you for support. They’re in there.” And she looks again at the doors and swallows.
“Who?”
“Model agents, Harriet,” Nat says as if I’m an idiot. “Lots and lots of model agents.”
“Oh,” I say stupidly, and then think about it. “Ohhhhhhhh.”
And I finally understand what I’m doing here.
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e were seven when Nat decided that she wanted to be a model.
“Gosh,” somebody’s mum said at a school disco. “Natalie. You’re getting gorgeous. Maybe you could be a model when you grow up.”
I paused from filling my party dress pockets with chocolate cake and jelly sweets. “A model of what?” I asked curiously. And then my greedy little hand went out to grab a mini jam roll. “I have a model airplane,” I added proudly.
The mum gave me the look that I was already used to by then.
“A model,” she explained, looking at Nat, “is a girl or a boy who gets paid ridiculous quantities of money to wear clothes they don’t own and have their photo taken.” I looked at Nat and already I could see her eyes starting to glow: the seed of the dream being planted. “Just hope you grow tall and thin,” the mum added bitterly, “because if you ask me, they all look like aliens.”
At which point Nat put her chocolate cake down and spent the rest of the night sitting on the floor, with me pulling on her feet to make her legs longer.
And I spent the rest of the night talking about space travel.
