by Holly Smale
Did I want Nick back so hard that I somehow turned it into a real, physical thing? Maybe I should start focusing my magical powers on curing cancer or winning a Nobel Prize, instead of hurting people.
“I should go,” I say quietly. “I’m so sorry, Poppy. If I had known all the trouble I’d cause, I wouldn’t have come.”
I zip my suitcase up, even though some of my belongings are still scattered around the room, and start wheeling it into the hallway. My sleeve gets caught on the door handle, and I’m now so utterly desperate to get away I strongly consider leaving my arm here and just going home without it.
“I’m glad Rin did what she did,” Poppy says as I finally yank myself free and stumble into the hallway. She puts her hand on the door and my stomach goes cold. “I think maybe it’s best for everyone if you’re not here.”
And she slams the door behind me.
y New and Infinitely Inglorious Plan (NIIP) is now as follows:
Apologise to Wilbur.
Fly home.
Apologise to my parents (and the bump).
Apologise to Nat and Toby.
Make up some kind of T-shirt that says SORRY IN ADVANCE as a cunning pre-emptive tactic.
Go to bed for the rest of the summer.
But when I come out of the flat I see Wilbur, leaning against a lamp-post, talking on his mobile phone. His voice is quiet and his shoulders are slumped. It’s as if all the bright colours have been drained out of him.
And suddenly I can’t face him.
I can’t face anyone at all.
I’m not proud of what I’m about to do next, but I do it anyway.
I pick up my suitcase so that the wheels don’t make giveaway squeaks. I tiptoe awkwardly behind Wilbur. I turn the corner of the street. I put my suitcase down.
And I run away.
All right: technically I wheel away.
I have no idea where I’m going. I’m just pulling my suitcase in the opposite direction to the flat.
I keep my eyes on the floor, and I walk. I walk and walk and walk in the hope that if I walk fast enough, far enough, I’ll discover exactly what it is I can do to make everything slightly less terrible.
By the time I’ve calmed down enough to take in my surroundings, I’ve managed to meltdown all the way into the heart of Tokyo. There are brightly coloured lights everywhere: flashing on the streets, climbing up the enormous buildings, soaring into the sky. Ten-metre televisions are yelling from the corners, hundreds of people are swarming everywhere and every three seconds or so there’s a high-pitched bird peep, followed by an answering peep from hundreds of metres away.
I am totally and utterly lost.
With a different type of panic setting in, I desperately try to find my bearings. There’s a Starbucks, some kind of enormous train station and the biggest zebra crossing I have ever seen running across five different roads. It’s so big that everyone has to wait on the pavement, and – when the peeps start – simultaneously scramble across the road in a vicious star shape: criss-crossing and bumping and shoving.
It’s like a huge computer game testing coordination and timing, and I know from harsh experience that I have precisely neither of those things.
I wait six entire crossing cycles before I can find the courage to step out and then take my deepest breath and start pulling my suitcase across. There isn’t much time: when the beeps start speeding up, you have ten seconds to reach the other side before the cars start again. And they will start. I’ve already witnessed at least two people put their hands out and physically push against car bonnets to stop themselves getting run over.
Getting hotter and hotter, I desperately try to manoeuvre my way across but my suitcase keeps getting stuck, people keep pushing me, blocking me, physically holding my arm so that they can go in front. By the time the beeps start speeding up, I’m only halfway there. And I can’t turn back because that would take longer and then I’ll just have to do it all over again. Somebody shouts something in Japanese at me, and I realise – to my horror – that I’ve stopped, frozen on the road like a terrified rabbit.
My heart is hammering, my eyes are starting to fill up.
I’ve managed to take a bad situation and make it a hundred times worse, all on my own.
Well, me and the Tokyo road planners.
I’ve just begun to start running to catch up with the people ahead of me when I hear a whoosh.
The world spins around.
And the road jumps up to meet me.
hankfully I don’t die.
The bicycle just clips me, and the only real damage is a bloody knee and elbow and quite a large hole in my leggings, pride and mental stability. A tiny lady swoops down to pick me up and guides me gently across the road. By the time I’ve stopped shaking enough to thank her, she’s gone.
Rocking my suitcase on its side, I ignore the dubious glances from the crowds and sit heavily on the floor next to it.
I want to go home.
I want to go home more than I have ever wanted anything before in my entire life.
I want to be in my tiny stupid bedroom, putting fossils on overcrowded shelves and trying to stop my dog from eating talcum powder. I want to be studying Shakespeare and Milton and star constellations; I want to be worrying about chemistry formulas and physics equations instead of dresses and poses and octopuses and kisses. I want to see my dad dancing around the living room and I want to see Annabel laughing at him and Hugo getting all over-excited. I want to see Nat roll her eyes at me and Toby wipe his nose on his jumper. I even want to see Alexa. Nice, predictable Alexa. Who hates me with the least amount of effort and national newspaper coverage possible.
I just want everything to be exactly how it was.
Maybe this is what happens to the butterfly and the frog. Maybe they go to so much effort to grow wings and legs and run away, and when they see a little bit of the world they just feel sad and lonely and end up hopping straight back home again. Where they belong.
I pick my phone up and ring Dad. There’s no answer.
I try Annabel: her phone is off.
Then I try Bunty: engaged.
I call Nat and get her voicemail again, then try Toby. It rings a few times before suddenly switching off.
Did Toby just hang up on me? Am I now so pathetic that my own stalker just cancelled my call?
That does it.
I pull my jumper tightly over my head. And I start crying.
don’t know how long I cry for.
In fairness, people don’t normally time themselves. All I know is that I cry long enough for my face to get all swollen and weird-shaped, and not quite long enough to forget what it is I’m crying about.
Not one person stops to ask if I’m OK. Not a single stranger asks if they can help. Not a human soul interrupts to offer poignant words of wisdom and kindness and—
“Are you OK?”
I sniffle and wipe my nose on my jumper. All right. Maybe I should have been a bit more patient before I attacked the entire human race. I nod.
“Are you sure?”
The voice is muffled and indistinct. “Yes. Thank you.”
“Because,” it continues, “for somebody who thinks they’re OK, you spend a hell of a lot of time rolling around on pavements.”
Slowly I remove the jumper and wipe my eyes.
“Hey,” Lion Boy says with a small smile. “There’s my girl.”
I look at Nick, with his beautiful face and his beautiful hair and his beautiful cheekbones. I look at the way he’s slouched, and the way his lips curve as if the world is permanently, irresistibly funny.
To summarise, I look at how incredibly beautiful and perfect he is.
“Go to hell,” I say, pulling my jumper back over my head.
I hear Nick sit down next to me. I immediately whip my head out again like the furious tortoise I am. “I’m not sure your geographical knowledge of the afterlife is very strong,” I say through my teeth. “Do I need to draw you a map?�
��
“I didn’t realise this was your pavement.”
“Actually,” I snap, and then stop. Stupid Japanese laws about public pavements. “Leave me alone, Nick. I mean it. Now.”
He opens his mouth to respond, and then sees the blood on my hands and knee. “God, Harriet. What happened? Are you hurt?”
I jerk away from his hand. “No,” I snap, struggling to stand up. “I am not hurt.”
I’m suddenly so angry it feels like the contents of my chest are about to rush out of my ears like the magma inside Mount Tambora in 1815 (the biggest ever recorded volcanic eruption). “Get lost, please. Go away. Go on, shoo.”
Nick’s lips twitch and his nostrils flare. “Did you just shoo me, Harriet Manners?”
And my head bursts.
“WHO THE SUGAR COOKIES DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, NICK? You may be a supermodel and you may be beautiful and charming and cute and funny but you’re also just a boy! You’re just a boy, and I am a girl, and every time I breathe in there is a molecule that used to be part of a dinosaur in it which I assimilate into my body which means that I AM PART DINOSAUR, POSSIBLY T-REX, AND YOU DO NOT GET TO TREAT ME LIKE THIS.”
I’m so swept up in a torrent of blind fury that I am making little claws at random passers-by. Nick blinks and then grabs one of my T-Rex hands. “Hang on a second, Harriet—”
“And OK,” I continue fiercely, shaking him off, “you’re probably part dinosaur too, but you’re probably a Dilophosaurus with a rubbish frilly neck or a Linhenykus which only had a little pointed finger where an arm should be like this.” I hold my forefingers out by my armpits and wave them around uselessly.
Nick snorts and I take a cross little hoppy step towards him.
“Oh, that’s it. Am I not mature enough for you? Not interesting enough for you? Too silly for your epic adultness? Well you’re the problem, Nick. Not me. Don’t you ever try and make me want to be someone else again. I am just fine the way I am.” I grab the handle of my suitcase. “And this time you can sit and watch while I disappear.”
I turn to sweep elegantly away, but Nick holds on to my suitcase. I cannot believe that on top of everything he has now totally ruined my dramatic exit.
“Can I say something now?” he says, lifting an eyebrow. “Or do you have more second-rate dinosaurs you’d like to compare me to?”
I scowl and stick my nose in the air. “Whatever.”
“Great. First of all, it turns out somebody has been sabotaging the campaign. I only found out at the lake. I had no idea before. We thought you were just being clumsy as usual.”
OH MY GOD HOW DARE HE—
Oh, OK. I suppose that’s a reasonable assumption to make. “I already figured that out yesterday, genius,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Poppy and Rin.”
“No,” Nick says, frowning. “Not Rin. She actually helped us sort everything out.”
I abruptly sit down on top of my suitcase. “Oh.”
“Harriet, Rin hasn’t got a bad bone in her body – plus she adores you. She’s getting a T-shirt made with both your faces on it. She wanted to make your friendship ‘official’.”
I’m so relieved I feel like crying. Of all the girls I’ve ever thought might be my friend – other than Nat – Rin’s my absolute favourite. I’m suddenly filled with so much happiness I have to desperately claw back a few remaining strands of anger to finish what I need to say. “So it was Poppy. Big surprise.”
“It was to me.”
“I bet,” I say in my most sarcastic voice. “Don’t you know your own girlfriend very well?”
“Usually,” Nick says, raising his eyebrows. “But Poppy’s not my girlfriend. She never has been.”
here’s always this excellent moment in really good action films where everybody’s kicking and fighting and there are legs and arms and bodies everywhere, and suddenly somebody leaps into the air and it all goes very slow, and very quiet, and you just know that the end is somehow coming.
As if we’re all hanging in the air, waiting for somebody to pull the move that changes everything.
“Uh?” I say.
“I have never dated Poppy,” Nick repeats, and there it is: the metaphorical boot in my face. “Ever. She’s just a model I worked with on that D&G shoot in Paris. I had absolutely no idea she’d told you we were together until Rin called me at the lake.”
I suddenly hear that overheard phone call again. ‘Poppy?’
He wasn’t talking to her: he was talking about her.
“But—” I try to swallow but it’s not really working. “You came to the flat … she said—”
“Exactly. She said. I didn’t. We were doing another shoot that evening, but the reason I’d raced over was to see you. I was waiting for you at the airport, but you looked so happy and excited to be in Tokyo … I guess I didn’t want to confuse things. So I decided to turn up at your flat instead and do it properly.”
My mind makes a little whirring rewind motion.
He did turn up a few minutes after I did.
And at no stage did Poppy ever refer to Nick as My Boyfriend in front of Nick. She kissed his cheek.
“B-but what about the sumo match?”
“I waited for you.” The corner of Nick’s top lip twitches. “For three hours, Manners. But then you made it brutally clear you were over me.”
I suddenly remember his white, punctured face on the steps.
He wasn’t confused, he was hurt.
I feel abruptly guilty, and also a tiny bit pleased with myself. Ha! I am an excellent, excellent actor. Nat is going to be delighted when I tell her.
“So at the lake …”
“I had to give it one last shot. But you gunned me down again, so the kiss” – he shrugs and looks pained – “I guess I was kind of saying goodbye.”
It’s a good thing I’m sitting down, because if I wasn’t standing would be a bit of a problem. You know how my bedroom always looked strange and unfamiliar once the lights went off? Now it’s the other way round. The lights have gone back on, and everything looks completely different. Unexpected. Brilliant.
“But …” I pause and blush.
The sumo. The lake.
Nick’s been totally innocent the entire time.
Oh my God, I have been so horrible to him. I said he was part Linhenykus. Nobody deserves that. Except maybe for—
I blink. “Why would Poppy pretend like this? And how did she even know about me?”
He shrugs. “Poppy’s the kind of girl who gets exactly what she wants. I think she kind of lost control when it didn’t work this time. I suppose she thought if she believed in it enough, and if she got rid of you, I’d end up with her. Which I wouldn’t, because she’s a nightmare and also” – he twists his finger up to his head in a way that politely suggests bat-poop crazy – “and … and I talked about you in Paris. A lot. She basically had an entire character-assassination arsenal at her disposal. Sorry about that.”
I look at Nick’s beautiful face, all screwed up and flushed and anxious, and suddenly know exactly why Poppy put in so much effort. “But … Nick, you dumped me, remember?”
“No, Harriet,” Nick sighs. “I told you really clearly that I was gonna leave you alone for a couple of months while you did your exams. I should’ve realised you’d zone out and stop listening – you always do that when you panic. I should’ve sent a supporting document or an email afterwards or recorded a message or something.”
And the last piece of the puzzle slots into place with a click, like an enormous, romantic Rubik’s Cube.
All I actually remember from that conversation over two and a half months ago is ‘we shouldn’t see or speak to each other any more’ before I went into internal meltdown mode.
And, though I’ll obviously never admit it to the Nobel Prize committee judges, there was quite a lot of time spent with Nick when I should’ve been revising.
Like, almost all of it.
Who wants to revise biology when you’re going out with
a supermodel? Even I’m not that much of a geek.
Oh my God. I am such an idiot.
Nick smiles awkwardly. “I said I’d be back when your exams finished. But you made me think I’d left it too late.”
The text. It arrived the day after the end of my exams.
“So … you still like me then?”
“Don’t you get it yet, Harriet?” Nick says in total exasperation. “I like that you know about the stars in rain and the shape of clouds and the heartbeat rate of a hummingbird. I like that you know that giraffes don’t have vocal cords and sharks can’t stop moving. I like the way you stick your little nose in the air and stomp your feet and frown just before you laugh. I like how your ears go red when you’re embarrassed and your freckles get darker when you’re angry. I like that little crumpled paper ball your chin makes before you cry. I like that when you’re shouting at me you physically pretend you’re a T-Rex. I like you, Harriet. Why is that the only thing in the universe you find so hard to wrap your big fat brain around?”
I suddenly feel like I’m at the lake again: as if I’m covered from head to toe in lights. I have absolutely no idea what to say to any of that.
“My brain isn’t big and fat. It has a totally normal fat quantity, which is roughly half of its dry mass.”
Oh. Apparently I do.
Nick grins. “My point exactly.”
It feels like two strings have been attached to the corners of my mouth and somebody is pulling them upwards. “And is this all because of you?” I gesture around me. “Am I in Tokyo because you made it happen?”
“Nope.” Nick shakes his head. “This time I’m here because of you. I actually begged Yuka for this job. I had to organise dresses and stuff. It nearly killed me.”
Nick pulls a face, but underneath the usual calmness is something I haven’t seen before: uncertainty. And I suddenly realise with a pang that all of this has been for me.
Nick found me, seven months ago. For me, he left. For me, he came back again. He made me laugh when I needed to; he annoyed me when it helped me; he saved me when I couldn’t save myself.
