Geek Drama

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 shizzlenizzle,” he said, holding me at arm’s length. “They love themselves a good bit of ginger frog now and then. And, oh my holy chicken-unicorns, what are you wearing?”

I grimaced. “It was the first thing that fell out of my wardrobe. Sorry.”

“Genius! I’ve always wondered what a human zebra would look like, and now I know!” Wilbur gave me an air-kiss. “We’ll be ready for you in four minutes, bunnycakes. Frankly, everyone else might as well go home now. Brink are absolutely set on you, my little peach drop. The job is pretty much yours.”

And then my agent spread his glittery pink wings and disappeared as loudly as he’d arrived.

Slowly, I turned to look at the models sitting behind me.

I read somewhere that ants can survive in a microwave because they are small enough to dodge the rays that would kill them.

Judging from the expressions on these models’ faces now, my two options were either to turn into an ant or to spin slowly in circles before finally exploding.

“Umm,” I said nervously as the glares intensified. “Have you met Wilbur before?”

“He’s our agent too,” the blonde model said tightly. “Believe it or not.”

“Ah. Right.” I coughed and looked desperately at the receptionist. “Is there … umm … perhaps a bathroom I could use?”

“It’s down the stairs, out in the corridor,” the receptionist said, pointing with lowered eyelids. “Corridor. Spelt c-o-r-r-i-d-o-r.”

I flushed a bit harder.

“Thanks.”

Then I disappeared out on to the stairs as quickly as my zebra legs would carry me.

After all, a lot of things can happen in four minutes.

In four minutes, lightning strikes the earth an average of 14,400 times. In four minutes, there are twenty earthquakes and 482,692 pounds of edible food is thrown away in the United States.

Every four minutes, 418 people around the world die.

And, if I stayed in the same place, it was starting to look increasingly likely that I would be one of them.

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uffice to say, I locked the bathroom door behind me.