Model Misfit

“I do,” I say quietly.

“So do I,” Nat says loudly, putting her arm around my waist and giving me a quick peck on the cheek.

“Me too,” Toby agrees. “Never underestimate the power of a well-placed apostrophe.”

We turn to leave and Alexa suddenly loses it, as if all her anger has just exploded in one bright firework of hatred. “Don’t walk away from me, geeks!” she screams, slamming her hand against a parking bollard. “We’re not done here! You just wait until next year! I’m going to … I’m going to – you – you – you’re …”

“Hey!” Toby says, “I think she’s finally getting it, Harriet!”

“We’ll look forward to hearing the rest of that sentence in sixth form, Alexa,” Nat calls back. “That should give you enough time to work out something really terrifying.”

We grin at each other and keep walking. Alexa’s shouting gets fainter and fainter until all I can hear is a harmless buzzing sound, like a tiny mosquito.

I look upwards.

The sky is bright blue, the trees have parted, and now there’s nothing but summer stretching endlessly in front of us.

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e don’t even wait until we turn the corner to start dancing.

That’s the beauty of the summer holidays. It’s as if life is just a big Etch-A-Sketch, and once a year you get to shake it vigorously up and down and start again. By the time we go back to school, the whole year will be wiped clean.

Sort of.

Enough to ensure nobody remembers Toby breakdancing across the road with his satchel on his head, anyway.

“Did you see Alexa’s face?” Nat shouts, doing a little scissor kick and punching the air. “That was magic.”

I give a happy little hop, even though it does mean I may now have to apply to a different sixth form if I don’t want to spend the rest of my teens lodged down a toilet of Alexa’s choosing. (The Etch-A-Sketch isn’t that thorough.) “Do you think I did something horrendous to Alexa when we were little that I’ve forgotten about, Nat?”

“Who cares if you did?” Nat yells as she does a series of excited little spins, high-fiving me on every turn. “Alexa’s gone! Exams are over. Do you know what that means?! No more physics! No more chemistry! No more history! No more MATHS!”

My A Levels will be in physics, chemistry, history and maths and I fully intend to start studying for them before the week is over, but I high-five my best friend anyway.

Nat giddily grabs a calculator out of her bag and throws it on the floor. “I am never going to use you again,” she yells at it. “Do you understand? Me and you: we’re through!”

Toby bends down and picks it up. “Aren’t you going to study fashion design, Natalie?”

“Yup.” She tosses her shiny black hair and beams at him. “It’s going to be clothes, clothes, clothes for the rest of my life.”

“Then you’re going to need this,” Toby says, handing it back to her. “To calculate fabric measurements, body shapes, profit margins, manufacturing costs and loan repayments, not to mention pattern cutting and size differentiation.”

“What?” Nat’s face collapses. “Oh for the love of …” She looks at me. “I didn’t have to know that for months. Seriously. Does he have to be here? Can’t we send him back to wherever he came from?”

“Hemel Hempstead,” Toby says helpfully. “I can get the 303 bus.”

“We’ve got an entire summer ahead of us,” I remind Nat jubilantly, ignoring him. I feel a bit like Neil Armstrong immediately before he boarded the Apollo in 1969: as if we’ve just been handed all the space in the universe, and we can do whatever we want with it. “In fact, I’ve got it all mapped out.” I start rummaging in my satchel and then pull out a piece of paper with a flourish. “Ta-da!”

Nat takes it off me and frowns. “Nat and Harriet’s Summer of Fun Flow Chart?”

“Exactly!”

I do a little dance and then gesture at the coloured bubbles: yellow for me, purple for Nat, and – thanks to the nature of the colour wheel – an unfortunate poo brown for everything in between. “I’ve got every detail planned out for maximum fun and entertainment value,” I explain, pointing proudly. “Starting with Westminster Abbey, which is where Chaucer, Hardy, Tennyson and Kipling are buried, and then Highgate Cemetery to visit George Eliot, Karl Marx and Douglas Adams. We’re working our way through dead writers chronologically.”

I’ve focused our Summer of Fun Flow Chart on London because all there is locally is a roller-skate rink and a Mill museum, and as much as I love both wheels on my feet and bread we totally exhausted both of those options before we left primary school.

“The Charles Dickens Museum?” Nat reads slowly. “Glass-blowing in Leathermarket? The Ceremony of the Keys at the Tower of London?”

She’s impressed. I can tell from how quiet she is and the fact that she’s not making eye contact.

“Amazing, right? They’ve just discovered traces of ancient blue paint on the Parthenon statues at the British Museum, scientifically proving that ancient Greece looked like Disneyland. We can go and see the new exhibition!”

Nat nods a couple of times and scratches at her neck. “Uh-huh.”

I suddenly realise how selfish I sound. “Nat,” I say quickly, “there’s loads of stuff for you on here too. There’s an exhibition on ball gowns at the V&A, and the London College of Fashion are doing a graduate show that I’m sure Wilbur can get us tickets to.”

Toby nods knowingly. “Did you know the Victoria and Albert Museum employs a hawk every summer to discourage pigeons from the gardens?”

“And tonight … I thought we could celebrate together with these!” I pull DVDs of The Devil Wears Prada and David Attenborough’s African documentary from my satchel. “And these!” I pull out some sparkly purple nail varnish and toe-dividers and a pack of Game of Thrones playing cards. “And – wait for it – these!” I pull out a pack of no-calorie caramel popcorn and an enormous chocolate muffin.

Then I look at Toby. “I didn’t forget you,” I add fondly. I hand him a Lord of the Rings Lego set.

“Harriet Manners,” he says solemnly. “I shall begin constructing a YouTube stop-frame video sensation immediately.”

“What do you think, Nat?” I squeak, bouncing up and down on my toes. “Are you ready to start the Most Incredible Summer Of All Time

?! I’m calling it MISOAT for short, by the way.”

“Umm,” Nat says, and glances at me then back into the middle distance. All signs of laughter or twirling have completely disappeared. “Toby, can you leave us alone for a second?”

“Girl stuff?” he says wisely. “Natalie, I know all about menstruation. We studied it in biology.”

“Toby.”

“Ah. Not menstruation then.” Toby cocks his head to the side. “Perhaps bras?”

Nat scowls so hard her forehead looks like something out of Star Trek.

“Kittens?”

Just as Nat reaches out a hand to physically throttle him Toby ducks behind a tree.

I guess old stalker habits die hard.

“What’s going on?” I ask nervously. “Have you already seen The Devil Wears Prada?”

Nat’s lips twitch. “Of course I have. It’s not that … I’m so sorry, Harriet. I only found out two days ago. I didn’t want to upset you during exams.”