Holly Smale - Model Misfit

My agent, Wilbur, still makes up words whenever he feels like it, and the fashion designer, Yuka Ito, is still totally terrifying.

My dog, Hugo, is still fond of sampling anything sticky he spots on the pavement and I still keep my textbooks lined up in alphabetical, chromatic and subject order.

Because that’s how real life is: people and situations and dogs don’t change that often, even when you have written very careful plans and tried to force them to.

And if I could leave my list there, I would. Because it’s a nice list, isn’t it? A lovely, positive list that looks forward to an entire summer with Nat, a brand-new graffiti-less satchel next term, and – quite soon – the legal ability to fly planes on my own whenever I feel like it.

But I can’t leave it there, because one more thing happened. And – for a little while, anyway – it made all the other points seem less important:

9. Lion Boy dumped me.

Reasons Not to Think About Nick

1 He told me not to.

on’t worry. It’s not as bad as it sounds.

I mean, in some ways it’s exactly as bad as it sounds. Four months after our first kiss, Nick told me we shouldn’t see each other any more and then he abruptly disappeared from my life. I haven’t seen or heard from him since. Not a text. Not a phone call or a voicemail. Not an email. Not a tweet or a Facebook message. Not even a fax (even though I’m not sure who faxes these days, but the option is still sort of there, isn’t it?).

But it’s totally OK. You don’t spend nearly sixteen years reading novels about love and scanning poetry about love and listening to songs about love and watching films about love without coming away with a pretty good idea of how love stories go.

Everybody knows the dramatic ups and downs are what make the difference between a real love story – the kind that people make into films – and a boring one that nobody bothers writing or singing about.

Would Pride and Prejudice be popular if Darcy and Lizzy hooked up at the first ball?

Would Wuthering Heights be a classic if Cathy chose Heathcliff?

Would Romeo and Juliet be studied in school if they dated for a few years and then got married and moved to the suburbs of Mantua?

Exactly.

So even if your love story involves somebody dumping you and moving back to Australia, as Shakespeare said you just have to refuse to “admit impediments”, and then they’ll come back to you. Everybody knows that.

And, yes, it’s been more than two months so it’s taking Nick a little bit longer than it probably should, but he must be on his way.

All I have to do is wait.

In the meantime, I’m trying not to think about him. I don’t think about his coffee-coloured skin, or his big black lion curls, or his green smell, or his eyes that slant up at the corners. I don’t think about the tilt of his nose, or the wideness of his smile, or the way he used to rub his thumb across my knuckle when we were holding hands and tap the end of my nose after I sneezed (which was very unhygienic, but for some gross and deeply disturbing reason I liked it).

I don’t think about how he makes me feel like a lightning bug: as if part of me is full of fire, and the other part of me can fly.

I don’t think about how I’d be with him all the time, if I possibly could.

And I absolutely never think about the fact that I’m not really enjoying this bit of my love story, and that I’d have much preferred the boring kind where Nick stayed and everything carried on exactly as it was before.

Even if it broke all the rules of romance straight down the middle.

The driver clears his throat.

“In love, Goldilocks?” He winks at me in the rear-view mirror, waving his hand in my direction. “That explains a lot.”

I look in surprise at the anatomically correct heart I’ve been sketching on the window, and then blush and wipe it away. Subtle, Harriet.

“Nope,” I say as nonchalantly as I can. “I’m just … prepping for next year’s biology module.”

“Course you are.” The driver grins. “Anyway, thought you was in an ’urry? Some kind of exam?” He nods. “You got four minutes left.”

I blink a few times. The car has stopped and we’re sitting directly outside my school. I hadn’t even noticed we’d stopped moving.

“But …” I say as I scrabble in my satchel for my purse, “how is that even physically possible?”

The driver shrugs. “I’m magic, ain’t I,” he states matter-of-factly. “Like that fat dude in ’ Arry Potter .”

I glance up. He certainly looks … other-worldly. Ephemeral. Slightly over-blessed with body hair.

“And I went well over the speed limit,” he adds brightly. “That’s eighty quid, love. Magic is pricy these days. Now get a hop on, you got three minutes left.”

swear on my Oxford English Dictionary , I have never moved so fast in my entire life.

By the time I’ve slid through the closing door of the gym hall, my breathing is so strained I sound like our vacuum cleaner when Annabel’s cleaning the sofa. Sweat is dripping down my neck and the only thing I have to mop it up with is the edge of my school jumper now hanging in three ripped pieces around my neck, like a piece of modern art. Or something Wilbur would wear.

I’m barely two steps into the room when Toby’s fluffy head spins around. I can only assume he spotted me out of the back of it with what he calls his ‘Harrietenna’.

“ Toby ,” Miss Johnson says in a warning voice, and Toby immediately stops waving and starts blowing me kisses and blinking instead.

I nod hello at him, hurry past and put my little plastic bag of stationery carefully on the right-hand side of my desk. Then I sit down and close my eyes.

Only a minute left to gather my thoughts, summon The Knowledge of the Stickers and Zen my environment. Just a few precious moments to allow the stress hormones to dissipate, to regulate my breathing, stop working out what time it is in Australia and to get my mind back on physics.

Midnight. It’s midnight in Sydney right now.

Somebody snorts.

Focus, Harriet. There are two types of electron: negative and positive. Like charges repel. Opposite charges attract .

Somebody snorts again, and there’s a faint giggle from a few seats away.

When insulating materials are rubbed together, electrons are knocked off one atom and on to the other.

There’s another laugh, and suddenly I’m vaguely aware of eyes burrowing into my forehead.

Not just Toby’s, I know what they feel like.

Cautiously, I open mine and glance around the room. There are a hundred and fifty-two other students in the hall, and every single one of them is staring at me.

I have absolutely no idea why. It’s not as if nobody here has seen sweat before. Or a ripped jumper. Or a single sock and scratched face. That’s how a large chunk of my year end lunch break.

I look at Toby and see he’s inexplicably patting his cheeks. When I search the room for Nat and see her – a long way away – she’s trying to mouth something at me.

“Go,” she’s saying, subtly pointing at me. “ Go .”

I love Nat. She’s my favourite person in the entire world (followed by my dad and Annabel). But I’m not going anywhere. I’ve only just got here.

“Go,” she mouths again, and then she rolls her eyes and smacks her head with her hand.