Holly Smale - Model Misfit

Now that gesture I’m familiar with.

“Everybody face this way ,” Miss Johnson shouts furiously, and three hundred and two eyes suddenly snap away from my face. “ Toby Pilgrim, that includes you ,” Miss Johnson yells, and the final two revert to the front. “You have thirty seconds before your exam begins.”

The only person not focusing on our imminent exam is Alexa, who is sitting diagonally directly behind me. She’s got a standard smug expression on her face and she’s rolling something between her fingers. Before I can work out what’s going on, she subtly leans down and rolls a little paper ball forward so it’s positioned directly under my desk.

“Twenty seconds.”

I stare at the ball in confusion, then in a flash I know: Alexa’s trying to sabotage my exam. She’s trying to plant revision notes on me. Yet another round of her ultimate plan – Ruin Harriet’s Life.

Oh my God. If I pick it up and get caught, I’m going to be thrown out of this exam. If I don’t pick up it up and it gets found under my desk afterwards, I’ll get disqualified for cheating. What do I do?

“Ten seconds.”

Pick it up or don’t pick it up? Don’t pick it up or pick it up?

“Five seconds.”

I bend down swiftly and grab it. If I can destroy the evidence before the exam starts, I’m not cheating. I’m just … disposing of rubbish responsibly.

But, like Pandora, I need to know what’s in the box. I need to know what’s intended to destroy me. So I tuck the note under the desk and quietly open it:

GEEK, YOU’RE FACE IS BRIGHT GOLD.

Oh, I think.

Oh.

“Please turn your papers over,” Miss Johnson announces as I shrink into my seat with my hands over my face. “You may now start.”

spend the rest of my final exam looking like something actresses hold once a year and cry over. According to a test I did on the internet, I have 143 IQ points. Clearly I have no idea what to do with any of them.

Toby isn’t quite so sure.

“Harriet,” he says happily as I walk out of the hall and head outside to wait for Nat. “I am honoured to stalk you. I honestly cannot think of anyone I’d rather follow obsessively around.”

Somehow, Toby’s gotten even more thin and stretched-out looking: as if he’s a bit of melted cheese somebody’s just pulled off a pizza. His hair is fluffier, he has dark shadows around his eyes, and he’s bobbing along with his hands neatly by his sides, his little nose twitching slightly. He looks even more like a meerkat than he did last time you saw him.

Let’s put it this way, I wouldn’t be even vaguely surprised if a plane flew past and he bolted for cover.

“What are you talking about, Tobes?”

“Gold is traditionally the colour of success, achievement and triumph,” Toby explains in a voice brimming over with admiration. “You’re the perfect colour for the last exam. I don’t know why nobody has thought of it before . ”

I stare at him, and then burst into an explosion of laughter. Only Toby could possibly think I painted myself gold today on purpose.

Except … In love, Goldilocks? That explains a lot.

I abruptly stop laughing. Oh my God: the taxi driver did too. I clearly just look like the kind of girl who goes insane and colours herself in on a regular basis.

That’s not the impression I’m trying to give to the world at all .

As Toby starts chattering excitedly about exam questions and oscillations of light waves, I glaze over and listen to the sound of his chirpy words going up and down and round and round.

Every time I try to remember what it was like not having him around, I can’t do it. Toby’s like a fact: once you know him, you can’t unknow him. Over the last few months, he’s started spending a little more time where Nat and I don’t have to pretend we can’t see him. And we’ve…

Well, we’ve kind of let him.

He’s not so bad in small doses. As long as he doesn’t irritate Nat too much. She has limited interest in irrelevant facts, and I fill that quota already.

We finally get outside, blink a few times in the bright sunshine, then start wandering, half blind, towards a small patch of shade. Nat’s surname is near the beginning of the alphabet, so she always gets stuck at the back of an exam room: picking at her nail varnish and making impatient huffing sounds, like a pretty, swishy-haired dragon.

By the time we spot Alexa it’s too late.

She’s just outside the school gates with a big group of her friends: all clad in their cunningly edited school uniforms like a fashionable army. Rolled skirts and tucked tops and pink streaks and bra-straps showing. Sprawled menacingly across the grass, as if they own the school.

And how can I put this?

In a very non-literal way, they sort of do.

o, by the way.

If you think a polite but firm conversation with my bully six months ago totally fixed everything between us, you’ve obviously never met Alexa. Or me.

Or any other teenage girl.

I want to pretend Alexa and her friends aren’t waiting for me, but a quick glance at her face tells me otherwise. She’s practically salivating. That’s the not-so-great thing about the last day of school: no repercussions.

“Hey,” she says sharply, taking a step towards me. “Manners.”

I instinctively look for another exit. But, short of using Toby to hurdle the fence, there’s no other way out of the school. So I duck my head and try my hardest to become completely invisible.

Thanks to not being a member of the Fantastic Four, this doesn’t work.

“HEY,” Alexa says again, blocking my path. She glances briefly at Toby. He scratches at the inside of his ear and then sniffs his finger. “Did you have fun in that exam, geek? Bet you did. I bet it was the best fun you’ve had in ages. ”

I flush slightly. She’s absolutely right: it was awesome. When I got to the essay question about the life cycle of a star, I actually got a bit dizzy with excitement. “Maybe,” I say with the most non-committal shrug I can muster.

“Bet you knew all the answers, didn’t you, you total spod.”

I shake my head. “Only about ninety-three per cent of them.”

Everyone snickers – I don’t know why: that’s still a solid A* – and Alexa scowls at me. I try to walk away, but she blocks me again. “So you’ve heard about the massive house party I’m having tonight?”

The answer to this question is obviously: yes. There are Eskimos in Siberia who woke up this morning, fully aware of the house party Alexa is having tonight.

“No.”

“ I’ve heard about it,” Toby interrupts eagerly. “You’re having tiny jellies, aren’t you? Alexa, they sound brilliant . I’ve always found normal-sized jellies unhygienic. All those different spoons. It’s much more sanitary to have lots of little ones each, isn’t it?”

Alexa ignores him. “A guy who used to be on TV is coming. So it’s technically a celebrity party.”

Toby nods sagely. “No green jelly then. Just awesome red and purple, right? My mum makes mine in the shape of a rocket with liquorice where the engines would be.”

Years from now, historians will look back at records of these days and wonder how Toby managed to get through them alive.

“That’s nice for you, Alexa,” I say, finally managing to dodge round her and start walking in the opposite direction.

“So, Manners” – and she clears her throat – “Want to come?”