Picture Perfect

“The last time you’ll ever block the entrance with your insanely boring conversations.”

We both turn round.

“Hi, Alexa,” Nat sighs. “Great to see a long break has really brought you a sense of inner peace and compassion.”

“Whatever,” my nemesis says, flicking her newly highlighted hair and whacking me with her shoulder as she saunters past. “Such a shame you’re leaving, Natalie. What are we going to do without you?”

“Collapse and die, probably,” Nat says, folding her arms. “I live in hope.”

“Maybe then I’ll smell as bad as Harriet.” Alexa glances over to where I’m standing, still rubbing the top of my arm. “Hey, loser,” she adds. “Looks like this year it’s just going to be you and I.”

And – just like that – my summer is over.

n fairness, I’ve had a good run.

If you take away all the holidays and weekends, we actually only have to be at school for 195 days a year. Add to that night-times, mornings, a few field trips, an hour for lunch every day plus two fifteen-minute breaks and the potential for getting sick now and then, and I won’t have to see Alexa for more than 1,118.5 hours this academic year.

That’s only a full 46.6 days.

A month and a half of solid Alexa Roberts.

On my own.

Oh, God. I’d really rather get it all out of the way at once. Maybe I should ask if she wants to move in with me.

“This year it’s just going to be you and me,” I correct quietly as Nat kisses my cheek and runs through the school gates towards the office.

Then I stare at the shrieking crowd of girls she’s now surrounded by.

They look strangely unfamiliar, and it takes a while to work out it’s because for the first time apart from field trips that we’re not in our school uniforms. Laura has a leather jacket, and Lucie is almost unrecognisable wearing bright red lipstick. Anna has blue feathers wound into the back of her ponytail, as if she killed a bird and ceremoniously attached it to the back of her head. It’s like seeing a fully dressed theatre production when you’ve only seen the rehearsal before.

The boys are all wearing jeans and T-shirts and have clean faces and short hair.

I look down at the Spider-Man T-shirt I bought last week and then touch my new bob haircut. I think it’s obvious which camp I fall into.

Maybe I’ll just make the most of it, grow a moustache and hide in the boys’ toilets this year.

“Harriet Manners.” A thin boy in orange corduroys and a Spider-Man hoody taps me on the shoulder. There appear to be tiny cartoons of goldfish on his socks. “How coincidental that we match perfectly today. One might call it fate. Destiny. Serendipity.”

It’s none of those things. He was hiding behind a clothes rack when I bought my T-shirt.

“Morning, Toby,” I say as he wipes his nose on his sleeve and stares at it in fascination.

Then I see the opened white envelope in his hands.

There are ten times more bacteria in your body than there are actual body cells, and I can suddenly feel them: squirming all over me.

“Is that …” I swallow as my entire body begins fizzing. “Is that them?”

“Yes,” Toby says. “Or no. That’s a very vague question, Harriet. They wouldn’t let you into the FBI with that kind of approach. I’ve checked.”

“One day,” Nat sighs, returning from the office, “you’re going to answer a question like a normal person, Toby, and we’ll all pass out with shock.”

“So …” I swallow. “How did you do?”

“14 A*s,” Toby says, carefully tucking the piece of paper into a folder with TOBY’S EPIC ACHIEVEMENTS written on the front. “Those Mandarin and Classical Civilisation evening classes were not the waste of time and money my parents said they were.”

My stomach spins and I take my phone out of my pocket.

“Here,” Nat says, thrusting a large envelope at me. “Stop thinking about Nick. You know he’s on a shoot in Africa: he’s probably busy having a staring contest with a hippo or something. This one’s yours.”

I stare at it, and then try unsuccessfully to lick my lips.

One way or another, everything in my life is about to change. Be calm, Harriet. Be Zen-like in your acceptance of the roller coaster of life and all its ups and downs and—

“Stop whispering at your results, Harriet,” Nat laughs. “Ready?”

“Mmmmmn.”

“Steady?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Now GO!” Nat yells.

And together we rip open our futures.

t any typical moment, your brain will be using twenty per cent of the oxygen that enters your bloodstream. Mine must have got greedy, because my head suddenly feels so light it could float away like a balloon.

I passed.

In fact, I passed with flying colours.

I don’t want to boast, so all I’m going to say is: I got one more star than the Chamaeleontis constellation and one less than Orionis.

I also got a C in technology, but if I ever need a pine box or a red plastic wall clock that looks like a badly sanded hummingbird, I’ll just go to the shops and buy one.

Nat is spinning on the spot in tiny circles.

“College here I come!” she yells, giving me a high five on every revolution. “I failed history but who cares, I’m going to college!”

Then she stops spinning so we can stare at each other.

My head promptly floats away.

“Sugar cookies!” I squeak, jumping up and down. “We did it!”

“Massive sugar cookies!” Nat shouts.

“UBER sugar cookies!”

“STELLAR sugar cookies!”

“IMMEASURABLE, BOUNDLESS SUGAR COOKIES! Our cookies have gone into orbit!”

“Ah,” Toby says, getting a small green book out of his bag. “I was under the impression that sugar cookies was a negative expression but I will now make a note that it can be used either way.”

Nat and I bounce and giggle hysterically and then gradually start half-hopping out of the school gates.

All this talk of cookies has made me hungry. Maybe my parents will have baked me another cake: a strawberry one, with ‘CONGRATULATIONS’ written in marshmallows and Smarties for the dots on the ‘i’s and—

“Oi,” a voice behind us says. “Did one of you losers drop something?”

And every last bounce and giggle suddenly drains out of me.

Because:

read somewhere that a fully grown octopus is flexible enough to climb all the way through a human’s intestines. From the feeling in my stomach right now that is exactly what’s happening.

Is that … my diary?

It can’t be. My diary is at home, next to my bed. Safe and private and protected by a carefully placed ginger hair, exactly as it’s supposed to be.

Except … I can see a British Library sticker on the spine, and the row of gold stars I gave myself at the bottom, and the corner Hugo chewed in a huff when I wouldn’t let him have a bite of my sandwich.

It can’t be, but it is.

Everything I’ve written in that book over the last seven weeks hits me so hard my entire body is suddenly full of cold, squirming, slippery sea creature.

No. No. No no no no no no NO.

I run towards Alexa, but it’s too late: she’s holding it high over her head and opening the front pages.

“Mr Harper, physics,” she reads loudly. “Divorced. Secret fan of Zumba. Member of Royal Horticultural Society. Note to self: learn more about Latin dancing and plants. And marital problems.”

Behind her are a few snorts of laughter.

When you blush, it’s not just your cheeks that turn red: the inside lining of your stomach does too. I’m so hot, I think I’ve accidentally cooked the octopus. How is this happening? What the sugar cookies was my diary doing in my bag?

Oh my God.

Annabel must have thought it was my school diary and popped it in my satchel. She’s so tired she probably didn’t notice the words INTENSELY PRIVATE written in silver pen on the front. And it must have fallen out when I was jumping around like an idiot.

This is exactly why I never do any kind of physical activity.

“Miss Lloyd, advanced maths,” Alexa continues in glee. “Inappropriate Facebook photos. Subtly offer to edit her online networking privacy settings.”

Teachers milling around the school entrance are starting to glance in our direction. I recognise Miss Lloyd in the distance. This is going to end my sixth form academic career before it’s even started.

I start leaping for the book, but Alexa continues flicking through with her other hand on my forehead while I scrabble frantically at her like a cat in a pond.

“Give it back,” I beg desperately, making another lunge for it. “Please, Alexa. It’s private.”

Nat is fishing around in her handbag. “Hand the book over,” she yells, blotched with fury. “Or I swear to God this time I’m going to scalp you.”

“Until the day it inevitably becomes a bestseller,” Toby concurs, “it is Harriet’s intellectual property, Alexa.”

But it’s too late.

Alexa has turned to the back of the book and is staring at the last page.

“Girlfriend?” she says. She looks almost speechless. “Girlfriend? Are you kidding me? You?”

The octopus in my stomach is about to die from heat exhaustion. “Yes.”

“Who?” Alexa looks around. “Him?”

“No,” Toby says, in answer to her pointing finger. “We discovered this summer that we lack the chemistry of physical lust and also that Harriet needs to work on her kissing skills.”

The octopus promptly goes BANG.

Alexa looks back at me. “Are you telling me a real live boy – other than this weirdo – actually wants you?”

“Yes,” I say again in a small voice.

I try to lift my chin, but all I can smell is a pungent cocktail of baby puke, damp dog hair and out of the corner of my eye I can still see brown icing on my boy’s clothes and stuck in my boy’s hair.

It suddenly seems pretty unbelievable to me too.

Alexa shrieks with laughter.

“OMG, this is priceless.” She turns to the group behind her. “Can you imagine the geekiness levels? I bet they’re off the chart. I bet he’s short and greasy and hasn’t learnt to shave yet.” She starts giggling. “Bet he – haha – studies physics and smells of Brussels sprouts and farts every time he bends down. Hahahaha.”

I think of Nick’s big black curls; his coffee-coloured skin and slanted brown eyes; the huge grin with the pointed teeth that breaks his face apart. I think of the mole near his eyebrow; the green smell of him and the tilt at the end of his nose.

I think of how he laughs at the wrong bits in the cinema; how he leans his cheek against mine when he’s sleepy; the way he tucks my feet between his knees when they’re cold and I don’t even have to ask him to.

I think of how extraordinary he is.

“H-he’s not,” I say in a tiny voice. “And he doesn’t.”

“Actually,” Nat snaps. “Harriet’s boyfriend is a successful international supermodel. So stick that in your cauldron and smoke it.”

Alexa starts giggling even harder, and rolls her eyes at her underlings. “Of course he is.”

“Show her,” Nat demands, flushing and pointing at my satchel. “Show her a picture of Nick, Harriet.”

“I … don’t have one,” I admit. “It’s a new bag.”

Alexa takes a step closer. “An imaginary boyfriend,” she says. “That’s pathetic, even for you.”

“He’s real,” I say, except it comes out as two tiny mouse squeaks. “And I’m not pathetic.”

“Oh, you are. Or should that be ‘you-apostrophe-r-e’?”

My whole body goes cold.

On the last day of exams I grammatically embarrassed Alexa in front of a lot of girls in our year. I had hoped maybe she’d forgotten.

She hasn’t.

“Do you expect me to believe,” Alexa says, “that anybody would want you, Manners? You’re the most boring person I’ve ever met. You’re a nobody. A nothing.”

I blink at her. For some reason I can’t fathom, I wish she’d just stuck with geek.

“I told you I’d get you back, Harriet,” Alexa adds, giving me a final shove backwards, putting my diary in her bag and closing it with a click. “Reading can be such an education, don’t you think?”

And she storms out of the school gates, with her minions scuttling behind her.

pparently horses and rats can’t vomit.

Unfortunately, I am neither a horse nor a rat. It’s taking every bit of focus I have just to make sure I don’t get sick on myself for the second time today.

“Are you OK?” Nat says, putting a hand on my arm.

“Mmm,” I say chirpily. “Sure. It’ll be fine. Just fine. Fine.”

Then I bite my lips. Stop saying ‘fine’, Harriet.

“She doesn’t sound fine,” Toby observes, tugging his rucksack back on to his shoulders like a broken tortoise. “I don’t think Harriet sounds fine at all, Natalie.”

“Shut up, Toby,” Nat says kindly, and then she puts her arm round me. “Don’t worry, Harriet. I mean, it’s just a few scribbles. How bad can it be?”

“The way I see it,” Toby adds cheerfully, “the more information people know about you the better, Harriet. Personally, I’d like to know everything. I’m hoping she makes photocopies and distributes them around the classroom.”

I flinch.

My diary isn’t the ‘today it rained, I stroked a cat, we had spaghetti for dinner’ kind of report I kept when I was five and I thought every day was riveting and unprecedented.

Everything I am is in that book.

My hopes and dreams; my worries, my doubts. My most precious, perfect memories of me and Nick, written in unnecessary, humiliating detail. My lists; my plans; the bit where I attempted to rhyme Nick Hidaka with big squid packer.

My process of falling in love, page by page.

In short, I’ve just given Alexa the strongest weapon she’s ever had against me:

Myself.

Nat starts gently leading me away from the school fence. I can’t really feel my legs any more: I feel like I’m being rolled forward on rubbery wheels.

“Forget about it,” she says firmly and shakes her head. “Anyway, we should be celebrating.”

I blink a few times.

Celebrating. Exam results. It already feels like a billion years ago.

This is like when that guy leaked classified National Security Agency information that revealed operational details of global surveillance and threatened to take down all of America. Except that instead of the US spy programme, it’s my personal secrets that are going to be spread around the sixth form.

And instead of temporary asylum in Russia, I’ll end up in a cold corner of the classroom.

“I think,” I say slowly, “I should probably go home. My parents are going to want to know my results straight away.”

This is a lie, obviously. If they’re even awake it’ll be a modern-day miracle.

“Are you sure? Because Mum promised she’d take me shopping for new college clothes and I thought you could come with us.”

“Ooh,” Toby says. “Yes please. I think I need to buy new boxer shorts.”

“Never,” Nat says, rolling her eyes, “talk to me about boxer shorts again.”

“Briefs?”

‘No.”

“Swimming shorts?”

“Why would you be wearing swimming shorts when you’re not even swimming, you weirdo?”

I’m subtly edging away from my best friends in a little sideways crab shuffle.

“Shopping sounds great, Nat,” I lie again as cheerfully as possible. “Maybe another time?”

“Sure. I mean, I’m going to have lots on with college and stuff. But we’ve still got weekends, right?”

“Right,” I say in a tiny voice.

And I spin round and run home as fast as my legs will carry me.

hich is faster than it used to be.

Nothing makes you take up jogging quite like a brand-new baby and nowhere to escape to apart from the garden shed.

“Annabel?” I say as I open the front door and Hugo barrels towards me, tail wagging. I bend down and give him a cuddle. “Dad? I thought you might like to know what I—”

And then I stop.

In the last hour and a half, the house has totally transformed.

The curtains are wide open, the kitchen is almost clean, and there are half-filled cardboard boxes lying at random points around the hallway. Piles of shiny plates and saucers are in stacks on the table, and the mugs are out in neat, organised lines as if they’re getting ready to break into an impromptu can-can.

The air smells of air freshener, and sunshine is pouring in through the window on to the huge suitcases still lying on the kitchen floor.

This is more like it.

My parents have finally decided to give my special day the respect it deserves and spring clean in my honour.

Although they could have just used drawers and cupboards like normal people. Lining everything up on the table seems a bit excessive.

“Harriet?” Annabel yells down the stairs. Tabitha has decided to recommence screaming. It only takes 100dB at the right pitch to break glass, and for once the windows in our house aren’t just in danger from my door slammings. “Is that you?”

“Who else is it going to be?” Dad says, wandering in from the laundry room. “If only strangers would consider politely breaking in with keys. Maybe they’d dust while they took our valuables.”

His arms are full of tiny pink things: little towels, trousers, onesies, cardigans, socks, bibs. It takes another glance to realise that they aren’t supposed to be pink. There’s a lone red sock on top of the pile.

Dad gives me a look that indicates he knows just how much trouble he’s about to be in.

“Harriet?” The screaming goes up a notch. “How did you do?” Annabel appears at the top of the stairs and Dad quickly lobs everything into a cardboard box and closes the lid.

“It went really well,” I say as the screeches get louder.

“What?” Annabel transfers Tabitha to a different arm and jiggles her up and down. “Say it again, Harriet.”

“My exams went really well,” I say, holding my thumbs up in the air. “Better than expected, actually.”

Dad climbs the stairs two at a time and takes Tabitha out of Annabel’s arms. “Pipe down, junior,” he says firmly, and my sister immediately goes silent.

Annabel crumples against the wall as if she’s just been popped.

“You’re like some kind of Baby Whisperer, Richard.”

“Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin were all premature babies like Tabby,” Dad explains. “Genius recognises genius.”

I hand Annabel my results and she looks at them and then beams at me. “Brilliant. Well done, sweetheart. You worked incredibly hard for them.”

“Hard schmard,” Dad says, fondly scruffing up my hair. “Both my daughters are geniuses. I genetically gave them my fierce intellect, fantastic cheekbones and the ability to make great spaghetti bolognese.”

“Marmite,” he adds, turning to the side and sucking his cheeks in. “The secret is Marmite.”

“Did you genetically give them your laundry skills too?”

There’s a long silence. Then Annabel lifts an eyebrow and looks at the tiny pink sock stuck with static to the side of Dad’s trousers.

He coughs.

“Maybe,” he admits. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

I look around briefly at the tidiness of the house.

It’s a lovely gesture of support and encouragement, but I think they’re overestimating how much I value seeing carpet. I haven’t seen the rug in my bedroom for weeks.

“There’s quite a lot of extra space in my wardrobe,” I say, tucking my results back in my satchel. “If you need it.”

Dad and Annabel look at each other.

“Huh?”

“I’ve got a spare drawer too, if you want it for some of Tabitha’s stuff. There’s no point boxing it while you clean.”

“Umm, Harriet …” Dad starts, clearing his throat.

“Thank you, darling,” Annabel says, raising her eyebrows at him whilst putting her arm around me. “It’s your big day. How would you like to celebrate?”

I think about it.

Starting the day again and making sure I do my satchel up properly doesn’t seem appropriately upbeat.

“I’m going to go upstairs and speak to my boyfriend,” I say instead. “I bet he’s been trying to call me all morning.”

“Young love,” Dad grins at Annabel as I start heading towards my bedroom.

They lean over and give each other a little kiss.

“Scientists have said that romantic love is only supposed to last a year,” I mumble, “due to diminishing levels of neurotrophin proteins in the blood. You guys are just making a mockery of statistics.”

And, with my parents giggling away, I walk into my bedroom and close the door as quietly as I can behind me.

t takes a computer with 700,000 processor cores and 1.4 million GB of RAM forty minutes to map just one second of human brain activity.

Forty minutes.

No computer in the entire world can do what we each do in our own heads every minute of the day. No computer is as complicated or as interesting.

I bet they don’t get into anywhere near as much trouble either.

Or write diaries and then drop them in the playground.

The first thing I do is pull my T-shirt over my head and slide down the back of my bedroom door. Then in the stuffy, deodorant-scented darkness I pull out my phone and stare at the blank screen.

No texts.

No missed calls.

No emails or Skype messages.

Not a single light flashing anywhere to say Nick has tried to reach me. I turn it upside down, just in case any incredibly romantic and supportive texts want to fall out.

They don’t.

This afternoon, for the record, was supposed to go like this:

Instead – on yet another pivotal day of my life – I’m hiding under a T-shirt on the floor of my bedroom.