All That Glitters (10 page)

Oh my God.

Of all the planets in our solar system, we would weigh the most on Jupiter. I’m starting to wonder if I’ve somehow accidentally ended up there instead.

Bits of the day are beginning to rattle around inside my head like coloured balls inside a lottery machine, and every time they collide with each other, another little piece of me gets heavier.

I like bananas!
My lungs.
I’ve got this one!
My tongue.
It’s a mushroom!
My kidneys and liver.
Do you ever think about anyone but yourself? Maybe you could leave me alone?
Eyeballs, spleen, pancreas, veins, muscles.

She’s not worth it
: every single one of my bones.

Until, organ by organ, I weigh so much I’m surprised I don’t have to drag myself down the road by my fingernails.

Finally, I manage to reach the bench on the corner of the road where Nat and I have met every morning for the last ten years, even when our parents had to come with us.

I stand and look at how empty it is.

Then I turn around again and start walking towards the only place in the world that could possibly make me feel lighter again.

The local launderette.

o, in case you’re wondering.

I haven’t been back here since Annabel and Dad broke up and then had their big romantic laundry reunion nearly a year ago. Initially, I thought it was because it had become
their
place, not mine any more. Then I thought it was because I’d just worked out how to clean my clothes for free at home, like a normal human being.

But now I’m wondering if it’s simply because I haven’t needed it the way I need it now.

When I don’t know where else to go.

I still love this place.

I love the bright lights, the soapy smells, the soft purring of the machines. I love the heat and the shininess of the glass in the tumble driers. But most of all I love the way that nothing could ever feel alone in a place where so many things are jumbled together.

I rub my eyes and pull a chair over to my favourite machine. The glass is still warm, and there are baskets filled with piles of abandoned clothes everywhere. Somebody’s even left a shoe behind: it’s peeking out from behind a particularly large heap of jumpers and underwear.

I pull a blue sock out of my bag and a memory suddenly flashes: snow, warm cheeks, a cold hand squeezing mine.

So I swallow and put it in the drier as quickly as I can.

Then I start fumbling through my satchel for the fifty pence I need to put it on a quick spin. Followed by another fifty pence.

Then another pound in shrapnel.

And a two pound-coin.

After the day I’ve had I may be here some time. I am about to own the driest sock in existence.

I’m just chipping a bit of melted chocolate off a pound so that the machine recognises it as something other than a snack when something small and shiny flies through the air and lands in my lap.

I blink at the newly arrived coin, then at the empty room.

Maybe there’s some kind of strange gravitational pull levitating the money out of the machines and throwing it at my head. I suppose I could do my science project on that instead.

Reaching into my bag, I pull out another ten pence and there it is again: money, soaring through the air.

Except this time it’s a pound, which is even better.

I look around the empty room – still nothing – and am just quickly calculating how long I’ll have to stay here before I am rich enough to buy a castle when somebody laughs.

“You actually think it’s magic flying money, don’t you?”

Then I see the shoe in the pile moving. A pointy, silver shoe that stormed down my driveway yesterday morning, attached to my best friend.

“Nat?”

A dark, curly head pokes out from behind an enormous pile of clean jumpers and trousers. She’s obviously been lying in them, like some kind of enormous cat.

“Obviously. God, you took
ages
. I was starting to think I might actually have to do some washing.” She stands up, puts
Vogue
down and picks off a pair of huge beige knickers attached by static to her jumper.

“Gross,” she adds, flinging them into the corner so they hit the wall with a
fffpp
. Then she turns to where I’m still sitting, frozen in surprise. “How’s it going, Manners?”

eriously.

I have
got
to start checking rooms before I walk into them. Apparently chameleons and dragonflies have 360-degree vision, and I am clearly neither. If I were a small animal, I’d definitely have been eaten by now.

“Nat, what are you doing here?”

She hops on top of one of the machines. “Finding you, obviously. I’ve got a selfie with Vivienne Westwood – she was nowhere
near
as difficult to pin down.”

I jump with considerably less nimbleness on to the machine next to her. “I’m sorry.”

“What’s going on? I’m so worried, I’ve just spent an hour sitting in a laundry basket, covered in old-lady clothes. I may never fully recover.”

I take a deep breath and decide to confront the metaphorical elephant in the room head-on. “I’m fine, Nat. Honestly. Nick quit modelling and went back to Australia, and we both decided together that a long-distance relationship was too painful. I know we made the right decision, I just don’t want to talk about it, that’s all.”

“Really?”

“Really really.”

“Really really really?”

“All of the reallies.”

“So you’re OK?”

“Yes,” I say as confidently as I can.

Nat studies my face carefully, then her shoulders relax very slightly. “Thank God, because I need to tell you something and if I don’t I’m going to explode all over my second-best dress and then we really
will
need a launderette.”

Suddenly I notice again how perfectly curly her hair is.

In fact – now I’m not hiding in a bush fifteen metres away, being attacked by spiders – I can see a general shininess about Nat, as if her insides have just been dipped in something twinkly. Her eyes are sparkling and her cheeks are pink; there are little dimples in the corners of her mouth and her skin looks like it could glow in the dark.

I look down: the varnish has been chewed off every single one of her nails.

Then I remember her on my doorstep yesterday.

I really need to talk to her.

Oh my God, why did I automatically assume it was about me? Ugh. Maybe Jasper has a point after all.

“Is it François? Are you back with him?”

“
Who
?” Nat frowns. “Oh, the French dude. Ugh: no. He won’t stop sending me postcards with rabbits cuddling in front of the Eiffel Tower. This one is called Theo. He’s studying photography at college, and we kissed on Friday night for the first time. He’s all right, I guess. For a boy.”

My best friend is playing it cool, but her entire face is luminous as if something has been set on fire behind it.

I stare at Nat in confusion. She has left literally fifty-six messages on my phone over the last few days, and not a single one of them mentioned this.

“But … why didn’t you just tell me?”

“Because you’re my best friend and you’ve just had your heart broken and this is terrible timing and I didn’t want to make you sadder.”

I suddenly love my Best Friend so much it’s hard to swallow.

“Nat,” I say finally, “do you know what happens to metal when it touches another piece of metal in outer space?”

“It makes a really loud screeching sound and the universe goes
aaaaaargggh stop it
?”

I grin at her. “There’s no sound in space, so no. What happens is that those two bits of metal weld together permanently. Nothing that makes you happy could possibly make me sad, Nat. We’re
welded
.”

She considers this briefly and then pulls a face. “Remind me never to go into space with Toby, in that case.”

We both laugh, then sit in comfortable silence for a few seconds with one shoulder touching.

“So how did you know I’d be here, anyway?”

Nat stretches and yawns. “I tagged you with an electronic chipping device while you were sleeping. Like a cat.”

My hand automatically goes up to my neck.

“Plonker. As soon as I got that last text I knew where you’d be, Harriet. You never use exclamation marks in a text unless you’re lying. So I figured your first day back had blown, and you’d be heading straight here.”

I blink at her in amazement.

See what I mean? Nat had known I was coming to the launderette before I even knew it myself.

Now,
that’s
a best friend.

“Well,” I start, ready to tell her everything: about Toby and Alexa and Jasper, and how nobody likes me. About how lonely I am without her already, and how I want her to come back to school so it can be just us again, the way it always has been.

Then I stop.

If we’re welded, it works both ways, right? My sadness will make her sad too, and I don’t want that. It’s her turn to be happy now. I’ve had my big, amazing romance. My best friend deserves to have the world light up for her too.

“
Au contraire
, Natalie,” I say as airily as I can, with a quick hand flourish. “In fact, I’ll have you know I won the class quiz in my very first hour.”

This doesn’t have the impact I’m hoping for.

“Oh my God,” Nat sighs, putting her hand over her eyes. “How bad? Post-it on the back of T-shirt bad or head-down-the-toilet bad?”

Just
once
I’d like Nat not to see straight through me.

“The former,” I admit. There was a Post-it saying
I AM A KNOW-IT-ALL
on my satchel at breaktime. “But don’t worry: it’s just a brief hiccup. I’m sure they’ll forget about it eventually.”

“Of
course
they will.” Nat puts her arm round me and leans her head against mine. “Lots of people make a slightly bumpy first impression and nobody ever remembers.”

We’re both lying, by the way: scientists have found that first impressions are very difficult to undo and can often be permanent.

“Exactly!” I drop off the machine with as much enthusiasm as I can muster. “And a school year is only 190 days, right? 1,330 hours will be over before I know it.”