All That Glitters (43 page)

This party is even worse than that one.

“I think maybe you should all go too,” I say blankly. “Please.”

I just want them out of here now.

They’re not my friends, and I’m not theirs. Honestly, I don’t even blame them. It’s starting to hit me that I was using them just as much as they were using me. I still can’t remember most of their names: I was so busy trying to fill my life with as many people as possible, I didn’t really care who they all were.

And it looks like they didn’t care who I was either.

There are a few guilty nods, even sympathetic glances.

But then one by one the rest of my classmates filter out of the room and into the dark.

“
We’re
not going,” Lydia says, staunchly folding her arms in the doorway. “
We
love you, Harriet. You’ve still got
us.
”

“
Yeah
,” Fee adds. “We still think you’re
awesome
.”

But it’s too late.

“Thank you,” I say, gently spinning them towards the exit. “But the party’s over now.”

I usher them out of the door.

Then I walk back into the darkness I made, covered in stars, and sit in the middle of the empty dance floor.

You actually think that everything will be different now?

She’s still Harriet Manners.

There are many survival strategies in nature.

The tortoise draws its head and limbs up inside a hard outer shell, rendering it completely protected from predators. The hedgehog has damaging prickles; the skunk ejects sulphuric compounds from its bottom. When threatened, the mother-of-pearl caterpillar launches itself backwards at thirty-nine times its walking speed, somersaulting the entire way.

But all I’m thinking about now is a sea snail.

When I was three years old, scientists discovered a
Crysomallon Squamiferum
at the bottom of the ocean: the only creature in the known world to literally build metal into its coat of armour. They found that its thick shell is made from layers of metallic sulphides, including iron pyrite.

Otherwise known as
fool’s gold.

I tried so hard.

I wanted so badly to be the glittering girl: confident, stylish, brave, inspiring. I so wanted to protect myself from my normal life. But all I was doing was covering myself in a layer of fake gold and I couldn’t deceive anyone for long: just one little hole, and the world could see the real me again.

And I was pulled out and torn to pieces.

I look down at my shiny outfit, and then up at the cutout stars. Then at the sparkle I threw all over the floor.

It was right there in the theme: I wrote it myself.

All that glitters … is not gold.

I don’t have an Inner Star at all. I was the glitter and the fool, and now I’m right back to the beginning again.

Except worse, because Nat and Toby have gone too.

This time I’ve lost everything.

Tokyo – June (4 months ago)

“3,358 seconds.”

We passed through tiny side streets of Tokyo, past dark wooden houses with white fabric hanging from the doorways like half-open gifts, under little archways and blue curved roofs, popping out into bustling, noisy roads and then back into the quietness again.

“3,247 seconds.”

We raced past a little train station.

“2,320,” I told him, as we ran over a beautiful wooden bridge stretching across a canal, painted red and stuck with long, red flags. “Nick, where on earth are you taking me?”

He laughed and turned round.

“Harriet, do you have some kind of exploding watch you haven’t told me about? Because if you have, I think it’s only fair I know about it. It is
seriously
going to affect my schedule.”

I grinned. “Say that again.”

“Schedule.”

“Again.”

“Harriet Manners, don’t you
dare
affect my schedule.”

I pulled Nick to a stop and stood on my tiptoes so I could kiss him. “I love it when you talk itineraries to me, Lion Boy.”

Nick kissed me back. Then he leant forward until I could feel his breath in my ear and whispered:

“
Timetable
.”

There are 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms in my body, and at that precise moment every single one of them was his.

“2,228 seconds,” I whispered back.

And he took my hand again and started running as I kept counting down: through the quieter streets, into the large, silver buildings of Roppongi. We ran over grey pavements, under an enormous, thirty foot bronze spider with an egg sac containing marble eggs and towards a huge, glass skyscraper.

Then we caught our breath in a lift that shot us fifty-seven floors into the air.

“At what point in our relationship,” I said, leaning against the wall and panting slightly, “did we decide there would be so much running? I mean, you’ve met me before, right? I’m not exactly renowned for my athletic abilities.”

“Well, my little geek,” Nick said as the lift doors opened, “did you know that when you run you spend more time in the air than you do touching the ground? So if it helps at all, that means it’s the closest we can get to flying.”

Then he wiggled his eyebrows at me.

I glared at him crossly. That did help, yes. Nick was officially the only person in the world who could make me voluntarily do physical activity.

“Whatever,” I said faux-grumpily. “If I really wanted to fly that badly I could just get on a trampoline and …”

I stopped talking.

While I was muttering we’d walked up tiny stairs on to a wooden deck surrounded by barriers of glass. People were scattered around us, taking photos, and in every direction was Tokyo. Stretched out and sparkling in the sunshine, leant against a backdrop of clear, bright blue.

And – far away – on the horizon, was a little cone shape.

Mount Fuji.

Nick reached out, tugged me into his side and kissed my head as I stared at it in amazement. I wanted to see Tokyo, and he had given me all of it in one go.

“Without equal,” he grinned, holding his arms out with a flourish and bowing. “Told you I could do it in the allocated time.”

“Oh my God, that’s so romantic. Say that again.”

“Allocated,” he said into my hair, “time.”

“
Thank you
,” I whispered, kissing the edge of his chin. Then I looked at my watch. “Although, you’ve still got fifty-two seconds left, according to my calculations.”

“Don’t need them,” Nick laughed. “Actually, I didn’t need any of them in the first place. I was just making you run for the sake of it.”

I blink at him. “What are you talking about? This isn’t your favourite bit of Tokyo?”

“Nope.” He touched the end of my nose with his finger. “I was there already. My favourite bit of anywhere is you.”

And then he kissed me.

lowly, I pull my satchel out from under a table.

Gently, I touch the little coloured beads hanging in a circle round my neck: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.

My very last gift from Nick.

Then I open my bag, tug a box from inside it and start pulling everything out carefully, as if I’m playing a very volatile game of Operation.

A Clothes Show ticket from the first time I ever met Nick under a table.

An advert torn from a magazine, depicting a boy, a white kitten and a girl, jumping in the Russian snow: the first time he ever held my hand.

The tiny toy lion he brought me when I was sick with flu, and the (unused) tissue and (unopened) packet of Lemsip that were supposed to make me better, but I kept instead.

A little postcard with a T-rex on the front that arrived a few days after I said I had an inner dinosaur in Tokyo, and the letter that followed our race from the roundabout:
Told you I was faster
.
xx

The folded, crumpled 1,000-yen note he gave me on the edge of Lake Motosu.

A very, very dry blue sock.

Finally – when the box has been excavated until it’s all lying in front of me, like a strange archaeological dig – I get a pristine envelope out. I pull a clean, smooth piece of paper from it and unfold it gently.

And I start reading.