Geek Girl (23 page)

t takes a few moments to work out where the bananas are coming from. Within seconds, I’ve got sweets in my hat, in the collar of my jumper and a half-chewed one stuck to the sleeve of my coat.

Inexplicably, I look upwards.

“Hey,
geek
,” a voice yells. It’s only as I turn round that I realise the sky isn’t raining sweets after all. Alexa is standing on the other side of the road just outside the local shops with her hand in a paper bag. “
Geek
,” she shouts again and then she laughs.

I freeze. Alexa has the single ugliest haircut I’ve ever seen on a girl in my life. Somehow I don’t think this is going to be a friendly encounter. A confused buzzing has started in the back of my head.
Aren’t things supposed to be different now?

“Leave me alone,” I say more firmly than I feel and start walking away as fast as I can.

She follows me. “As if that’s going to happen.” Another banana smacks me hard on the back of the head. “I saw a documentary about monkeys last night and I think you look just like one, Harriet. And you move like one too. A little ginger orang-utan. All orange and hairy.” She looks at the bananas in the bag she’s holding. “You know,” she adds, “it’s lucky these taste like perfume or I’d probably just eat them.”

“Umm,” I say. Does she want me to thank her?

Alexa looks back at me and her lips pull back so I can see her teeth, except it’s definitely not a smile. “What do you think, Harriet? Do you like my hair?” And she points to her head.

Don’t engage in conversation. It’s going to make it worse.
“It’s, umm,” I say because yet again the connection between brain and mouth has snapped. “Very… snazzy.”

“Yeah?” Alexa says. “Personally I’m not so keen.” She runs her hands through it. “In fact, I’m pretty hacked off about it.”

I burst out laughing at the pun and then bite my lip in horror.

“You think this is
funny
?” Alexa yells, suddenly losing her cool. Her face changes colour. “You think I’m
laughing
?”

“No.” I put my suddenly sweaty hands around my satchel straps so that when I have to run, it doesn’t slow me down.

“The hairdresser can’t fit me in until tomorrow. I’ve had to go to school like this for
two entire days.
Two days, geek. Do you
know
how many boys have stopped fancying me now?”

“Two?”

“It was a rhetorical question!” Alexa looks furious. “Nat said she did it for you. So
I’m going to make you pay for it.
”

I take a few jittery steps backwards because she’s going to hit me. Finally – after years of vaguely promising it – she’s going to get down to bullying basics and smack me right in the face.

I quickly run through the options.

I’m so surprised that I nearly forget about the fifth choice:

“Are you going to punch me?” I ask, feeling numb and strangely relieved. I wish she had done this years ago. Maybe then she’ll be finished with me.

Alexa frowns and then laughs. “Punch you? Why would I
punch
you? What on earth would I get out of that, apart from a load of trouble?” Then she pulls something out of her bag. It looks a lot like a newspaper. “You forget, Harriet, that I’ve known you for ten years. I don’t
need
to punch you.”

I’m so confused my whole head feels like it has been stuffed with cotton wool. And yet somehow I know that whatever it is Alexa’s about to do, I’m going to wish she’d just used her fist.

I look at the paper. “W-w-what’s that?”

“This?” Alexa looks at it. “It’s an article, Harriet. About some fifteen-year-old schoolgirl apparently. Took the fashion world by storm yesterday in… where was it? Moscow.”

My entire body goes cold and I feel like I’m going to throw up.

“That’s in Russia,” she adds. “In case you were wondering if I knew.”

No.
No.
There’s no way this could have happened. It would have to have gone to print… Last night.

Sugar cookies.

Alexa smirks and moves close enough for me to see. There – in full glory – is a large photo of me yesterday. Sitting on the catwalk, with Fleur next to me. The headline says English Schoolgirl Knocks Fashion World Off Its Feet
.

“I…” I start mumbling, but my insides are ice and my ears are completely numb. “I… I…”

“I, I, I,” Alexa echoes and then she looks at it again. “I know. It’s beyond me why anybody would want a photo of
you.
”

At the back of my brain, I finally feel the horror of comprehension. “You haven’t…
shown
anyone, have you?” I whisper and my voice sounds like I’m being strangled. “You haven’t shown anyone else this article?”

Alexa looks shocked. “Like who? Like our headmistress? Who’ll be interested to know why you haven’t been at school for two days? I went all the way back to school to hand her a copy especially. Punishment for taking time off school without permission is normally suspension, right? Or possibly,” and she looks at the paper again, “expulsion.”

My head is starting to spin. I’m going to get suspended? I don’t get suspended. And I definitely don’t get
expelled.
I shake my head. There’s something more important. “Have you shown it to… anyone else?”

Alexa crows. “What, Nat? The girl who has made every single class speech about wanting to model since we were seven? The girl who wouldn’t talk to anyone after The Clothes Show and has been crying in the loos ever since? The girl who told everyone you were sick with a cold for the last two days
and seemed to believe it
?” Alexa raises her eyebrows. “Why?” she says in a faux-innocent voice. “Was I not supposed to?”

Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no.

Nononononononono.

“
Did you tell Nat?
” I shout at the top of my voice. “
Did you tell her?”

“No,” Alexa says. “I just dropped an extra copy of this page through her letterbox.” And she turns round and touches her hair. “It’s known as
retribution
, Harriet. Or
requital. Vengeance. Comeuppance.
Pick any noun you like.”

And – just as quickly as it started fitting back together – my whole world falls apart again.

run as fast as I can, but it’s no good. As soon as I turn my phone on, I know my life is in meltdown. I have fifteen voicemails from Wilbur and nobody else is picking up their phone.

“
Hello. This is Richard Manners. I’m probably with Liz Hurley right now, but leave a message and I’ll ring you back when she’s gone home. BEEP.”

“Dad,” I gasp into his answering machine, still running. “We’ve been caught. Don’t let Annabel buy—” and I screech to an abrupt halt on the pavement. I have no idea what paper this article is in. “Don’t let her buy
anything
. Just stop her leaving the house. She can’t find out this way
.
”

Then I recommence running. I need to get to Nat.Before the newspaper does.

Apparently I’m the only person in the entire world with any sense of urgency. By the time Nat’s mum finally opens the front door, I’m screaming
Fire
through the letterbox and scratching at the paintwork.

“Harriet?” she says and even in my panic I stop, confused for a few seconds.

Nat’s mum is blue. Not a bit blue: totally blue. Like Annabel, she only really ever wears a dressing gown; unlike Annabel, she doesn’t just have one and it doesn’t have baked beans down the front. This one is a pale blue silk kimono. She also has a white towel wrapped round her hair and her face is painted in a pale blue face mask. When Nat’s mum doesn’t look like a giant Smurf, she looks a lot like Nat. Except twenty years older and modified by huge amounts of plastic surgery.

“What’s going on? Are we all dying?”

“Yes. I mean no. Not immediately. Is Nat here, please?”

“No idea. Four Botox injections and I can’t move a muscle. Look at this!” She makes a pained expression with her eyes.

“I need to see her.”

“Is everything all right?”

“Not really.” I start removing my shoes so I don’t track mud into her white carpet. “Has anything been delivered to your house today?”

Nat’s mum strains around the eyes again. “Not as far as I know.”

I pause in the middle of a shoelace. The wave of relief is so powerful that for a second I think I’m going to fall over. Maybe Alexa got the wrong address. “Really?”

“I don’t think so.”

I take a deep breath and feel the panic starting to seep back out. I’m still going to tell Nat, but now I can do it gently, sensitively, apologetically, delicatel—

“Unless you mean the envelope that came through the door half an hour ago.”

My breath stops.

“I took it up to her a few minutes ago. I’m not sure I’d call it a
delivery
exactly, but it seemed important. Handwritten and everything.”

Oh, no, no,
no.

And before Nat’s mum can say anything else, I rip my shoes off and race upstairs.