by Holly Smale
t was only a matter of time.
I’m like the donkey in the Aesop’s fable who dressed in a lion skin and got away with it until the fox heard him bray. I’ve been waiting for six months for the fashion industry to realise I’m their donkey and chuck me back out again.
I quickly put Wilbur on speakerphone, throw the mobile across my room and climb miserably back into bed. Then I pull a pillow over my head.
You know what? I think I am just going to stay here. I’m almost certain that nobody will notice. I’ll be like Richard III, and in hundreds of years archaeologists will find my skeleton buried under some kind of car park, where future people keep their spaceships.
Or jet packs.
Or magnetically levitating transporters.
Or flying bubbles.
I’m just trying to work out if in 500 years they’ll have finally found a way to replace the wheels in my trainers with rockets when some of Wilbur’s nonsensical words start filtering in through the pillow. “Candle-wick.” “Rabbit-foot.” “Potato-nose.” “Tokyo.”
Tokyo?
I lift the sparkly pillow so I can hear a bit better.
“…so there’s going to be a lot of work to do before you go … and oh my gigglefoot that reminds me you need to pick up some spot cream because we do not want any dermatological disasters like last time you went abroad, do we, my little Baby-baby Unicorn? Eat some more vegetables before you get there and …”
The tiger beetle is proportionately the fastest thing on earth. If it was the size of a human, it could reach 480 mph. I’m on the other side of the room so quickly I reckon I would leave it panting and retching behind me.
“Hello?” I pick the phone up, drop it and then grab it again and start randomly whacking buttons. “Hello? Hello? Wilbur? Hello? Are you there? Hello?”
“Where else would I be, Owl-beak? This is my phone, isn’t it?”
“What did you just say?”
“Love bless you, Plum-pudding. I forget your family has a problem with earwax. I said, try and eat some more vegetables before you land in Tokyo, or Yuka’s going to kick off again and we all know what that means.”
My entire body suddenly feels like it’s been electrocuted. Before I land in Tokyo? “I’m not fired?”
Wilbur shrieks with laughter. “Au contraire, my petit poisson. Yuka has a brand-new job for you in Japan, and if we get moving I should be able to get flights sorted in time.”
I stare at the wall in silence.
I’ve been obsessed with Japan since I was six years old. It’s the Land of the Rising Sun: of sumo and sushi; karaoke and kimonos; mountains and manga. Homeland of Ryuichi Sakamoto and Studio Ghibli; of Hayao Miyazaki and Haruki Murakami. Mecca for geeks and freaks and weirdos. I have dreamt about visiting Japan ever since …
Well. Ever since I realised it existed to visit.
Oh my God: this could fix everything. It will be my New and Infinitely More Glorious Summer Plan 2 (NAIMGS2). I can make a brand-new flow chart. It’s perfect.
And, yes, it might only be a temporary solution, but everybody knows that if you put enough temporary solutions together you’ve got something that lasts a very long time indeed.
“YES!” I shout, picking Hugo up and giving him the biggest, most twinkly kiss of his life, right between his eyebrows. “When do I leave? What’s the plan?”
“You leave on Saturday, my little Panda-pot. And BOOM!” he adds after another stunned silence. “Your fairy godmother strikes again.”
ight. Time to initiate the New Plan.
The first and most important step to convincing your parents that you are a responsible nearly-adult, capable of foreign jaunts, is obviously not being painted gold. So I hop in the shower and scrub myself until I no longer look like the death mask of Tutankhamen.
Then I peruse my wardrobe for something that says I am an authoritative and totally trustworthy girl on the cusp of womanhood. Something that says I can be sent very far away without any repercussions.
In a moment of poetic inspiration, I put on the most expensive thing I own and grab the matching accessories. I spend a few minutes fiddling on my laptop, then stride confidently into the kitchen to face my parents.
“Zac?” Annabel’s saying, pouring ketchup into an open tin of pears and mixing it up with the end of an empty biro. “For a boy or a girl?”
“Either. It’s very gender neutral.” Dad pauses and then adds, “Plus it’s the name of a Macaw from San Jose who can slam twenty-two dunks in one minute.”
“Vetoed.”
“What about Zeus?”
“Zeus? As in the lightning-lobbing Greek father of Gods and Men?”
“As in the world’s tallest dog. Great Dane. Nice eyes.”
Annabel laughs. “I don’t care how nice his eyes are, Richard. Vetoed.”
“Archibald, the world’s smallest bull?”
Annabel looks calmly at Dad. “I think it’s time to give Harriet back her Guinness Book of Records.”
Dad shakes his head. “I’m surprised at you, Annabel. Do you have no respect for the majesty of the animal kingdom?”
“I have plenty of respect for it, Richard. I just don’t particularly want it coming out of my uterus.”
“Liz?”
“You’d better be referring to the Queen.”
“Of course I am,” Dad says indignantly. “Two of them, in fact. Both fierce examples of female power, independence and majesty.” He pauses. “And, you know … Hurley.”
I quickly cough from the doorway before there’s only one parent left alive to appeal to. Then I walk regally into the centre of the room.
“Father. Annabel.” I look at Hugo who scampered down here at the first whiff of cheesy-bacon. “Dog. I would like to open this session by apologising profusely for my behaviour yesterday. It was an untimely display of vivaciousness due to the unexpected ruination of my Summer of Fun Flow Chart. I should have found a way to express my entirely valid opinions more reasonably.”
I pause to see if this heartfelt apology has sunk in. They’re both staring at me with wide eyes. Ha. I feel a bit like Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. I’m totally going to nail this.
“Secondly,” I say, putting my laptop down on the table and pressing a button so that it shines at the wall. “I have something very important to show you.”
There are a few seconds of impressed, awed silence.
Then my parents burst into laughter so loud that Hugo steps back and starts barking at the ceiling.
“Brilliant,” Dad gasps. “What’s she wearing this time?”
“I think it’s her bridesmaid dress from Margaret’s wedding,” Annabel whispers, wiping her eyes. “You can still see where she sat on a candle during the after-dinner speeches.”
“Oh, thank God. I thought my daughter had turned into an enormous toilet-roll holder.”
I wait patiently for them both to stop giggling. I’m totally going to remember this moment when it comes time to put them in a retirement home.
“This outfit,” I say, nobly deciding to rise above both of them, “may be a bridesmaid dress, but if you use your imagination it represents something much bigger.”
I press a button on my laptop, and an image of a cygnet shines on to the wall. “I was once an ugly duckling—”
Dad puts his hand up. “With feathers all stubby and brown?”
I stick my tongue out at him and press the button again. The picture changes from cygnet to swan. “But in the last six months, I have grown up a lot. I have transformed.” I click quickly through a few photos of tadpoles and frogs, caterpillars and butterflies I copied from Google. “But what happens at the end of a transformation … is that where the story ends?”
I point at the slide that says:
TRANSFORMATION → WHAT NEXT?
“Yes.”
I scowl. “It’s a rhetorical question, Dad. The implied answer is clearly no.”
“Keep going, Harriet,” Annabel says through a
mouthful of ketchup pear. “I’m curious to see where this will end up.”
“Does a caterpillar sit on the same leaf when it’s a butterfly? No! It goes for a little fly and sees something of the world. Does the tadpole stay in the same pond once it’s a frog? No! It stretches its legs, goes for a jump, explores other waters.” I gesticulate energetically with my matching fake flower bouquet. “Did Cinderella go back to cleaning hearths once she married the prince?”
“Probably,” Dad says. “They didn’t have women’s rights back then. She had to do the cooking too, and probably a bit of laundry.”
“For the love of sugar cookies, Dad, stop answering rhetorical questions.”
I take a deep breath and compose myself again.
“Transformation means moving forwards. If a butterfly stays on the same leaf and a frog stays in the same pond, then they may as well have stayed a caterpillar or a tadpole. There was no point in metamorphosing.”
“Wrap it up now, Harriet,” Annabel says gently.
I had an entire slide about a dragonfly, but maybe I’ll leave that for the encore. I click to the final slide, and a picture of Mount Fuji shines on to the wall with my face hastily copied and pasted on top of it.
“So, in summary: I assert my right to go to Tokyo for a modelling job. Thank you for listening.” And I plonk myself triumphantly down on a chair.
Excellent. That should do it.
Maybe I won’t be a physicist after all. I’ll be a lawyer, and my poetic and powerful Powerpoint presentations will be made into poignant fridge magnets for years to come.
Dad’s expression reminds me of Hugo when we get takeaway pizza. “Japan? The agency wants Harriet to go to Japan? Annabel, that’s where those little trees that look like big trees but smaller come from. Can I go with her, Annabel? Please?”
“Richard,” Annabel says, “if you had a full-sized koala lodged in your abdomen, would you want me to stay with you?”
Dad looks horrified. “Definitely.”
“Then let’s assume I feel the same way, shall we?” She turns back to me with a softer voice. “We can’t take you to Japan, sweetheart. I wouldn’t be able to get through the doors of the aeroplane, for starters, and I need your dad here because I could go into labour at any moment. You understand, don’t you?”
I nod. Of course I understand that.
Annabel’s eyes widen. “So what you’re actually asking is to go to Tokyo, entirely on your own? At fifteen years old?”
“Yuka will be th—” I start, and Annabel looks at me sharply.
She has a point: Cruella De Vil would make a more reassuring guardian.
I clear my throat and clutch my fake flower bouquet as tight as I can. “Like Cinderella, I believe it is my turn to stop cleaning hearths.”
“Harriet,” Dad points out. “You don’t even make your own bed.”
“I’m talking symbolically.” Dad clearly doesn’t understand the subtleties of the English language. “Please?”
Annabel smiles. “Come here,” she says affectionately, and when I perch on the sofa next to her she nudges me with her shoulder and spikes another pear with her biro. “Listen, we know things are hard for you at the moment, Harriet. Don’t think we haven’t noticed.”
I shrug.
“But I’m sorry, you can’t go to the other side of the world on your own. You might be older than your age in some ways, but in quite a few of them you’re also much, much younger.”
What?
“Just because I don’t have any boobs yet doesn’t mean you can stop me going abroad! That’s discrimination!”
Annabel laughs. “That’s not even slightly what I’m talking about, Harriet.”
Then I turn to Dad with my widest, most beseeching eyes. “Tell her I can go, please!”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart, but for the first time ever I’m with Annabel on this one.” Dad twinkles at me but I block it with my firmest scowl.
“So what am I expected to do all summer? Just sit here and rot in a corner?”
“I don’t know, Harriet,” Annabel sighs. “Draw. Read. Paint. Go for walks. Build nuclear warheads. Take your dad to the zoo. Whatever you want as long as you remain within a 500-mile radius of this house.”
“So what you’re telling me,” I shout furiously, “is I can’t go to Japan because of that?” and I point at Annabel’s belly.
Annabel suddenly looks incredibly tired. “No, Harriet.” She puts the pear tin down. “I am saying that you can’t go to Japan because of that.”
And she points directly at me.
bviously the most important thing at a time like this is to remember to maintain the moral high ground. To react with dignity and self-control: noble in defeat, gallant in loss.
Which is why it’s a massive disappointment when I throw the fake flower bouquet across the kitchen and yell, “Stop trying to ruin my life! This is so unfair! I wish I’d never been BOOORRRN!”
And charge over to the front door, pull it open and stomp out with as much vigour as I can muster. Leaving it hanging wide open behind me.
Before I actually run away, I’d just like to point out how incredibly unreasonable my parents are being.
I’m nearly sixteen. By this age, Isaac Asimov was at university, Eddie Murphy was doing stand-up comedy shows in New York, Louis Braille had invented raised writing, chess champion Bobby Fischer was an international grandmaster and Harry Potter was well on his way to saving the entire world of magic.
It’s not that I don’t appreciate having people in my life who want to be with me, every step of the way. But still.
I bet Isaac Asimov didn’t get this kind of disrespect from his parents.
My plan is to stomp all the way to Nat’s house and then stay there a) forever or b) until my parents are so prostrate with grief at my absence that they’ll let me do whatever I want as long as I come home again.
Unfortunately the huge silk skirt of my bridesmaid dress gets caught on a bush at the bottom of the road, and by the time I’ve managed to rip myself free I don’t really have any stomping energy left. I just feel like a bit of an idiot.
Nat’s door swings open before I’ve even knocked, and – not for the first time – my brain spins slightly. When Nat’s mum isn’t covered in colourful miracle paste and wearing a dressing gown, she looks so much like Nat it’s like having a worm-hole into the future.
“Harriet, darling!” she says, beaming at me. “What a pretty dress!” She leans forward to give me a kiss. “And I adore the tiara.”
“Hello, Ms Grey,” I say politely. “I’ve run away and I’m living here now.”
“Are you, sweetie? How terribly exciting.”
“Is Nat in, please?”
“She’s upstairs, packing for her trip.” Nat’s mum pauses and sniffs. “And by the smell of it she’s taking my Chanel perfume with her.”
“IT’S NOT THE CHANEL ACTUALLY, MUM,” Nat yells downstairs. “IT’S THE PRADA. SHOWS HOW MUCH YOU KNOW.”
Nat’s mum leans up the stairs. “You’re being punished, Natalie. You’re not taking any perfume, mine or otherwise. And no high heels, make-up or jewellery either. I will be checking.”
Nat appears at the top of the stairs in about half a second, like a magic genie. “Mum. I can’t leave the house without make-up. I’m not a savage.”
“Maybe the next time you decide to skip an exam because you feel like testing out lipsticks, you’ll think twice.”
“Or maybe I’ll just check first that my mum isn’t testing out eyeshadow in the aisle behind me.”
Nat’s mum laughs. “Touché, Natalie. Unfortunately only one of us is Mum and it’s not you.”
Nat looks furious. “Fine. Whatever. Have it your way, as always.”
She looks at me and makes her Can You Believe This? face.
Then she looks at me again with her What The Hell Are You Wearing? face.
“Harriet, why do you look like something that just got kicked off the Disney Channel?�
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I hold out my skirts. “Parental manipulation.”
“Did it work?”
“Nope. Not even a little bit.”
“I honestly don’t know why we bother making an effort in the first place.” Nat glares at her mum again, then beckons to me. “Anyway, come on up, Harriet. I think I might need your help.”
at needs somebody’s help, that’s for sure.
I can barely open the door to her room, and – when I finally do – I realise it’s because every single piece of clothing she owns is on the floor. It looks like our garden after a mole has been through it, except that instead of mounds of soil there are about fifteen hills of shoes and dresses and jumpers and handbags and scarves and vest tops and leggings, erupting from the carpet.
Nat’s already crouched in the middle of her bed, holding a box of tampons.
“Hop up here,” she says as I squeeze my way in, pointing at a spot on the bed with her foot.
I carefully clamber over a pile of skirts. “What on earth are you doing?”
Nat holds up a tampon with a grim face. “This.” She pulls the cotton wool out of the applicator and rams a pink lipstick in. “I reckon I should be able to get five in a box, and quite a few eyeliners and lipglosses as long as they’re short ones.” Then she holds up a small conditioner bottle. “This is foundation.” She pulls out a tiny tub of moisturiser. “This is cream blush.” Finally, she pulls out a ridiculously thick copy of Harper’s Bazaar. “I need you to cut a hole in the middle of all the pages so I’ve got somewhere to put my eyeshadows and mascara.”
I stare at her in awe and then take the magazine off her.
“You could put a pair of strappy high heels inside a tissue box, with tissues on top? And maybe little sachets of perfume inside sanitary towels?”
Nat grins at me and holds up her hand. “Harriet Manners, what would I do without you?”
I high-five her. “Be slightly shorter and less fragrant, I’d imagine.” Then I pick up the scissors and start neatly cutting through a few pages of a beautiful model with blonde waves down to her waist.