Forever Geek

by Holly Smale

  Quickly, I look at my watch.

  I’m the only model who’s now totally ready: the other girls are still being amended, stitched or made-up in the main room.

  Which means I’ve got twenty minutes to spare.

  And if my mental map of the entire internal layout of the Sydney Observatory is accurate – which it absolutely is – that should be plenty of time.

  If not, there’s always the printout in my satchel too.

  “Soooo …” I say, taking an awkward side step. “Did you know that by the time we reach seventeen years old, most British children will have been driven 80,000 miles by their parents?”

  I look round: everyone’s chatting, stitching and practising poses without a glance in my direction.

  So I take another cautious step.

  “And that it would take a garden snail three years and two months to make its way from Land’s End to John O’Groats?”

  They’re all focused intently on the job at hand.

  I take one more tiny step. “Or that a raw carrot is still alive when you eat it? Can you believe that?”

  Not a single glance in my direction.

  And they’re three pretty amazing facts: if anyone was listening, they would definitely have responded.

  My parents certainly did when I told them the first one.

  With a surge of excitement, I carefully tuck the daisy Bunty gave me into the back of my bun.

  Then I take my final step towards a tiny side door with a piece of paper that says:

  TELESCOPE TO THE STARS –

  DO NOT ENTER.

  Smiling, I hold the skirts of my gown up like Belle in Beauty and the Beast.

  And then I push it open and flit straight through.

  know, I know: I can almost hear you judging me.

  Because let’s be honest, of all the professional things a model should probably do before a big fashion show:

  … are not three of them.

  I mean, what’s wrong with me? Why am I always asking for trouble? Haven’t I made very similar mistakes before?

  Have I actually learnt nothing?

  Well, I have.

  What I’ve learnt is that you can’t just crouch under a table, waiting for life to come and find you.

  You have to grab it for yourself.

  There are eighty-eight official constellations of stars, and each of them has its own story:

  The whole night sky is a narrative, written by us.

  So if our stories are driven by who we are and what we do – not by the events that happen to us – then it also means we get to choose our own adventures.

  We decide our own fates.

  And we make our own luck.

  Quietly, I tiptoe through the corridors with my white dress carefully held off the floor so it doesn’t get dusty.

  Everything’s dark but I don’t want to draw attention to myself by switching all the lights of a closed observatory on. So, with a bolt of sudden inspiration, I put my hand to my back.

  Smiling, I press a button.

  And with a pop my entire dress lights up like a candle, just as it did in the lake: brightly enough for me to see a few metres ahead.

  Glittering, I reach the bottom of some winding stairs.

  Quickly, I check the time: I’ve got seventeen minutes left to examine the southern hemisphere in detail and be back before anyone notices I’m missing.

  Gathering my skirts, I run up the stairs.

  Breathing hard, I burst through the door into a small, domed room.

  Scientists recently discovered that the flame of a candle creates 1.5 million diamond nanoparticles for every second it burns. But as I stand – glowing – in the doorway I’m forced to wonder if I’m on fire too.

  It’s pitch-black but I can just see the shadowy outline of a boy, already looking through the telescope.

  And I’m suddenly not sure where the tiny diamonds are coming from any more.

  My dress, or me.

  emember what I told you about ghost words?

  Words that officially exist in the English language but don’t actually carry any kind of meaning in them?

  Well, there’s the exact opposite too.

  There are approximately 6,500 different languages in the world, and most of them have ways of expressing sensations, experiences, objects and feelings that we forgot to name in English.

  In Hawaiian there’s akihi: the process of listening to directions, walking off and then forgetting them.

  In Japanese there’s tsundoku – the act of buying books and then not reading them – and in German there’s Kabelsalat: a mess of tangled-up cables, or a “cable salad”. Pisan zapra in Malay is the time it takes to eat one banana, and struisvogelpolitiek in Dutch is the art of sticking your head in the sand (literally, the “politics of the ostrich”).

  There’s also pochemuchka: a personal favourite of mine, and Russian for “a person who asks too many questions”.

  That’s how I know these words in the first place.

  But as I stare at the boy in front of me – as I glitter all over like the night sky – I realise that there are some experiences that can’t be expressed perfectly in any language.

  And that this is one of them.

  “Nick?” I say, taking a step forward.

  I’m the sole source of light in the room: filling it with the bright, eerie glow of an enormous bioluminescent insect, wearing yet another white dress.

  Honestly, I’m starting to feel like a teenage Miss Havisham.

  “Harriet?” Nick says, turning round.

  Even in the dark, I can vaguely see the almond outline of his eyes; the halo of his black curls, the curve in the corner of his wide lips. I can see the tiny mole on his left cheek and the slight glimmer of his pointed canine teeth; the slope of his shoulders and the—

  Oh, God.

  Kilig is a Tagalog word for “butterflies in the stomach”.

  But mine must have somehow escaped, because they’re suddenly everywhere: beating their wings through my whole body. In my chest, in my throat, in my shoulders, in my arms and my legs, through to my fingertips and into my toes.

  And I don’t know the right word for that.

  Honestly, I thought they’d all fallen asleep a long time ago, or at the very least gone on an extended holiday.

  You’re friends you’re friends you’re –

  “I came to see the catadioptric telescope,” I blurt nervously. “It combines a Cassegrain reflector’s optical path with a Schmidt corrector plate to make a compact astronomical instrument that uses simple spherical surfaces.”

  Which is literally, word-for-word, what is written on Wikipedia.

  “I know,” Nick says with a smile. “It’s written on the little sign over there.”

  Bat poop.

  “Does it say that the first-ever large telescope to use that design was the James Gregory Telescope of 1962 at the University of St Andrews?”

  Nick’s nose twitches. “Nope.”

  “Oh good. Because I’m all out of facts about this particular telescope now so that would be awkward.”

  Nick laughs loudly and for just a second the light in the room gets very slightly brighter.

  “Do you want to look?” Nick says, taking a step back. “I already know the southern hemisphere pretty well, so …”

  Cautiously, I take a few steps forward.

  Humans are able to detect one trillion different scents, but as I put my eye against the viewfinder all I can smell is greenness: limes and wet grass and chewy sweets.

  And with a whoosh I’m suddenly back under a table again.

  “So …” I say, trying to subtly breathe through my mouth. “What exactly am I looking at?”

  “You tell me,” Nick says with a grin, pressing a button and putting a hand briefly on my shoulder. “You’re usually the resident star expert.”

  With a whirring sound, the roof starts to spin slowly and the night spins with it: a dizzying mass of twinkling l
ights.

  I’m now glowing so hard and my head’s spinning so fast it’s a wonder I don’t just shoot into the sky like a meteor.

  Focus, Harriet. You’re friends you’re friends you’re—

  Frowning, I peer into the telescope.

  “That’s Mars,” I say, clearing my throat as the telescope focuses. “And right next to it is Saturn.”

  “No offence, Manners, but for a star expert you aren’t pointing out many stars.”

  I laugh. “I think that’s Gemini,” I continue, awkwardly pointing. “See? The two brightest stars are Castor and Pollux, and if you trace them down you can see the outline of twins. Which means next to it must be—”

  I abruptly stop talking.

  Mamihlapinatapai is a Yaghan word that means silent understanding between two people thinking the same thing at the same time, and this is probably the first time I’ve ever experienced it.

  As is well documented, I never normally know what anyone else is thinking at all.

  Except right now I do.

  Because the telescope is pointing directly at Orion’s Belt: Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka. The three stars you can see from both the southern and the northern hemisphere: the three stars that held Nick and I together when we were apart.

  “A-and th-that’s the moon,” I stammer quickly, spinning the telescope away. “Not a planet or a star, but a satellite. Did you know that you would need 398,110 moons in the sky to equal the luminosity of the sun?”

  Nick doesn’t say anything.

  “Or that a ninety-five per cent illuminated moon is only half as bright as a full moon because of the shadows caused by the craters?”

  Still silence.

  “Which are … umm … all named after scholars, artists, scientists and explorers?” I swallow, hard. “For instance there’s the Copernicus Crater, the Aristotle Crater, the Archimedes Crater, the Calippus Crater, the Descartes Crater …”

  “Harriet,” Nick says finally.

  “The Edison Crater, the Earhart Crater, the Michael Jackson crater …”

  “Harriet.”

  “The Newton Crater, the Marco Polo—”

  “Harriet, I need to say something.”

  Flushing, I slowly lift my head and turn to face him in the dark. There are 300,000 moon craters and frankly I’m so nervous right now there’s a good chance I was just going to keep naming them for the rest of the night.

  No, Harriet. No no no no no no no –

  Because forelsket is the Norwegian word for the euphoria you feel when you start falling in love. And I can suddenly feel the beginning of it: tumbling and plummeting and cascading inside me.

  Except it’s not really the beginning, is it?

  All we did was hit pause.

  “Harriet,” Nick says again slowly, and …

  I’m watching him sleep under a table;

  I’m sitting on the pavement;

  we’re running through the snow,

  walking through Manhattan,

  spinning in a circle on a roundabout;

  he’s flicking mints at my window;

  we’re laughing in my bedroom,

  my sock is wet;

  we’re standing on a bridge;

  kissing

  kissing

  kissing …

  There’s a loud bang.

  And suddenly the room is full of light.

  e both freeze.

  For just a second the light is so blinding, so disorientating, I’m convinced it’s coming from me.

  I may have a habit of massively overestimating my electric capabilities.

  “Harriet,” a sharp voice says as Nick and I automatically spin towards the source of light. “When are you going to do as you are told.”

  It’s a question but it definitely doesn’t have a question mark.

  And there – a dark silhouette in the doorway – is the reason we are both here in the first place.

  Yuka.

  hlimazel.

  It’s a Yiddish word for somebody who has a lot of bad luck, except – as previously discussed – I almost always bring mine on myself.

  We’ve got an English word for my personalised version.

  It’s idiot.

  With a tiny movement, Yuka Ito touches the wall and a neon light flickers on overhead. She looks exactly the same as she did last year: white marble face, long black lace dress, straight black hair, tiny pillbox hat with a net over one eye.

  Like an incredibly fashionable, terrifying spider.

  Yet again, I get the feeling I’m the fly.

  “Nicholas,” she says, turning towards him coldly. “I was unaware that you were at this event. I’d ask how you got in, but I suspect it was through a window.”

  A pulse of fear rockets through me – the truth is all going to come out now, at the worst possible moment – but Nick just grins.

  “Doors are massively overrated,” he shrugs.

  “Apparently,” Yuka says in a clipped voice. “I may have to invest in better security.”

  Then – as if she’s on a pivot – she turns slowly towards me.

  Apparently African heart-nosed bats can hear the footsteps of a beetle on sand from two metres away and I really wish I had similar audio skills.

  At least a bit of warning would have been handy.

  “And I don’t remember my instructions being for every model to congregate at eight pm, apart from Harriet Manners,” she adds flatly. “Perhaps you heard them wrong.”

  I shake my head, even though I’ve just surreptitiously glanced at my watch and it’s nine minutes to eight so I’m not actually late yet.

  I’m not going to make that particular observation out loud.

  “No,” I admit in a tiny voice. “I didn’t.”

  “Then presumably you can explain why you’re up here, running down the battery in my dress.”

  Oops. Quickly, I slip my hand to my back and press the button that turns my lights off. “I …”

  “It’s my fault,” Nick says as I stop glittering in every sense possible. “I made Harriet meet me up here. There were some stars I wanted to show her.”

  Blinking, I stare at him. “That’s not what—”

  “You must be mistaking me for someone who cares,” Yuka interrupts. “All I know is that there are five hundred people waiting for a show to start and instead of preparing for it I am searching the building for my missing model.”

  A wave of guilt rushes through me.

  “I’m sorry,” I say meekly. “And … I just want to say thank you. For … letting me be part of this …” I glance at Nick. “Special event. With you. Now.”

  I can’t say any more than that without giving it all away.

  “You were free,” Yuka says bluntly. “I’d rather spend my money on things I can rely on working properly.”

  Then she turns rigidly towards the stairs.

  “I expect you to be downstairs and in position in forty-five seconds, Harriet,” she says over her shoulder. “There will not be a next time.”

  Then she turns the light off over our heads with a click and disappears down the stairs.

  Just for old times’ sake, I guess.

  There’s a silence while Nick and I stand in the dark.

  There will not be a next time.

  “Nick,” I manage finally into the darkness. “You didn’t need to do that. Lie for me, I mean.”

  “I didn’t,” he says simply. “Who do you think wrote the sign on the door downstairs in the first place?”

  Then with a small smile Nick disappears down the dark stairs too.

  Leaving me: transparent like crystal behind him.

  K, it’s time for me to focus.

  Because I’ve done a fair few fashion shows, and so far they have consisted of: walk, walk, walk, walk, make a mistake, get yelled at, regret ever trying to model in the first place.

  This time, I’m committed to performing flawlessly.

  Partly because this is by far the most impor
tant fashion job I’ve ever done. Partly because humans have been upright and bipedal for 3.7 million years so it’s really not that much to ask of me.

  But mainly because there are only so many ways you can screw up walking and I’ve already done them all.

  As for everything else …

  I think we can wait a little while longer.

  As calmly as possible, I make my way back into the main room.

  Then I blink at the shift in atmosphere.

  Just fifteen minutes ago, the room was full of noise and chaos and mess: of hairdryers, make-up, hairbrushes, rollers: models chatting, stylists yelling, Poppy and Shola complaining loudly about their agents in the corner.

  But now it’s totally silent.

  The tables have all been moved and tidied, and there’s a line of models queued against the side of the room. All bright, all beautiful; all sparkling and excited.

  And all behaving – I have to say it – perfectly.

  “Harriet!” Fleur hisses across the room, pointing frantically to the space in front of her. “She’s coming! Quickly! Get in!”

  As fast as possible, I skip over to my position.

  “Do we have no shoes?” I whisper, suddenly realising that every single model in the room is barefoot.

  “Not for this one,” Fleur says with a wry grin. “Although knowing Yuka it may be because this show is going to include walking across burning coals.”

  Oh, thank sugar cookies.

  My chances of falling over just decreased by five thousand per cent. I’d happily take third-degree burns over wearing high heels any day.

  Poppy glares at me icily from four girls in front, and I smile winningly back.

  “If we’re all here now,” a hard voice says as the front door swings open, “I’d like your full attention.”

  We turn obediently to the front.

  Yuka’s standing in the doorway. She’s now wearing hot pink lipstick, but she still looks tired and pale: fragile and brittle under the thick make-up.

  “This show is momentous,” she says as I feel another pang of sadness. “It will be the pinnacle of a career that has spanned thirty years and changed the fashion industry as we know it.”

  From anyone else, this would sound incredibly arrogant: even slightly delusional.