by Holly Smale
I take a deep, contented breath. It’s like seeing a field of clean, unmarked snow and knowing you’re about to get your footprints all over it.
“What do you want to start with?” I say, pulling out a pale blue book with butterflies on the cover. “I’m really keen to find out what a lepton and a quark are. Do you know?”
“Education is an adventure,” Miss Hall says abruptly, sitting on the sofa. “I cannot make the journey for you.”
I couldn’t have put it better myself.
So I pore happily through a few books and say:
“This one says a quark is one of the hypothetical basic particles, having charges whose magnitudes are one-third or two-thirds of the charge of an electron.”
“Exactly,” my governess agrees.
“And a lepton is any of a family of elementary particles that participate in a weak interaction.”
“There you go. And how do you feel now?”
“A bit confused,” I admit.
“I was given the impression that you were a clever girl, Harry. Have I been misled?”
I flush. Up to this point, I thought I was too.
“N-no,” I stammer, picking another textbook up. “I’ve got top grades, Miss Hall. Straight A*s.”
I’m not going to include technology. Nobody cares about my ability to sand things properly.
“Good,” she says. “Because I will be extremely disappointed if I have to hold your hand throughout this process. I am an academic, not a babysitter.”
I flush a little more.
“I know,” I say more indignantly than I mean to. “And I don’t need a babysitter.”
“Then we understand each other. Read chapter sixteen, and in ten minutes I will test you on it.”
I flip the physics textbook back open. It’s a chapter on something called ‘Damping’.
“But …” There are a lot of complicated-looking graphs, and something about oscillating equilibriums. “Don’t you think that’s a little—”
Miss Hall lifts her eyebrows. “If you can’t keep up, Harry, I suggest we put these textbooks away and start again with Year 11. If you’re not intellectually ready to move on, then I see no other option but to treat you like a child.”
I’ve been called many, many names in my life, but intellectually deficient is not one of them.
“I’m ready,” I say, lifting my chin slightly and thinking of all my favourite facts that I’d lovingly listed in my diary.
“It seems to me that you seem to lack what here in America we call character. I’m hoping you simply make a weak first impression.”
I put my chin back down. “Sorry.”
“Nothing can hold you back but yourself, Harry. Remember that. Now get on with it.”
ere are some of the highlights of the next four hours:
By the time I’ve waded through an entire chapter on nuclear fusion my brain feels like it’s been dissolved in sodium hydroxide and then popped in a blender.
I am nowhere near as smart as I thought I was.
Finally, Miss Hall tells me that’s enough ‘easing in’, tightens her backpack straps and leaves in a stomping march.
“How did it go?” Annabel says as I stagger up the stairs and stand, rubbing my eye, in the middle of the hallway.
Every single cell of my brain aches. A brain which – I’ve just discovered – doesn’t actually have any nerve endings and therefore can’t feel physical pain.
Right now, I am seriously starting to question that fact.
“Great,” I say, putting my hand on the doorframe so I can yawn without falling over.
Annabel’s sitting on the bathroom floor, wrestling Tabitha into a clean onesie. It looks like she’s trying to fit an octopus into a sock: there are arms and legs everywhere. “So did you like Miss Hall?”
“Very much,” I say, crawling on to the floor next to Annabel and sleepily putting my face against Tabitha’s warm, round cheek. Then I close my eyes and listen to the comforting dripping of the tap.
Drrrrrip. Drrrrrip. Drrrrrip.
“Harriet?” I open my eyes. Annabel is frowning at me. “Is it too hard? Because if it is, just tell me and I’ll have a word with Miss Hall. I don’t want her exhausting you.”
Too hard? What is that supposed to mean? Does my own stepmother think I can’t keep up?
“Why would it be too hard?” I mumble. “Nothing can hold me back but myself.”
Annabel’s frown deepens. “OK.”
“Our future selves are only as good as our past selves believe we can be.”
“…right.” Annabel frowns a bit harder. “That doesn’t really make any sense, but as long as you’re happy.”
I close my eyes again. “I’m going to get spectacular results,” I murmur sleepily, “and pass with flying colours, just … you … wait … and …”
Drrrrip. Drrrrip. Drrrrrip.
It’s funny, in the moment just before you fall asleep, things start to sound different. The bathroom tap sounds like a spaceship.
Or a helicopter.
Or some kind of giant bee, with huge fluorescent rainbow wings, flying closer and closer, landing on my leg, vibrating and—
“Harriet? Are you going to answer your phone?”
My phone feels like it’s about to take off in my pocket. I grab it out and hold it to my face without even looking at the screen.
“Hmmmm?” I say.
“Hmmmm to you too,” a warm voice says on the other end. “And brrrrrrr and baaaaaa as well, if we’re just making noises.”
I jump up so quickly my hip smashes into the towel rail. “Nnnneoowww,” I squeak in pain.
“Another classic. How about grrrrrr or pnnnnnnggg or dingowombatikan?”
“Dingowombatikan?” I smile. “That sounds like some kind of tiny marsupial.”
“I’m Australian,” my boyfriend laughs. “I’ve got imaginary indigenous species on the brain. This particular one looks like a dog crossed with a kangaroo.”
And suddenly my brain feels just fine.
July 15th
“I’ve got an idea.”
Nick and I were lying against each other on the roundabout in the park near my house, watching the sky rotate above us and the sun flash in and out of the trees.
We hadn’t spoken in more than thirty minutes, other than little kisses strewn throughout, and I was very nearly asleep.
“Mmmm,” I mumbled into his shoulder. “We should make a note of it and bury it in the garden for posterity.”
Nick laughed. “Do you want to hear it, or do you want to be a smart-arse?”
“I want to be a smart-arse,” I said firmly, sitting up and holding my hand out. “Hi, I’m Harriet Manners. We obviously haven’t met before.”
“Nice to meet you,” Nick grinned, swooping in for another kiss and then leaning back and scruffing his hair up. “Harriet Manners, I’m about to give you six stamps. Then I’m going to write something on a piece of paper and put it in an envelope with your address on it.”
“OK …”
“Then I’m going to put the envelope on the floor and spin us as fast as I can. As soon as either of us manage to stick a stamp on it, I’m going to race to the postbox and post it unless you can catch me first. If you win, you can read it.”
I thought about it briefly.
Nick was obviously faster than me, but he didn’t know where the nearest postbox was.
“Deal,” I agreed, yawning and rubbing my eyes. “But why six stamps?”
“Just wait and see.”
A few seconds later, I understood.
As we spun in circles with our hands stretched out, one of my stamps got stuck to the ground at least a metre away from the envelope. Another ended up on a daisy. A third somehow got stuck to the roundabout.
One of Nick’s ended up on his nose.
And every time we both missed, we laughed harder and harder and our kisses got dizzier and dizzier until the whole world was a giggling, kissing, spinning b
lur.
Finally, when we both had one stamp left, I stopped giggling. I had to win this.
So I swallowed, wiped my eyes and took a few deep breaths.
Then I reached out my hand.
“Too late!” Nick yelled as I opened my eyes again. “Got it, Manners!” And he jumped off the still-spinning roundabout with the envelope held high over his head.
So I promptly leapt off too.
Straight into a bush.
Thanks to a destabilised vestibular system – which is the upper portion of the inner ear – the ground wasn’t where it was supposed to be.
Nick, in the meantime, had ended up flat on his back on the grass next to me.
With a small shout I leant down and kissed him hard on the lips. “HA!” I shouted, grabbing the envelope off him and trying to rip it open.
“I don’t think so,” he grinned, jumping up and wrapping one arm round my waist while he retrieved it again. Then he started running in a zigzag towards the postbox.
A few seconds later, I wobbled after him.
And we stumbled wonkily down the road, giggling and pulling at each other’s T-shirts and hanging on to tree trunks and kissing as we each fought for the prize.
Finally, he picked me up and, without any effort, popped me on top of a high wall.
Like Humpty Dumpty.
Or some kind of really unathletic cat.
“Hey!” I shouted as he whipped the envelope out of my hands and started sprinting towards the postbox at the bottom of the road. “That’s not fair!”
“Course it is,” he shouted back. “All’s fair in love and war.”
And Nick kissed the envelope then put it in the postbox with a flourish.
I had to wait three days.
Three days of lingering by the front door. Three days of lifting up the doormat, just in case it had accidentally slipped under there.
Finally, the letter arrived: crumpled and stained with grass.
tell Nick everything.
Well, not everything, obviously.
I’m not insane.
But I tell him a carefully edited version of events. Or – as Annabel would put it – I just don’t elucidate the facts accurately.
I don’t tell him, for instance, that my governess thinks I’m stupid and she might be right. Or that I haven’t made any friends or that I’m so bored and lonely I’m tempted to draw eyes on my cupboard and just start talking to that instead.
I don’t tell him Hugo seems to have let Toby supersede me in his affections already.
I don’t tell him that it’s taken Nat precisely five hours to find a new best friend called Jessica who looks exactly like me.
Or that they’re already drinking coffee together.
No, I lock myself in my bedroom so Annabel can’t hear me, and I simply tell him that things aren’t exactly going to plan.
And, as I talk, I can feel my voice getting higher and tighter and my breath getting faster until Nick says:
“Hang on, just how far away are you?”
“An hour and a half.”
“That’s not that far, Harriet. You haven’t moved to the moon. I’ll just come to you. No biggy.”
Of all the things I love about Nick, this is what I love most. I love his calmness. I love the way my brain spirals out of control while next to it his moves in a straight and steady path. As if I’m a little tug boat in a storm, being thrown about by the waves and the currents, and he’s the big ship I’m anchored to for safety.
My breathing starts to slow. “Really? You’ll do that?”
“Of course I will.”
“Will you come tomorrow?”
“What’s tomorrow?”
My stomach sinks. “Nick, it’s my b—”
He laughs. “Your birthday. I know. You’ve been reminding me for the last two months. I’m pretty sure you put it into my phone calendar. Three times.”
And I set an alarm for him, just in case.
“I only turn sixteen once, Nick. Just because your sixteenth birthday has slipped into the foggy mists of time doesn’t mean that everybody else is so complacent.”
“I’m only seventeen, Harriet. I can remember it quite clearly.”
“Sure you can. You probably carved it into a rock with another rock.”
We both start snorting with laughter.
“You know, I’ve worked out that if I lived on Mercury I’d be sixty-six years old tomorrow. I’d be twenty-six on Venus, and half a year old on Saturn. I’m only sixteen because I’m on this planet.”
“Just,” Nick says. “Sometimes with you it’s debatable.”
I stick my tongue out at the phone even though he can’t see it. “So can you come?”
“Of course. I’ve got a show at Versace but I should be done by five so I can hop on a train and get to you by seven?”
“Then we can have a really romantic evening,” I say hopefully, grabbing HNRNYP out of my pocket and staring at it. “Ooooh, can we have a picnic? Under an oak tree? With a field of corn blowing in the breeze and the sunlight falling just so against our faces and a dove with its wings spread and cooing and—”
“Sure,” Nick grins. “Birthday oaks, corn, breeze, sunlight, faces, cooing wing-spread dove. Done.”
“And cake? Will there be lots of cake?”
“Yes, Marie Antoinette. There will be cake.”
I beam so hard I’m sure he can tell. Although this does mean that I’ve only got about twenty-four hours to find some kind of field. I’m not entirely sure there is one. We might have to make do with the supermarket car park and a slightly dazed-looking pigeon.
I jump up in excitement. Everything’s starting to look perfect again. “So I’ll meet you at Greenway Station at seven tomorrow then?” I squeak.
“Count on it.”
And I settle down to write my new romantic American birthday plans in earnest.
y sixteenth birthday plans are now:
Wake up in America with birds singing, sun shining, leaves rustling, etc.
Read exuberant text messages from loved ones.
Think about the fact that I am a legal adult, capable of driving a moped or an invalid carriage, joining a Trade Union and buying a lottery ticket.
Do none of those things.
Open the curtains jubilantly to face a world that feels entirely different.
Bounce down the stairs, where my parents will pretend they have forgotten all about what day it is.
Pretend to be surprised when they jump up and shout SURPRISE! and hand me an enormous, expensive and very thoughtful gift.
Do fun stuff with thoughtful gift all day.
Have the World’s Most Romantic Birthday Evening (WMRBE) with Nick.
It all starts perfectly.
I am up at the crack of dawn. The birds are singing. The sun is shining. The leaves are rustling. I beam, get my pen out and cross them off the list with a neat line.
On my phone are four texts already:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY FRECKLES! Can’t wait for tonight. LB xxx
O tanjobi omedetogozaimasu!! Much loving of you on speciality day, Harry-chan! Rin. xxxx
IT’S YOUR BIRTTTTTHHHDDAY! Ring you later. LOVE YOU LOVE YOU YAAAAYYYY!! Nat oxoxoxo
Many happy sixteenth returns, Harriet Manners. We’d send a kiss but we don’t want you to get the wrong idea again.
Hugo and Toby.
I stretch out happily, and then cross the next point off the list too. I think briefly about driving a moped and an invalid carriage, don’t do it, and cross both these points off as well.
Then I pull open the curtains.
“Good morning!” I shout to a little girl outside. “Isn’t it a wonderful day?”
She pauses from prodding a crisp packet stuck in a bush with the end of a stick. “Uh?”
“I hope you have a lovely morning!”
“Weirdo,” she says, going back to prodding, and I beam at her anyway.
Then I jubilantly cross my fifth point off
the list.
Finally I pull on my dressing gown and bounce downstairs, to where my parents are slumped, scowling at each other exactly as predicted.
I swing the door open with a joyful BANG.
My sister immediately starts crying. She’s obviously in on it too.
“Harriet,” Annabel says, picking Tabby up with a sssshhhh. “Was that totally necessary?”
I beam at everyone, and then take my seat at the kitchen table. “Probably not,” I say nonchalantly. “It’s such a boring day. Such a nothing day. Why did we even bother waking up in the first place?”
Then I mentally kick myself. Pull it back, Harriet. You’ll ruin everything.
Dad gazes blearily at me whilst tightening his tie. “Have you been eating American breakfast cereal, Harriet? I’m not sure you’re built to handle that many E numbers.”
I look optimistically at Annabel. She’s going to say something really grumpy now too. I can feel it.
“Don’t leave your butter knife on the table like yesterday, Richard. Put it in the sink.”
Ha.
“But I don’t need a butter knife this morning, do I? There being no butter. Is there anything to eat in here?”
“There’s a piece of pizza in the fridge.”
“I’m off to work in the city and you want me to eat a piece of old pizza for breakfast?”
“There’s a can of mini sausages in the cupboard.”
“You want me to take a can of mini sausages on the commuter train?”
“Or a slice of plastic-looking cheese.”
“You want me to take a piece of plastic-looking cheese to work?”
“No, Richard,” Annabel says, putting her head in her hands. “What I want is for you to stop repeating everything I say in italics and understand that I was up all night with the baby and haven’t had time to shop. Can you do that?”
I blink a few times.
They’re taking it a bit far, to be honest. There’s no need to be this boring.
“So,” I interrupt, spreading my hands out on the table in a present-welcoming kind of way. “I have no idea what I’m going to do today. No idea.”
“Yes, you do,” Annabel says as Tabitha spits up on to a bib. “Miss Hall is coming. You’ve got school.”