Picture Perfect (13 page)

“Uh,” I say, suddenly nervous. I thought we’d be holding hands and swinging in circles by now, reciting Latin verbs. “Hello. I’m Harriet Manners. This is for you. It’s a
Rudbeckia Hirta
, otherwise known as a Black-Eyed Susan.”

Let’s just say I had a lot of time on my hands last night and somebody left a local fauna and flora book in my bedroom.

“How nice,” she says, grabbing the flower in her enormous hand and totally crushing it.

“Miss Hall comes with glowing references and the most incredible CV I’ve ever seen,” Annabel says. “Harvard, Cambridge, a stint in Switzerland, the whole works.”

My eyes widen.

Clearly I judged her far too quickly, like a magazine cover. But – on the other hand – isn’t that kind of what they’re there for?

“
Oooh
,” I say in excitement. “Which Cambridge college did you go to? I can’t decide whether I want to go to Magdalene, like CS Lewis, or Trinity Hall, like Stephen Hawking. But then St John’s has the most beautiful library and—”

“Harry,” Miss Hall interrupts. “I don’t like discussing my background with students. It creates a false level of intimacy and impedes the absorption of knowledge.”

I blink.
Harry?

“It’s Harriet,” I say as assertively as I can.

“I shall call you Harry,” Miss Hall says sharply. “It saves time. Now,” she adds, “I think we should start straight away.” She looks at Annabel. “I prefer not to have parents around for the education of my students. They can be a distracting influence.”

“Right,” Annabel says. “Can I get you a cup of tea, or a biscuit, or a—”

“That won’t be necessary,” my governess says, pulling a backpack on to both shoulders. “I prefer to keep the mind clear to work at full capacity.”

I exchange a delighted glance with Annabel. At this rate, I’m going to pass my A levels before Christmas.

“Excellent,” Annabel concurs. “In that case, I’ll leave you to get on with it.” She kisses Tabitha’s head. “
One
of us appears to have pooped ourselves again and it’s not me.” She winks at me and closes the living-room door quietly behind her.

hey say that fiction is the closest we ever get to magic.

Forget top hats and rabbits: open a book, and an entire world will pop out. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s full of dragons or Victorian orphans or wizards, you are immediately somewhere else and someone else.

Transported.

It’s not like that with textbooks.

Open a physics A-level book or a biology syllabus and nothing will really happen. Read the periodic table, and you’ll stay very much you, and very much in the same place.

But if stories are like magical top hats, textbooks are the wands that change everything. Because the more you know and the more you learn, the more
real life
opens up.

Trees aren’t just green any more: they’re full of cells that contain the pigment chlorophyll that only uses the blue and red wavelengths of light.

A strawberry isn’t a berry, but bananas and watermelons are.

Chalk isn’t just chalk, it’s trillions of microscopic skeleton fossils of plankton.

Fact by fact, step by step, the world unfolds, like one of the little origami flowers Rin used to make me, except the other way round.

And you realise
everything
is magic.

Without a word, I run to the corner of the room and pull out my special cardboard box. In it are piles and piles of brand-new textbooks. Coated in plastic, with shiny and unbroken spines. Each with hundreds of bright white pages filled with countless diagrams and facts, begging to be absorbed and annotated.

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
?”