Picture Perfect (18 page)

That’s it.

I consider other, more elaborate options. I think of carefully planned strategies: pretending I need library books from New York, or that I’m sick and in need of a doctor with city expertise. I consider tying my bed sheets into a rope and climbing subtly out of the window, like a heroine from a
Famous Five
novel.

Then I realise that my poor knotting and rope-climbing skills might probably result in a much more permanent departure than I’m aiming for.

So at 6am on the dot, I jump out of bed and stand in front of my wardrobe, trying to decide what a sixteen-year-old would wear to a model casting in New York City.

I experiment with a few options.

I try my Eeyore jumper and jeans, followed by my spotty vest and shorts, then I take them off and try a yellow T-shirt and zigzag leggings. In a moment of desperation, I even consider the conjoined white trousers and red jumper I wore trick-or-treating a few years ago when I was dressed as a can of Campbell’s soup. But then I realise you can still see the vague outline of the word TOMATO painted across the middle.

And I’m not sure that a fruit pretending to be a vegetable is the style icon I should be channelling.

Finally, I chuck my childhood back into the wardrobe and crush it down as hard as I can. Then, slightly cautiously, I walk over to the corner of the room where the red and white heart dress is lying in a crumpled heap, from me throwing it there four days ago.

I don’t think this is scientifically possible, but somehow it looks sad. Flat. A bit resentful.

I
did
stamp on it quite a few times.

“Sorry,” I whisper, picking it up and trying to straighten it back out. Somehow, it feels like Nat might mystically know. “Can we try again?”

The dress doesn’t say anything so I wave it around a few times to try and get some creases out, and then carefully climb back in and zip it up. I wash my face, apply some more of Annabel’s mascara and stick some lip balm on my lips.

Then I stick a blue stripy hoody on over the top and put my New York guidebook and my birthday money in my satchel.

There’s a jam jar on the windowsill, stuffed with a messy bundle of ‘emergency kitty’: several twenty-dollar bills, crumpled up together.

After a few seconds of guilty deliberation, I grab that too.

Then I run down the stairs.

“This is very early for you, sweetheart,” Annabel observes, coming out of the living room still blinking in the morning sunshine. “Where are you going?”

“Out,” I say, opening the front door.

And I close it firmly behind me.

Greenway train station is no longer empty. There are people quietly lining the edges of the platform like a sleepy army. Men in suits, women in smart dresses and heels. A couple of young girls in jeans, talking on their mobile phones. A lady and her little dog. A man with a suitcase.

I look up and down for Dad with another pang of guilt, and then lift my chin defiantly and take my place in the line.

This is it
, I realise as the bell rings, the barriers lower and the silver train starts slowly approaching.
From this point, everything changes.

The train stops, the doors open and I climb up on to the top deck and take a seat, accidentally spreading my dress out on to the lap of the girl next to me. For the first time in weeks, there’s no weight in my stomach. No ripples of panic.

Nothing.

And as Greenway and everything in it retreats behind me, I don’t feel sad or invisible.

If things won’t be perfect for me, I’ll have to make them perfect myself.

And there’s no going back.

ere are some interesting facts about Grand Central station in New York:

But none of these are my favourite facts.

The best one is this: if you look up there is a vast, bright turquoise ceiling, and on this ceiling are painted 2,500 individual stars depicting the zodiac of the Mediterranean winter sky.

Even better, the stars are
backwards
because they were inspired by a medieval manuscript that shows the constellations as they would have been seen from the
other direction
.

In other words, when you look at the sky of Grand Central station, you are viewing it as God.

Which means that where you’re standing is supposed to be heaven.

I can kind of believe it.

The second I step off the train, the sleepiness of Greenway instantly evaporates.

As I stand in the middle of the station, staring at the ceiling and clutching my satchel, it feels like the whole world has opened up to its proper size and I can finally breathe again.

There are hundreds of people everywhere.

Taking photos, eating cheesecake with little plastic forks, checking the train timetables. According to my guidebook, there are 4,000 bulbs in this station, and every single one of them is on and shining: the room is full of warm light and noise. Dozens of conversations and questions and accents blur into each other until they form a comforting, drone-like hum. It’s like being in a warm, friendly beehive, if a beehive cost two billion dollars to build.

I stare at the star-filled sky until my neck starts aching, and then open my map and wander slowly into the street.

At which point the world opens up even further. And further and further.

And then it just keeps opening.

Giraffes have the same amount of vertebrae as humans, and I’m genuinely concerned that mine are going to stay stretched out permanently as I try to take it all in.

New York City is
enormous
.

It shoots into the sky and just keeps going: like a normal city that’s been sprayed with fertiliser and has suddenly grown in every possible direction. Upwards, outwards, across. Sprouting everywhere simultaneously, like a jungle made of concrete and glass and marble.

The buildings are huge. The roads are huge. The buses seem bigger and brighter; the crowds faster and louder. Everything seems
more
, except for the sky, which suddenly feels smaller and much, much further away.

In the corner next to the station a man in a bright blue T-shirt is playing a golden saxophone next to a yellow cap on the floor. Opposite him a man in a tracksuit is smashing at a makeshift drum kit made out of pots and pans.

A woman in shiny black leather boots with a tiny dog tucked under her arm pushes past, and a small girl wheels a ladybird suitcase over my toes.

A stand selling pretzels and doughnuts is next to a stand selling fried noodles, and the air is sweet and smoky and salty.

Everywhere is noise and colour. A couple are yelling at each other: “
Don’t
talk to me like that, yo,” “Don’t
you
talk to
me
like that, yo,” and another girl is crying hysterically into her friend’s shoulder. A bright yellow taxi pulls to an abrupt stop in front of a group of tourists looking at a map.

“Are you trying to get yourself
killed
?” the driver shouts in a heavy accent out of the window, beeping four times.

They stare at him, eyes wide.

“
Move it
,” he yells, and they do: stumbling backwards on to the feet of more pedestrians who look equally annoyed. The entire city seems to be divided into two sets of people: people who belong here, and people who do not.

Of which I am definitely the latter.

It’s all strangely familiar, yet also unfamiliar. Like when you meet an old great-aunt you haven’t seen in ten years and you recognise her face and smell and the way she leaves a wet mark on your cheek but at the same time you don’t really know her. I’ve known this city all my life, but after sixteen years and hundreds of films and TV shows and four guidebooks, I’m finally here.

I’m in New York.

Happiness bubbles into my chest and up my throat until I can’t help it: I squeak a couple of times and jump up and down on the spot, hugging my guidebook to my chest.

The saxophone player is watching me, so I stop jumping, put a dollar bill into his yellow cap and beam at him.

“You have a nice day,” I say experimentally.

He winks and keeps playing.

I wink back.

And, slowly but surely, I start pushing my way through New York City.

ow, I know some basic facts about navigating New York. In fact, through personal research and also a lifetime of growing up with America as a cultural backdrop, I know quite a lot.

I know that the roads run parallel to each other in a grid shape based on an Ancient Roman system called
centuriation.

I know that the distance between one road and another is a
block.
I know
streets
run east and west, and
avenues
run north and south, and that they’re all numbered sequentially:
39th, 40th, 41st,
and so on.

I know that one direction is
uptown
and the other is
downtown.

And I know I like it, because it’s incredibly
logical
. Unlike in England, where landmarks and etymology and history and destination and famous individuals are all welded together in a hotchpotch that makes no sense unless you’re a road historian. Which almost nobody is.