Picture Perfect (26 page)

This is partly because she’s dressed in a long, bright yellow silk dress, with huge gold earrings and gold bangles wound up her arms like some kind of Amazonian sun goddess.

But mostly because she yells, “
You have got to be freaking kidding me!
” at the top of her voice as I approach.

“Well,” she says, stomping towards me in bright gold heels. “
Somebody
pulled the short straw, didn’t they? You need a better agent, babe. You wouldn’t get me into an outfit like that in a million years. You look
hideous.
”

I’m too busy staring beyond her to respond.

There’s the usual group of people wearing black and holding lights and light reflectors and make-up bags and large cameras. And in the middle of this crowd is a girl.

She’s tall and pale and beautiful. Her brown hair is up in a bun, and she’s wearing a sky-blue silk evening gown, with silver earrings and a large silver necklace with a shimmering blue stone set in the middle.

Behind her is a winding mass of metal.

It twists and turns and spirals and dips and tangles like the strings of a puppet that’s been left too long in the box.

Every few minutes there’s a loud rush, and a small car zooms past at top speed, packed full of people.

Screaming people.

“That’s Cyclone,” Nancy quips, pointing at the giant roller coaster. “We’re going to get a great action shot with this one.”

If you scare a vulture, it will vomit to try and drive away its predator. It’s both a peace offering, and a method of self-defence. I’m not a vulture, but I might go ahead and give it a shot.

I look down at my hideous outfit, and then at the beautiful yellow and blue silk dresses next to me. Then I look at my nasty fur slippers. When Charles Perrault wrote
Cendrillon
in 1697, he accidentally replaced the word
vair –
fur – with
verre
, meaning
glass.

Which means I’m Cinderella.

“Hello, Fleur,” I say to the least ugly sister I have seen, ever.

“Hi, Harriet,” Fleur says softly. “
Again.
”

bviously,
Harriet, again
can mean a lot of things.

It can mean, “Oh, thank
goodness
! I was hoping I would see you again!” It can mean, “I am so sorry I ran off without giving you my number! Let’s hang out and play Monopoly as soon as possible!”

Sadly, there is no exclamation mark, so it means neither of those things.

Fleur looks exhausted.

And slightly concerned that I’m either going to try and force her into an involuntary lunch or knock her on to the floor in public again.

“How are you?” I say awkwardly as Nancy starts arranging the crowd and securing the barriers around us.

“Fine,” Fleur tells the floor.

“And …” I’ve run out of small talk already. There really should be a class on this at school. “The clouds are nice today, aren’t they? I think those are Cirrus, and they are usually just above six thousand metres high.”

“Right,” Fleur says as I point vaguely upwards, and I really wish I’d just stuck with fire hydrants. At least we’d be on known territory.

“Fleur?” Cal lifts the rope for the ride. “Ready?”

Her collarbone is going steadily pink.

“Mmm,” she says, staring at the toes of her shoes and climbing into the roller-coaster car.

Cal hops into the back seat and winks at me.

“Don’t worry about blurgh,” Kenderall says in a low voice. “I did try and warn you.”

“Blurgh?”

“Fleur Blurgh. She can suck the character out of anyone from a hundred paces.”

I look at Fleur in surprise. She’s huddled in the seat of the car with her arms folded around her middle and her shoulders hunched, as if something in the centre of her is slowly getting smaller. Where is the girl who winked at me from behind the curtain in Russia?

Fleur looks up, catches my eye and looks away, as if I’m totally invisible.

“On you get, my little Model-moos,” Wilbur says, gesturing towards the train. “And let me remind you, Chipmunks, this is high fashion. No screaming. No laughing. No looking like you’re having fun. I want you to appear thoroughly miserable.”

I look at the tiny metal car and the spiralling mass of metal above us that totally defies gravity and logic. This is possibly the most inaccurate allocation of the word ‘fun’ ever.

“That shouldn’t be a problem,” I say, climbing in next to Kenderall and behind a woman wearing black, holding an enormous camera. “Just shoot me.”

And the worst three minutes of my life begin.

ere are the three biggest roller coasters in the world:

• Kingda Da,
  in New Jersey. 139 metres.
  
• Top Thrill Dragster
  , in Ohio. 130 metres.
  
• Superman,
  in California. 126 metres.
  

They’re all in the United States.

This country clearly has no respect for the natural speed, height and orientation of human beings.

For the first few seconds, I almost forget where we are. The sea is sparkling in front of us. The sand is a yellow ribbon, and – dotted like tiny stars – are people: lying on the beach, eating hot dogs, sunbathing, swimming with dolphins.

And then the world tilts and it all disappears.

“
Woooooooooo
,” Kenderall shouts next to me. “Come on, baby! Bring it on!”

The camera starts clicking, and – in what feels like another dimension, even though she’s sitting next to me – I can feel Kenderall go very still, arch back in her seat and start pouting dramatically.

When I was six, Nat had a little black gerbil called Fidget. It liked sniffing your finger through the cage, nibbling on bits of carrot and running very fast in its wheel.

But every now and then it couldn’t keep up: it would end up pressed against the side of the wheel, spinning round and round until it finally got ejected on to the floor of the cage.

That’s exactly how I feel.

Every time the roller coaster slows down and the world stops spinning it’s only for long enough to blink back the tears and take one deep breath before it dissolves again.

I’m not just dizzy.

I’m not just disorientated.

I’m hanging on to the metal pole in front of me so tightly my knuckles look like they’re about to poke through my skin, like a mini Wolverine.

I am
terrified
.

We twist and turn and roll and jolt; we rotate and warp and wind and zigzag. Finally, when I’m not sure I can handle any more, the train starts slowing down.

Thank God thank God thank God thank
—

“Did we get it?” Nancy shouts over the gathering crowd around the base of the ride as I desperately try to work out which way up I am.

In front of me, the photographer peers at the camera and then shakes her head.

“One more time!” Nancy yells.

And the nightmare begins again.

We go round eight times
.

We go round until there’s dry saliva on my cheeks and my eyes are burning and my hands are dripping and wind has blown my hair into a wild fuzz over my head.

We go round until there’s a point where I seriously consider just clambering out of the train at a high point and attempting to climb down the metal beams like Spiderman.

Finally the photographer gives an almost imperceptible nod.

“OK,” Nancy says. “That’s enough.”

And the train slows to a stop.

I, however, don’t.

As I clamber out, the world continues to buckle. The clouds continue to spin; the floor continues to warp and rotate and move up and down.

“Monkey?” I hear Wilbur say from a billion miles away. “Are you O—”

And everything goes black.

’ve always wanted to faint.

On my list of Romantic Moments Harriet Manners Would Like to Achieve, fainting is number two.

Just under being the cause of a swordfight at dawn, and just above being rescued from a tower and then carried across a desert in a floaty dress.

I’m supposed to faint delicately and then get caught by a handsome boy who is terrified that I might be dead and tries to breathe life back into me with a well-timed and medicinally dubious kiss.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite work like that.