Picture Perfect (3 page)

Except I know from experience people don’t like it when I do that.

So I probably won’t.

“Can you believe this is the last time I’ll ever walk through those gates?” Nat says happily.

“Mmm.”

“The last time I’ll ever have to wear my hair in a ponytail for gym, which is totally inappropriate for my face shape.”

“The last time you’ll ever block the entrance with your insanely boring conversations.”

We both turn round.

“Hi, Alexa,” Nat sighs. “Great to see a long break has really brought you a sense of inner peace and compassion.”

“Whatever,” my nemesis says, flicking her newly highlighted hair and whacking me with her shoulder as she saunters past. “Such a shame you’re leaving, Natalie. What are we going to do without you?”

“Collapse and die, probably,” Nat says, folding her arms. “I live in hope.”

“Maybe then I’ll smell as bad as Harriet.” Alexa glances over to where I’m standing, still rubbing the top of my arm. “Hey, loser,” she adds. “Looks like this year it’s just going to be you and I.”

And – just like that – my summer is over.

n fairness, I’ve had a good run.

If you take away all the holidays and weekends, we actually only have to be at school for 195 days a year. Add to that night-times, mornings, a few field trips, an hour for lunch every day plus two fifteen-minute breaks and the potential for getting sick now and then, and I won’t have to see Alexa for more than 1,118.5 hours this academic year.

That’s only a full 46.6 days.

A month and a half of solid Alexa Roberts.

On my own.

Oh, God. I’d really rather get it all out of the way at once. Maybe I should ask if she wants to move in with me.

“This year it’s just going to be
you and me
,” I correct quietly as Nat kisses my cheek and runs through the school gates towards the office.

Then I stare at the shrieking crowd of girls she’s now surrounded by.

They look strangely unfamiliar, and it takes a while to work out it’s because for the first time apart from field trips that we’re not in our school uniforms. Laura has a leather jacket, and Lucie is almost unrecognisable wearing bright red lipstick. Anna has blue feathers wound into the back of her ponytail, as if she killed a bird and ceremoniously attached it to the back of her head. It’s like seeing a fully dressed theatre production when you’ve only seen the rehearsal before.

The boys are all wearing jeans and T-shirts and have clean faces and short hair.

I look down at the Spider-Man T-shirt I bought last week and then touch my new bob haircut. I think it’s obvious which camp I fall into.

Maybe I’ll just make the most of it, grow a moustache and hide in the boys’ toilets this year.

“Harriet Manners.” A thin boy in orange corduroys and a Spider-Man hoody taps me on the shoulder. There appear to be tiny cartoons of goldfish on his socks. “How coincidental that we match perfectly today. One might call it fate. Destiny. Serendipity.”

It’s none of those things. He was hiding behind a clothes rack when I bought my T-shirt.

“Morning, Toby,” I say as he wipes his nose on his sleeve and stares at it in fascination.

Then I see the opened white envelope in his hands.

There are ten times more bacteria in your body than there are actual body cells, and I can suddenly feel them: squirming all over me.

“Is that …” I swallow as my entire body begins fizzing. “Is that
them
?”

“Yes,” Toby says. “Or no. That’s a very vague question, Harriet. They wouldn’t let you into the FBI with that kind of approach. I’ve checked.”

“One day,” Nat sighs, returning from the office, “you’re going to answer a question like a normal person, Toby, and we’ll all pass out with shock.”

“So …” I swallow. “How did you do?”

“14 A*s,” Toby says, carefully tucking the piece of paper into a folder with TOBY’S EPIC ACHIEVEMENTS written on the front. “Those Mandarin and Classical Civilisation evening classes were not the waste of time and money my parents said they were.”

My stomach spins and I take my phone out of my pocket.

“Here,” Nat says, thrusting a large envelope at me. “Stop thinking about Nick. You know he’s on a shoot in Africa: he’s probably busy having a staring contest with a hippo or something. This one’s yours.”

I stare at it, and then try unsuccessfully to lick my lips.

One way or another, everything in my life is about to change.
Be calm, Harriet
.
Be Zen-like in your acceptance of the roller coaster of life and all its ups and downs and
—

“Stop whispering at your results, Harriet,” Nat laughs. “Ready?”

“Mmmmmn.”

“Steady?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Now GO!” Nat yells.

And together we rip open our futures.

t any typical moment, your brain will be using twenty per cent of the oxygen that enters your bloodstream. Mine must have got greedy, because my head suddenly feels so light it could float away like a balloon.

I passed.

In fact, I passed with
flying colours
.

I don’t want to boast, so all I’m going to say is: I got one more star than the Chamaeleontis constellation and one less than Orionis.

I also got a C in technology, but if I ever need a pine box or a red plastic wall clock that looks like a badly sanded hummingbird, I’ll just go to the shops and buy one.

Nat is spinning on the spot in tiny circles.

“College here I come!” she yells, giving me a high five on every revolution. “I failed history but who cares, I’m going to
college
!”

Then she stops spinning so we can stare at each other.

My head promptly floats away.

“
Sugar cookies
!” I squeak, jumping up and down. “We
did
it!”

“
Massive sugar cookies!
” Nat shouts.

“UBER
sugar cookies
!”

“STELLAR
sugar cookies
!”

“IMMEASURABLE, BOUNDLESS
SUGAR COOKIES
! Our cookies have gone into orbit!”

“
Ah
,” Toby says, getting a small green book out of his bag. “I was under the impression that
sugar cookies
was a negative expression but I will now make a note that it can be used either way.”

Nat and I bounce and giggle hysterically and then gradually start half-hopping out of the school gates.

All this talk of cookies has made me hungry. Maybe my parents will have baked me another cake: a strawberry one, with ‘CONGRATULATIONS’ written in marshmallows and Smarties for the dots on the ‘i’s and—

“Oi,” a voice behind us says. “Did one of you losers drop something?”

And every last bounce and giggle suddenly drains out of me.

Because:

read somewhere that a fully grown octopus is flexible enough to climb all the way through a human’s intestines. From the feeling in my stomach right now that is exactly what’s happening.

Is that … my
diary
?

It can’t be. My diary is at home, next to my bed. Safe and private and protected by a carefully placed ginger hair, exactly as it’s supposed to be.

Except … I can see a British Library sticker on the spine, and the row of gold stars I gave myself at the bottom, and the corner Hugo chewed in a huff when I wouldn’t let him have a bite of my sandwich.