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“Right,” Aiden the photographer says, “what are we thinking, model?”
(You see what I mean? What are we thinking: fashion and I are basically sharing a brain.)
“We’re thinking mysterious,” I tell him. “We’re thinking enigmatic. We’re thinking unfathomable.”
“And why are we thinking that?”
“Because it says so on the side of the perfume box.”
“Exactly. I’m thinking Garbo and Grable, Hepburn and Hayworth, Bacall and Bardot, but it might be best if you think reality TV show contestant and do the opposite.”
“Got it,” I say, shifting slightly in my position on the floor and moving my foot so that the sole is pointing towards me. Then I lean towards it gracefully. Mysterious. I grab the corner of my jacket and lift it slightly, like a butterfly wing, angling my face downwards. Enigmatic. Finally, I arch my back and poke out an arm so I’m staring at the crease of my inner elbow. Unfathomable.
“Got it.” Aiden looks up from the camera. “Model, Yuka Ito was right. These are some very strange shapes you’re pulling, but it works. Very edgy. Very high fashion.”
What did I tell you? Me and fashion: I walk in and out of its mouth and it doesn’t even try to eat me any more.
“Now point your elbow in the other direction for me.” The photographer crouches down, adjusts the camera shutter and then looks back up again. “Towards the camera.”
Sugar cookies.
“You know,” I say without moving, “enigmatic, mysterious, unfathomable. They’re tautological. Yuka could save a lot of room on the box by just picking one.”
“Just move your arm.”
“Umm, has she considered ‘baffling’? It’s from an old word used to describe a wind that buffeted sailors from all directions. It’s sort of appropriate for a perfume, don’t you think?”
Aiden pinches the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “Right. How about you show me the bottom of the shoe? We should try to get the contrasting sole in the shot.”
I clear my throat, mind starting to race. “Erm … but what about Saudi Arabia, China and Thailand? It’s considered culturally impolite to show the bottom of your feet there …” I look around the room in a blind panic. “We don’t want to risk alienating them, do we?” I sweep my arm out in a wide, persuasive gesture.
And something on my sleeve catches Aiden’s eye.
Oh no. No no no.
“What’s that?” he says, standing up and walking over to where I’m now scrabbling to get off the floor but my feet are caught in the enormous tutu. The photographer grabs my arm and peels a tiny gold sticker from the inside of my jacket elbow. “What’s this?”
“Hmm?” I say, swallowing and straining to make my eyes as round as I physically can.
Aiden peers at the sticker. “F = M × A?” he reads slowly. Then he pulls three more from inside the lining of the jacket. “V = I × R? Ek = ½ × M × V2? W = M × G?”
Before I can move he grabs the shoe from my foot, turns it over and pulls a sticker from the heel. Then he pulls one from my inside elbow and four from the inside folds of the tutu netting.
He blinks at the stickers a couple of times while I stare at the floor and try to look as small as humanly possible. “Harriet,” he says in a slow and incredulous voice. “Harriet Manners, are you studying maths in the middle of my fashion shoot?”
I shake my head and look at the air behind the photographer’s left ear. You know the crocodile and the bird? I think one of us is about to get eaten.
“No,” I answer in my littlest voice. Because a) It’s physics, and b) I’ve been doing it all the way through.
Or – you know: a lot.
I haven’t changed. In fact, I’m even more of a geek than I used to be because:
1 the grey matter in my brain is still developing extra connections on a daily basis
2 I know even more facts than I did before
3 I’m just coming to the end of exams, which means my short-term cognitive abilities are on overdrive.
I’m also not graceful, elegant or stylish, but I guess you’ve already worked that out for yourself.
“Unbelievable,” Aiden mutters, clicking through the images as I slip behind a curtain at the back of the room to get changed into my school uniform.
“I’m so sorry, Mr Thomas,” I call out. “I honestly didn’t mean to disrespect you and the crocodi— erm, fashion industry. Did you get OK photos?”
“That’s not the point. Do you know how many other models wanted this job?”
Yes. Last time I was at Infinity Models, two of them locked me in a cupboard so I missed a really big casting. I had to wait until the cleaner came round to let me out again.
“I’m sorry, it’s just it’s my final GCSE today,” I try to explain as I tug off the massive tutu and smack an elbow painfully against the wall. “At 2pm, the British education system is going to decide whether I have any chance of ever becoming an award-winning physicist. My entire future is going to be shaped by today.”
I pull on my school jumper, which promptly gets caught in the gold wire still wrapped around my head. There’s silence while I hop in and out of the ‘changing room’ with my jumper over my face and my arms waving in the air like manic bunny ears.
“Hmm,” Aiden agrees still clicking through images. “You’re clearly a genius destined for a Nobel Prize.”
“GCSE physics is not about literal spatial awareness,” I puff, clutching blindly at my head and simultaneously smashing my knee against the wall. “It’s conceptual spatial awareness. Two very different things.”
Which is lucky, because the wire on my head now appears to be caught on everything in a two-metre radius. I have a detailed Get To School On Time Plan in my satchel, and nowhere at all does it say: Detach Myself From A Curtain Ring.
“It’s OK, Harriet,” I say, spinning helplessly in little circles. “You still have an hour and eleven minutes to get to school by train. Or an hour and sixteen minutes by taxi. You’ve got ages.”
“Erm … you know the clock on the back wall is slow. Right?”
I abruptly stop circling.
Oh my God. OH MY GOD. I knew there was a reason they made us study karma in religious education.
“No,” I squeak, ripping myself free from the wire at the cost of quite a few hairs, a scratch on my cheek, a curtain ring and half a school uniform. “How slow?”
“An hour,” Aiden says.
And