Picture Perfect

“Yes,” I say again in a small voice.

I try to lift my chin, but all I can smell is a pungent cocktail of baby puke, damp dog hair and out of the corner of my eye I can still see brown icing on my boy’s clothes and stuck in my boy’s hair.

It suddenly seems pretty unbelievable to me too.

Alexa shrieks with laughter.

“OMG, this is priceless.” She turns to the group behind her. “Can you imagine the geekiness levels? I bet they’re off the chart. I bet he’s short and greasy and hasn’t learnt to shave yet.” She starts giggling. “Bet he – haha – studies physics and smells of Brussels sprouts and farts every time he bends down. Hahahaha.”

I think of Nick’s big black curls; his coffee-coloured skin and slanted brown eyes; the huge grin with the pointed teeth that breaks his face apart. I think of the mole near his eyebrow; the green smell of him and the tilt at the end of his nose.

I think of how he laughs at the wrong bits in the cinema; how he leans his cheek against mine when he’s sleepy; the way he tucks my feet between his knees when they’re cold and I don’t even have to ask him to.

I think of how extraordinary he is.

“H-he’s not,” I say in a tiny voice. “And he doesn’t.”

“Actually,” Nat snaps. “Harriet’s boyfriend is a successful international supermodel. So stick that in your cauldron and smoke it.”

Alexa starts giggling even harder, and rolls her eyes at her underlings. “Of course he is.”

“Show her,” Nat demands, flushing and pointing at my satchel. “Show her a picture of Nick, Harriet.”

“I … don’t have one,” I admit. “It’s a new bag.”

Alexa takes a step closer. “An imaginary boyfriend,” she says. “That’s pathetic, even for you.”

“He’s real,” I say, except it comes out as two tiny mouse squeaks. “And I’m not pathetic.”

“Oh, you are. Or should that be ‘you-apostrophe-r-e’?”

My whole body goes cold.

On the last day of exams I grammatically embarrassed Alexa in front of a lot of girls in our year. I had hoped maybe she’d forgotten.

She hasn’t.

“Do you expect me to believe,” Alexa says, “that anybody would want you, Manners? You’re the most boring person I’ve ever met. You’re a nobody. A nothing.”

I blink at her. For some reason I can’t fathom, I wish she’d just stuck with geek.

“I told you I’d get you back, Harriet,” Alexa adds, giving me a final shove backwards, putting my diary in her bag and closing it with a click. “Reading can be such an education, don’t you think?”

And she storms out of the school gates, with her minions scuttling behind her.

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pparently horses and rats can’t vomit.

Unfortunately, I am neither a horse nor a rat. It’s taking every bit of focus I have just to make sure I don’t get sick on myself for the second time today.

“Are you OK?” Nat says, putting a hand on my arm.

“Mmm,” I say chirpily. “Sure. It’ll be fine. Just fine. Fine.”

Then I bite my lips. Stop saying ‘fine’, Harriet.

“She doesn’t sound fine,” Toby observes, tugging his rucksack back on to his shoulders like a broken tortoise. “I don’t think Harriet sounds fine at all, Natalie.”

“Shut up, Toby,” Nat says kindly, and then she puts her arm round me. “Don’t worry, Harriet. I mean, it’s just a few scribbles. How bad can it be?”

“The way I see it,” Toby adds cheerfully, “the more information people know about you the better, Harriet. Personally, I’d like to know everything. I’m hoping she makes photocopies and distributes them around the classroom.”

I flinch.

My diary isn’t the ‘today it rained, I stroked a cat, we had spaghetti for dinner’ kind of report I kept when I was five and I thought every day was riveting and unprecedented.

Everything I am is in that book.

My hopes and dreams; my worries, my doubts. My most precious, perfect memories of me and Nick, written in unnecessary, humiliating detail. My lists; my plans; the bit where I attempted to rhyme Nick Hidaka with big squid packer.

My process of falling in love, page by page.

In short, I’ve just given Alexa the strongest weapon she’s ever had against me:

Myself.

Nat starts gently leading me away from the school fence. I can’t really feel my legs any more: I feel like I’m being rolled forward on rubbery wheels.

“Forget about it,” she says firmly and shakes her head. “Anyway, we should be celebrating.”

I blink a few times.

Celebrating. Exam results. It already feels like a billion years ago.

This is like when that guy leaked classified National Security Agency information that revealed operational details of global surveillance and threatened to take down all of America. Except that instead of the US spy programme, it’s my personal secrets that are going to be spread around the sixth form.

And instead of temporary asylum in Russia, I’ll end up in a cold corner of the classroom.

“I think,” I say slowly, “I should probably go home. My parents are going to want to know my results straight away.”

This is a lie, obviously. If they’re even awake it’ll be a modern-day miracle.

“Are you sure? Because Mum promised she’d take me shopping for new college clothes and I thought you could come with us.”

“Ooh,” Toby says. “Yes please. I think I need to buy new boxer shorts.”

“Never,” Nat says, rolling her eyes, “talk to me about boxer shorts again.”