Читать книгу Geek Girl and Model Misfit - Holly Smale, Холли Смейл - Страница 33

fter a few minutes of heavy breathing, I’m still not particularly calm.

This might surprise you, but here’s a fact: people who plan things thoroughly aren’t particularly connected with reality. It seems like they are, but they’re not: they’re focusing on making things bite-size, instead of having to look at the whole picture. It’s procrastination in its purest form because it convinces everyone – including the person who’s doing it – that they are very sensible and in touch with reality when they’re not. They’re obsessed with cutting it up into little pieces so they can pretend that it’s not there at all.

The way that Nat nibbles at a burger so that she can pretend she’s not eating it, when actually she’s eating just as much of it as I would.

Despite my rigorous planning, I can’t break this down into any smaller pieces. Walking into a modelling agency and asking strangers to tell me objectively whether I’m pretty or not is one big scary mouthful, and the truth is I’m terrified.

So, just as I think things can’t get any worse, I abruptly start hyperventilating.

Hyperventilation is defined as a breathing state faster than five to eight litres a minute, and the best thing you can do when you’re hyperventilating is find a paper bag and breathe into it. This is because the accumulation of carbon dioxide from your exhaled breath will calm your heart rate down, and your breathing will therefore slow.

I haven’t got a paper bag, so I try a crisp packet, but the salt and vinegar smell makes me feel sick. I think about trying the plastic bag that came with the crisp packet, but realise that if I inhale too hard, I’m going to end up dragging it into my windpipe, and that would cause problems even for people who weren’t struggling to breathe in the first place.So, as a last resort, I close my eyes, cup my hands together and puff in and out of them instead.

I’ve been puffing into my hands for about thirty-five seconds when I hear a human kind of noise next to me.

“Go away,” I say weakly, continuing to blow in and out as hard as I can. I’m not interested in what Dad thinks. He plays games of Snap with himself when he’s stressed.

“This isn’t Singapore, you know,” a voice says. “You can’t just fling yourself around on the pavement. You’ll get chewing gum all over your suit.”

I abruptly stop puffing, but I keep my eyes closed because now I’m too embarrassed to open them again. My suit is grey and the pavement is also grey; perhaps if I stay very still and very quiet, I’ll disappear into the background and the owner of the voice will stop being able to see me.

It doesn’t work.

“So, Table Girl,” the voice continues, and for the second time today somebody I’m talking to is trying not to laugh. “What are you doing this time?”

It can’t be.

But it is.

I open one eye and peek through my fingers, and there – sitting on the kerb next to me – is Lion Boy.