The Look Read online

  “There!” I tell her. “What did I tell you?”

  She checks the camera screen and pouts. “I look like an egg dressed as a pirate.”

  “You do not. Look at your smile.”

  “OK. I look like Anne Hathaway doing an impression of an egg dressed as a pirate.”

  “That I’ll accept,” I agree, grinning and putting away the camera.

  But I notice that she sends the picture to Jesse as soon as she gets home, and that by lunchtime, Mum has it as the new wallpaper on her phone. It shows it pays to think about what you’re doing. It’s not up to Seb standards, I admit, but it’s definitely the best picture I’ve taken so far.

  Over lunch, Dad still keeps staring at us, and me in particular. He’s trying to be as enthusiastic about our new appearance as we are, but the effort shows.

  “I’ve been doing some research,” he says. “There’s a very good wig shop in Notting Hill, apparently. I’ll book a cab to take you there.”

  “I don’t need one,” Ava says. “The hospital will give me one, remember?”

  “I do,” Dad says, “but those are pretty basic. Your mum and I — we want you to have something that’s very natural and realistic. I mean, you look great now” — he coughs — “obviously. But your nan … well, when she had chemo … she said a good wig made all the difference. For … public occasions. We can afford it if we’re careful. And, Ted, you’ll need one, too.”

  “Sure, Dad,” Ava says obediently. “That’s very kind.”

  I realize she’s in keep-the-parents-happy mode. Poor Ava. It’s really tiring, being ill. Then it occurs to me: I may be happy with my bald head at home, but school starts in a few days. Dad may have a point.

  So Mum accompanies us to the wig shop and we spend ages in front of the mirror, turning ourselves into different people. It’s great. First, I’m Marilyn Monroe, then Fergie. Ava is Elizabeth Taylor (easy), then Katy Perry, then our old nan. Honestly — our nan. In a shaggy, short, blonde-streaked crop, just like she always used to wear. Creepy.

  I fall in love with a short, dark, slinky wig with ruler-straight bangs that makes me look like Louise Brooks from the 1920s. (It’s amazing what you learn from watching the classic movie channel with your sister.) I’d love to get it, but it’s super-obviously a wig. I know I’m going to have to settle for something that looks vaguely like the bird’s nest. Although when I describe it to the lady in the shop, she seems slightly horrified.

  Eventually, Ava goes for something shoulder-length and wavy. It’s called the Scarlett Johansson. Who wouldn’t buy a wig called the Scarlett Johansson? Even so, she puts it in a bag to take it home, rather than wearing it right now.

  “It makes my head hot,” she complains.

  The woman nods. “A lot of my customers say that. I wish they’d invent them with air-conditioning. You looked great in it, though. You could be a model, you know.”

  Ava smiles and catches my eye.

  My wig, in the end, is called the Robert Pattinson. Says it all.

  “It looks as though it’s about to eat a bit of lettuce,” Daisy says pensively.

  Fresh back from Germany, she’s come over to hear my news and check out my new hairpiece. On my head, she admits it’s very hard to tell the Pattinson from the real thing. But on my dresser, where it is now, she says it reminds her very much of a long-haired guinea pig.

  “I wish you’d put it away.”

  “I can put it back on,” I offer. “I need to attach it with wig tape, though, if I’m going to do it properly.”

  “No, I like your head like that. It’s very nineties Sinéad O’Connor. She sings this song by Prince called ‘Nothing Compares 2 U.’ Have you seen the video? It’s incredible. I’ll have to show you.”

  With Daisy, it always comes back to music. In fact, she’s not that interested in most of my modeling stories, apart from the one about the kite tails. She doesn’t actually say “I told you so,” but transmits it in sheer brainwaves. Then she goes on about her dad’s gig in Düsseldorf and how much she missed Marmite. Basically, she’s just glad that things are back to normal.

  Except they aren’t, exactly. Not for me. I may look the same — with the R-Patz on, anyway — but I feel different somehow. I have an urge to stride through ancient domains, dominating my kingdom, and there’s no denying the fact that under the R-Patz, I am bald. If anyone finds out, how’s that going to go down at Richmond Academy?

  However, I’ve learned one thing from those endless, hopeless castings, and it’s that you just have to hold your head high and keep walking. So, despite my nervousness, when I show up in class on the first day of the fall term, I try to act as if nothing has happened. And the strange thing is — it seems to work. The R-Patz is hot and itchy. But after everything I’ve been through this summer, nobody notices anything at all.

  Strangest of all, I have Cally Harvest to thank. It turns out that after a couple of Jell-O shots one evening in Magaluf, she had Dean Daniels’s initials tattooed on the back of her neck. It’s the talk of the class and makes her the center of attention. Dean’s thrilled. Personally, I’m not convinced it was such a great idea. She’s going to need to wear turtlenecks a lot if it doesn’t work out. Or else she’s going to have to be very careful in her choice of future boyfriends.

  Soon, we’re back into the swing of the school day. The final period is art, which is the one I’ve been looking forward to. Miss Jenkins is keen to know how we got on with our projects over the summer, and I can’t wait to show her. When it comes to my turn, I unveil all my sketches of shaded fruit with a flourish.

  “Really, Ted? Is that it?” she says, with a general lack of appreciation bordering on disappointment.

  I look at my bananas, and back at Miss Jenkins, shocked. I also did a glass of water.

  “I worked really hard on it!” I protest. And I did. I shaded those bananas for ages.

  “But did you think about it? At all? Which artists inspired you? Oh, Ted — that manga drawing you did of Daisy last year was really good. It captured her softness and her spikiness. I was hoping for something more … original from you.”

  I bite my lip. I would so love to be original.

  Miss Jenkins sees my lip tremble slightly. She’s not as harsh as her crimson lipstick might suggest.

  “Did you do anything artistic over the summer?”

  Does wobbling up and down in five-inch platforms count as artistic, I wonder? Or having tissue-paper petals stuck to me? Or wearing a jacket made out of kite tails? The thing is, it was always the other people who were artistic. I was just there. And even then I was officially “very nothing.”

  “Not really,” I admit. “Except … I took some photos, I suppose, of staircases and stuff. And of my sister.”

  Miss Jenkins sighs again. I’m sure she’s about to say something about family photos not counting, but then she pauses, as if she’s just remembered that my big sister is Ava, and that Ava is (a) beautiful and (b) fighting for her life.

  “Really?” she asks. “What were those photos about?”

  At which point Nathan King, who’s been playing around at the back of the art room, bumps into a table and sends several tubes of poster paint flying. One explodes and covers Melanie Sanders in bright green goo, and she starts screaming hysterically.

  “Sorry,” Miss Jenkins groans. “I’m needed.”

  What did she mean “about”? I wonder. My pictures were of Ava, so they were “about” her, surely? Except, I realize as I ponder it, they were more than that: They were “about” how she still looks beautiful, even though she’s changed so much this summer. They were “about” her bravery in facing up to everything the doctors are doing to fight the lymphoma …

  And gradually, an idea begins to form. By the end of the class I know exactly what my art project — my new art project — is “about,” and how I need to research it, and how right Miss Jenkins was to spot that all those endless shaded bananas were — I admit it now — a total waste of tim
e.

  When I get home, Ava’s sitting at the folding table, dosing up on ice cream to take away the metallic taste that chemo always leaves in her mouth.

  “Ava,” I ask, “you couldn’t possibly do me a favor, could you?”

  She looks at me suspiciously. “No, you can’t.”

  “What?”

  “Borrow my mascara. You’ll only get it all gooey and forget to put the lid on. You’ve got some money now, T. Get your own.”

  “No, it wasn’t that,” I say. Although I was rather hoping she might relent about the mascara. Apart from that skirt, and her camera of course, she never did fully master the art of sharing. “Actually, I was wondering if you could pose for me. You know I’ve got to do this thing called Still Life —”

  “Oh, not the stupid fruit again!”

  “Yes, that. Well, I was wondering if you could pose with the fruit. After all, Mum keeps buying it to make you better, and hopefully it’s working, and your head is such a beautiful shape …”

  “Really?”

  “Really. I think it would look interesting next to a pile of strawberries and raspberries and papayas and —”

  “It would look surreal,” she says with a frown.

  “Yes, it would,” I agree. “Very.”

  “Hey!” Her frown transforms to a grin. “That’s not bad, T! Coming from you. Positively artistic.”

  I simper modestly. “So you’ll do it?”

  She worries at her fingernail for a while, then nods. “But this time you have to help me out.”

  “OK,” I say nervously, hoping it isn’t anything needle-related. “How?”

  “When I was in the hospital on Monday, the nurses said I looked different.” She laughs. “Apart from being bald, I mean. Different in a good way. They thought I’d be a mess after I lost my hair, but I told them about what you did, and Vince, and the whole experience. They want me to share it with some of the other girls, because they’re worried about it, too. Will you come with me? The whole point was that there were two of us.”

  She gives me a casual smile, as if this isn’t a big deal. And I give her a casual “Sure” back, because she’s not into big emotion at the moment, and I don’t want her to know how I feel. But I feel stunned. It is a big deal. This could be the first time she’s ever asked me to do anything for her because I might be good at it, and not just to help her out of a hole. In fact, this time it’s me that goes off to the bathroom for a while, just to be by myself and get my head around it. If the guidance counselor were to ask me how I was feeling right now, I’d say that despite everything, I was feeling … elated.

  After supper I borrow Dad’s computer and have another look at the website where Nick Spoke and his friends discuss photography. I’m sure Nick won’t remember me — after all, he had other things on his mind when we met — but I want to say thank you to him for the ideas he’s given me.

  Actually, I don’t know why I’m trying to contact him. He will be rude and busy, and he’ll probably think I’m cyberstalking him. Just because he can draw, and we have a common interest in backgrounds, it hardly explains why I’m opening myself up to potential ridicule from Mr. Abstract Impressionism. Even so, I write a comment to say how much I like one of his pictures, and how I’m using photography in my school art project. Then, before I post it, I delete the bit about the school project, because he’s going to art college and it makes me sound so childish.

  He must have a smartphone or something, because he e-mails me back before I’ve shut Dad’s computer down.

  Thanks for the comment. How did the test shoot go, by the way?

  Oh my goodness: He does remember me. He remembers Seb’s shoot and everything. Maybe it’s because he had to look at those pictures of Sheherezade. I explain that I’m not cut out for modeling, and he sends another instant reply.

  Good call. Did you see the links to Man Ray? Or Ansel Adams? Check them out.

  I think we’ve just started an e-mail conversation. Though what did he mean by “good call”? He certainly seems anti-modeling, so I wonder what would impress him — short of having your own art show at a gallery, maybe. Meanwhile, knowing something about Man Ray and Ansel Adams might be a start.

  I’m on my third biographical website when Dad finally tells me to shut down his computer and go to bed, because somehow the whole evening has disappeared in a moment. I’m not so sure about Ansel Adams — endless rolling deserts, and personally I like lots of trees with leaves on — but Man Ray’s eccentric portraits and eerie lighting are exactly what I need to inspire my new project. In fact, if I ever got a puppy, I wouldn’t mind calling it Man Ray. Then I could smirk knowledgably if anyone asked me why. Not that Nightmare Boy would need to ask, of course: He would just know.

  Next day, I spend some time in the school library, poring over books on the Old Masters of painting and also on portrait photography, looking for more useful images for my art project. I have in my mind the detailed, glowing paintings of fruit and flowers that Dutch painters did in the seventeenth century, and also bold, modern portrait photographs. I want Ava’s head to look strange and magnificent, the way it does to me.

  I make a list of artists and photographers who might be helpful, but this is just the start. It will take a lot of research to find the perfect inspiration. Plus, I have to “illustrate my journey.” The school board doesn’t make it easy for you in these final-grade projects. Miss Jenkins is going to want postcards and printouts, sketches and plans. But it just so happens that the National Gallery, which is crammed with old masters, is right next door to the National Portrait Gallery, which is bursting with photos of famous people, so that’s my Saturday morning taken care of. I’m really looking forward to it.

  Ava wanted to come with me, but after a couple of trial days at school, by the weekend she’s wiped out. We postpone the trip, but on Sunday she’s no better. Besides, the day dawns drizzly and gray: a proper autumn morning, with even more of a nip in the air than before. Ava decides instead to catch up on some of the Xena: Warrior Princess DVDs we ordered on Amazon. She’ll be on her own, because Mum is off to work soon at the store and Dad is off to meet with the TV researcher he made friends with on my “very nothing” day.

  I’m not too thrilled to hear about this meeting. For a start, I don’t like being reminded of that day, and also I think that however much Dad likes to hear about how TV shows are made, it’s not very nice for Mum if he takes time off from writing to have coffee with attractive young women. Not that I’m telling Mum how attractive that production assistant was. But she was — very. If they’d put her in five-inch platforms alongside Sheherezade, she wouldn’t have been “very nothing” at all.

  On top of everything, I noticed Dad making a real effort with his appearance before he went out. He hasn’t done that for ages. He tried on all his jackets and most of his ties, and even got out his old fedora and checked himself out in it in the hall mirror. He left the hat behind in the end, though.

  On impulse, I grab it from the hall table as I head out. It might make me look suitably arty for my gallery tour. And it will be an awful lot more comfortable than the R-Patz, which is getting increasingly itchy on top of my new hair growth. With relief, I leave the wig behind. It sits peacefully on the hall table, the spitting image of a long-haired guinea pig, waiting for me to return.

  I spend a happy hour in the National Gallery, examining various Dutch painters’ takes on fruit, vegetables, flowers, plates, vases, and basically anything they could fit on a table. It’s mostly what I was expecting, except that they seem to delight in imperfections. They love painting mottled surfaces on peaches, or apples with insect holes in them, or flowers with torn petals. Somehow, it makes them seem more alive. But the best bit is the shop, where I stock up on postcards to show Miss Jenkins my working process, as required.

  After a quick walk around the corner of Trafalgar Square, I get to the National Portrait Gallery, where they happen to be holding a special exhibition of Richard Avedon
photographs. The posters show stunning portraits of strong faces: exactly what I’m after. I can’t afford the ticket for the exhibition, but I buy a couple of beautiful postcards. One of them shows a modern-day princess with daffodils in her hair — arranged in such a way that they seem suspended around her head, like the flowers on the wallpaper behind her. I love that effect.

  I keep thinking about it as I head for the Underground at Charing Cross station. In fact, I’m just getting the postcard out of the paper bag to have another look when a sudden gust of wind whips Dad’s fedora off my head and straight into the road in front of me. I rush forward to grab it, when a pair of strong arms reach out from nowhere and hold me back. An enormous, bright red London double-decker bus zooms past, missing me by millimeters.

  Oh my God. I nearly died to save a hat.

  I turn around to say thank you to the arms that just saved my life. They belong to a businessman in a pinstripe suit, who gives me a very odd stare. Maybe this is how people look at you when they know it’s thanks to them you’re alive at all. I stare back, dumbstruck, and after an awkward moment he strides off, just as another bus rolls by, squashing Dad’s hat as flat as a pancake.

  Suddenly, this day isn’t turning out so well.

  For five minutes, I wander down the street in a daze. I can’t face going into the Underground quite yet. Or the thought of telling Dad about his fedora when I get home.

  Gradually, I notice that lots of people are heading in the same direction as me — more than usual. I could even swear I recognize a couple of the faces, although I can’t think where from. Still dazed, I follow the crowd. Then lots of the people turn through a big stone archway, which is manned by security guards. You need a pass to get through and I don’t have one, so I stop.