Model Misfit by Holly Smale

kawwaaiiiii, ne
?
    I have no idea what they’re saying, obviously, but it doesn’t feel mean.
    I blush slightly and give a little shy wave. They blush and start waving shyly back. Then I notice that one of them has a little dinosaur key ring hanging off their satchel. Another has a little Winnie the Pooh, and a third a small fluffy duck.
    Oh my God: is
this
where I belong? I have spent an entire lifetime struggling to fit in only to discover that all the other tidy, shy teenage girls with neat ankle socks and no make-up and a fondness for satchel accessories live on the other side of the world.
    Maybe I’ll ask if one of them can adopt me.
    I give another shy wave and then follow Bunty outside.
    We walk through a wall of intense, pulsing, dense heat and climb into the back of a taxi.
    Then we start the slow, winding drive into the heart of Tokyo.
    I have literally never seen a city more
awake.
    Lights are flashing. People are everywhere. The smell of frying is coming from all directions. Everything is pushed together and jumbled up: streets and paths and roads, winding up and down and over each other like an enormous Scalextric set. The buildings get taller and taller, and – tucked away like secrets – there are tiny wooden temples and flowers and trees, peeking out like grass between pavement slabs.
    Everything is moving and glowing and beeping: signs, shops, restaurants, T-shirts, pedestrian crossings, all flickering and lit up and coloured and singing.
    It’s as if the entire city and everything in it has just drunk eight cups of coffee and is going to spend the rest of the night shaking, feeling really sick and staring at the ceiling. (I did this with Nat a few months ago. It wasn’t as much fun as we thought it would be.)
    As I stare out of the window to my left, there’s a shop display with a purple unicorn in it, wearing tiny orange trainers and a rhinestone saddle. A few minutes later there’s a car covered in thousands of diamonds. To my right, ballerina mannequins hang from silver threads.
    A group of men wearing grey suits walk past, with a man wearing red tartan in the middle.
    A woman dressed as a rabbit waves at us.
    And every time the taxi stops at a light, it’s all I can do not to open the car door, jump out and swirl around the middle of the road with my hands stretched out, like Julie Andrews in
The Sound of Music.
Except with a much greater chance of being hit by a car and a much smaller chance of falling off the top of a mountain.
    I’ve researched Japan for an entire decade. I’ve looked at photos and memorised facts and stuck maps on my wall. I’ve printed things off the internet and ripped pictures out of calendars. But for the first time in my life, studying has let me down. Not a single thing I’ve read or looked at or studied has ever come close to what it’s like actually
being
here.
    I stare out of the window in total silence until the car finally pulls into a smaller street with large, grey, grubby concrete blocks and stops halfway along the kerb. The windows have bars across them and there are wooden sticks strewn on the floor with bits of dried chicken still attached to them.
    “Ta-da, darling,” Bunty announces, flourishing her hands, as if she just pulled a grubby Tokyo suburb out of a black top hat. “Out you hop.”
    I go to open my door, and then pause. My grandmother looks very seated and her invitation sounds nowhere near as plural as it should do. “Me?”
    “No, I’m talking to the cab driver,” Bunty laughs. She playfully grabs my arm and shakes it. “Yes,
you,
silly bean.”
    “Where are
you
going?”
    “I thought this would be so much more fun on your own, sweetie. It’ll be a real, grown-up adventure. We won’t tell your parents. Deal? I’d only cramp your style anyway.”
    The driver opens my door for me and then starts pulling my suitcase on to the pavement. I climb out with my mouth flapping in confusion. What is she
talking
about? I don’t have any