Geek Girl: Model Misfit

My face is starting to hurt with all the pretend emotions.

It feels as if somebody’s just stabbed me with a cattle prod

the hour before you’re supposed to wake up, the anterior pituitary gland in the brain releases a polypeptide tropic hormone called adrenocorticotropin, which acts as a stimulant and natural alarm clock

Tabitha?” Dad says. It’s only when he takes the baby and fits her swiftly into the crook of his arm that I remember he’s actually done this before. “Tabitha Manners? As in Tabitha from Bewitched?”

Annabel laughs. “It’s also Aramaic for gazelle and the cat in Beatrix Potter, so it should keep us all happy. I’m sure if we do enough research we can find a few record-breaking owls and koalas too.” Then she turns back to me. “Come here, Harriet.

I DON’T LIKE HOSPITALS.

Let’s be honest: nobody actually does. Ostensibly, they’re about making people better, but they’re not. They’re about reminding us that at some stage we all get sick, and we all hurt, and we all get lonely, and sometimes there’s nothing anybody can do about any of it.

For God’s sake. Bella never had to put up with this kind of friendly, bonding nonsense in Twilight.

The dog waited for the rest of his life, and when he eventually died the people of Tokyo built a statue in the place he used to wait to commemorate his loyalty, and the fact that he never, ever gave up.”

Every day for a year Hachiko would come and greet Hidesaburo after work here, at this exact spot at Shibuya station. In 1925 the professor suffered a stroke at work and died, but Hachiko returned to the same spot every single day for nine years waiting for him to come back.”

“Not just any dog, Harriet. That’s a dog called Hachiko. He was a brown Akita dog and he was adopted in 1924 by a Tokyo professor called Hidesaburo Ueno.”

Lady of Shalott (yet another heartbroken lady who didn’t fare very well in lots of water).