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Go right ahead, Meera. You don’t mind do you, love?
    EMILY ZIPZER: She doesn’t mind.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
    My life can sometimes seem like a never-ending crisis. It certainly feels that way.
    But this wasn’t a crisis. This was more like a mission. And missions are fun. I am good at missions. They focus my brain, so that I don’t worry about not reading well and I stop thinking about forgetful I am.
    Right then I was no longer a forgetful, underachieving kid with helmet hair but a man on a mission. I was a hero!
Y
es!
I could do this.
    As I hurtled back to the flat with Mum’s keys, I felt like I had a chance. This year was going to be my year. Photographic perfection was within my grasp!
    That enthusiasm lasted 3.4 seconds after I entered the flat. I had dashed to the laundry basket, ripped off the lid, flung clothes everywhere in a storm of dirty laundry, and there it was, lying right at the bottom.
    My uniform.
    My heart sank when I pulled it out, though. I’d let a pen bleed to death all over the shirt collar. At that moment I wanted to be anywhere else but here.
    I wanted to disappear into the floor, tunnel through the planet and re-emerge somewhere in Chile with a new name, a new haircut, and a fresh start. As I couldn’t do that, I sort of crumpled to the floor instead. While I rubbed my eyebrows into the carpet, I scolded yesterday’s Hank for screwing up my life so royally.
    There was no time to wallow. I only had forty-ish minutes until the photographer packed up for the day. I had to be sitting in his chair, looking like a million dollars, before he did.
    I sprang to my feet and clapped my hands. Time to get heroic.
    First thought: stains come out in the wash.
    Solution: wash the shirt!
    I ran to the kitchen sink and scrubbed the collar. I scrubbed like Cinderella. I scrubbed until I thought my hand would fall off. I scrubbed under the hottest water the tap would pump out. Then I scrubbed under the coldest water, just in case that helped. I froze my scalded hand but did hardly any damage to that stinking stain.
    All my hollering and banging around had attracted Katherine the lizard. She was peering at me from between two boxes of cereal, watching me like I was a fly she was hunting. She flicked her tongue out, which I took as a sign she was ready to help – or maybe she just wanted to eat me.
    “What do you think?” I asked her, holding up the shirt. “Can I get away with this?”
    Her tongue disappeared.
    “No, I didn’t think so either,” I said and then sighed. “How can I get this out?”
    Katherine’s tongue appeared again, to lick her eyeball.
    “That’s just what Emily would say.”
    I looked at the shirt again. I needed soap.
    The kitchen dispenser was empty, so I dashed to the bathroom. I knocked almost everything off the sink as I lunged for the liquid soap. After squirting half of the bottle on the stain, I really let my shirt have it. Still no luck, though my hands now smelled like nectarines.
    I was starting to feel panicky. My legs had got wobbly, so I looked around for a soft spot to collapse onto.
    Then I saw it. Not a soft spot but a solution to the problem of my stained shirt. Emily’s electric toothbrush. I must have knocked it off the sink earlier. That’s what I needed: more muscle.
    I squirted the rest of the liquid soap all over Emily’s dentist-recommended hypersonic brush. While the tap water was warming up, I looked at myself in the mirror.
You can do this
.
    Then I saw something green and scaly reflected in the mirror. Katherine had followed me and was now sitting on the bathtub, watching me. No time to worry about that now.
    I took a deep breath, plunged the brush into the steaming hot water and pressed the little blue “start” button. That brush was so super-charged that it sprayed soap and scalding water all over the place.
    It didn’t get the stain out either.
    “Talk to me, Kathy, huh? I’m running out of ideas here!”
    The lizard seemed to