Some glittering reviews for the books:

“Loved Geek Girl. Wise, funny and true, with a proper nerd heroine you’re laughing with as much as at. Almost”

James Henry, writer of Smack the Pony and Green Wing

“I would highly recommend Geek Girl to anyone who likes a good laugh and enjoys a one-of-a-kind story”

Mia, Guardian Children’s Books website

“Smart, sassy and very funny”

Bookseller

“Brilliantly funny and fresh … A feel-good satisfying gem”

Books for Keeps

“There’s laughter and tears in this hilarious roller-coaster story”

Julia Eccleshare

“Simultaneously hilarious and heart-warming. Everyone should read this book”

We Love This Book

“Pure fun”

School Library Journal

Copyright

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2015

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

The HarperCollins website address is: www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright © Holly Smale 2015

Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com;

Cover typography © Mary Kate McDevitt;

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015

Holly Smale asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008163440

Ebook Edition © 2015 ISBN: 9780008165635

Version: 2015-12-08

For all my geek girls and boys, wherever you are.

Merry Christmas.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Read on for more geekery …

Read on for a bonus Geek Girl story …

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

celebrate [cel-e-brate] verb

1 To observe or commemorate an event

2 To mark with festivities

3 To proclaim or make public

4 To praise widely

5 To perform appropriate rites and ceremonies

ORIGIN from the Latin celebrare – to honour

My name is Harriet Manners, and I love Christmas.

You can tell I love Christmas because I start celebrating it in the middle of August.

I do it subtly, obviously.

A tinsel brooch here, a life-size plastic reindeer with flashing nose there.

“Harriet,” my stepmother said this year when I wheeled it into the hallway.

“Annabel,” I replied, making my face as angelic as possible. “Did you know that the majority of male reindeers lose their antlers in winter? That means that Rudolph was almost definitely a girl. Don’t you think we should be reminded of this every day of the year?”

Annabel laughed and put the reindeer back in the garden shed, along with my ‘Jingle Cat – Meowy Christmas’ album and the cinnamon incense sticks I’d hidden behind the radiators.

So I think the answer was no.

In September I constructed a battle of pink versus white sugar mice on the living room carpet, and October was spent sticking thick wads of cotton wool along the edge of every external windowsill so it looked like it had just been snowing.

“Harriet,” Annabel repeated, which means November was spent cleaning it all off again.

Now it’s the middle of December and I’m finally allowed to start marking the occasion, I’m so excited I feel like a shaken can: except instead of soda, Christmas is fizzing straight out.

I have made a neat list of my favourite Christmas animals, and my favourite Christmas foods, and my favourite Christmas songs, and my favourite Christmas lists.

I’ve created a gift plan with associated shopping map, and a detailed Q and A to hand out on Christmas morning so I can accurately deduce how much people really like their presents.

Together, my best friend and I found a traditional mince pie recipe from a Tudor recipe book written in 1543 and cooked them perfectly. (Then threw them all away, because there’s a reason mince pies are now vegetarian.)

I’ve made Christmassy pie charts and PowerPoints, line graphs and crosswords.

I’ve even had a couple of epic festive-themed fights with my parents, because laughing at a letter I wrote to Father Christmas when I was five years old is just not entering into the appropriate spirit of things.

And – most importantly – I’ve decorated.

In fact, thanks to school having just broken up for the Christmas holidays, my house is starting to look like something Santa would visit incognito out of sheer embarrassment.

I have Christmasified everything.

With barely contained happiness, I have glitterised and spangalised, frostificated and shimmerised. I have sparklificated and made up a whole range of festive verbs and written them in my notepad.

But it doesn’t make much of a difference.

Because four days ago, in a dark TV studio in the middle of London, a beautiful model boy held my hand.

I had my First Ever Kiss.

And now it doesn’t matter how much sparkle I spray, or glitter I drop: it feels like I’m decorating from the inside out.

The shiniest thing here this Christmas is me.

Here are some other important festive Firsts:

Not that I’m trying to compare one kiss with significant festive moments that changed the entire course of human history.

But I think I know how their inventors felt.

It may have changed the course of mine.

“And,” I tell Nat, happily bouncing up and down on the sofa with a tiny red frosted T-rex on a string clutched between my hands, “we spend an average of two weeks of our lives just kissing. Isn’t that wonderful?”

“Mmm,” my best friend says, taking the dinosaur off me, frowning at it and putting it back in the decoration box.

“Plus each kiss burns up to three calories,” I inform her, handing her a giraffe coated in green glitter. “That means it is twice as productive as sleeping.”

“Wow,” Nat says, putting that away too.

“And studies have shown that we remember ninety per cent of the details of our first kiss.” I bounce up and down a few more times with a tin-foil robot. “Although in my case, I think it might be even more.”

Like, ninety-nine per cent at the very least.

I remember everything.

I remember the quietness after everyone abruptly left us alone in the television studio, and the unexpected flush in Nick’s cheeks when he told me he liked me.

I remember the way he reminded me all over again of a lion: big, wild hair and cat-shaped eyes and a mouth that curved upwards at the corners.

I remember the deep breath he took as he stepped forward.

The way he looked at every part of my face.

The way I studied every inch of his.

I can still see the ski-slope shape of his nose; smell the faint lime-green scent of his breath; feel the tickle of a dark curl against my forehead and how his bottom lip was warm and dry.

I can still feel the throb in my ears, and the heat in my cheeks, and the way my heart skittered around my chest like a deer on ice.

Literally still feel it.

Maybe I should work on not remembering quite so much. Kissing causes a sudden surge of dopamine and adrenaline through the system, and mine appears to have lasted three and a half whole days.

“Gosh,” Nat says, handing me a boring gold bell and pointing firmly at the tree. “That. Is. Amazing.”

“I know.” I beam at my best friend. Nat’s been camped out at my house pretty much constantly since The Kiss happened. She claims it’s to help me decorate, but I think I know the truth.

It’s so I Don’t Do Anything Stupid.

Which is totally unnecessary. I don’t even know what that would be.

“And,” I continue breathlessly, gazing in rapture up at the beautiful, sparkling Christmas tree, “scientists say that five out of twelve cranial nerves in the brain light up when you kiss someone. You are literally connecting with your minds. Isn’t that just the most romantic thing you’ve ever h—”

“OK,” Nat says calmly, throwing a piece of red tinsel on the floor. “Enough.”

I stare at it in consternation, and then at her.

“What are you talking about? You can never have enough tinsel, Natalie. Never. It is a physical impossibility.”

Like time travel, or the ability to put a chocolate bar back in the fridge once the wrapper’s open.

“No, I mean enough of this.” Nat points at me. “Enough about kissing. Enough about Nick. Enough hopping up and down while I do all the decorating. It’s time to stop now.”

Huh. OK.

My adrenaline and dopamine levels are so high they’ve actually managed to seep out and exhaust my best friend too.

“I’m sorry,” I say, obediently hanging a silver bauble on a lower branch. Nat’s right: while I’ve been bouncing, she’s decorated pretty much the whole tree. “It’s just … It’s all so perfect, Nat. Christmas, romance, my momentous coming of age as a kissable human being.” I shake my head in wonder. “It really is the most magical time of the year.”

There’s a long silence.

The kind of silence you could wind round a fir tree, should you be interested in decorating with silences.

Then Nat sits down next to me and puts her arm round my shoulder. “That’s not what I meant,” she says gently. “I meant … time’s up.”

Because the main reason my best friend hasn’t left my side is it’s been nearly four whole days now since I had my first kiss.

And Nick still hasn’t called.

Obviously, I like rules.

Rules stop people cheating in exams, and filling out official documentation in pencil, or just putting the king anywhere they like in a game of chess. Rules prevent running in school corridors and walking all over the grass at Cambridge University like total savages.

Rules allow geeks like me to know what to do, and when to do it, and then to try and make other people do it too, even when they don’t really want to.

Rules put the world in order.

But as much as I like a good distinct rule, some are obviously more flexible and open to interpretation. More like – let’s be honest – suggestions.

And I think the Three Day Rule is a guideline.

“But he’s only six hours over the limit,” I remind her. “It’s been less than seventy-seven hours and fifty-three minutes since it happened.”

I should know: I’ve programmed it into my stopwatch.

“Harriet,” Nat sighs patiently, “if a boy doesn’t make contact within three days, they’re not going to. That’s the law.”

I frown. “Chickens aren’t allowed to cross the road in Georgia: that’s a law. Not having a sleeping donkey in your bathtub after 7pm in Oklahoma: that’s a law. Using a phone is not actually a legal requirement.”

Although frankly, of the three options, it’s the one I’d vote for.

“Not a law law,” my best friend admits reluctantly. “But it’s the law of dating and everybody knows it.”

“I didn’t know it.”

She nods as if this goes without saying. “Everybody apart from you. And maybe some random Inuit girl who’s been buried under a pile of ice for the last twenty billion years and is still waiting for some idiot to ring her.”

I laugh. “In fairness, the big bang only happened fourteen billion years ago, so the universe not existing yet is probably a legitimate excuse.”

“It’s the only legitimate excuse,” she growls.

“And maybe Nick doesn’t know the rules either,” I add, ignoring her. “Statistically, the average phone is broken within eleven weeks. There are many possible reasons why he’s not calling.”

“Sure,” Nat says darkly. “Maybe his fingers have been snapped off and fed to a party of hungry Christmas elves.”

I laugh. I love my best friend when she gets angry and protective. She starts staring into space and muttering threats like Batman.

But it’s just not going to work.

Nat can be as cynical as she likes – there are way too many love chemicals currently rushing through my body for me to feel anxious. I am bouncing on a fluffy Christmas marshmallow of my own biological optimism.

It’s kind of funny, really.

We both knew that eventually a boy would enter the equation for one of us first. It’s just that in ten years of friendship, we never guessed that he might be for me.

“Have a little faith in romance,” I say reassuringly, jumping up and skipping to the switch in the wall. “Trust in the magic of the season, Nat. Nothing’s going to go wrong. It’s Christmas.”

Grinning, I switch the tree lights on with a tiny pop.

And – with a burst of ‘Joy to the World’ – my phone starts ringing.

Seriously.

My precognitive skills are totally wasted as a budding model. With my startling ability to see the future, I should at least be employed as some kind of psychic.

Although statistically most give forty-eight-hours’ warning before something happens, so I’d definitely be one of the cheap ones.

Sticking my tongue out at Nat, I grab my phone from where it’s been perched on the arm of the sofa. It’s a mysterious unrecognised number, and I’m so shiny now it’s hard to tell which is more twinkly: me or the T-rex.

“Nick?” I beam into my phone.

“Sadly not, my little Elf. Although you can bet your sparkle-chickens I’m working on it. I keep trying to curl my hair like his, and then I am forced to remember I don’t really have any.”

Nat’s making a frantic who-is-it? face, so I mouth back Wilbur and try not to notice the I-told-you-so eye-roll. For a few seconds I can feel my supreme confidence wobble slightly.

Four days is quite a long time.

I could have done half of the Trans-Siberian Railway in the time it’s taken the first recipient of my lips not to contact me.

“Wilbur, have you got a new number?”

“No, this phone belongs to the agency, Baby-cinnamon-socks. I dropped mine down the toilet. Nearly went from being my number one form of communication to my number two, if you know what I mean.”

Then my modelling agent breaks into peals of tiny bell-like giggles.

“Anywho,” he continues, “I’m just calling to see if you got the new fashion contract from Yuka Ito before the Christmas holidays start. That is not a designer who waits, even for little baby Jesus.”

“Sure,” I say, making a cut-it-out face at Nat. She’s formed a gun with her hands and is pointing it angrily at a tiny cupid hanging on the tree. “My parents signed it, it’s all fine and it’s in the p—”

I stop abruptly.

Ooh. I’ve just had a brilliant idea. A brilliant, inspired, really quite obvious idea I’d have had ages ago if I wasn’t so busy having a happy festive meltdown.

And also writing hilarious legal Clauses for Santa.

“Wilbur, do you have Nick’s phone number? Could you maybe give it to me?”

Nat stops shooting Cupid and her eyes go very round. In fairness, this is definitely, definitely not in the dating rules. She’s told me so about a billion times, vehemently.

The girl must never contact the boy first. Ever.

Especially if he disappeared so quickly he didn’t actually give her his number, so she couldn’t call him in the first place.

“They’re not rules,” I hiss at Nat for the trillionth time, holding my hand over the phone. “They’re guidelines.”

“Darling,” Wilbur laughs, “if I gave Nick’s number to every girl who rang asking for Nick’s number, I’d basically be a telephone directory. Also, as he’s one of our models, it’s data protected.”

“Oh.” I can feel myself collapse slightly again. “Of course. Sorry. Well, Merry Christm—”

“But as it’s you … I heard the most amusalazing story the other day. Do you want to hear it? Do you have a piece of paper and a pen handy?”

I blink a few times.

“Umm,” I say vaguely, watching Nat pick up a sugar mouse and then pointedly bite its head off. “Sure?”

“Ready?” He clears his throat ostentatiously. “Oh, my dear, once upon a time seven little boys made seven little snowmen and oh can you believe each hand had nine fingers so—”

“What were they made of?”

“Sorry, Bunny?”

“What were the snowmen’s fingers made of? Because it can’t be snow – I’ve tried that and they don’t stay on. And you can make arms out of sticks or brooms, but fingers are really tricky.”

There’s a pause, and then a long sigh.

“I don’t think you quite understand the point of this story, Twinkle-face. Maybe I’ll try a simpler one.” Wilbur clears his throat. “Oh every Christmas time seven elves prepare seven stockings but oh zero of them have time to wrap more than nine gifts—”

“Seven elves?” I interrupt again. “There are approximately two billion children in the world, Wilbur. Even with nine gifts each that wouldn’t be enough to—”

“Oh for the love of brandy pudding,” Wilbur exhales. “Do you want this story, poppet, or do you want to spend Christmas cuddling your oversized teddy bear instead?”

I blink. How does he know about my teddy b—

Hang on. Oh. Seven elves. Seven snowmen.

Oh seven seven.

A wave of disbelief smashes over my head.

Oh my God. Wilbur’s telling me Nick’s mobile phone number and I’m too busy correcting him to actually notice. My love life is about to go down the pan thanks to my chronic pedantry.

I am such an accurate idiot.

Fast as I can, I rip the back off a Christmas card. It’s from Granny Manners and it has red bows stuck all over the front of it. In fairness, it probably needed destroying eventually anyway.

“Shoot,” I say, grabbing one of Nat’s eyeliners. “There were nine gifts, how many fingers? Or was it stockings?”

“I’m texting it to you now,” Wilbur says in defeat. “Don’t say it came from me.”

A rush of gratitude whooshes over me.

“Thank you thank you, Wilbur. You’re the best.”

“You bet your tiny jingle-bells I am,” he laughs. “Merry Christmas, my little Snow-socks. Now go get him.”

Which is exactly what I intend to do.

There’s just one hurdle standing between my romantic Christmas destiny and me. And she’s looming directly over me with her hands on her hips and the string tail of a mouse dangling out of her mouth.

It’s really quite distracting.

Nat looks exactly like our cat Victor after he’s been on a successful hunt in the garden. Except high on sugar and pink food colouring, and therefore a lot more dangerous.

“This,” my best friend says crossly, taking a step towards me, “is exactly why I’ve been stuck to you for four days, Harriet Manners.”

Ha. Told you that’s why she’s really here.

“Natalie,” I say quickly, holding my phone over my head as the text received sound pings. “Did Jane Bennet just sit around, waiting for Bingley to call her? No. She went to his house, uninvited, and pretended it was to see his sisters and got the flu and stayed there for weeks, remember?”

Nat frowns. “That’s the example you’re using? Seriously?”

I clear my throat: OK, point made.

“How about Lizzy Bennet?” I say, quickly tapping open my messages. “Did she just sit around, waiting for Darcy to make the move?”

“Nope,” Nat says, taking another step. “She got on with her own life and started making out with Wickham instead.”

Sugar cookies. Thanks to a plethora of well-made and accurate Hollywood adaptations, she’s right again.

“Cinderella?” I say desperately, stabbing at the number Wilbur has sent me. “She went to the ball without being invited, right? Breaking the rules worked for her just fine.”

“Harriet,” Nat says, holding her hands out. “Firstly, Cinderella’s the least cool fairy-tale heroine ever invented. Secondly, you are not a rule breaker. And thirdly, do you really want to talk to someone who doesn’t want to talk to you?”

I stare at her in amazement.

Of course I do. I want to talk to people who don’t want to talk to me all the time.

My best friend clearly doesn’t know me at all.

Besides …

“But you’re wrong,” I say in confusion. “He’s been waiting for the right moment. And that moment is right now. Just watch.”

With a final burst of confidence, I hit call number and beam smugly at Nat as it rings twice.

There’s a tiny click.

“Hello?” a familiar, warm, twangy Australian voice says. “Nick speaking.”

And it’s like magic.

With just three words, every gorgeous romantic moment from the last couple of weeks comes racing straight back.

“Hey, Nick,” I say brightly as something in the middle of me starts spinning happily like a Christmas bauble, glittering all over. “It’s me.”

Then there’s a pause long enough for me to fully register the significance of what I’ve just done.

“Sorry,” Lion Boy says eventually, “who?”

There are 1,025,109.8 known words currently in the English language.

‘Who’ was the only one I wasn’t prepared for.

I put my name and number into Nick’s phone myself, with my own fingers. Which means that he didn’t just fail to use my details in the last four days …

He actually deleted them?

“It’s Harriet,” I say stupidly as Nat puts her hands over her mouth in horror. “Harriet Manners.”

Norwegian scientists have hypothesised that Rudolph’s red nose is probably the result of a parasitic infection of the respiratory system.

Judging by my current glow and sudden inability to breathe, I should be able to lead Santa through the night quite safely for some years to come.

“We kissed a few days ago,” I clarify into the aching silence, and then add in a panic: “Speaking of kissing, did you know that the word mistletoe comes from the Old English word mistletan, which means poo twig, because it spreads itself through seeds in bird droppings that land on tree branches?”

Nat’s eyes are now so round they look like they’re about to pop out and roll under a table.

Poo twig? she mouths at me.

“And,” I continue with a wince, turning round to rest my hot forehead on the wall, “don’t you think it’s strange that an entire romantic tradition is based around a parasitic plant that takes nutrients from another? What does that say about love, do you think?”

Oh my God. I can’t stop talking.

I’m going to just keep talking, and when the heat from my cheeks causes the whole house to explode into flames and crumble around me, I’ll be there: still inexplicably yabbering about parasites.

Frankly, I’ve read a lot of romantic speeches in my life, and absolutely none of them started with faeces.

“Although,” I add in a desperate, horrified rush, “apparently mistletoe actually comes from a Norse legend and the white berries are—”

“Stop, Harriet,” Nick laughs. “I believe it’s you. No further evidence is necessary. Where on earth are you calling from?”

“England. My living room.”

I’m pretty much part of the wall now, but he doesn’t need to know that.

“Very literal.” He laughs again. There’s a crispy chomping sound. “I’m in the kitchen, eating cereal for lunch because apparently I don’t know how to fend for myself.” There’s the crunchy sound of a cornflake box being shaken. “So … is there a problem?”

I blink, smacking my head gently on the wall. “Umm, sorry?”

“You called me.” A second shake. “Is something wrong?”

Oh my God. This is getting worse by the minute. Apparently my call is so unwelcome and so unexpected it’s actually a sign that the universe has gone awry.

“No-o-o. I just …” I clear my throat. “I wanted to say hello, that’s all. Thomas Edison chose it as the word to use when greeting people on the phone. So … hello.”

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