All That Glitters (13 page)

“I think I need to balance you faster, in that case,” I laughed, cheeks ridiculously warm. “It’s an hour to the next train and now you’re going to miss your Hilfiger casting.”

“Totally worth it. Tell me something else about snow.”

“Umm.” I rummaged through my brain for a few seconds while Nick opened his big grey coat and pulled me inside it so I wouldn’t get cold. “Anything?”

“Tell me anything, Polar Bear Girl,” he said, wrapping his arms round me. “Anything at all.”

“OK.” I found my best snow fact and smoothed it out for a few seconds until it was all neat and clean. “If you had a million snow crystals and compared two of them every second, you’d be there for nearly a hundred thousand years before you found two that matched.”

Nick wiped a snowflake off my cheek and pulled me a bit closer. “Funny,” he said as it started snowing again. “I must be smarter than we thought. It only took me seventeen years.”

And he kissed me again.

I run until I reach the bright red postbox.

For a disorientating second, I can almost believe Nick’s here and not on the other side of the world. That it’s snowing again and I have one cold sock and two hot cheeks. That he’s still with me.

That I’m not on my own.

“I miss you,” I whisper, kissing the envelope and posting it through the hole.

And it’s like magic: I immediately feel lighter.

As if I’ve pulled out all the heavy words and sent them far, far away, where they can’t weigh me down any more.
I miss you
is gone and – just like that – my heart lifts to a white dwarf, then to the sun, then to Jupiter. Then Neptune and Saturn.

Until, finally, I’m on earth again.

Back where I belong.

ou know what?

People can say what they like about my hippy grandmother – and judging by my parents they often do – but Bunty told me once that sometimes all you need is a good cry and an even better pen.

I think she might have been right.

By 7am the next morning, I’m feeling infinitely brighter and more positive. In fact, I’ve even found the massive flaw in my First Day Back plan.

I didn’t have one.

After years of careful strategising, I can’t believe I tried to fit back into a new life with nothing but a toilet book and an apparently pathological interest in bananas to win people over.

I will never be winging anything again.

Luckily my new plan – aka Harriet’s Win People Over And Make Them Like Me Again Plan (HWPOAMTLMAP, for short) – is
so
well designed it starts working before I’m even through the school gates.

That’s how powerful it is.

“Hey,” a girl in a yellow dress says, tapping me on the arm. “Do I know you from somewhere? We played volleyball last year, right? Or were you at Meg’s party in February, dancing on a table?”

Volleyball. Party. Dancing on a table.

“That doesn’t sound like me,” I say doubtfully. “If I’d been there I’d have definitely been under it.”

She laughs, even though I wasn’t actually joking.

“No worries – I’ll work it out. Catch you around!”

The girl wanders off and I stare in amazement at the enormous bag I’m carrying with the plan inside it.

Goodness. It’s not even
open
yet.

Another two students smile as I wander through the corridors, a girl I vanquished in debate club two years ago nods at me and a group of three boys abruptly stop talking as I walk past.

And no: I’m not dressed as a bumblebee or a duck, my trainers are matching and my clothes are seasonally appropriate.

For the first time ever, I’ve actually checked.

“Yo, Harriet,” Robert says as I reach the classroom. I open my bag and pull a pink plastic Tupperware box out. “It
is
Harriet, isn’t it? You look really … nice today.”

I blink at him. “Sorry?”

“Yeah. You look really … Err. Cute.”

Robert has been in my form for five years, and he once sat on my foot: that’s how utterly invisible I usually am to him. I stare at him in shock, then at the box I’m holding, and it all promptly makes sense again.

Oh my goodness: the poor, poor boy.

His parents clearly aren’t feeding him properly. His blood sugar levels must be dangerously low.

“Thanks, Robert,” I say gently. “You look nice too.”

“Do I?” He grins and leans forward until I’m at risk of being stabbed in the eye by one of his gel-points. “Maybe we could look nice together at lunch sometime?”

“Sure,” I say sympathetically, awkwardly patting his arm. “I’ll save some sugar for you.”

“That’s what
I’m
talking about,” he says, wiggling his eyebrows. “I reckon there’s a bit of sugar with my name all over it.”

Huh? How does he know that?

“There is, actually,” I say in surprise, pushing the classroom door open. “And chocolate chips too, and quite a lot of peanut butt—”

But before I can get any further, every person in the room swivels round.

And the room explodes around me.

ll I can hear now is a chorus of my name.

“Good morning, Harriet!” “Hey, Harriet!” “How was your evening, Harriet?” “What did you get up to, Harriet?” “Over here, Harriet!”

As if my class has been replaced by a flock of twittering, excited birds.

“Harriet!” Ananya says as I take a bewildered seat. “Or can I call you Ret?”

Ret?
That makes me sound like a man with a big moustache and a Panama hat.

“Umm, of course,” I mumble in surprise, putting the box on the desk in front of me and getting an even bigger one out. “Ret. Retty. Or … you know. Harriet is also fine.”

“I’m so sorry we didn’t get a chance to catch up properly yesterday. Sixth-form homework is
mad
, right? I mean, where do they think we get the time from? Does it grow on
trees
?”

“Actually, thyme is a flowering herb,” I say distractedly, still blinking at the rest of the class. “It grows best in pots.”

Ananya stares at me blankly, and then explodes in a fit of giggles. “Oh my God, that’s so funny! How do you think that quickly?”

I don’t know what she’s talking about. One neuron in the brain fires 200 times a second, but none of mine have done a single thing since I walked into the room.

I knew my plan was good, but this is ridiculous.

“Oh wow-wow-wow,” Liv breathes, pointing at me. “IsthatChanelI
love
itit’sso
retro
IreallywishIhadonetoo wheredidyougetitfrom?!”

I glance down in confusion at my bright jumper. I don’t know much about designers, but I don’t think Coco Chanel was a big fan of badgers wearing top hats and bow ties.

“My grandmother embroidered it for me.”

I mean Granny Manners: not Bunty, obviously. The latter would rather poke her own eyes out with a biro than get caught appliquéing knitwear.

“OMGthatis
so
unfair. My nan died
years
before badgers became cool. That is literally so
typical.
”

I’m not quite sure how to respond to that.

Then I glance cautiously around the room. Everyone’s still staring: Robert keeps winking at me, five girls are whispering and even India gives me a brief nod.

This lot must be
starving.

I can’t help but notice that Jasper is still facing the front, utterly unmoved.

We’ll just see about that.

With a sense of triumph, I open my Tupperware box and the comforting smell of freshly baked butter and sugar rises into the air. Inspiration hit me last night, at some point around the fiftieth mumbled
sugar cookie.

All I needed was something simple and traditional. Something that would show the class that I care about them and want to be their friend: that I’m not as stuck-up as I made them think.

So – in a flash of positivity – I rushed down to a late-night supermarket.

Then I spent the entire night making, icing and decorating three hundred dinosaur-shaped sugar cookies. Pink
Isisauruses
and green
Tangvayosauruses
; purple
Argentinosauruses
and orange
Camarasauruses
. Each one personalised so that everyone in my class had their very own biscuit: name written in silver balls and jelly sweets perched on top.

With enough to win over the rest of the year too.

Maybe a few extra for the teachers.

Three for Steve, obviously: he looks like he has a sweet tooth.

And I might be exhausted, and I may still have flour in my eyebrows, but I don’t care. The word
mate
comes from the Middle Low German word
gemate,
which literally means
to eat together.
So maybe this is my best shot at making friends.

Because as people start smiling, chattering to me and munching their way through the biscuits, I think I’ve actually done it.

I am finally part of a team again.

ews of my awesome dinosaur biscuits spreads far and wide.