Read Online Geek Girl by Holly Smale - Free Book Online

ones. And your cracker was one of them.”
    “Sir!” Alexa exclaims indignantly. “This isn’t fair! We haven’t got to the end of the play yet! Harriet cheated!”
    “It’s not called cheating,” Mr Bott says tiredly, putting his hand over his eyes. “It’s called having a vague interest in the storyline.” Then he puts his fingers briefly on the bridge of his nose and breathes out.
    “But—” Alexa says, cheeks even redder.
    “I can see my time here is well spent,” Mr Bott interrupts. “And on that encouraging note, I am going to go and collect some more textbooks from the staffroom. At least three members of this class appear to be reading Romeo and Juliet , hoping I won’t notice the difference.” He sweeps a look of total disdain round the classroom. “Entertain yourselves for five minutes. If you can.”
    And then he leaves. Like a circus master who has just bashed an angry tiger on the nose and then locked it in a cage with his assistant.
    I turn slowly to face Alexa, and somewhere in the distance – outside of the terrified buzzing that has just started in my head – I can hear the sound of thirty fifteen-year-olds sucking in their breath at the same time.
    “Well,” Alexa says eventually, turning to look at me, and I swear she sort of growls. “I guess now it’s just you and me, Harriet.”

ou know in romantic films, there’s always that moment where the love interest just can’t hold back how they feel any more and has a sudden need to declare themselves in public?
    It’s always totally predictable, and always totally expected, yet the heroine is always shocked and surprised, as if it’s out of the blue. I’ve never understood that. I mean, how dense is she? Couldn’t she see it coming a mile off? Couldn’t she feel the gradual build-up of tension, like everyone else?
    Now it all makes a little bit more sense. You don’t see things happening to you . Only when they’re happening to somebody else. Alexa’s passionate, inexplicable hatred for me has nowhere else to go. It has come to a big pulsing head and now it’s going to come bursting out.
    I look at the door desperately. Should I try to escape? Or keep my head down and try to get through it? We’re at school. Just how bad could it be? And you know the scary bit? There’s still a part of me that’s about to correct her grammar. “You and I,” I’m tempted to reply. “Not you and me . Now it’s just you and I , Alexa .”
    “Well,” Alexa says again and I can tell the whole class is still holding its breath. “Harriet Manners.”
    I swallow and take one step towards my seat.
    “Oh, no. No, no. You’re not going anywhere.” She grabs the back of my school jumper and pulls me to the front of the class. It’s not a violent tug; it’s gentle, almost like a mother trying to stop her child from walking across the road when a car is coming. I stop and stare at the floor, making myself as small as possible.
    “Could you have made me look any more stupid?” Alexa asks, almost conversationally. “I mean, ostensibly ? Did you actually use the word ostensibly ?”
    “It means ‘apparently’,” I explain in a whisper. “Or ‘supposedly’.”
    Why didn’t I use ‘supposedly’?
    This seems to make her even angrier. “I know what it means!” she shouts. “God, you really do think I’m thick, don’t you!”
    “No,” I whisper.
    “Yes, you do. You and your smart little comments and your crap little facts and your geeky little face . ” She pulls that expression again: the one with the crossed eyes and protruding teeth. Which is really unfair: she knows I had my braces taken off years ago, and my left eye is only lazy when I’m tired. “You really think you’re better than everyone else, don’t you, Harriet Manners?”
    “No,” I mumble again. The humiliated burn has spread to my neck and my ears and is creeping up my scalp. I can feel the entire class staring at me the way they stared at the monkey at