All Wrapped Up

Some glittering reviews for the

“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

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

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 dayof 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.