Geek Girl
“My name is Harriet Manners, and I am a geek.”The first book in the bestselling, award-winning GEEK GIRL series!Harriet Manners knows that a cat has 32 muscles in each ear, a “jiffy” lasts 1/100th of a second, and the average person laughs 15 times per day. She knows that bats always turn left when exiting a cave and that peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.But she doesn’t know why nobody at school seems to like her.So when Harriet is spotted by a top model agent, she grabs the chance to reinvent herself. Even if it means stealing her best friend's dream, incurring the wrath of her arch enemy Alexa, and repeatedly humiliating herself in front of impossibly handsome model Nick. Even if it means lying to the people she loves.Veering from one couture disaster to the next with the help of her overly enthusiastic father and her uber-geeky stalker, Toby, Harriet begins to realise that the world of fashion doesn't seem to like her any more than the real world did.As her old life starts to fall apart, will Harriet be able to transform herself before she ruins everything?The award-winning debut by bestselling author Holly Smale.
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First published in paperback in Great Britain
by HarperCollins Childrenâs Books in 2013
HarperCollins Childrenâs Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,
HarperCollins Publishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
The HarperCollins website address is: www.harpercollins.co.uk
Copyright © Holly Smale 2013
Holly Smale asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, 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 ebooks.
Source ISBN: 9780007489442
Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2013 ISBN: 9780007489459
Version: 2016-04-21
For my grandad. My favourite geek.
Contents
geek/gi:k/h noun informal, chiefly N. Amer.
1 an unfashionable or socially inept person.
2 an obsessive enthusiast.
3 a person who feels the need to look up the word âgeekâ in the dictionary.
DERIVATIVES geeky adjective.
ORIGIN from the related English dialect word geck âfoolâ.
I know Iâm a geek because Iâve just looked it up in the Oxford English Dictionary. I drew a little tick next to all the symptoms I recognise, and I appear to have them all. Which â and I should be perfectly honest here â hasnât come as an enormous surprise. The fact that I have an Oxford English Dictionary on my bedside table anyway should have been one clue. That I keep a Natural History Museum pencil and ruler next to it so that I can neatly underline interesting entries should have been another.
Oh, and then thereâs the word GEEK, drawn in red marker pen on the outside pocket of my school satchel. That was done yesterday.
I didnât do it, obviously. If I did decide to deface my own property, Iâd choose a poignant line from a really good book, or an interesting fact not many people know. And I definitely wouldnât do it in red. Iâd do it in black, or blue, or perhaps green. Iâm not a big fan of the colour red, even if it is the longest wavelength of light discernible by the human eye.
To be absolutely candid with you, I donât actually know who decided to write on my bag â although I have my suspicions â but I can tell you that their writing is almost illegible. They clearly werenât listening during our English lesson last week when we were told that handwriting is a very important Expression of the Self. Which is quite lucky because if I can just find a similar shade of pen, I might be able to slip in the letter R in between G and E. I can pretend that itâs a reference to my interest in ancient history and feta cheese.
I prefer Cheddar, but nobody has to know that.
Anyway, the point is: as my satchel, the anonymous vandal and the Oxford English Dictionary appear to agree with each other, I can only conclude that I am, in fact, a geek.
Did you know that in the old days the word âgeekâ was used to describe a carnival performer who bit the head off a live chicken or snake or bat as part of their stage act?
Exactly. Only a geek would know a thing like that.
I think itâs what they call ironic.
So.
Itâs currently December, Iâm in bed â tucked under about fourteen covers â and Iâm not doing anything at all apart from getting warmer by the second. In fact, I donât want to alarm you or anything, but I think I might be really sick. My hands are clammy, my stomachâs churning and Iâm significantly paler than I was ten minutes ago. Plus, thereâs what can only be described as a sort of⦠rash on my face. Little red spots scattered at totally random and not at all symmetrical points on my cheeks and forehead. With a big one on my chin. And one just next to my left ear.
