Free All That Glitters by Holly Smale Page A

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