Free All That Glitters by Holly Smale Page B

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    As if my class has been replaced by a flock of twittering, excited birds.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