Geek Girl (Geek Girl, #1)(63)

My deep breath rushes out of me all in one go. “Huh?” I say in confusion. “What? Seriously?”

Nat puts her head in her hands.

“Sure,” Alexa says, folding her arms in front of her. “We can all sit in the living room and discuss the likelihood of a white Christmas.”

“Really?”

The beam disappears. “No, not really, you moron. I have no idea what you’re doing here and I don’t care. Get off my doorstep before I set the dogs on you.”

Toby takes a few steps backwards. Admittedly, I can’t hear any dogs, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any; they might just be really quiet ones.

I bite my bottom lip hard. “Not until I’ve said what I need to say.”

Alexa’s frown deepens and she starts making a whistling sound. “Rex? Fang? Come here, boys. It’s geeks for tea.”

Nat breathes out loudly and tugs at my arm. “OK, Harriet. You’ve made your point, you’re risking your own safety to defend me, you’re very brave, I love you again, now let’s drop it and go home, all right?”

“No.” I fold my arms, partly to look determined and partly because my hands are shaking with nerves. “I’m not going anywhere. Not until I’ve told her.”

“Told me what?” Alexa stops whistling and her eyes narrow. “You’re standing there like the three little pigs on my doorstep so that you can tell me what?”

There’s a long silence while I look at her, my brain making whirring sounds. The Three Little Pigs. And their three little houses. One made out of straw, one made out of wood and one made out of brick. That’s it.

I’m going to tell Alexa that if we’re the three little pigs, then it’s OK because there are three of us, and we’re not in a house of straw, we’re in a house of brick. So she can huff and puff as much as she likes, but she can’t blow us down.

And if she has a problem with this analogy – I do, actually, because in Tudor times houses were made out of straw and they didn’t seem to have a problem with the elements – then I’ll switch to The Three Bears and tell her it doesn’t matter how much of our porridge she eats and how many of our beds she sleeps in: we’ve finally found the strength to run her back into the woods.

And then I’ll turn to The Three Brothers, and I’ll just keep going with the fairytale triumvirate analogies until she understands that we’re not frightened of her any more. And she can’t hurt us again, however hard she tries. Because we won’t let her.

I prepare myself to launch an attack verbally way below my range, but abruptly stop. I don’t need to say any of it. I know. Nat knows. And Toby knows. We’re here and that’s enough. But there is something I do need to say.

“We’re sorry about your hair.” I point to Alexa’s head. “That’s what we came to say. What we did was horrible, malicious and wrong, and we are sorry.”

Alexa lifts her eyebrows. “You came all the way over here to tell me you’re sorry about my hair?”

“Yes.” I turn to Nat, who looks totally speechless. “Aren’t we, Nat?”

“I’m sorry too,” Toby interjects. “Despite having nothing to do with it in a literal sense, as leader of this gang I feel I should take responsibility for its actions.”

Nat and I look at each other. We’ll just let Toby have that one.

Nat scowls and her cheeks go pink. I know she’s been feeling bad about it too. She’s just not mean enough to think it was acceptable behaviour. “Yeah,” Nat says finally, her shoulders relaxing. “I lost my temper, Alexa, and I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.” She pauses. “But if you do anything like that to Harriet again,” she mutters so that only I can hear her, “I’ll give you a buzz cut.”

Alexa touches her hair. “Luckily my face shape can pull off just about anything. Are we done now?”

“Yes,” I say slowly, looking at her hard. “We are done now.”

And I really, really mean it.

“Then please feel free to go to hell. All of you.” Alexa looks at the three of us. “Geeks,” she adds, almost as an afterthought.

And closes the door on us.





e dance all the way home. Although we wait until we’re out of Alexa’s driveway first obviously. We’re not on a suicide mission.

“Did you see that?” Toby keeps shouting, wiggling his hips. He’s opened his jacket up and is accompanying our triumphant movements with the electric keyboard on his T-shirt. “Take that, Alexa! WHAM! We came all the way to your house and everything!”

I twirl round in a happy little circle with my hands over my head. It’s all over. If the big bad wolf wants to get us, she’s going to have to climb down the chimney. Where we’re going to keep a big cauldron of hot water, just in case.

It feels amazing. Even Nat does a little triumphant shoulder wriggle when she thinks nobody’s looking.

“You know,” she says breathlessly when we’ve all finally stopped glorying in the moment, “that felt really good. Alexa’s never going to say sorry for anything, which makes us the good guys, right?”

“Well, we know we’re not the bad guys,” Toby says earnestly. “If we were, we’d be wearing black with little skulls and we’d probably have moustaches.”