All Wrapped Up. Holly Smale
magical time of the year.”
There’s a long silence.
The kind of silence you could wind round a fir tree, should you be interested in decorating with silences.
Then Nat sits down next to me and puts her arm round my shoulder. “That’s not what I meant,” she says gently. “I meant … time’s up.”
Because the main reason my best friend hasn’t left my side is it’s been nearly four whole days now since I had my first kiss.
And Nick still hasn’t called.
Obviously, I like rules.
Rules stop people cheating in exams, and filling out official documentation in pencil, or just putting the king anywhere they like in a game of chess. Rules prevent running in school corridors and walking all over the grass at Cambridge University like total savages.
Rules allow geeks like me to know what to do, and when to do it, and then to try and make other people do it too, even when they don’t really want to.
Rules put the world in order.
But as much as I like a good distinct rule, some are obviously more flexible and open to interpretation. More like – let’s be honest – suggestions.
And I think the Three Day Rule is a guideline.
“But he’s only six hours over the limit,” I remind her. “It’s been less than seventy-seven hours and fifty-three minutes since it happened.”
I should know: I’ve programmed it into my stopwatch.
“Harriet,” Nat sighs patiently, “if a boy doesn’t make contact within three days, they’re not going to. That’s the law.”
I frown. “Chickens aren’t allowed to cross the road in Georgia: that’s a law. Not having a sleeping donkey in your bathtub after 7pm in Oklahoma: that’s a law. Using a phone is not actually a legal requirement.”
Although frankly, of the three options, it’s the one I’d vote for.
“Not a law law,” my best friend admits reluctantly. “But it’s the law of dating and everybody knows it.”
“I didn’t know it.”
She nods as if this goes without saying. “Everybody apart from you. And maybe some random Inuit girl who’s been buried under a pile of ice for the last twenty billion years and is still waiting for some idiot to ring her.”
I laugh. “In fairness, the big bang only happened fourteen billion years ago, so the universe not existing yet is probably a legitimate excuse.”
“It’s the only legitimate excuse,” she growls.
“And maybe Nick doesn’t know the rules either,” I add, ignoring her. “Statistically, the average phone is broken within eleven weeks. There are many possible reasons why he’s not calling.”
“Sure,” Nat says darkly. “Maybe his fingers have been snapped off and fed to a party of hungry Christmas elves.”
I laugh. I love my best friend when she gets angry and protective. She starts staring into space and muttering threats like Batman.
But it’s just not going to work.
Nat can be as cynical as she likes – there are way too many love chemicals currently rushing through my body for me to feel anxious. I am bouncing on a fluffy Christmas marshmallow of my own biological optimism.
It’s kind of funny, really.
We both knew that eventually a boy would enter the equation for one of us first. It’s just that in ten years of friendship, we never guessed that he might be for me.
“Have a little faith in romance,” I say reassuringly, jumping up and skipping to the switch in the wall. “Trust in the magic of the season, Nat. Nothing’s going to go wrong. It’s Christmas.”
Grinning, I switch the tree lights on with a tiny pop.
And – with a burst of ‘Joy to the World’ – my phone starts ringing.
Seriously.
My precognitive skills are totally wasted as a budding model. With my startling ability to see the future, I should at least be employed as some kind of psychic.
Although statistically most give forty-eight-hours’ warning before something happens, so I’d definitely be one of the cheap ones.
Sticking my tongue out at Nat, I grab my phone from where it’s been perched on the arm of the sofa. It’s a mysterious unrecognised number, and I’m so shiny now it’s hard to tell which is more twinkly: me or the T-rex.
“Nick?” I beam into my phone.
“Sadly not, my little Elf. Although you can bet your sparkle-chickens I’m working on it. I keep trying to curl my hair like his, and then I am forced to remember I don’t really have any.”
Nat’s making a frantic who-is-it? face, so I mouth back Wilbur and try not to notice the I-told-you-so eye-roll. For a few seconds I can feel my supreme confidence wobble slightly.
Four days is quite a long time.
I could have done half of the Trans-Siberian Railway in the time it’s taken the first recipient of my lips not to contact me.
“Wilbur, have you got a new number?”
“No, this phone belongs to the agency, Baby-cinnamon-socks. I dropped mine down the toilet. Nearly went from being my number one form of communication to my number two, if you know what I mean.”
Then my modelling agent breaks into peals of tiny bell-like giggles.
“Anywho,” he continues, “I’m just calling to see if you got the new fashion contract from Yuka Ito before the Christmas holidays start. That is not a designer who waits, even for little baby Jesus.”
“Sure,” I say, making a cut-it-out face at Nat. She’s formed a gun with her hands and is pointing it angrily at a tiny cupid hanging on the tree. “My parents signed it, it’s all fine and it’s in the p—”
I stop abruptly.
Ooh. I’ve just had a brilliant idea. A brilliant, inspired, really quite obvious idea I’d have had ages ago if I wasn’t so busy having a happy festive meltdown.
And also writing hilarious legal Clauses for Santa.
“Wilbur, do you have Nick’s phone number? Could you maybe give it to me?”
Nat stops shooting Cupid and her eyes go very round. In fairness, this is definitely, definitely not in the dating rules. She’s told me so about a billion times, vehemently.
The girl must never contact the boy first. Ever.
Especially if he disappeared so quickly he didn’t actually give her his number, so she couldn’t call him in the first place.
“They’re not rules,” I hiss at Nat for the trillionth time, holding my hand over the phone. “They’re guidelines.”
“Darling,” Wilbur