A twosome never to be divided, like salt and pepper or cheese and tomato. That’s right: Nick and I are finally a proper duo.Ī couplet. There’s a sketch of me and it’s timed and dated to commemorate the precise moment-four weeks and two days ago-that Lion Boy and I became an official item. It would be a really weird thing to doodle on someone else’s private stationery. Thanks to my brain drowning in the love chemicals phenylethylamine, dopamine, and oxytocin, I’ve basically morphed into a cartoon princess.Įxcept one with an astronomically high phone bill and a tendency to look up symptoms of being in love online when her boyfriend isn’t looking.Īnyway, the final reason I know I’m a girlfriend is this, written on the inside back page of my new bright-purple diary: I know I’m a girlfriend because I’m giggling at my own jokes, singing songs I don’t know the words to, hugging any animal within a hundred-meter radius, and twirling around in circles with my hands stretched out every time I see a small patch of sunshine. I’m grinning every thirty or forty seconds, minimum. Apparently, the average girl smiles sixty-two times a day, so I must be statistically stealing somebody else’s happiness.

I know I’m a girlfriend because I can’t stop smiling. MY NAME IS HARRIET MANNERS, and I am a girlfriend.

Geek Girl by Holly Smale