Nerd Girl Chapter 1 (Patreon)

Nerd Girl

By T.G. Cooper and Anonymous 3

“So, you’re taking care of it?”  Richard said into his cell as he ran his electric shaver across his chin.

“Of course, but, really—“  Michael Kline stared to say.

“BUT?  Don’t you but me!  Do your job!” Richard said, ending the call.

Micheal looked at his phone, his blood boiling.  Richard had been accused of sexual harassment— again— for repeatedly coming onto one of his professors no less.  Micheal had been tasked with making it go away.  Again.  He was really getting tired of it. “ I went to Harvard Law school for this?”  He wondered.  Of course, he worked for Richard’s father and was very well paid, but still.  He really didn’t like being talked down to by a child.

Luke, Richard’s roomie, was sitting on the couch, Calculus textbook in his hands. “That prick giving you shit?”

“Asshole started to lecture me.  Like I give a fuck what he thinks.”

“He take care of that bitch?”

“Yeah.  Just had to find her price.  For all her feminist bullshit, we paid her off just like any prostitute.”

“And you would know,” Luke said.

Richard chuckled. “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”

Richard looked himself over, smiled.  He was a good looking man, for sure, and he knew it.  Add in the fact that his father was worth half a billion dollars, and he’d gotten away with everything his whole life. Not that his Dad was any kind of positive role model. He was on his fourth wife— this one a 19 year old model.  He’d only agreed to marry her after she’d gotten a boob job. Richard thought it was awesome.  He wanted to be just like dear old dad as he got older, trading in one hot young wife for another.

“Heading out,” he said.

“Keep it real,” Luke said.

“Always.”

Richard walked down the hall to the elevator.  When the doors opened, he saw a girl there— another student.  Looking her over he saw cheap jewelry, a shitty blonde dye job, plastic sandals.  In other words, common, though slightly attractive in the way a peasant can be.  She smiled.  “Hey,” she said.

“Yeah,” Richard said, getting on the elevator, making it as clear as he could through his tone and demeanor that he didn’t want to talk to her. He even pulled out his phone, pretending to check his texts, praying to God the elevator would get to the first floor in a hurry.  The girl was wearing some kind of cheap, drug store perfume that smelled like chemicals he suspected were supposed to approximate some form of flower, but actually just smelled like pollution to him.

“We have a class together,” the girl said.  “Economics?  In that auditorium with, like, 300 people?”  There was something needy, almost desperate in her voice. It made Richard sick.

“You are a mud person,” Richard said.  “A common creature.  I wouldn’t hire you to clean my toilets, so please just shut up.”

The girl looked stunned, stepped back.  They rode the rest of the way down in silence.  When the reached the first floor and the doors opened, the girl shoved her way past Richard, mumbling, “jerk!”

Richard recoiled, disgusted she had touched him. “I am only being honest,” he called after her.  “I thought women liked honesty.”

The girl didn’t respond.

“Morning, sir,” Ahmir, the doorman, said from behind his desk.

“The quality of the residents has declined,” Richard said. “Have you noticed?”

“Oh, yes,” Ahmir said, thinking, with you.

Richard left.  Thank God this was his senior year, and he would soon be free of the requirement to associate with lesser people. The worst thing about colleges these days, he felt, after the absurd sexual harassment policies, was the insistence on providing opportunities to middle class and even — ugh— poor people.  They just degraded everything with their backward and uncouth opinions.  Not to mention the smell.

He made the short walk to campus, thinking about the corner office that awaited him at dear old dad’s brokerage.  The secretary.  The penthouse apartment he would secure, in a building with the better sort. It was all going to be so glorious,  and it would make these days listening to the idiotic droning of these pitiful low paid academics worthwhile.  How could people who only made 70,000 dollars a year and lived in hovels expect to be taken seriously?

Just as he was contemplating the pitiful existences common to his so-called professors, he came to the quad and stopped short.  There were people there— students, alleged adults, dressed in robes, rubber armor, swinging plastic swords. He stopped.  A waifish girl with pale skin and pink hair, wearing a robe with stars and moons on it, holding a staff over her head, was backing toward him. “I cast my spell of turn undead!”  She shouted, her voice trembling with passion.

“The spell worked!” Richard shouted. “You look like a skeleton!”

“What?”  The girl spun around.

“What is this?  Dimwits and dullards? A support group for terminal losers?”

The Larpers all looked away, embarrassed and not sure how to react to the bully who’d intruded into their fun. All, but the waif. “For your information,” she said, “Larping is one of the fastest growing pastimes amongst educated men and women between the ages of 18-25.  So you are the one who isn’t cool.”

Richard chuckled. “Cool?  What adult cares about cool?”  He stepped forward, assessing the young woman. “You,” he said,”have never had a boyfriend.  You were on every planning committee for every dance in high-school, but  no one ever invited you. You went anyway. Alone.  You pretended you didn’t mind, but it hurt.  So bad.  You had a crush on the quarterback and used to fantasize about him asking you out, but you knew you could never be worthy of a boy like him, so you threw yourself at a serious of sad nerds and losers, none of whom ever returned your sad affections largely because they were all gay. Your father abandoned you.  You never got along with your mother.  And now, you try and escape your sad little life, to feel some sense of power and worth, by pretending to be some kind of wizard, which is the saddest thing about your pointless and loveless life.”

The girl’s mouth dropped open. Her eyes started to mist over as she shook her head.  “No…” But Richard could see he’d nailed her.

“Um, for your information, she’s not a wizard, she’s a cleric,” an acne scared bean pole wearing what looked like a corset and a monocle said.

“Shut up, crater face,” Richard said. “You’re all pathetic,” he shouted, waving toward the crowd of Larpers. “You proclaim to the world that you are losers, and you wonder why no one respects you!  Go!  Go!  Run to Mordor and give Gollum a kiss for me.”

Laughing, Richard turned and walked away.  He was truth teller.  He couldn’t help himself. Perhaps his radical honesty would lead them to change their lives. As he was replaying his performance in his mind, he was so distracted he didn’t even see the woman who stepped in front of him.  He collided into her, shocked, stumbling backward. “Hey!”

The woman was tall, dressed in a cable knit sweater, a flamboyant scarf draped over her shoulders.  She looked down at Richard through big, turtle shell glasses. “Excuse you,” she said.

“You’re the one who got in my way,” Richard snapped.

“Richard,” the woman said, shaking her head.  “You are everything that’s wrong with men.  You are the kind of person who watches Star Wars and roots for the First Order.”

“So?”

“So, it’s time for you to learn to identify with the underdog, my little friend.  It’s time for you to broaden your horizons.”

“I’m outta here,” Richard said, but when he tried to walk past the strange woman, he found he couldn’t move. “What?”

“My name is Eris,” the woman said. “I’ll be seeing you around, nerd girl.”

With that, she began to laugh, the air around her shimmered, there was a blinding flash and when Richard could see again— she was gone.

Richard shook his head.  Took a step to find out if he could move, which he could. “I need to get more sleep,” he decided. “Losing it.”  He went on to class, putting the incident out of his mind.  Finding a seat toward the back, he slouched down in his seat.  As he waited for class to start, a girl walked in, stopping in the aisle to talk to someone.  She was wearing a t-shirt that read, “Gryffindor.” Richard smiled, his heart even fluttering a little.  “She must be into Harry Potter,” he murmured.  “That is so cool.  I’m so Slytherin.”

The girl found a seat.  Richard found himself thinking about Hermione.  He really admired her and kind of wanted to be like her, she was so brave and loyal.  Really, he was already pretty much her —

What am I thinking?  Richard sat up, shocked at the the fact he’d been admiring a— woman?  And not even a real one, but a character in a stupid… But no.  He realized.  Harry Potter wasn’t stupid.  It was one of his favorite all-time things. Richard’s head hurt as he struggled to process what he was thinking.  He had always thought Harry Potter was moronic, something for losers, hadn’t he?  He was sure he had, and yet now he had memories of reading every book, even hugging them to his chest before he went to bed at night… he … he..

The professor walked in.  Richard shook his head. It was all nonsense.  He would just forget about it. None of that mattered.  As the professor lectured, though, Richard found himself sketching a picture of Harry, and decorating it with hearts.  When he realized what he’d been doing, he crumpled up the picture, looking around, worried someone had seen him.  There was a girl sitting in the row behind him, and she kind of smirked.  Richard looked away, humiliated and enraged.