Chapter Text
People wouldn’t exactly describe Nerds as a very “popular” candy.
Sure, she was alright to have in the moment if you forgot to do your homework last night and needed someone to do it for you or help tutor you after class. Other than that, she was more or less just another candy in the huge Halloween basket that was Redforty High.
Nerds was never the type of person to make enemies. However, she could make one exception for a particular girl.
Airheads.
Just saying the name could make her shudder. Airheads was Nerds’ exact polar opposite in many, many ways. What Nerds did, Airheads always tried to do better. She always walked down the hallways with some sort of obnoxious flair, her two (or sometimes three) somewhat-friends following behind her like lapdogs. She lied and cheated almost daily, so often that Nerds could tell when and where it would happen. And what she hated the most? Airheads, quite predictably, was an airhead. Anything she attempted to learn went in one ear and out the other for around six seconds before she decided she had gotten bored. Somehow, she always got above-average grades, and not even she knows how.
In short, Nerds hated Airheads. Her disregard for the rules, her pretentious attitude, the way she shows up to classes twenty minutes late as if she barely even wants an education.
And in turn, Airheads hated Nerds back. The way she pushed her glasses up when correcting people, the way she clutched her books close to her chest, and her braces-filled smile.
Nerds stood in front of her large locker, almost as big as she was, clad in gray metal painted lipstick-red. She squinted, reaching her hand up and ripping off a sticky note that hung from the locker door.
“Morning nerd. Open your locker, I left a suprise in there. - A <3”
Of course it was Airheads. It was always Airheads. The poor bastard barely even spelled “surprise” correctly. And why did she have to leave this condescending heart at the end of her note? She doesn’t love her like that. She loves her like how a snake loves a mouse for being a source of food. Whatever it was inside her locker, it couldn’t have been that terrible.
She swung open her locker, prepared for the worst, closing her eyes as if something would pop out at her… Weirdly, she felt nothing. She cautiously opened her eyes, looking around her to see if anybody else spotted anything. Nobody batted an eye.
She stared down, just now noticing something crawling up her sleeve. She could make out a thin tail, mangy gray fur, and two beady soulless eyes.
A rat.
Why did it have to be a rat?
Nerds immediately jumped, shaking her arms to free the rat from her sleeves. It didn’t budge. Instead, it crawled higher up her arm, reaching her shoulder before emerging out of the hem of her shirt. It jumped off of her shoulder before scampering off down the hallway to terrorize some other student.
Then came the sound of laughter. A sound she’s heard a thousand times over. Steps ambled toward her, before a heavy, pale-colored arm slung itself around Nerds’ shoulder. She recognized the letterman jacket, the tiny scar on one of her knuckles, the nails painted such a red color it barely fit Airheads’ personality in any way. “‘Sup,” she said in such an unmistakable voice, “like the surprise?”
“What in God’s name urged you to put a rat in my locker?!” Nerds shouted back.
“I ran out of snakes. I had to improvise.”
Nerds stared up at Airheads in a mix of fear, disgust, and general distress. “You were going to put a SNAKE in my locker?!”
Airheads planted a fist in Nerds’ short-cut purple hair, ruffling it until a few strands stuck out. “Calm down, shitface. It’s just a prank. Why do you have to take everything so seriously?” Nerds hated when she said dumb stuff like this.
Nerds pushed Airheads away from her. “That wasn’t a prank!”
“It was goddamn hilarious though.”
“Maybe to morons like you, it is…” Nerds mumbled under her breath, reaching an arm out into her locker to grab her bag. Airheads, picking up on her comment, grabbed onto Nerds’ shirt.
“What was that?”
“N– Nothing,” Nerds stammered.
“That’s what I thought.” Airheads let go of Nerds’ shirt, leaning against the lockers. “You have the money, don’t you?”
“My lunch money?”
Airheads scoffed. “Duh.”
Nerds sighed. “No, I don’t have your money.”
“Have it by tomorrow, or this fist…” she balled her fist, just to prove a point, “is going right in that stupid little face of yours.”
What Airheads wanted this money so badly for Nerds could only guess. Maybe the money was going toward someone else. Maybe it was to buy drugs. Maybe it was going to a charity… Come on, it was Airheads we’re talking about. There’s a good chance she didn’t know what a charity was until she was eleven.
Nerds, without much else to do, nodded and walked away, heading to class. “Alright, fine.”
Mangled thoughts of discomfort and aversion swirled in Nerds’ head like a big stew.
If you had told Nerds that, given a month and a half, she and Airheads would’ve drunkenly made out during a party in a rich kid’s backyard, she would have called you as many names as she could think of.