How to seduce a nerd

THE BULLYING

Chapter 2: The Bullying

I didn't sleep last night.

Not because I was crying about Sam—though I definitely did some of that. But because I couldn't turn my brain off. Couldn't stop replaying the plan over and over in my head. The look on Sam's face when he saw me with Brian. The way everyone would realize I wasn't boring. The way I'd get my power back.

Except there was this other thing. This tiny, annoying voice in the back of my head that kept asking: What if he actually likes you?

And I'd push it down. Because that was the whole point—he would like me, I'd get what I needed out of it, and then I'd move on. Simple. Clean. Perfect.

Except nothing about this felt simple or clean.

By the time I got to school, I was running on fumes and espresso. My makeup was flawless—it always was—but underneath it, I could feel the exhaustion. The cracks in the mask were starting to show.

I spotted Brian almost immediately in the hallway before first period.

He was at his locker, methodically organizing his books like they were precious artifacts instead of just textbooks. His dark hair was falling into his eyes, and he kept brushing it back with this absent gesture that somehow made him look both completely lost in thought and completely present at the same time.

It was annoying how much I was noticing details like that.

Someone threw a paper ball at the back of his head.

"I watched it bounce off his shoulder, watched him flinch,just barely—then continue organizing his books like nothing had happened." Like being targeted was just background noise in his day.

"Yo, nerd," one of the guys called out—Tyler, a jock who'd been in my English class sophomore year. "Why are you taking so long? It's just books, man. They're not going anywhere."

Brian didn't respond. Didn't even look at them. He just finished putting the last book away and closed his locker with careful precision.

"He's ignoring us," another guy laughed. "Ignoring us like we're beneath him. This little nerd thinks he's better than us."

I wanted to keep walking. I should have kept walking. This had nothing to do with me, and stopping would draw attention, and attention was the last thing I needed right now.

Instead, I stopped.

"He's not ignoring you," I said, and I wasn't even sure why the words came out. "He's just... not interested in whatever this is."

The guys looked at me like I'd just appeared out of thin air.

"Chelsy?" Tyler said, his tone shifting immediately. From cruel to confused to something that looked suspiciously like impressed. "What are you doing over here?"

"Walking to class," I said simply. "Like normal people do."

I brushed past them before any of them could say anything else, aware that Brian was watching me. Aware that I'd just done something that didn't fit the plan. That didn't fit the narrative of a girl who was using him, manipulating him, taking advantage of his vulnerability.

I'd just defended him.

Which was stupid. Which was exactly what I shouldn't be doing if I wanted to successfully seduce him without complications.

But I couldn't really regret it either.

Second period, I had physics. Brian sat in the back corner, like he always did. Alone. I tried very hard not to look at him. Tried to focus on Mr. Henderson's lecture about Newton's laws and momentum and all the other things that were supposed to be interesting but just made my brain hurt when I was this tired.

Instead, I found myself watching Brian.

He was taking notes, but not the way normal people take notes. He wasn't just writing down what the teacher said. He was actually thinking about it, writing his own analysis in the margins, drawing little diagrams that showed he actually understood the concepts instead of just memorizing them.

When Mr. Henderson asked a question about velocity, I expected the usual scenario: awkward silence while everyone waited for someone else to answer. But Brian's hand went up immediately.

"The velocity would increase proportionally to the time elapsed, assuming constant acceleration," he said, his voice quiet but absolutely certain. "But if there's friction involved, the calculation gets more complex because you have to account for the resistance—"

"Yes, thank you, Brian," Mr. Henderson cut him off, already moving to the next topic.

But I'd seen it. That moment where Brian was so completely in his element that he forgot to be shy. Forgot to worry about how he looked or sounded. He was just... brilliant.

And nobody cared. Nobody even noticed.

Merge was sitting next to me, and she leaned over during the next lecture. "Stop staring at the nerd," she whispered, clearly amused.

"I'm not staring," I whispered back.

"You're totally staring. What's going on? Are you actually getting cold feet about the plan?"

"No," I said, but I wasn't entirely sure I was telling the truth.

"Because if you are, we can find someone else. There are other nerds. There are probably nerds who are less likely to—"

"I'm not getting cold feet," I interrupted, keeping my voice low. "I'm just tired. I didn't sleep."

"Because of Sam?"

"Because of... a lot of things."

Merge didn't push, which was good because I didn't have an answer that made sense. I was tired because I'd spent all night staring at my ceiling, thinking about the plan. Thinking about Brian. Thinking about how he'd looked when Mr. Henderson cut him off mid-explanation, like his thoughts weren't worth finishing.

Thinking about how that felt familiar.

I pushed the guilt down and kept moving forward with the plan anyway.

Because that's what I did. I pushed things down. I moved forward. I didn't let anything slow me down, especially not some nagging feeling of conscience about a guy I barely knew.

After lunch, I had to use the bathroom. Which meant I had to walk past the science wing, where I saw something that made me stop dead in my tracks.

There was a cardboard box outside of the science lab, filled with what looked like pieces of a robot. Broken pieces. Like someone had smashed it, or thrown it away, or destroyed it on purpose.

And standing next to it, staring at it like his entire world had just collapsed, was Brian.

His hands were shaking as he reached down and picked up one of the pieces—a circuit board, maybe, or some kind of processor. He turned it over in his hands, examining the damage. His face was unreadable, but I could see the tension in his shoulders. The way his jaw was clenched.

Someone walked past and bumped into him deliberately, hard enough to make him stumble.

"Watch where you're going, nerd," the guy said, not even looking back.

Brian didn't respond. He just steadied himself and went back to looking at his broken robot.

And I realized, standing there in the middle of the hallway with my perfect hair and my perfect makeup and my perfect life that was falling apart at the seams, that Brian and I weren't as different as I'd thought.

He was invisible. I was hypervisible.

He was being targeted. I was being pitied.

He was broken. I was breaking.

And I was about to use all of that to make myself feel better.

I turned and walked away before he could see me watching.

Before I could feel any guiltier than I already did.

I watched him for another moment, then turned and walked away.

Because stopping to help would just make this harder. And I didn't want it to be harder. I wanted it to be simple. I wanted it to be a plan with a beginning, middle, and end. I wanted to seduce Brian Chen, prove to Sam that I wasn't boring, and move on with my life like nothing had happened.

I wanted to not think about his hands shaking. Wanted to not care that he was special and brilliant and completely invisible to everyone around him.

I wanted a lot of things that I was starting to realize I wasn't going to get.

But I was going to do it anyway.

Tomorrow, I'd approach him. Tomorrow, I'd start the plan. Tomorrow, I'd become just another person using him, and I'd do it anyway because I was hurt and angry and desperate to feel like I had power over something in my life.

Tomorrow, I'd become the villain of his story.

But tonight, I just stared at my ceiling and tried very hard not to think about what that made me.