Popular Nerd

Chapter One// The School Nerd

"Do you think the school nerd would do my homework for me if I asked him out?" My best friend asks from across the lunch table.

Amusement sparks in my laugh as I shake my head at her with disbelief. "What 'school nerd'?" I ask quizzically, using my fingers as air quotation marks before using them to pick up another French fry from my tray.

"The school nerd." Begins Lacy. "You know? That guy at the back of the class room who does nothing but memorise text books and gets straight As," she clarifies as if I should have known all along.

"I don't think anyone else but you calls him 'the school nerd' Lacy," I connect my eyes with hers as she stares back at me with her burger in one hand. "And anyway, I'm sure he has a name."

"Well duh!" Moans Lacy, dunking her burger into some tomato sauce, sighing exasperatedly. "But I don't know what his name is. Do you?"

Very good question. I tilt my head and raise my eyes to the corner of the cafeteria. I lose myself in a deep thought for a moment until Lacy snaps her ketchup fingers in front of my face. I shake out of my daze. "I don't think I do," I confess. "Why don't we ask him?"

"Are you crazy?" She splutters out her milkshake. "I'm not talking to a guy like him," she scoffs, disgusted, as if I'd challenged her to eat a piece of mouldy chewing gum off the dirty cafeteria floor.

"Well your going to have to know his name if you're going to ask him out," I say plainly, the corners of my mouth turning up into a small grin.

"That was a joke, Paige!" Lacy whines, playfully swatting my arm as I flinch backwards into my seat.

"Ow," I caress my arm pretending I am hurt. We always joke like this. Lacy just rolls her eyes at me. "Joke or no joke, you still need to do that report," I tell her with meaningful eyes. "It's due Monday and today is Friday."

"Don't you think I already know that?" She throws her head back and groans defeated. "It's just too much work!"

I chuckle to myself at how pathetic she is acting. But that's my best friend for you- always trying to get out of doing school work. But at least I've gotten used to that for three years now, since we first became besties back when we were fourteen. Normally, she would try and get me to-

"Paige?" Her head levitates back up and a sweet, innocent smile grows across her cherry lips, batting her eye lashes.

"No!" I sit up instantly. "No, no, definitely not."

"But please," she begs, extending the letters in her words, thinking that if she sounded like a baby I would give in. But not today.

"I don't have time," I say simply. "Josh is taking me out Saturday night and before that it's my cousin's birthday party. Then on Sunday I'm at my dad's house and you know I haven't seen him in ages."

"I know, I know. But you could do it tonight?" She offers, sending me another hopeful smile, desperation lit up in her glistening green eyes.

"I'm doing my own tonight." What will it take for her to see that I am no longer a study puppet where she can control me to do her homework. "Sorry girl but you might just have to do it yourself this-" before I manage to complete my sentence, my phone starts buzzing from inside my bag.