The Will To

T W E N T Y - T W O (nerdhood)

I'd spent a total of twenty minutes with Reid at the party that Friday night. To his credit, he'd sought me out and we stood together near the edge of the common room. My mind was swollen with thoughts relating a bit too much of him to focus, and I hadn't been on my game. Reid, too, was distracted, as his friends kept pulling his attention away, and, after one obscenely loud guy grabbed his shoulder and hauled him towards the kitchen for some stupid drinking game, I cut my losses. Reid offered no apologies, and I wasn't keen for one.

The spot on the wall that Rey had promised me had popped into my head as I left the Alpha Beta Gamma frat house, but I didn't detour to see him. I was tired, very, very tired, and the chaos of Greek Row was nearly unbearable tonight. A wall wasn't going to offer me the quiet I desired, and I'd see Rey Sunday evening for another project meet up. That thought warmed me a bit on my walk home.

Nola was asleep when I entered our apartment. She hadn't set foot on Greek Row that night, and, though our interactions had been strained recently, she made sure that I was equipped with my pepper spray before I left for the party earlier that night.

I crawled into bed feeling a knot of guilt that wouldn't unravel as I drifted to sleep.

Though I was annoyed that I'd have to spend another Sunday evening inside the library, I wasn't the same level of annoyed as I had been the first time. With Nola and I still at odds, I wasn't missing our sacred Sunday night binge-fest, and I was actually excited to start piecing together our project. I'd enjoyed researching cyberstalking over the last couple of weeks and was beginning to believe it was going to make an impactful case study, hopefully leading to the FBI internship wrapped with a bow on my doorstep.

Rey was present when I entered the library. His head was cradled inside his hand as he read something from his open notebook, with a pencil tapping against his temple. I only noticed that Danica and Xavier were also at the table when I approached.

"What kind of nerd is early for a seven o'clock meeting in the library on a Sunday?" I cracked, throwing myself in the chair beside him. My comment generated three different responses: Xavier lifted his gaze from his phone for half a second, Danica startled as if I was wielding shurikens, and Rey glanced quickly at his wristwatch and grinned. "You, apparently."

Unable to stop my mouth from twisting amusedly, I extracted my journal from my bag and slapped it onto the table. "Did you just call me a nerd?"

"By your own definition, that's exactly what you are."

"Show me the ways, Sensei."

"Nerdhood is not for the faint of heart," Rey said solemnly. "People think it's all pizza pockets, online gaming, and mouth breathing—no, it's much more than that. It's complex. It's intricate. It's indescribable." He paused for dramatics. "It's a lifestyle."

"God," I said, biting back a laugh. "You really are a nerd."

Rey clicked his tongue. "That is not the way to Nerdhood."

Our back and forth managed to snag Xavier's attention from his phone, and he watched us with knitted brows. Danica still looked like I was about to throw a throwing star in her direction at any given second.

I cleared my throat, feeling some heat in my cheeks and wondering when the library had become so warm. Rey slid me a half-grin and gingerly tugged on his ear. "So, anyway, yeah. Now that we're all here and good to go," he started. "Let's, um, get to it. Put together what we each researched. Let's case study the shit out of cyberstalking."

X

Case study the shit out of cyberstalking we did. An hour and a half later, we'd managed to compile a rather organized rough draft of our case study. Much of the required research had been completed (I was pleasantly surprised at the level of aptitude my fellow teammates had demonstrated). We were making tremendous progress, and though I was happy the project wasn't a sinking ship, there was something that still didn't sit quite right with me. As if it was missing something.