At home that night, I was relaxing in my bedroom after dinner, wearing just a thin tank and cotton shorts as I lay on my bed. The weather was warm in Florida, except for a couple of months of the year when it did get cold at night, so I tended not to wear much at night.
I was trying to work on these physics problems when my phone pinged. I reached over and picked it up thinking it was one of the Nerd Collective asking for help with their homework. We often shared problems we were having with homework, hoping that one of the others understood it. For some reason, I was top of the list to ask. Maybe they were just too lazy and they liked to talk to the only girl in the collective. I think I spent a lot of my time just directing them to their answers, like a glorified AI assistant.
Hey, Zoemi, how do I find the answer to this mathematics question?
It wasn't the messaging app I used for school, however, but another. It had been a while since I used this one. When I opened it up and read the message, it made me pause.
J0LLy-R0g3R: I know what you did in class
When I looked at the username, I realized they had used the same temporary name as my fake porn site. Someone had obviously memorized it and made an account with it.
You have to be wondering why I used the same name as my scapegoat for my fake porn site. You see, Roger and I have a bit of history. We've known one another since fifth grade, and it hasn't been all sunshine and roses. It's more like the fertilizer that they spread around the plants. Like shit.
He was always such a mean dick from day one. He used to tease me. About the way I dress, the shape of my face, to what I ate for lunch at school. Everything. It got worse as I got older and I became a nerd. You know, smart, excelled in my grades, while he became a jock. Someone with more testosterone in their head than actual brain matter.
The guy knew how to play football, which helped him, I guess. Then suddenly, I ended up in the Nerd Collective. Certainly not by choice. When the teachers recognize how good you are in certain subjects, shower you with praise and they start to spotlight you. Show you off to the rest of the class as the perfect little student, while telling the rest of them to be more like me. I was good at academic subjects. Not so in athletics or swimming. I was okay, I guess. Not as good as everyone else. I wouldn't be winning awards.
It didn't matter what I was like in other subjects. Once you are branded a nerd, you're always a nerd. I hated it. But what could I do, apart from purposely making mistakes on tests? I loathed the idea of fucking up my grades. Yes, I was little miss perfect. Blame my sisters for my inferiority complex. So I kept at it, and the teachers kept showering me with accolades and offering me competitions in mathematics, computers, and any subjects that I excelled at.
That wasn't to say that Roger was the only one that made fun of me as a nerd. No, it was open season on nerds because of the high ratio of jocks. So plenty of other kids got in on it. Eventually, by the time I was in high school, I was on the outs with everyone in school, even the cheerleaders. Some cheerleaders were in my Phys Ed classes and constantly made fun of my baggy clothes every time we did track and field. Girls can be scary bitches.
From then on, it wasn't just Roger that made my life a misery. From random tripping in the hallway, and spilling my food tray in the cafeteria. One time I got hit by a flying football during Phys Ed.
Finally, I'd just got tired of the mean jokes and had enough of the bullying. Roger was my nemesis and someone who deserved to be taken down a peg or two, so I concocted this cockamamie plan.
I was pretty sure I'd covered my tracks and no one would know what I did, which made me feel all the more uneasy at seeing the message. Maybe whoever this was, was spamming everyone in class, hoping to get a reaction. Their statement did feel like it was right out of some creepy horror film where everyone eventually gets killed.
But I wasn't going to learn anything by staring at it. Most likely it was one of the Nerd Collective, trying to prank me.
ZoemiLightBringer: Who's this?
Heh. I forgot that I had that username on this account. I used to use it when gaming with the Nerd Collective. They wanted me to play video games with them a couple of years ago. I didn't really have that much fun, to begin with, and it turns out that being a girl in online games sucks. And not in a nice way. I thought Roger was bad, but people actively went out of their way to ruin anything I was doing. So, I quit. I'm sure if I started a new account that didn't look like a girl's name and didn't talk on voice chat or used a voice changer, I might have found a way to enjoy playing games, but the shit I saw every day was way too toxic for me.
Jolly Roger hadn't replied.
ZoemiLightBringer: Is this you Taylor?
ZoemiLightBringer: This isn't funny guys
He was one of the male members of the Nerd Collective. Get it? Members.
J0LLy-R0g3R: You can keep guessing. If it makes you feel better. I won't tell you who this is
Harsh. Maybe it was one of the other guys from class. It was difficult to believe one of the jocks would do this, reach out to me with an anonymous account. For a moment, I wondered if it was Roger, but I knew he would have been filling this chat with more hateful words if he knew I was responsible.
