Note: this is a slow moving story, if you like quick bang-bang stuff it ain't for you.
This is set in Ontario Canada, in 1980. There is no internet, there are no cellphones, no streaming video. These are fictional 18 year old characters.
Nerds of a Feather - Chapter 1 The Ask
Thursday Oct 16 1980
Jake Martini was sitting in the cafeteria across from his lab partner Kara Martins, working on their grade 13 chemistry lab report during one of their study periods. They were nerds by any measure. They sat next to each other in just about every class they had, all through high school, because the teachers at their school had a policy of seating students alphabetically. They had been lab partners in every physics, biology, and chemistry class they took. Jake and Kara were both in grade 13, and both were on the honour roll, competing for top of the class. And they were both loners, far too shy for any social activity. They didn't really have friends at school, just a small circle of acquaintances, all mostly nerds like themselves.
Jake was 5' 7", a scrawny kid with light brown hair, wearing glasses since second grade. Typical nerd, interested in science & math, reads a lot, and is painfully shy around girls. He had always been teased and pushed around by bigger kids, so he kept to himself most of the time. Any time he tried to talk to a girl he blushed and stammered; he was always rejected or ridiculed. The way girls hung around in groups meant that there were always a couple of them available to make snide remarks if he tried to speak to one. He was smart too, too smart, and was teased for being a 'brainiac'. By this time, at age 18, he was pretty much a full time loner. Never had a girlfriend, had never even been on a date.
Kara was tall for a girl, just shy of 6 feet, skinny, and not well endowed, with bad skin due to acne and eczema, and wore her dark brown hair short. Long hair and the dandruff from her skin conditions did not go well together. She was very shy with boys due to her self-image issues. She didn't have the curves that the other girls had. She was tall and thin, and wore mostly baggy shapeless clothes that covered her completely, partly to hide her lack of shape, and partly to hide her blotchy skin. Other kids teased her, calling her Crater-Face, which hurt a lot, and made her withdraw from most social contact with others. She spent a lot of time reading books about science and SF/fantasy. She too was an 18 year old loner. Never been on a date, never had a boyfriend, and never expected anyone to ever find her attractive. Not that she didn't dream of having a boyfriend...
Jake looked across the cafeteria at a group of the popular kids. The ones with social skills and interests & activities outside of school. The jocks and the cheerleaders, ones with boyfriends and girlfriends, who dated and partied, the popular kids and the cool kids. Sometimes they were the cruel kids too. The nerds, the outcasts, kids like Jake, were always on the outside, bullied, and always left out, pushed out, teased or ignored. He wished he could break that cycle. Life was OK, mostly, but he felt that it could be so much better. But there was no way to get involved, he was too shy, and felt rejection too keenly. He wished he had a girlfriend, but his shyness and fear of rejection prevented that.
He looked across the table at Kara and asked her "Do you ever think you might want to be part of that?" as he gestured towards the other kids.
She looked over at the group who were laughing and talking and listening to music on a boom box, and she said "Yes, sometimes, but I don't want to ruin my grades by wasting my time like most of them." Many of those kids were barely passing, and Kara was at the top of the class. 'And they would never have me in any of their groups anyways', she thought privately. She would've liked to have had a boyfriend, but she was so ugly and flat chested no one would ever be interested in dating her.
"Yeah, good point," Jake said. Then he looked down at his lab report, thinking about what she had just said, about wasted time and grades, looked over at the other kids, and then looked back at Kara. "Hey, so, um, how much actual homework do you take home? I do all mine at school, during lunch and spares." Being in Grade 13, he had two study periods plus lunch, which was loads of time to get all his work done. Especially for brilliant students who aced just about every test. He might work a bit at home, if it was a large essay or a big project, but 99% of his homework got done here at school.
Kara looked at her notes, then at the other teens, and back to Jake. "Oh! I never thought about it that way. That's an interesting observation. I finish all my work at school too. I spend half my study period just reading, for fun." She had a surprised look on her face as she continued, "I could easily spend time in social activities after school, and still have lots of time available for homework. That wouldn't hurt my grades at all" she said. She had never thought of this before. Most of her evenings were spent reading, watching TV, or researching personal projects. Kara looked at the others again, frowned, and said "I'd like to, but they're a very, um, exclusive group. I don't think they want someone like me hanging around with them."
He was surprised at her answer. It sounded like she really was interested in some kind of social activity. It made him think. It made him look at Kara, really look at her. Not the lab partner, not the kid who sat next to him in all his classes, but at the girl. Her answer indicated they both seemed to be interested in doing some kind of social activities, and she was a girl. He had never really seen or thought of her as a girl before. She was certainly not what you would call pretty, but at this point, someone familiar was as good as anyone Jake could think of. He hated the idea of 'settling' for someone, but who else was there? He didn't know any girls he could actually talk to, except maybe Kara.
Jake wanted to make a change in his life, so he dug deep inside and fought to keep a steady voice as he said "OK, so, um, would you, would you like to do something together, like after school, or something, like with me, maybe?" He could feel his face burning with a serious blush and steeled himself for the expected rejection. That's all he ever got from girls, rejection. It wasn't that he was particularly attracted to Kara, she wasn't pretty, but she was familiar, having sat next to him for 4 years. She was smart too, not one of those airhead cheerleader types. And she was a girl, despite the lack of figure and her acne-scarred face. But she probably wasn't interested in him anyways, he thought. What girl would be? Scrawny weak little nerd, can't even talk to a girl.
Kara sat up straighter, her eyes widened a bit and she blushed too. Having a poor self-image, she was more or less resigned to being alone most of the time. This sudden interest from a boy, even though she knew him pretty well, was a bit of a shock. She'd never considered Jake as a boy, he was just her lab partner, just someone from school, but yes, he was a boy, not one of those tall handsome hunks, but a boy nonetheless. Jake's earlier comments about time and homework made her think seriously about this. The two of them were not particularly close, just acquaintances really. But they worked well together, and he was smart, as smart as she was, far smarter than most of the other people in their class.
The seconds dragged by, time made slow and ponderous by anxiety, and Jake was on the verge of grabbing his books and fleeing the situation when she finally said "You mean, um, like a date?" Jake hadn't thought this far ahead. A date!? Did he just ask a GIRL out on a DATE? 'I'm doomed', he thought, 'she's gonna point and laugh, there's gonna be insults and humiliation'.
"Uh, I, yeah I, I uh guess so?" stammered Jake.
Instead of rejection, she said "Okay. What did you have in mind?"
Jake's heart was hammering as he thought frantically for something reasonable, and all he could come up with was "How, um, how about dinner and a, maybe a movie, um, tomorrow night?"
Kara blushed harder and said "Oh. Uh, OK that sounds good. Where and when, and um, which movie were you thinking about?"
