💡🐇 Naughty Thoughts

꩜🚼💧 Fixing the Nerd

Grace has always struggled to be one of the popular girls, but she doesn't let on how hard it is. Her friends are cool, she spent most of high school dating guys on the sportsball team, and for the last year she's been dating a guy on the college team. She's gone straight from high school to the local college, and took most of her friends with her. But she's also developed a reputation for being a bit wild, because that's how she could get the attention of all the cool kids she wanted to impress.

Avery and Laia, on the other hand, are the natural cool kids. They seem to have an inherent sense of style, and they never worry about what anybody else thinks. So whenever she's hanging out with them, Grace worries that they'll drop her as soon as the supply of crazy ideas dries up. So she has to keep going one step further, coming up with ideas even weirder and more wonderful than she's thought of before. And when it comes to the case of Berta, a quiet nerd who's gone through the first half of the year practically ignored, an idea comes to mind that just seems perfect.

They're going to fix the nerd; teach her to be popular. At least, that's what they'll promise her. They'll teach her to let go of her inhibitions, at least, and maybe she'll learn to show off instead of falling back on whatever weird depressive coping mechanisms are making her so withdrawn. It's kind of a win/win situation from Grace's point of view: either they can give Berta a makeover and it'll be a miracle, or they can humiliate her and laugh at her expense. Avery and Laia aren't so sure this is a good idea, but they go along with Grace's plan after a little pushing. But the more they talk about it, the more extreme ideas get thrown into the mix. And when they find out that Grace's parents are going to be away for the whole summer, they decide that it will be a perfect opportunity to give Berta a kind of rebirth. Rather than just reinventing her, they're going to take her all the way back to being a baby and let her grow up into a different person.

It's extreme, sure. But Grace's ideas always are. And she's done a lot of research on drugs, sensory deprivation, hypnosis, and other manipulation techniques. She's sure she could turn the shy girl into a total baby; a blank canvas ready to be reshaped.

Everything starts to go wrong when Berta comments on some of the weird stuff in the medicine cabinet. She sees the packages, and comments on the side effects when those things are mixed together. It turns out that she has a perfect memory, and knows all kinds of drug interactions and medical stuff better than most pharmacists; and she knows ways the substances could be abused that Grace never even thought of. But that's not a big deal, because she's talking about it like an intellectual curiosity. She doesn't suspect that those drugs will be going in her drink later.

Then it comes to the evening. Avery is trying to learn to be a cocktail bartender for her part time job, so she's the one mixing the drinks. And Berta is the one asking for mocktails the whole evening, so there's no chance of confusion. It gets pretty late in the evening before Grace realises she isn't just drunk, and starts to have a few little problems. Because the other two were impressed by Berta's knowledge, and decided to change the plan. It's going to be Grace who gets regressed; she was so excited about the possibility, so it seems like a fairer prospect for her to be the one experiencing it. And when Berta turns out to be some kind of genius, making plans in minutes that are more potent than the ones Grace spent weeks of research on, the quiet girl has a talent that really impresses the others. Maybe she can be popular without even needing to change, now the cool kids have seen what she's capable of.