April Ficlet: ZeroCool (Supernatural)
The only thing less attractive than a male nerd was a female one - except, of course, when it came to other nerds, but sadly, female computer nerds were thin on the ground and Charlie just wasn’t interested in the very male Russian exchange students that she most often shared the computer lab with.
Not that Charlie was a computer nerd. No, she was much more than that. It had taken her an afternoon to hack into the high school’s computer system. She installed Doom and Duke Nukem 3D, because first-person shooters had been hot since Wolfenstein. She also installed Space Quest, because it was a personal favourite.
Her mistake, of course, had been bragging. She told too many people how to find the executables. It was a few months before the teachers became wise to the rampant gaming - but Charlie couldn’t say she hadn’t seen it coming.
They shut down all the computer labs for three days while they rebooted the system. They changed all the admin passwords and installed new safeguards. Thankfully, no one turned her in as the culprit - mostly, because only a select few knew that she was the one that had done it, and those that did know, also knew what else Charlie could do for them. Turning her in, which would either get her expelled, or, worse, banned from all school computers, would do them no favours in the end. Those Russian exchange students needed good grades to send home to mom and dad, and it wasn’t their fault there was a language barrier.
When they opened the labs again, Charlie waltz in and hacked the system in less than five minutes. She reinstalled the games, told only a few people how to find them, and then swore them to secrecy upon pain of what she could do to their permanent records.
In the world of the computer lab, Charlie was beloved. She was worshipped as a queen.
So, maybe Charlie stopped going to classes - maybe Charlie started hacking into other things - maybe, the problem wasn’t that she was a nerd; the problem was that she was in high school. There was a whole world out there and Charlie had a suspicion that she was destined for much greater things.