It is said that the name you’re given in life plays a large part in what determines your fate. Brigid, her name being what it was, firmly believed that. For it was a moniker that smacked of someone dowdy and unhygienic. Worse still, it was some off-brand version of Bridget. The ultimate fat girl’s name (and not just because of Bridget Jones). Thus, she was stuck with a double curse, moniker-wise.

Brigid was convinced this curse had to be the reason why, no matter what she did, or how meticulous she was, a perennial booger remained lodged in her right nostril. It was an abhorrent phenomenon she was initially forced to reconcile with in elementary school, when kids are first fine-tuning their cruelty. To make matters more dire, Brigid’s “desk mate” was the most notorious bully in all of second grade: Felix Beekman. Maybe his constant deflection method of insulting others was instrumental to ensuring no one ever have time to call out his own shit name.

Brigid had the further misfortune of being seated to Felix’s left, so that her right nostril was directly within his purview. It only took a matter of hours of sitting together for him to christen her “Brigid Booger.” An epithet that would follow her until the bitter end of her public school education. But if Brigid thought elementary school was a nightmare, she couldn’t have possibly been prepared for the hellscape that was to be junior high. The daily sense of dread that visited her psyche was enough to sanction her use of a prescription anti-anxiety med. Although her parents were reluctant to endorse her intake of such a drug, having to deal with seeing one of her attacks in real time was enough to convince her mother, Connie, that Brigid was in genuine need of a “mood stabilizer.”

The truth, however, is that she was in need of a world in which children weren’t such assholes. Because now, in addition to being “Brigid Booger,” she was also “Brigid the Blob” thanks to an unfortunate weight gain over the summer between sixth and seventh grade. And, even though she had done her best to rid herself of that perennial booger by shoplifting a nose hair trimmer from CVS, it only seemed to make her nose hairs grow back with a stronger, more ironclad vengeance. This meant any booger in her right nostril that all her boogers so favored had an even thicker nest to lodge itself in. Almost like her class had put a hex on her that would benefit their cause of continually calling her “Brigid Booger.”

There finally came a time when she gave up on trying, appearance-wise. By high school, she surrendered completely to the image they had of her. She hardly ever bothered to shower, took to wearing baggy, oversized clothing and dyed her hair from its natural sandy blonde (dishwater blonde, her detractors would argue) to the blackest black she could get it to be. Her peers were quick to label her a goth. But that was far too much of an oversimplification for what Brigid was. So much more than mere “goth” or “Pugsley Addams” (as some infernal youths had also taken to branding her). No, Brigid was a girl whose soul had been blackened and then all but stamped out by the cruelty of humanity. More specifically, the most “innocent” members of so-called humanity. Brigid couldn’t fathom why children had a reputation for bearing some halo of innocence when they were truly at their meanest as preadolescents. Although the adolescent phase brought with it its own style of brutality, by then those who were perpetually bullied, like Brigid, had been desensitized to it.

It was therefore unjust to slap teenagers with the “meanest of them all” crown when they were simply extensions of their horrible child selves. For what else did anyone expect horrible children to grow into but more horrible “later” selves? And even if you weren’t horrible, you would end up with such a quality drilled into you as a result of others being so merciless toward you. Ergo, being horrible crops up as a defense mechanism against those who are horrible already. It was the “natural” order, the “way of the world,” etc., etc. A vicious cycle that rendered everyone horrible ad infinitum. Just like Brigid, who had started out as a sweet, trusting and naïve girl, only to be made “wiser” by her peers. To learn, early on, that life is pain. Especially as an “other.”

While she didn’t have it as bad as, say, the girl in her class who had recently started presenting as a boy, she was othered all the same. Made to feel not “worthy” of the “in crowd.” She was outside of it instead, hardly bothering to try looking in anymore. She had other plans up her sleeve, or nostril. A big finale for her senior year that she had started to plan during the summer between sophomore and junior year. It would involve, of course, a large stockpile of all her boogers, which she had taken to collecting and setting aside in her closet, a place her mother never bothered to check. The day before graduation, she would place a small, but pronounced-in-its-disgustingness pile of “Brigid Boogers” on every doorstep of the students who most tormented her throughout her “learning” tenure. Though she didn’t learn much, she did come to apprehend that revenge is the only form of satisfaction. The only way people will ever be punished for their wrongdoings—because “karma” certainly isn’t going to do it.

Thus, not only were the doorstep boogers a key part of her plan, but so was hiring an interloper to appear at the graduation ceremony, blending in as one of the students. Easily unnoticeable among the herd. Never mind that the man she had gotten for the job was an ex-con who very much did not look like a teenager. But when one has the cap and gown uniform, going unchecked isn’t so difficult.

Nor was it so difficult, to Brigid’s slight surprise, for the ex-con to conceal a semiautomatic rifle of compact stature inside the graduation gown she had secured for him. The ex-con had been given explicit instructions on who to target first before deviating toward others in the crowd. Of course, she told him to wait until after her own name was called to approach the podium. She didn’t want her special moment to be ruined, after all. And when the principal, who had been tasked with saying every student’s name at the ceremony, accidentally started to announce her as “Brigid Boog—” before correcting himself to say “Brigid Trask,” she really didn’t feel a modicum of guilt for all the heads that were about to blow. Almost as much as her nose was in class once she leaned into her unwanted nickname.