Being Not Good: as opposed to being bad

by Elizabeth Stevens

  “Avery!” I heard a recognisable voice call and I slowed a little to let Blair catch up to me. “Oh my God. Are you okay?”

  I actually smiled at her. “Weirdly, yes.”

  Blair looked me over suspiciously for a moment, but she knew the way my head worked almost as well as I did. She knew when I was okay, when I wasn’t, and when I needed a distraction to give me time to properly process. She smiled.

  “Then… That was epic!” she laughed.

  I nodded. “Teach him to break up with me.”

  My best friend looped her arm through mine. “Okay. Best thing for heartbreak is getting right back on the horse. Any preferences?”

  I shook my head then she started listing guys I should go out with as payback. We both knew I wasn’t the sort of girl who dated for payback – that was probably one reason I was too good – but Blair liked to plan. She wasn’t particularly fussed what she was planning, as long as she got to plan it. She’d plan the apocalypse if it meant she got to plan something.

  “I think Josh is single,” Blair was saying. “Although there’s that unfortunate situation with the broken leg. But!” she said brightly. “That’s totally coming off in like…” She muttered as she was counting, “I dunno, actually. But, like, before the formal at least!”

  “I dunno…”

  Blair paused for a moment as we stopped at my locker and the force I used to wrench it open was the only outward sign about how miffed I was. My locker door crashed into the one next to mine, leaving a little dent in it.

  “Woah. All right, iron woman. Am I going too fast? Is it too early? Do we need to wait until you’re not in love with Miles anymore?” she asked gently as I put my books away and got my recess out.

  Miles had been my first real boyfriend. I thought I’d been in love with him. But the simmering anger – rather than actual heartache or sadness – in me suggested I hadn’t been quite as in love with him as I’d thought. Maybe I’d been a little bit in love with him. But I sure as heck wasn’t anymore and I sure wasn’t going to let another guy treat me that way again.

  Too good? I’d show him and everyone else that Avery St John wasn’t too good. I could let loose like everyone else. I wasn’t some stupid little girl. I wasn’t innocent and sweet. I was normal. I was just a normal teenage girl.

  I just had to work out how to prove it.

  “No. I’m not sure I was in love with him to begin with,” I told her as Miles walked past with a few girls who fluttered around him like it was him who’d just had his heart broken.

  Not that I was the one who’d had their heart broken. Because I wasn’t going to let a guy who cheated on me – properly, full blown, no concessions cheated on me – to break my heart as well.

  Too good? How could you be too good?

  “Hey Avery!” Trina interrupted my thoughts as she passed.

  “Hi, Trina,” I replied, forcing a smile.

  “I’m going to need you to make some photocopies for the Formal Committee meeting on Thursday. I’ve emailed them to you.” Trina was head of the Formal Committee, so it made sense she had other things to do.

  I nodded. “Sure. Can do.”

  “Thanks!” Trina said as she swanned off with Louise and Nina.

  Too Good? I couldn’t believe this.

  I’d thought Cindy was Miles’ mistake. I’d thought it had only been a kiss. Now I was starting to think that I was Miles’ mistake, that he saw me as nothing but weak and stupid and that made it okay to cheat. And I wasn’t going to stand for that. I wasn’t going to be anyone’s mistake!

  Wait… Mistakes? I thought to myself, that simmering anger intensifying as I slammed my locker closed.

  Oh, I had a brilliant idea. That brilliant idea bumped up against my brain the same way the subject of the idea had bumped into me that morning on the way into first lesson.

  “Blair, hear me out,” I said, whacking her in my excitement.

  “Oh, what?” The planner was definitely willing to take my input.

  “Am I really as good as everyone thinks?” I asked her.

  “Uh… Yes.” She nodded.

  “And I’m innocent and sweet and nice?”

  “Yep.”

  I thought about that. “And that makes people assume I’m an idiot…”

  “Yep.” She paused. “No, wait… Well…sort of,” she said apologetically.

  I shook my head, holding up a hand to her. “No. That’s good.”

  “What?” Her confusion was understandable.

  “Well, if not, my plan wasn’t going to work was it?”

  “I don’t know. What’s your plan?”

  “Okay. So everyone thinks I’m this goody-two-shoes and I’m too good? Well, would a goody-two-shoes go out with the worst boy in school?”

  Everyone knew who the worst boy in school was.

  Blair scoffed, “No, she wouldn’t. She’d steer clear of him!”

  “She would.”

  “She’d be like, ‘no thanks, I’m not even going to talk to you’.”

  “Exactly. That goody-two-loser would be just like that.”

  Blair’s smile dropped. “Oh?” Then brightened again. “Oh! “ Now a slight tinge of confusion. “You mean you’re going to go out with him?”

  I nodded. “Yep.”

  Now it was full confusion as her eyebrows knitted together. “Why?”

  “Everyone thinks I’m the girl who never makes mistakes, right?”

  “Well, duh,” she scoffed with a smile. “Because you don’t. You’re perfect. You’re nice and kind to everyone.”

  “And they treat me like an idiot because of it.”

  Blair frowned. “Not everyone. I don’t think you’re an idiot.”

  “Almost everyone,” I amended.

  Blair nodded in begrudging agreement. “Okay…? So what’s he got to do with that?”

  I might not have been the kind of girl who’d date for payback. But I could date to show everyone I was normal. Maybe that was kind of like payback. But I’d be doing it for more than getting back at Miles – he was the last one I cared about. I was doing this for me.

  “Because he can ruin my image. With his influence, there’ll be no more Little Miss Goody-Two-Shoes. We can say goodbye to her and I can be normal.”

  “Normal?”

  “Yep, normal. Normal girls don’t get called sweet and innocent and too good. People don’t talk down to them, or never yell at them, or expect them to cover on Formal Committee, or try to do everything for them like they’re incompetent. Their boyfriends don’t cheat on them. They’re just…normal. Their defining feature is they’re smart, or their piercing’s infected, or they’re sunburned, or something.”

  Blair was looking unsure. “So you’re going to date the worst boy in school and tank your rep?”

  I nodded. “Yep.”

  She wrinkled her nose like she was thinking it through. “I feel like this is not the way to get Miles back…”

  I waved a dismissive hand at her. “Cindy Porter can have him. I don’t want him back. I just want to prove to him, the school, to me that I’m not too good.” I finished with a mutter, “How is that even an insult?”

  Blair shrugged. “I don’t know.” She ran a hand over her chin. “He would be perfect for the mission, though,” she mused. “But how are you even going to get him to go out with you?”

  I sighed. That was going to be the one potential snag in an otherwise perfect plan. “Don’t know. I guess I’ll just have to figure it out as I go.”

  “Okay.” Now she was getting excited. “When are we starting?”

  “Now.”

  “Now?”

  “Yep. He’s like almost always inside at breaks. I’m going to go find him.”

  “Do you need a lookout?”

  I shook my head. Approaching him was dangerous enough. Approaching with more than one person would be suicide. “Nope. I’ve got it covered.”
>
  Blair nodded encouragement. “Okay. Come find me after?”

  “Yep. Will do.”

  “Good luck!” she called as I hurried off.

  I went from room to room. I knew exactly who I needed – exactly who the worst boy in school was – and I had a feeling I knew where he’d be. Finally I found him, tucked away in one of the meeting rooms off the library.

  Davin Ambrose.

  Mitchell College’s very own bad boy was at least six feet of indeterminate frame under his baggy uniform. His almost black hair was far too long all over and he was constantly flicking it away from his black glasses frames. So between those two, I wasn’t sure I’d ever even seen his eyes. Although that would require any kind of eye contact from him and that was also something I’d never witnessed him give to anyone but those who ventured too close. He was rude and sarcastic at the best of times, and in detention the rest.

  I don’t think I’d ever seen enough of him to determine if he was attractive or not. He was always hunched in his blazer, hair hiding his face, buried in a book, or behind his computer screen. And that was when he wasn’t programming the fire alarms to go off or distributing the popular kids’ embarrassing photos.

  Well, all the popular kids but me, since I was apparently too good to have anything worth distributing. Then again I guessed pictures of me doing things like hanging out at the beach with Blair or Miles hadn’t been very interesting compared to the pictures of Cindy and Trina drinking at Rich’s party, or Nina and Becker making out.

  Davin was on his ever-present laptop and wore his headphones. I watched for a moment as his fingers played over the keys way faster than any one person should be able to do that, and tried to work out how to get his attention.

  “Hey, Davin?” didn’t seem to work, so I was going to have to try another tack.

  I walked over to him and bent over to stick my head between his screen and his face. Hypnotic green eyes blinked slowly behind those glasses then stared at me in confusion.

  Two: Davin

  There was a head hanging over my screen.

  There was a head with a mass of blonde curls spilling onto my keyboard, shining bright blue eyes, and a bubble-gum pink smile.

  I pulled away slowly and realised the head was in fact attached to a body that was standing in front of my table. And I did recognise the whole package.

  Avery St John.

  Mitchell College’s answer to what would happen if you got a teletubby to fuck that weird elf from Disenchantment, or what would you get if a rainbow slinky fucked a bucket of glittery fairy floss. She was nauseatingly peppy, didn’t understand that there was such a thing as too much colour, and I didn’t think she knew how to frown.

  After going to school with her for four years, I had started to wonder if she was a robot. And not even something useful like a sex-bot. Just some annoying throwback from the fifties created to serve as an example of the perfect girlfriend. She was like a fucking Stepford Wife, minus the pearls.

  Ugh and she was talking to me.

  I debated not taking off my headphones so I wouldn’t have to listen to her. But touching might have been involved then if she decided to remove them for me and I didn’t want to risk catching whatever the popular kids had that made them so annoyingly happy all the time.

  I slid my headphones down around my neck and rose an eyebrow at her. Her lips had stopped moving, propped open in a little ‘o’ like I’d surprised her.

  Well, I wasn’t the one interrupting.

  “What?” I asked her.

  “What, what?” she replied, pulling back and standing up straight.

  Was she slow? Maybe that was why she was so happy all the time.

  “What do you want?” I enunciated carefully.

  She blinked like it was a foreign concept, then was back to smiling. “Oh. So I wanted to know if you wanted to go out with me.” She caught her bottom lip in her teeth as she gave me this smile that confused me further.

  Now I was blinking. Avery St John was asking me out on a date. Either Satan was skating to work this morning or I was the most recent butt of a rather ambitious joke. Well two could play at that game.

  “What?” I scoffed, looking back at my screen. “Did that muppet Miles finally dump your goody-two-shoes frigid arse for the super tramp?”

  “Yes.”

  Ouch.

  I slid my eyes up and saw there was no sign in her eyes of the perfectly peppy smile she had plastered to her face. Girl was hurting and I wasn’t helping.

  Oh, well.

  “Well. That is something I can’t help you with.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Take your pick.” I shrugged. It was all the same to me.

  “Come on, Davin.” Did she just stamp her foot? “Go out with me.”

  “Why me?”

  “Why not you?”

  I looked at her, highly suggesting she take a moment to remember who she was talking about here.

  “What? You’re such a bad boy that you’re too good for me?” she asked, crossing her arms.

  Ignoring the idiocy of that statement, I slowly stood up from my seat and rested my hands on either side of my computer to lean towards her. Even then, I towered over her.

  “I was thinking more along the lines of the fact you’re the human equivalent of every overly optimistic Disney character somehow squashed into one unfathomably tiny body and I’d have no interest in dating you even if I suddenly had a lobotomy and forgot my own name.”

  You had to hand it to her, girl rallied like a fucking pro. I doubted she’d ever had anyone say anything less than positive to her in her entire life, but that enthusiasm was so ingrained in her that she wasn’t going to let me come along and rain on her parade.

  She drew herself up to the tallest her preposterously short height would allow and somehow managed to look infernally happy and glowering all at once. “Just because you’ve got the personalities of Marvin, Squidward, Eeyore, Bender, Dr Cox, Stewie, and…and a wet towel controlling every function of your unrealistically tall body does not make you better than me, Davin.”

  I wasn’t sure if I should be more impressed that she knew Hitchhiker’s Guide, SpongeBob, (was that Breakfast Club or Futurama, though?), Scrubs and Family Guy, or that she’d actually delivered a clean insult. I think I’d just found a shred of respect for the tiny gnat of positivity.

  “She’s fierce, this one, eh?”

  There was an actual frown on those pristine features as she looked around. “Who are you talking to?”

  “No one.” You know who. I ignored her look of confusion and picked up my computer. “Look. Great talk. But I don’t really do people. So I’ll save you the bother of leaving and just do it for both of us.”

  I gave her my least sincere grin and strode out before she drowned me in any more saccharine annoyance. Just her voice had me left feeling like I needed to check my blood-glucose levels. If a person could give you diabetes, Avery St John was that person.

  It wasn’t even halfway through the day and I felt like I needed to go home and lie down. It was worse than a heavy night of drinking.

  “Only… What? Five more hours? I can make it through that. Can’t I?”

  But I didn’t. I did not make it through that. Not sane or relaxed.

  Avery bounced up to me at the beginning of our pre-Lunch Home Group two lessons later – with a cursory smile to her friend Blair over the other side of the room, of course – and just radiated joy at me until I felt like I’d been blinded.

  “Can I help you?” I asked her, not missing the fact that people were staring at the Queen of Pep talking to little old me. I didn’t really care. It’s not like I had a reputation to ruin. But it did serve to be annoying.

  Blair was staring the most avidly, presumably being totally clued in to why Avery was bugging me incessantly. The two friends looked totally different. Blair wasn’t just tall and willowy, she had black hair
and brown eyes and her skin was darker – there are probably a thousand more PC ways to describe her, but that’s all I’ve got. However as soon as Blair opened her mouth, the two of them could have been twins.

  “You can.”

  Why did she smile all the time? Was she a walking dental ad? “Oh, good. What with?”

  Her eyes lit up with hope. “One date.”

  Sarcasm obviously wasn’t her forte. I rolled my eyes. “Seriously?”

  She nodded. “Blair’s sister’s into the whole Goth thing, so she’ll give me tips and everything.”

  Tips? Tips for what? “Sorry. What?”

  Whatever she’d come up with in her mind had obviously made her very proud of herself. “So I don’t stand out so much. I do own black, you know.”

  I was still confused. “Still not following. Are we going to a funeral on this hypothetical date you’ve created in the fantasy land in your head?”

  Her head cocked to the side like she was confused but she still smiled. “No?”

  “No?”

  “I just thought you’d be more comfortable if I looked more…like you?”

  I leant my elbows on the desk towards her. “Firstly, in what universe would we ever date? And secondly, Avery…” I scoffed. Are you listening to this drivel? “If Hell ever froze over to the point we did go on a date, I wouldn’t want you changing who you were.”

  She looked at me like I’d just spoken Chinese.

  Was this really what she believed? Strike that. I didn’t even want to begin to contemplate any of her belief systems. “Just… You be yourself, Avery…”

  Nope. Still nothing. I wasn’t sure if it was just because I’d dashed her grand plans or if she’d spent however long with Muppet Miles thinking she was supposed to be whatever he wanted.

  “So… No?” she asked.

  I shook my head, feeling like I should be sorry but not finding it in myself. I sat back in my chair and crossed my arms. “That’s a hard pass.”

  She was still smiling. “That’s what you say now.”

  I was flabbergasted as I leant further forward with every word. “That’s what I say… Always… I will never not… Wait, what?”