Bad Guy: Providence Prep High School Book 1

by Allen, Jacob

  “If your stepfather has any sense, he will kick you out of this school and right to military bootcamp.”

  I didn’t resist Joy. I went along with it.

  It was much easier given the fact that even as Joy pulled me away, Emily could not let go of her gaze for me. For however much she felt threatened, she sure also seemed very aroused by it all.

  * * *

  “I cannot fathom that my own son would have the gall to act so scandalously and so inappropriately!”

  I sat in my stepfather’s office, crossing one leg over the other, keeping my shirt untucked, and putting my hands behind my head as he lectured me like the annoyed, old senior citizen that he was.

  “The first day of school, Adam, the first day of school! This is your chance to be a good student, to set an example for your brother and all the underclassmen, and instead, you act like a horny buffoon! To say I am disappointed would be a grave understatement.”

  I would have normally talked back, given some flack to the old man, maybe have said to say I was bored would be a grave understatement. But I had a bigger drive pushing me right now.

  I was fucking hungry.

  “I understand, sir,” I said, as dryly as possible.

  “Promise me, son, that you will be a good student from here on out,” he said. “Promise me!”

  I groaned.

  “I promise to be a good student, sir.”

  I could not have layered my voice any thicker with sarcasm if I tried. Good news for me—and for everyone else in the student body—was how unaware and how stupid the old man was when it came to sarcasm.

  “Very good, Adam. Be on your best behavior.”

  I nodded and didn’t wait for him to dismiss me as I headed for the mess hall. My stepfather could say as much as he wanted to about me being on my worst behavior.

  It was much more fun to be the bad boy.

  It’s what got me the most attention from the rest of the student body and from her.

  5

  Emily

  I thought PE class would give me a respite from Adam.

  I thought his stepfather would never allow him to waste a precious slot on a physical education class. I thought that by taking this course, I’d get a chance to burn off some stress from him, ignore all of the bullshit surrounding him, and maybe even get some practice in before soccer practice.

  Whoops.

  Now, not only did I have to look forward to five days a week of staring at Adam’s muscular arms and hearing his ugly words, I also had an ankle sprain that was probably going to keep me out of a few days of practice. It didn’t feel that severe, so I held out hope that it wouldn’t keep me out of any games—our first one was a week from Wednesday.

  Even with that ugly injury, though, I never would have anticipated Adam coming into the girls’ locker room.

  I probably should have, actually. Adam didn’t know the first thing about boundaries. He had never hit me or even touched me since the end of middle school, so I suppose that qualified as a boundary, but that felt more like him having too many other women to touch than him having some ethics about not wanting to hit a lady or anything like that.

  I wasn’t even angriest at him, though. I was angry at myself.

  Because there was a part of me I could not ignore that actually enjoyed having Adam as physically close as he was.

  When we dated, we had never done anything more than kissing. I think at one point, Adam had put his hands down the back of my pants and squeezed my ass, but he had never progressed any further than that. He hadn’t even groped my chest. The Adam of old was respectful of my boundaries.

  The Adam of new, though, didn’t even seem to know what boundaries were.

  But I also couldn’t say that I wanted to have the same boundaries as before.

  I was still a virgin. I wasn’t willing to whore myself out to one of the Broad Street Boys. But when Adam was right there, with my towel wrapped around my body—my mostly clothed body—and I envisioned him taking the towel away, nibbling on my ear and neck, pulling my pants down, ripping my bra off…

  I couldn’t lie, the feeling was good.

  But the feeling was only good in that physically, it would feel good. Emotionally, I would feel like a whore and a traitor to myself right after. There was no universe, at least none that existed right now, in which I could have let Adam have sex with me in that locker room and feel any semblance of self-respect, regardless of whether or not any teachers had walked in on us.

  It was all too fucking much to handle. I had a feeling Adam knew it, too, especially the way that he smirked at me as he got pulled away by the school’s athletic director. His look just screamed that he knew what I was thinking and that he wanted to see it come to fruition.

  No fucking way, Adam. Not a fucking chance. I might admit that you have an objectively nice body, but I’m not giving you anything else. You are too cruel and too mean of a man to be given my body. It’s not just my body you’ll get if we have sex—it’s everything else.

  I got dressed in a hurry and ignored the other girls in my gym class, heading for my English class, sitting outside the door even though I had six minutes before we had to begin and another minute before the previous class even let out. If I only had one class with Adam all semester, I could tolerate that. If I had anything more…

  “Emily.”

  Samantha’s familiar, sweet voice carried through the hallway, and I smiled as I looked up at her.

  “Hey, you’re in AP English too, huh?”

  “Yep!” she said with a chipper step. “Were you not coming from lunch? I didn’t see you there.”

  “No, unfortunately not,” I said with a sigh. “I just had PE.”

  “What?” Samantha said, as if I had just told her I’d signed up for a class in 9th century psychology. “You took PE?”

  “I know, and you wanna know the crazy part? I took it because I thought that I could avoid a class with Adam.”

  “You thought… oh,” Samantha said, dawning on her. “You could just avoid him, stand far away?”

  Samantha, you’re adorable sometimes.

  “I wish I could do that, but in PE, we’re all moving around and playing sports and such, it’s all but impossible to not have to endure some close space with him.”

  Real, real close space.

  “I can imagine. How did the class go, anyways?”

  “Oh, heavens,” I said, causing Samantha to chuckle. I had to laugh too—I mean, how ridiculous was this whole thing? What words could describe everything with Adam other than just batshit crazy?

  “That bad, huh?”

  I shook my head as the bell rang. Students poured out of the classroom from Mr. Baker’s tenth grade English class, including Ryan Collins. Ryan either didn’t notice me or just outright ignored me, which was just as well. If he had said anything, I probably would have hit my limit for bullshit from Collins today and smacked him.

  “Well,” I said as Samantha and I grabbed seats far away from the door, not quite at the back but away from prying ears. “In case you couldn’t tell by my walk, I sprained my ankle. I ran and hit his foot.”

  “Oh my God, do you think he did it on purpose?”

  I wanted to believe that. It would have made the story that much easier to tell.

  “Anything’s possible with him, but I think it was just a freak accident. With his big feet and all, it was impossible to get on third base anyways. Almost drilled him in the face with my kick, though. That was fun.”

  “If only,” Samantha said with a chuckle. “Asshole would have gotten what was coming to him.”

  “Yeah, but that’s not the real crazy shit,” I said. “He fucking came into the girls’ locker room!”

  Samantha audibly gasped at that. I had to motion for her to watch her reactions, especially now that other students were starting to come into the classroom. What Adam had done would undoubtedly start to spread through the hallways in record time, but I didn’t need to have it s
pread any faster. I would already have to deal with some of the other girls suggesting I’d wanted him in there or had planned to have sex with him in there.

  I didn’t need to add my own fuel to that fire.

  “Did he do anything?” she asked.

  “He tried to say I liked it.”

  “Did you?”

  “Hell no!” I said emphatically. “He was a fucking creep and a loser then! No way. Uh uh. I’d sooner go for one of the girls in that room than him.”

  “Wow,” Samantha said. “We should beat the shit out of him.”

  I laughed quite hard at that. Samantha’s loving humor had a way of just beating right to the point. While I didn’t think her and I could actually “beat the shit out of him,” the image of us knocking him to the ground and kicking him was oddly satisfying.

  “Well, even if we wanted to, we couldn’t,” I said. “And even if we could, we’d probably get in trouble.”

  “So? I’m sick of the Broad Street Boys,” Samantha said, and there was nothing humorous about what she was saying. If she said something funny, it was by complete accident, not on purpose. “All they do is cause terror and run amok at this school. The only one who isn’t an asshole in that group is Nick, and he’s too passive and quiet to try and stand up to them. They need their comeuppance, Emily.”

  I couldn’t have agreed more with that. But I also struggled to see how that would happen. Adam’s stepfather would protect him, Adam would protect the rest of the group, and the cycle would continue for two more years with Ryan around. The only good news in all of this was that we only had to put up with it for nine more months, and then, even if we both went to the same university, the odds of us ever interacting again more seriously were minuscule.

  “Just one more year and we’re done,” I said. “Vanderbilt’s still the goal, and they’ve got twelve thousand students. Compared to, what, six hundred there? I’ll take twenty times fewer encounters with Adam than now.”

  Samantha sighed. I looked at the clock. We only had a minute and some change to go before English class started and we had to table our conversation for a later time.

  “Emily, if we keep having this attitude of, ‘just a little more time and we’re aware from him,’ we’re letting him win, and you can’t let him do that.”

  So, is this like the terrorists where we can’t let them win?

  “I say get back at him. Seriously. Don’t let him keep bullying you. That’s something that elementary school students do to each other, not eighteen-year olds.”

  I was laughing at the prospect of getting back at him. First of all, I was not a vengeful person. I might have flipped him the bird in frustration or cussed him out under my breath, but premeditated, organized strikes against Adam was not in my blood. Frankly, I had too much stuff to do with school, work, and soccer to really care.

  Second, I didn’t see how that would get Adam to stop. If anything, it would only increase the intensity. Igniting fire with fire seemed like a really good way to ensure that he never left me alone, including at Vanderbilt and maybe even into my adult life. Ignoring him seemed best, but only because it would eventually work—as far my senior year, nothing would really work.

  “Sorry, but I’d rather read ‘A Prayer for Owen Meany’ than plot ‘A Revenge Against Adam Collins.’”

  “Ohhh,” Samantha said, apparently unaware of my disinterest in her current plan. “You wanna know how you can really dig at him?”

  I checked back at the bell. We now had less than thirty seconds until class started. Adam still hadn’t walked in, minimizing the likelihood of me having to have him in this class. God, that would be ideal. If all I had to do was suffer Adam’s overinflated athletic ego one class a day, I could… I could survive that that.

  “Hmm?” I indulged Samantha.

  “You can go out with one of the Broad Street Boys!”

  “What?!?” I said, laughing mostly in confusion.

  “Yeah! I actually really like this idea. Kevin, Nick, hell, even Ryan, ohhhh, he would get so pissed if you went out with Ryan. That would teach him to fuck with you.”

  “OK, first of all, as funny as this is, I’m not going to ever go out with Ryan. He’s even worse than his brother, and the only reason Ryan doesn’t pick on us is because we’re two grades above us. I think he’s got some girl in his grade he already picks on anyways. As for—”

  But the bell rang to signify class was about to begin. Mr. Baker cleared his throat immediately, stood at the front, and had us all silent like well-trained dogs in a matter of seconds.

  Just because my voice had gone quiet, though, didn’t mean that my mind had followed suit. It continued the thoughts started just moments ago from Samantha.

  No way I go out with Ryan. Just no way.

  Kevin is Jackie’s target. Even if I think that that is a foolish pursuit, even if I think Kevin treats her piss poor and, at best, merely holds her off, I’m not going to upset Jackie like that.

  Nick…

  Nick might actually be tolerable. I have absolutely no attraction to him. He’s too quiet and passive for me. But…

  I normally never struggled to pay attention in class, especially on the first day of school. But by the time the bell rang to signify the end of the fifth period, I had some very strong thoughts on the matter.

  Had Adam not come into the women’s locker room today, I probably would have dismissed the idea as too extreme. But he’d violated all sorts of social norms today. He could have gotten away with so much dangerous activity, it made me shiver. And worst of all, even though my rational, coherent mind liked it, my emotional brain that still wanted that eighth grade Adam to make a sudden return was thrilled by it.

  I had to teach both Adam and me a lesson. I had to take drastic action that would not get me suspended but would ensure that Adam would never bother me again.

  I had no attraction to Nick whatsoever. Whatever I did was a little bit manipulative of him. But by the end of class, the more I thought about it…

  As a “fuck you” to Adam?

  Why not?

  6

  Adam

  The first four days of school had wrapped up. All that remained was one more miserable Friday, and then, by my best estimates, week one of 36 would have wrapped up. Only 35 more shitty weeks to go!

  It was bad enough having my stepfather be the headmaster of the school. It was even worse having to go home and know that I’d have to face him. My junior year, I usually just retreated to my room, did my work, and silently stewed, only emerging for a quick meal with my mother—the only person who got something even remotely resembling a soft side, and even that was relative.

  I followed suit on that behavior pattern the first three school nights, but by Thursday, I’d had enough of that fucking shit. I’d discovered how much fun the summer was when I was away from my stepfather, either out in Nashville when he was around or by throwing bigass parties when he wasn’t. Why should something as stupid as a senior year that didn’t matter that much for my future affect me?

  So, after class, instead of driving home, I instead peeled out of the parking lot, slamming the accelerator and forcing people to jump out of the way, and sped around Highway 155 to get out some of my frustration. My Corvette hit well over a hundred miles per hour, even exceeding 120 miles per hour. I needed that thrill, that freedom to know that no, fuck your old man, you could not hold me down all the time.

  Such speeding only provided a momentary thrill, though, and I eventually grew bored. There was no one to actually race, no one to roll my window down at, taunt, and then take their girlfriend. My stepfather would have suggested studying for the first test of the week, but to that I laughed. I was too smart to fail a math test, especially when said test was a review. I may not have looked at a calculus problem since early June, but there was no fucking way it would take me longer than a couple minutes for it all to come back.

  Instead, I headed for a parking lot near the Tennessee Titans’ stadium
, an empty area until a few weeks from now, and used my Bluetooth to call the Broad Street Boys. I didn’t know what we were going to do, but it sure as shit wasn’t going to be schoolwork or at my house.

  As long as I could avoid that, everything else fell into place.

  I decided to call the bitch of the group first, the one whom I knew would do anything and everything for me.

  “Hey, sup?”

  Kevin. Oh, Kevin. He would have killed to know what was up with me, wouldn’t he? He was like the lap bitches of the school—I could say “wreck your car to make me smile,” and he’d ask if I wanted it to catch fire. He was so desperate to hang out with the Broad Street Boys, so jealous of my family’s wealth and status, that I could all but use his back as a footrest if I threatened him with getting kicked out of the group.

  “Find a pack of beer and come to the parking lot by Nissan Stadium,” I said. “The big one. I trust you’re not too dense to not know what I’m talking about.”

  “Not at all! I’ll be there in thirty.”

  Typical. So easy.

  “What kind of beer do you want?”

  “Whatever fucking kind of beer you think I want,” I said. “I trust that after knowing me now for a few years that you know what kind of alcohol I like.”

  “I know, it’s just last Saturday, you weren’t drinking, and so I wanted—”

  “Goddamnit, Kevin, stop being a fucking idiot. Get over here as soon as you can.”

  He kept talking, but I hung up on him. I didn’t need to hear his whining about how he actually had my best interests at heart or some stupid bullshit like that. I’d hear enough of it when he showed up and apologized for daring to be thirty seconds late. Amazing how someone so rude and controlling to Jackie can be so easily manipulated by me.

  Huh. Wonder if anyone has that power over me.

  Nope.