Bad Guy: Providence Prep High School Book 1

by Allen, Jacob

  “You can say whatever you want,” my stepfather said. “But that girl, she’ll end up being a whore. All girls do at some point. Even the good ones.”

  * * *

  Present Day

  I loved how Emily pushed back at me.

  I fucking loved that she would stand up to me, dare me, even threaten me. Do you know who else did that? No one. No one else had the balls to push back on me like Emily Zane did.

  God, what a fucking rush. What a fucking thrill to have that bitch stand up to me. It was so hot, it got me all hot and aroused. And few naked girls could do that so instantly, so quickly—I almost preferred to confront Emily and push her than I did to have some cheerleader strip teasing before me. One was just so… easy to create. The other was so thrilling to create.

  The rest of the school was too scared. Everyone was scared to confront me or any of the Broad Street Boys.

  There was only one person I was too scared, so far, to face off against.

  Him.

  The asshole that had ruined me three years ago, the man who had drunkenly revealed to me the unfortunate truth about women. The one who ruined whatever chance I had at a normal life.

  My stepfather.

  Fucking asshole. I wanted so bad to confront him head on. But even my grand plan was not a plan to attack him head on so much as it was, frankly, a play to passively get back at him. Like it or not, I had to live with the fact that if I didn’t want to wind up at some shit state school or, God forbid, a community college because Elder Collins wouldn’t pay for my tuition, I had to pretend to behave around him.

  Granted, if I wasn’t around or he wasn’t around, I could get away with all but a confessed murder, but that wasn’t as fun as giving the old fucker what he deserved. Just stay in his good graces for nine more months. Then it’s all over and you can tell him to suck your balls a little after that.

  “What the fuck do you mean, something at home?” Nick said as we stood outside the library. “And let’s make this quick, shall we? Your little bullshit melodrama in there with Emily means I can’t go back in there, so I need to get to the locker—”

  “Stop acting like you’re better than this,” I said with a scowl. “You’re a part of the Broad Street Boys. You’re lucky I don’t pull your ass aside during your games.”

  “Because you know I’d crack your fucking skull with my helmet.”

  I ignored the truth in that statement.

  “Where the fuck are Kevin and Ryan?” I said, checking my phone. I didn’t have any new messages since before I’d walked into the library and decided to push Emily a little further.

  “How would I know? I’m just trying to get work done before the game tonight,” Nick said. “Not sure if you’re aware, but recruiters from Vanderbilt and Tennessee State are going to be there tonight, and—”

  “You mean—”

  I bit my lip. For once, I had to play nice with the rest of the Broad Street Boys, if for no other reason than that I needed their help to get this payback to my father up and running. That meant minimal taunting of Nick’s relative lackluster athletic status, Kevin’s class status, and Ryan just being the younger bitch. Oh, I was still going to give them shit for all of that once the plan was in motion, I wasn’t a pussy. I was just a smart asshole.

  “Mean what?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  Thank God Kevin drove up seconds later, his beat up clunker that drove slower than a walking horse coming toward us. Ryan swerved in right in front of him, causing Kevin to slam on his horn. I just laughed my fucking ass off. Someone had to be the dick Collins today if it wasn’t going to be me.

  “The fuck’s your problem?” Kevin said as he and Ryan got out of their respective vehicles.

  “Many things,” Ryan said dryly. “But I don’t give a shit about them.”

  “Typical,” Kevin said.

  Sometimes, I wondered how much of Kevin’s taunting of Ryan was how he was really feeling about me. But then again, sometimes, I liked to get high as fuck and try and eat three pizzas at once. Didn’t meant hat I did it often or even more than once a semester.

  “Anyways,” Nick said. “I have to get to the locker room first. What the fuck is going on, Adam?”

  “Glad you gave me the stage,” I said, to which Nick rolled his eyes. “Gentlemen, and Kevin.”

  Kevin laughed at my mocking him. As usual.

  “You all remember the Senior Year Kickoff party that I had a week ago, right?”

  “Duh,” they all said.

  “We need to go one better,” I said.

  Truth be told, I hated myself that this was my plan to get back at my stepfather. Really, honestly, the plan was only different in that instead of cleaning up after the party or having our maids do it, I’d leave it all for my stepfather to return to. And let me tell you, for being a Broad Street Brother, that was a real pussy of a plan.

  But like I said, I wasn’t stupid enough to throw away everything just for the sake of sticking the thorns up his ass further.

  For now, that was. We all had our breaking points.

  “My stepfather and mother will be disappearing for fall break in early October,” I said. “This party will have to all but burn the house down—and I don’t mean like that stupid song. I mean we need to rage like mad.”

  Looks went between the other three, as if they were trading some sort of stupid inside language that I wasn’t privy to. That was dumb—I was the ringleader of the Broad Street Boys. Nothing passed amongst this group without me knowing it. Nothing.

  “OK, and what for?” Nick said.

  “The fuck you mean, what for? I just said it, didn’t I?”

  “He just wants a chance to look big and bad in front of his girl,” Ryan said with a cackle.

  I came over to him and shoved him into the bushes behind him before punching him in the gut.

  “Don’t you dare talk shit about her, this has nothing to do with her,” I said.

  Talk shit about her? Or bring her up?

  “Oh, yeah, it never—”

  I raised my fist, and that was enough to get Ryan to shut up. It probably didn’t help that Nick and Kevin had pulled me back from the fight. I was getting a little sick of Nick’s persistent interventions.

  “You can hit me all you want, but it won’t change that you’re an ass to—”

  “Alright, enough!” I roared. “I did not bring us together so we could have some fucking intervention for me. OK? There is no one that I am throwing this party for except against my stepfather, and that’s to make a point to him. He needs to come back to a shithole mess. Got it? I want him to fucking feel what I feel.”

  “Damn,” Nick muttered, but more in a surprised, shocked way than in an overwhelmed way.

  Even I had to echo Nick’s utterance. I couldn’t believe I had just spilled that all out there. For someone who prided himself on not showing anything and not giving a shit, that was an impressive amount of revelations.

  Too bad it was going to fucking stop right there.

  “See, this is why being born last is great,” Ryan said with a snicker. “I don’t have some weird complex with my stepdad. He’s just—”

  “Ryan,” Nick snapped. “Save the family drama for home, would you? Look, I have to get going. Fall break?”

  “Fall break,” I said.

  “I’ll tell the team,” Nick said as he walked away, which would all but guarantee that everyone would show up. While we ran the school, the football team was the second-most popular group on campus.

  I suspected some might think that we were the second-most popular clique, but given that I’d never lost what I really wanted to anyone on the football team, while I could take whatever I wanted from them, it seemed pretty clear to me who ruled those power dynamics.

  “Good,” I said. “Ryan, you know what to do. Kevin, tell Jackie and whoever the fuck as long as they’re cool.”

  “And who are you going to tell?”

  I shrugged. An
answer came to mind quickly, but that answer was more of someone I was going to mock as not being able to come than anyone else. I almost said it, but when I looked back, I noticed Nick had paused, trying to eavesdrop or maybe not caring at all if I noticed.

  Something about the way he intently listened made me wonder whose side he was really on.

  Something about the way he looked at me as he listened made me think I had to keep an eye on him.

  “No one at the moment,” I said. “I’m Adam Collins. People will know. And they will come.”

  9

  Emily

  Three Years Before

  Adam wasn’t answering his text messages, and it terrified me.

  We had a mall trip planned for Sunday at noon, and when I woke up on Sunday at nine in the morning, I still hadn’t heard a word from Adam. What had I done wrong? What had happened to him?

  Nothing made sense. He had left with an almost embarrassing kiss on the lips—in front of my father, no less!—and spirits that could not have soared higher. I loved his romantic, cavalier attitude; while it also embarrassed me to be so doted on in public, it had a sweet side to it that I silently relished. His Facebook and Instagram accounts hadn’t shown anything unusual—actually, they hadn’t shown anything since Friday when the two of us posed for a photo outside the ice cream parlor. His Snapchats didn’t have anything.

  I tried not to show my concern when I walked downstairs that morning to breakfast; my father was making us pancakes with bacon. My mother had her head in her hands.

  “Hi, sweetie,” my father said. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m OK,” I said, hopefully off enough that my parents picked up on it. “Mom, are you OK?”

  “Hungover as hell,” she murmured.

  Unfortunately, I could not say that that surprised me. Especially with it being a weekend, what little barriers to drinking before had temporarily vanished. She groaned as I tried to find the right balance between sympathy and disappointment.

  “She’ll be fine,” my father said in his typically deflective tone. “What have you got planned for today? If memory serves me right, you want to go to the mall at some point, right?”

  “Yes!” I said upbeat, somehow hoping that I could will Adam to have as much excitement for today as I did. “At noon, please. Opry Mills.”

  “Oh, you going to go around with your boyfriend?” my father said with a short laugh.

  I laughed too, but more out of mortified embarrassment that my father was going to tease me about Adam’s kiss on Friday. He’d kissed me before plenty of times in school and after school, but never before in front of my father—talk about simultaneously awesome and awkward!

  “Him and a couple others,” I said in a half-lie, hoping that it would make it a little less weird.

  “He seems like a fine fellow,” my father said, his voice trailing off.

  I wanted to think that he realized how awkward the train of conversation was for both of us and chose to just let it die. I took the opportunity to grab a glass of water and head for the kitchen table. I pulled my phone out en route, and I couldn’t help the beaming smile that formed as a text popped up in my notifications.

  “Be there at noon. See you.”

  Adam was typically understated, and had this shown up without any communication the previous two days, I would have wondered if something had happened to put him in a funk. But I was just happy that we were talking again. I was just grateful that my plans had not ended and that I wouldn’t have an awkward freshman year because Adam had ghosted me as soon as the summer ended.

  “He is!” I said. “He’s a great guy. A little sarcastic and crazy sometimes, but a great guy all the same.”

  “Is that so?” my father said as he laid out the food for us.

  “Yep!” I said. God, I must sound like an idiot. Whatever. “I really like him. I know that he cares about me, and something tells me he’ll always care about me.”

  “We’ll see, life has a lot of twists and turns. But you know, he kissed you the way I kissed your mother.”

  I wanted to die from embarrassment the way my father laughed and leaned over to kiss my mom. Fortunately, in just about three hours, it really would feel like I’d gone to heaven.

  * * *

  I could have gone the entire summer without seeing Adam, and I’d still be able to pick him out of a crowd almost instantly.

  For one, Adam was taller than pretty much everyone except a couple of basketball players in our class. He told me that he was now six feet tall; he was much taller than me, that much I knew and that much I cared about. Two, he had begun to grow some early signs of facial hair much faster than anyone in our class. He had to keep it cleanly shaved for the school year, but even on weekends, I could see some stubble forming. Here, when I saw him from a distance at the mall, I could already make out the early beginnings of a teenage beard.

  “Adam!” I shouted from the entrance.

  He had his arms crossed, a distant stare out at the parking lot, and a stiff body. He turned to me when I called his name, and for a second, he seemed to hesitate, as if he couldn’t decide whether to face the parking lot or me. I tried to ignore that, but I couldn’t lie that it hurt.

  “Hey, you OK?” I said as I embraced him tightly.

  “Oh, yeah, yeah,” he said, holding me close. “Just… crazy weekend, that’s all.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Adam didn’t respond. I looked up at him, waiting for my kiss, but instead, he gently turned me with the hand on my back, saying, “Come on, let’s go to the food court, I’m starving.”

  That… was not the Adam Collins I knew. What had happened? Why was he so distant? I knew I wasn’t going to get answers here, but I couldn’t just let the fact that he had not even kissed me slide. I’d have to ask more questions soon enough.

  When we got to the food court, I grabbed Adam’s arm and smiled.

  “It’s nice to be with you again,” I said. “Friday seems like an eternity ago.”

  “Mmhmm,” he said, but again he turned his attention back to straight ahead.

  We were in line at Chick-fil-A, not some fancy new sushi restaurant. There was no way he was just looking at the menu. It was almost like he was trying to ignore me.

  But, again, why?

  “What’s going on, Adam?” I said when only one person was in front of us.

  Adam’s eyes notably narrowed and his skin seemed to tense in my arm. I let go, fearful that he was about to have an outburst. We hadn’t fought yet, but I’d seen his temper with his little brother and even with his friends; I hoped to never be on the receiving end of it.

  “Adam?”

  “Can I take the next person in line?”

  The cashier gave Adam the out he seemed to want, but it just left me starting to feel very nervous. Had I done something to bother him? If so, why had he agreed to meet up? Did he just want me here but to not talk to me? That might have worked if he told me so, but he wasn’t giving me anything other than a freezing cold shoulder.

  Adam placed his order, asked what I wanted, and, when I just shrugged, asked for an extra order of fries. I wasn’t that hungry to begin with, and Adam’s apparent silence killed whatever hunger had remained.

  I went and grabbed us a table, hoping that the given space would allow Adam to calm down and handle whatever nonsense was on his mind. Nonsense wasn’t the right word, that was a bit insensitive—I meant more that Adam could discuss whatever troubles he was having if he so desired. It felt like nonsense, though, that he wasn’t even acknowledging that something was wrong.

  When he sat down, I couldn’t help myself.

  “Adam, are you sure you’re OK?” I said. “You seem so cold and so—”

  “It’s my fucking stepfather!”

  I’d heard him cuss before, but never with such venom. He said it with such violence, in fact, that people around us began to stare.

  “I fucking hate him for being the asshole
he is. And I fucking hate my mom for taking it. I fucking hate her for what she did to me!”

  “Adam?”

  “No, don’t—don’t fucking ask me to talk about it,” Adam growled as he stuffed a bunch of fries in his face. “I’m so fucking angry with both of them right now. And before you say anything stupid, they’re both in the Caribbean, so I can’t reach out to them.”

  “Adam…” I wasn’t going to say anything stupid, Adam. I just wanted to help. I just wanted to help you feel better. Am I allowed to do that?

  “Don’t fucking talk to me,” he said. “No one can help me right now. I hate them. They don’t love me. You don’t love me.”

  “What?” I said.

  I began to feel tears well up in my eyes.

  “My stepfather showed me the truth, Emily,” he growled, but his voice was cracking as he spoke. “I know the truth about what you will be, if you aren’t already, Emily.”

  “Adam! What is going on?!?” I said.

  Desperation was clawing at me. Were we about to end just because of one conversation he’d had with his stepfather? I had no idea what he was referring to. I’d always been faithful to him. Heck, I’d even avoided talking to his friends in private because I didn’t want to make it look like I was more interested in them than him.

  “Just leave me alone, Emily,” Adam said. “Leave me alone, OK? Don’t hurt me any more.”

  Any more? What do you mean…

  “Girls can never be faithful,” Adam said. “You won’t be, either.”

  “Adam!”

  “Just go before you hurt me more.”

  Tears welled in my eyes. One fell down my right cheek. Adam wouldn’t look at me anymore. His eyes cast down at his food, which he ate hurriedly. I sat there in the chair until he finished not only his plate but my serving of fries, hoping at some point that he’d say something.

  But he didn’t.

  In fact, when he finished, he put the tray away and just walked off, leaving me by myself in the food court.