A Bad Boy's Worst Nightmare (Book 1)

1. White Eyelashes

"Come on, Ryder, just give me a little bit! You always get a ton of guacamole with your nachos and you never eat it anyway!" Kelsey whined.

I glared at her. "No."

"You are the worst best friend I have," she said, crossing her arms and pouting at me.

I shrugged and bit my chip. "Too bad." Suddenly her arm snaked past me and in to my plate, then she retracted it with guacamole on a chip. I glared at her. "Slut."

There weren't many things I called people a slut over. The things I won't call people a slut over are: sleeping with a lot of people, kissing lots of strangers, cheating on boyfriends. The things I will call someone a slut over? Taking my food.

She grinned at me evilly and bit her chip victoriously.

I caught her eyeing my plate again and peeked at her through the corner of my eye. "If you touch my food again I will cut your arm off." I kept watching her, and even though she rolled her eyes, she didn't go near my plate again. When lunch was over, I walked with Kelsey out of the lunch room in to the hallway, which was very, very loud. "The hell?" I muttered.

Kelsey stood on her tip-toes to look over the heads of other people--or, she tried to at least. She was five foot nothing. "I think they're talking about the new kid," she decided.

"New kid?"

"Yeah, some kid just joined the school."

"Second semester Junior year is a hell of a time to do it," I muttered. "Why couldn't they have waited until Spring Break? Doesn't it start on, like, Thursday?"

"I don't know. I hope it's a boy though," she said, swooning. "A hot one, at that."

"You have a boyfriend."

"Just because I don't have my wallet doesn't mean I can't browse."

"Shut up, Kelsey."

She grinned at me. "Well, I'm going to Chem. Good luck finding your way to class through all of this mess. See you after school, Ryder!" she called over her shoulder as she wove her tiny body through the mass of students.

I sighed, beginning to walk to Astronomy Two. Someone slammed in to me suddenly and I lurched forward, only barely able to twist myself so that I didn't hit my head on the door. "Watch it!" I snapped, spinning around angrily.

Everyone within a two foot radius stopped walking.

I glared at the girl who had slammed in to me as she fixed her hair.

"Ugh, you shouldn't have been in my way, loser."

"Repeat that?"

Lacey looked up and regret flashed across her makeup-coated mask of a face. "Um...yeah, I said you probably should've been being more careful since the hallways are so crowded, Ryder. It was stupid if you to not be paying attention."

I glared at her one more time, watching her swallow nervously, and turned around again, opening the door to my classroom and taking my seat in the back.

Now, I wasn't the "bad girl" type exactly, but I was intimidating when I needed to be. Or wanted to be, for that matter. I was sarcastic, and rude, and most of my jokes would probably get me beaten if I said them to the wrong person, but I had a four point five grade average and two friends that I knew I could rely on when I needed to. I followed the rules I wanted to follow, and ignored the ones I didn't. What? It's not like anyone really cared what I did.

The second the room was full of students, they were all buzzing with talk.

"I heard he started school here because he just got out of jail and has to finish high school."