If somebody asked you, randomly of course, to select what you deemed to be the perfect, cliché opening setting for yet another bad boy story... where exactly would you choose?
The library?
Nah, that's kind of already taken by at least a thousand books. I don't exactly know why, maybe there's just something oddly romantic about the smell of new books and the usual dull wall colours associated with that particular venue.
Okay, how about a balcony?
I agree - too soon.
Not yet, at least.
Going straight in with something so romantic and Romeo and Julietish could be pretty risky, and we're not taking any risks.
Alright then... perhaps a cute little café no one's ever heard of that just sort of, magically popped up out of nowhere very suddenly?
Yeah, now I'm thinking way too originally, which takes away from the idea that this is supposed to be quite cliché.
Obviously, there are a load of places that you could choose, but it would take far too long to list, and most of them are pretty darn bad.
So I suppose that leaves us with just one, perfectly cliché opening setting that is actually pretty perfect...
The cafeteria.
* * *
"Tam".
My eyes, dark in comparison, are fixed on the bright swirls of blue and white in the sky, mixing together like messy paints on an artist's unfinished canvas.
We've successfully managed to, at some point in our miserable school lives, appoint ourselves a table in this lunch hall that, unfortunately for us, gets the most amount of sun in the summer, which can be great when you're trying to get a killer tan...
Not so great when you can't see whose food you're even eating.
I squint hard at one of my best friends in the whole world, Chloe Cross, who has been sitting diagonally to me for the past five minutes since the bell first signalled the start of lunch, the past five years if you wanted to go that deep.
"Tam," she says again, blue eyes still unwavering from the screen of her oversized phone.
The sun is shining so hard and so harshly onto our plain, beige table that there is a legitimate halo of light encircling Chloe's hair as she repeats my name for what I think is now the third time.
"Tam".
"Chloe," I match. She sneaks me a tiny smile, looking up at me for one blessed moment before returning to her daily horoscopes, which she treasures dearly.
"Wanna know what Aquarius says today?".
"That's why you were calling me as if I'm not already sitting right beside you?". Chloe tilts her head to one side, so that her long brown hair falls across her shoulders like a waterfall. She sees my unimpressed expression and only frowns in response.
"You were doing your usual 'I'm far away' thing". I just wanted to take the opportunity to point out that the 'I'm far away' thing has only just been invented by Chloe, who is a little mad, in all honesty.
Basically, don't believe everything she tells you.
She isn't mad because she reads horoscopes and dances when there's no music playing, although it does sometimes concern me...
Nope, Chloe is mad because she is, quite literally, extremely gorgeous.
Just go ahead and picture the hottest brunette chick in the world. Come on, just picture them in your mind, and then put her sitting across the table from me in the overcrowded lunch hall at Clearwater high school, holding an oversized phone and wearing really trendy, nerdy prescription glasses that cause her to wrinkle her nose cutely every few minutes.
YOU ARE READING
Another Bad Boy Story
Teen Fiction"Well, he's not that bad" I hear myself say, my lips seemingly moving all on their own. They both give me an inquisitive stare. "I mean...". He's sweet and funny, he makes me laugh - that's definitely an achievement. We seem to be able to just sit...
