Bad boy? ✔️

9. 10.

9. His POV

Three periods and only one tiny break, I never had another chance to talk to her. At the end of the day I saw her get in the car with Lucas, Bernie and Annie when I walked outside. Tomorrow I'd have homeroom, business, algebra, advanced English and Chines with her. I groaned at myself. Pathetic. The moment Rafe told her what classes she had, I memorized which ones were with me. Worse, I wished he'd read the whole thing out loud so I knew exactly how often I could see her in class. It didn't even matter that I knew Rafe wouldn't be interested in her, when he said that every guy needed a girl friend I got jealous. Of Rafe of all people. He was already taken.

His bike was parked next to our car. Sly usually rode with us because he lived two doors down from us, had done so his whole life. If we weren't out, we were hanging at his place most days. Big house, only child, working parents that were hardly ever there. For dinner he came to our place almost every night. Mum even texted him some days to say dinner was ready, she said he was her fourth son. Our older brother was at University, on a sports scholarship, so he only came home for breaks and our sister Diana was the oldest, she worked in China. She was the reason I became interested in learning Chinese and if I had trouble I rang her. Her mad language skills got her a job at some big company, she translated stuff, worked with foreign clients, checked correspondence in other languages for mistakes that weren't obvious. In Asian countries especially, they had some funny ideas on what was appropriate so she made sure the company wouldn't lose face. I smiled thinking about her. She was a nerd at heart but the one that had given me the plan to become a bad boy.

She was finishing high school before we were ready to even start. Her first year had been hell, teased as a nerd and bullied everyday. The second year Mitchell, our older brother started and he was made of pure muscle. He beat up every single one of her bullies for her and introduced her to the girl that became her best friend. Bella, she'd been one of the cheerleaders at the time and had transformed our nerdy sister into the it girl. I was a nerd too, at heart, but the four of us decided that we would be doing highschool on our terms.

So, Rafe being bullied for things he had no control over, became the bad boy. Being his best friend, I did too. Nobody would bully a bad boy for getting good grades. Rafe told his dad about our plan and he helped by teaching me how to fight as well. Oh, and fight we did. Our first year was made up of a lot of calls home but we couldn't be expelled because we never ever threw the first punch, we just fought to protect ourself. That was the story. We also accepted every challenge from people to fight after school and beat them up. But our best stunt was when Rafe filmed a particularly nasty bully teasing me remorselessly for getting A plus in all subjects. The guy didn't realize that I was purposely winding him up by suddenly being submissive after weeks of fights and thought he was showing everyone I wasn't tough at all. He yelled in my face about how I would always be a nerd and I wasn't that tough and how I would have to do his homework or he'd hang me naked from the climbing ropes in the gym.

I'd dressed in a button up shirt that day and looked pretty nerdy. Rafe filmed until he hit me properly after shoving me around a bit then turned off the camera after running down the hall a bit with an 'oh crackers I better get a teacher'. It was perfect. Fight was over before the teachers came and he wasn't punished by the school, but that was the plan. My sister's boyfriend did his best to look like a geek, pretended to be my big brother and then we took the video to his parents. He didn't come to school the rest of the week and we heard he transferred to another school the next week. My reputation was set. Rafe put a guy in hospital for teasing him that he was a fag for hanging out with me, that fight cemented his reputation for being bad.

While we're doing that Mike and Sly set about joining every team they could. They hadn't done anything else. Training all the time even in the holidays. Soon all the teachers were loving them and the coach thought they were the best athletes he had, their reputation was made despite the fact that they didn't actually ace everything they did either in sports or academically. They were the golden boys of the school and they hung out with us, the bad boys. Between the four of us nobody dared go against us.