Bryce

Bryce by Natalie Decker

Chapter One

Bryce

I repeatedly hit the X button on my PS4 controller. "Die, bitch!"

Graham is no help whatsoever. He keeps taking out the wrong people, and I know he's doing it on purpose. "Seriously, man! What are you doing?" I yell at him.

He pushes pause. "Dude, are you ready to go get Maddy and get this shit done today?"

Inwardly, I groan. He knows how I feel about Madison Issac, my next-door neighbor from hell. As kids, I knew she was too good for me—a dark-haired princess a frog like me could never touch. Not that I wanted to. I learned real quick what girls like her did, thought, and acted. They're nightmares. And Madison is probably the worst kind. She's a priss with a decent face and killer brains but a world-class bitch. I swear she was born with a stick wedged so far up her ass it probably sprouted branches. "Man, she's a freaking buzzkill." I go to unpause the game, but Graham glares at me.

He's my homeboy. We've been best friends since fifth grade, but sometimes he's clueless as all hell. I know he only hangs out with Madison because he uses her to ace his classes. And, okay, I kinda use her too, because I copy off Graham. But that's beside the point. Getting good grades shouldn't require hanging out with her all the freaking time.

The only reason she and I even sort of tolerate each other is because of Graham.

"No, she's not. She's just Madison."

I raise a brow. "Are you trying to tell me you secretly have a spank bank for the girl now?"

Graham frowns and punches me in the shoulder. "Dude, no! She's just a friend."

I shut down the game and nod. "Yeah. You trying for friends with benefits?"

He glowers. "That's not cool. You know I look at her as a sister, fucker!"

"Don't get pissed at me. I mean, don't get me wrong. If she wasn't such a raging bitch all the time, I'd probably try to hit that."

Graham looks as if he's about to punch me in the face. "I hate you. Why can't you two just get over whatever shit is between you? Seriously, it's senior year. I don't want to referee every fight you guys have this year."

"Calm down. I'm not even going to give Smalls any shit this year. But for real, if she starts those jokes about jailbait and then points to me again, I might strangle her."

I haven't dated anyone underage and gotten in trouble for it. I was tossed in juvie a few months back for tagging a building. Okay, not really me. I was with some people who tagged a building. When the cops showed up, some of us got caught. I smoke, so my lungs aren't exactly in tip-top shape for running distance. I know it's disgusting, and I should quit, serves me right, yadda yadda. I took the rap and got thrown in with the delinquents. Two weeks and some probation. I can't mess up for a whole year, or I'll go to the slammer for defacing property. Well, during the last week of school, I'm standing there talking up my next conquest, and Madison walks by me and says to her friend Emily, "Isn't that cute? She's taking the jailbird's bait. If you two hook up, I'm calling you Jailbait." Then she laughed like she was the funniest person ever.

I glare out my window at her house. Graham sighs. "Oh, come on. That was kind of funny. You know she's just getting back at you for the wet T-shirt bullshit you pulled on her at Greg's party."

Okay, in all fairness, that was a dick move on my part. But I'm an asshole. Everyone who knows me knows this, especially Madison. I'm not going to apologize for being me. She was wearing a white T-shirt, and I happened to stumble upon some water balloons. So, I may have run up to Greg's balcony with a bowl of filled balloons and waited for Madison to come into view. Then I launched them in a way that got her T-shirt soaked, revealing the parts she always keeps hidden. Literally, the girl goes swimming in dark shirts.