[Excerpt] [Bad Boy's Guide to...] Being Not Good (Bad Boy's Guide Book 1)

Chapter Three: Avery

It didn't take long for word to spread around the school that I was going on a date with Davin Ambrose. Probably because Blair and I ensured it didn't take long. I just had to get him to agree on what the date was going to involve.

While Miles and Cindy were busy being loved-up on Wednesday, and cards and flowers and chocolates spread like bushfire, Blair and I were in planning-mode as we tried to come up with something Davin might agree to doing.

"It doesn't bother you?" Blair checked again at Recess.

I looked over the Year 12 Common Room to see Miles and Cindy hugging while people watched them like some celebrity couple. I felt a small twinge in my chest. I guess I was a little bit jealous. Not because it was Miles, but because I used to be looked at the way he was looking at her.

"I still don't want him back, if that's what you're really asking," I told her.

"Maybe."

As we walked to class I kept an eye out for Davin, but he managed to avoid me like the plague. Ebony found me though.

"What's this I hear about you going out with someone not Miles on Friday?" she asked me as we passed in the hallway.

Ebony was in Year 9 and, like me, she was the shortest in her year. Unlike me, she was the fiercest in her year. No one was going to be calling her too good. Grandma always called Ebs my mini-me; her eyes were the same as mine – the piercing blue we got from our parents – but her hair was a little darker than mine. We had the same nose, chin, and cheekbones. But appearance was about where the similarities stopped.

"Miles and I broke up," I told her.

"He dumped her for Cindy Porter," Blair added and I rolled my eyes at my BFF.

"He dumped me for Cindy Porter," I repeated, acknowledging the truth of it.

Ebony looked Blair and I over with a calculating gaze far beyond her years. "Uh huh. We'll talk about this later. I'm frankly disgusted I found out from the rumour mill." She pointed at me like a villain in a movie as she started walking away.

"Your sister scares me," Blair whispered and I nodded.

Sometimes she scared me, too.

I got through Valentine's Day with my usual pep and vigour. I had a date to look forward to and my image to ruin, so the fact I'd been dumped only the day before paled in comparison to the excitement I lost myself in.

I finally cornered Davin before school on Thursday by his locker – which I'd managed to find thanks to the lovely Mrs Hines, the principal's PA, who gave me its location.

"Do you bowl?" I asked.

"Do I what?" he replied in a gravelly voice, flicking his hair out of his face as he pulled books out of his locker.

His tie was still undone, the ends hanging loose over his shirt. The top two buttons were undone and his blazer collar was sticking up on one side. I resisted the urge to fix it, helped by the hostility spreading off him in waves.

"Bowl. You know. Funny shoes, heavy balls, slippery... What?" I asked as he looked at me weirdly.

"Did she really just...?" he asked like he was talking to someone who wasn't there. "Let's keep talk about balls to a minimum, yeah?"

"Fine. No bowling." The last bell rang. "We'll continue this conversation later."

"We really don't have to."

"A first date should be something both parties agree on," I told him.

"Exactly. So remind me why we're having one...?"