Pretty Bad Things [Sample]

Pretty Bad Things : My Street Cred is Dead

“Well, you’re going to have to. What if you don’t ask and you stand him up?” Nick said.

I hadn’t thought of the possibility of standing Harvey Lockwell up. No one stood him up. Now, that was an invitation to get gangbanged.

“Fine, but I don’t even know where to find him! He’s never in class!” I half yelled, plopping myself on the bed beside Nick.

I internally chuckled at the irony of my situation. I needed to find him to tutor him, but I couldn’t because he was never in class—which was probably the reason he needed the tutoring! It could have been because for all his good looks Harvey just didn’t understand certain subjects in school, but I could still remember the time in fourth grade when we went head to head in the school spelling bee. I doubted he even recalled, but I could still picture him beating me. Ambidextrous. He’d beaten me with ambidextrous because he knew there was an o when I didn’t. Fourth-grade Harvey had been smarter than me.

“Livvie, my sweet Livvie,” Nick snickered, looking down at me like a parent. “If you want to talk to Harvey you’re going to have to visit The Cave,” he told me in a low tone which made the little hairs on my arms stand up. I didn’t have a clue as to what the heck he was talking about, but even the name sounded intimidating.

“What’s that?” I asked, bringing a candy into my mouth in the heat of the moment.

“It’s an alley behind the gym and the cafeteria. Harvey and his friends are there most of the time.” Nick shrugged. Did everyone know this except me?

“I didn’t know they hung out there,” I finally said, chewing on my candy bar some more.

“If you ever went to gym you’d probably smell them from the track.” Nick shrugged again before stealing the last piece of my candy and popping it into his mouth.

I ignored his comment, deciding not to press more. I immediately thought of all the ways things could go wrong if indeed I did decide to go looking for Harvey.

“Could you—” I was about to ask Nick to come with me when I did go looking for Harvey, but Nick started to shake his head violently.

“That wouldn’t be such a good idea for me, Livvie,” Nick said quietly while looking down at his hands.

I wanted to ask why, until it hit me. Nick would probably get beat up by Harvey and his friends, just because of who he was. I was momentarily mad, but I didn’t want Nick to notice. It really wasn’t fair that Nick was judged so much at school. We lived in a pretty small town where there weren’t many other people who were gay. Last time I checked, Gunnison had a population of 5,854 people and not too many of them played for the other team.

It made it extremely difficult for Nick to make more friends or even go out. I always wanted to tell people off when they gave him weird looks and whispered under their breaths at school, but I was too scared. At least Nick was comfortable enough with himself to accept who he was.

“You’re right. Plus, what could possibly go wrong?” I said like a total dork, trying to make Nick feel better.

It sort of worked, because Nick gave me a small smile. Small and partially sad, but a smile.

We finally stopped talking about my Harvey situation and put on a movie to watch. My mom was almost never home, so Nick tended to sleep over a lot. Not that she would really care, since I was pretty sure I had mentioned he was gay in the past. Before we started the movie, I took the time to make my way into Brian’s room. It wasn’t very late, so I found him sitting Indian style on the floor, playing with his Ninja Turtles action figures. Even though my little brother could make me want to rip all of my hair out, I still loved him to no end. Because my mom wasn’t ever around, I usually took care of him every day after school.