Oops, I Fell For The Town Bad Boy! (Oops!)

1. Kane

CHAPTER 1

KANE

“ O ne last party,” Kane McCormick said over lunch. “One last blowout before school ends and we all have to go our separate ways.”

He twirled a cigarette in his fingers, raked his dark hair out of his eyes, and looked around at the group of his friends who were gathered around him. He’d expected that his proposal would be met with cheers and excitement. That was what usually happened when Kane suggested something.

But the others were looking at one another uneasily. If he didn’t know better, he would have thought they didn’t like what he had suggested.

“What?” he demanded.

Predictably, it was his best friend, Bradley, who had the courage to speak up. “It’s not that we hate the idea of a party,” he said. “It would be fun. Parties here are always fun. But… Kane, maybe we should hold off on that kind of thing, at least for a few weeks.”

“What do you mean, hold off for a few weeks?” Kane asked. “Since when have you been one to shy away from a party, Bradley? You usually go as hard as anyone.”

“I know that,” Bradley agreed. “I know I do.”

“So then what’s with you now?”

“It’s just… we’re going to be graduating soon.”

“All the more reason to get wild while we still can.”

“All the more reason to keep it buttoned up,” Bradley countered. “Look…” He hesitated, as if unsure whether he was going to say what was on his mind.

“Spit it out,” Kane said.

Bradley sighed. “Fine,” he said “I was accepted to college.”

And you weren’t . Kane heard what his friend hadn’t said. He knew about Bradley’s college acceptance, of course. He was happy for his friend, even if it did make him feel a little bit funny to think about it.

Not that I wanted to go to college anyway. Four more years of school! If anything, I feel sorry for him. I feel sorry for all of these chumps who bought into the system.

Kane hadn’t taken the college application process seriously. He had filled out two applications on a lark, mostly to have something to do one afternoon at the library while a few of his friends were working on theirs. Kane and his group usually went to the library to laugh and cause a bit of trouble right after school, but on that day, no one had been in the mood, and he had thought seriously about just ditching his friends. Instead, he had printed off two of the applications and had filled them out, making a big production about how everyone was worrying over nothing and how any idiot could get himself accepted to college. He had sent them off in high spirits, and when he had received rejections, he’d been more upset about the fact that he would have nothing to wave in his friends’ faces, no way of showing them that he had been right and they had been worrying too much.

Technically, he supposed, he should be embarrassed by all this. It was obvious that Bradley thought he ought to be. That fact just made Kane feel angry. What was there to be embarrassed about? It might be embarrassing if he was someone like — he glanced around at the crew — someone like Taylor, who had always worked hard at the academic side of things. It would definitely be humiliating for her if she hadn’t gotten into college!

But she had, of course. Kane wasn’t close to Taylor — she was a part of the group because her best friend, Maddie, was dating Bradley. But word had gotten around when she had been accepted to the nursing school she’d had her eye on for years, and her friends had decorated her locker, so that you couldn’t walk by without taking in the celebration of her accomplishment. Kane was happy for her, he guessed, but he also thought everyone was making too big a deal out of the whole thing.

“What does college have to do with anything?” he asked Bradley now.

“It matters because we don’t want to be caught doing anything sketchy now,” Bradley said.

“They’ve already accepted you, though.”

“But they can rescind their acceptances. The guidance office was really clear about this when they met with me. I’m guessing other people heard this too?”

He looked around the lunch table where they were all sitting. It was their usual table — it had been since freshman year, when they had staked it out. Kane remembered that moment very well. It was the convention at their high school for freshmen to gather and eat lunch on the lawn outside. The cafeteria was upperclassman territory. And that was all very well on sunny days, but this was Iowa, and there was rain and snow and the cold of winter to contend with. When those days rolled around, the freshmen sought refuge in the auditorium, packing themselves into the stadium seats there, or climbing up onto the stage to eat.

Kane had been the one freshman with the courage to buck that trend. Why shouldn’t he and his friends have a table? So in the first week of school, he’d marched into the cafeteria and claimed one for them, and he had sat there looking all the upperclassmen in the eye, daring them to say anything, until the table was full of the very people who still sat here today.

The very people who were nodding along with Bradley now, as if to say that they had been told the same things he had and shared his fears and concerns about their future.

“Bradley’s right,” Maddie said, leaning forward on her elbows. She’d become intolerable over the past few weeks, her acceptance to a prestigious Ivy League school transforming her from someone who could liven up any party to someone who seemed to think of herself as a miniature adult. Though he couldn’t say so to Bradley, Kane could hardly stand to be around her anymore. She was the only one he wouldn’t be sorry to see leave — though he could admit that he did miss his friend, the person she had been before she had changed.

“You always take Bradley’s side,” he told her now, twirling the cigarette faster in his fingers.

She snatched it from him, snapped it in half, and dropped the pieces on the table.

“Hey!” Kane objected. “That was my second-to-last one!”

“Good. I want you to quit. You’re going to kill yourself by the time you’re thirty at the rate you’re going.”

“You know, you’re turning into a real?—”

“Watch it,” Taylor said suddenly. “Valencia.”

Kane didn’t give a damn about cursing in front of Vice-Principal Valencia, but Taylor had broken his stride. He scowled and raked his hair out of his eyes again as the vice-principal stopped by their table and leaned on it with one hand. “How are my favorite seniors?” she asked.

Bradley laughed. “We aren’t your favorite seniors.”

That was true. Her favorite seniors were the ones Kane thought of as the senior suck-ups, the clique that included the prom queen and the quarterback, the ones who had started a volunteer group in sophomore year and always made the honor roll, who didn’t party and didn’t smoke pot and didn’t, as far as Kane could tell, do anything fun at all.

But Valencia did like their group. At least, she liked most of them. She was a good vice-principal, and she had some affection for all of her students. Kane knew she was proud of Maddie’s prestigious college acceptance, and she had always shown up to the school plays to watch Bradley, who tended to land leading roles in them. A couple of members of their group played on various sports teams. Jonathan had put together an a-cappella group last year, and they played gigs all over town now. And nobody could help but like Taylor, who was like a ray of damn sunshine everywhere she went. And even though they got into trouble from time to time, Kane knew Valencia was fond of them.

At least, she was fond of the others.

He didn’t think she had much interest in him at all. The only time the two of them had spoken was at the end of last month, when she had called him into her office to make a whole production out of the fact that he didn’t have any college acceptances.

“I’m not going to college,” he’d told her, because there was no point in getting into a whole thing about it. “Can I go?”

“Kane, I want you to let me help you,” she’d said quietly. “I know nobody has ever pushed you. I know you think you can’t do this. I’m here to tell you that you can if you try, but you do have to try. If you and I put in a lot of effort between now and the end of the year, we can get you a college acceptance. What do you say — will you do that?”

Something about the way she’d said it had made Kane feel as if he was standing on the edge of a cliff. He’d stood up and shoved his chair away gruffly, cursed, and left her office.

Since then, Valencia hadn’t spoken to him directly.

She glanced at him now, as if she knew that he had been trying to put together a party that she wouldn’t have approved of. As if she knew that he was putting his energy into partying instead of trying to get into college. And for a moment, Kane wondered whether she was going to say something — call him to her office, try again to get him to commit to the idea of college.

And he thought, Maybe if she does, I’ll even go. Maybe I’ll let her talk to me about it. I mean, what could be the harm?

For a moment, he found himself genuinely considering it. College might be fun. High school parties were winding down, it was true, and his friend group would be going their separate ways, but maybe that didn’t have to mean an end to the fun of his life. Maybe he could go on to something bigger and better. People partied in college. A big part of what was bothering him these days was the knowledge that Bradley and the others would be having fun without him. That wasn’t a pleasant thing to have to think about. Maybe he’d made a mistake.

He was half out of his chair, ready to accept the invite he was sure Valencia was about to give him to come and talk to her — but her gaze skipped right over him as if he wasn’t even there.

“You all behave yourselves,” she said evenly. “None of you better give me a reason to contact your colleges before the semester ends.” She said it with a smile. It didn’t sound like a threat. It sounded almost affectionate, like she was proud of them for having gotten into colleges in the first place.

And of course, that was a sentiment that didn’t include Kane. If he got into trouble, what was she going to do? She couldn’t jeopardize his future. He was staying here. There wasn’t anything anyone could do to him now.

He was determined, suddenly, that there would be one last party on his family’s land before everyone scattered to the four winds. College be damned. They hadn’t left yet, and he was going to make the most of that fact. He was going to enjoy this last little bit of his time with his friends while he could.

“Party at my house,” he said firmly. “Saturday night, and everyone had better be there. You don’t want to miss this one, I promise you.”

He got up from his seat, taking his lunch tray with him and refusing to look back. He was the leader of his group of friends. They might be about to leave, but right now, that was still true. And they would show up when and where he told them to. He could still count on that.

At least, he hoped he could.