Taming the Bad Boy Was a Mistake novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Annoyance Meter
Callie learns the full purple bar over her boyfriend's head means he's one point from done with her, hands back everything she took from him in front of the whole dining hall, and he grabs her wrist and asks if she's dumping him.
I spent a whole year taming the worst boy on campus, and the bar over his head was so full it looked ready to burst.
It floated a hand's width above his black hair, deep purple, ninety-nine out of a hundred.
I was eating fries and feeling very pleased with myself.
Jesse Rainey sat across from me in the dining hall with a salad I'd picked out for him.
He was eating it.
A year ago he'd have thrown it at somebody.
Then my System popped up in the corner of my eye, took one look at the purple bar, and went quiet.
The System was a little glowing square only I could see.
It usually had something rude to say.
This time it said, [Oh no.]
"What?" I whispered behind my cup.
[Host, stop smiling.]
"Why?"
[That isn't the love meter. That's the Annoyance meter.]
I stopped smiling.
[The main system glitched and flipped the labels. I just got the patch.]
"How bad?"
[One more point and he's done with you. Done done. The mission fails, and you know what happens to you when it fails.]
I knew.
I'd already died once.
In my first life I was twenty-six, driving home after a double shift, and I fell asleep at a red light that turned green.
Nobody came to the hospital.
Then the System woke me up at nineteen, in a dorm room in Ohio, with a scholarship and one job.
Make Jesse Rainey fall in love with me.
Fill the bar.
Live.
I looked up at the bar again.
It looked a lot less like a heart now.
It looked like a bruise.
"No," I whispered. "No way. He does everything I say."
[Ever think about why?]
I thought about it.
The first week, I took his cigarettes out of his jacket and dropped them in the trash in front of his friends.
He let me.
I told him his white-blond hair made him look like a cartoon villain, and I bought him black dye.
He dyed it.
I banned him from the gaming cafe on Fourth Street.
He stopped going.
I made him sit in the library with me every night until it closed, even though he never opened a book.
He sat there.
I picked his shirts.
I texted him a schedule every Sunday.
When he was late, I cried in front of people until he said sorry.
[Host, what did you do this year?]
"Loved him," I said.
[Sure. Loudly.]
Jesse looked up from his salad.
"Who are you talking to?"
"Nobody."
He went back to the salad.
Ninety-nine, said the bar.
[Fix this. Go along with him. Get that number down, or we're both finished.]
I looked around the dining hall.
The whole long table was full of his old friends and my old enemies.
Two girls at the end had their phones out.
They always did, around us.
We were the funniest show on campus.
The bad boy and his warden.
I reached into my bag.
My hands were shaking, so I did it fast.
I put a crushed pack of cigarettes on the table between us.
His cigarettes, from September.
I'd kept them in the inside pocket of my bag for a year.
Next I set down his old lighter, the silver one with the dent.
Then the key to the gaming cafe locker he'd handed me on the first day, as a joke, and never got back.
The table went quiet.
Jesse put his fork down.
"These are yours," I said. "I'm giving them back."
"Okay," he said slowly.
"You don't have to go to the library tonight."
His grey eyes narrowed.
"Or ever. You can dye your hair any color you want. You can wear whatever you want. You can go wherever you want, with whoever you want."
Somebody at the end of the table whistled.
"No more schedules," I said. "No more rules. You're free."
I stood up with my tray.
My legs felt like they belonged to someone else.
I had never once walked away from him first.
I made it two steps.
A hand closed around my wrist.
Not hard.
Just completely.
I turned around.
Jesse was standing, and the whole dining hall was looking at us.
He didn't look free.
He looked like I'd hit him.
"Free," he said. "From what?"
"From me."
His jaw moved.
"Callie. Are you dumping me?"
Above his head, the purple bar flickered.
Ninety-nine point nine.
[HOST,] the System screamed. [SAY NO.]
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