Cover

About the Author

Flynn Meaney is the author of The Boy Recession and Bloodthirsty. She studied marketing and French at the University of Notre Dame, where she barely survived the terrifying array of priests and nuns, campus ghosts and bone-crushing athletes who inspired Bad Habits. Since completing a very practical MFA in poetry, she works for a French company and travels often between New York (when she’s in the mood for bagels) and Paris (when she’s in the mood for croissants).

Dedication

For all the loud feminists with purple hair …
and the quiet feminists with killer French braids

August

1

Don’t look down, I told myself. If you look down, you’re friggin’ screwed.

There I was, hanging from a second-floor window of St Ambrose Hall in a denim miniskirt and my motorcycle boots. As my bare legs dangled, my sore biceps suddenly reminded me that I had not in fact done ten pull-ups during the school physical-fitness test last year. I had lied. In reality, I had done three, twerked a little in mid-air, then bribed Amy Horner with my Shameless Hussy red lipgloss to write down ten. Crap.

‘Alex!’ Colin Nowakowski stuck his head out of the window. He was fumbling to button his shirt over the silver cross on his chest. ‘I don’t know if you climbing down is such a good idea!’

Last year, I thought Colin Nowakowski was kind of a little turd. But tonight, when we reached for the same hot dog at the back-to-school barbecue, I saw that a summer growth spurt, plus a cool shorter-on-the-sides haircut, had transformed him from turd to quasi-hot hipster. So I’d put my number in his phone, suggesting we hook up later.

Now, seeing him all anxious and twitchy like a meerkat with irritable bowel syndrome, I regretted it. Here’s a pro tip: if you ever sneak into a guy’s dorm room to hook up and he’s got a Michael Bublé station on his Spotify, just turn and run.

‘Psh, it’s fine!’ I said cheerfully. ‘I’ve snuck out of every boys’ dorm on this campus! Once P. J. Keller lowered me from the fourth floor on a bedsheet. This is no sweat!’

In reality, I wasn’t as chill as I sounded – either literally or figuratively. No sweat had been real bullshit because I was sweating heavily in the hot August night. Those friggin’ Minnesota mosquitoes were all over my bare legs, I couldn’t get my boots to grip on the dangerously smooth stone wall and my hold on the windowsill was slipping.

Suddenly there was a growl below me.

‘Was that a dog?’ I hissed. ‘Is there a dog down there?’