Bad Habits - Softcover

Meaney, Flynn

 
9780241407196: Bad Habits
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0241407192 ISBN 13: 9780241407196
Verlag: Penguin, 2021

Inhaltsangabe

'Heart-warming and hilarious, this is a book you need on your shelves in these bleak times.' Irish Times

Perfect for fans of Sex Education and Derry Girls.

Alex is a rebel with a purple fauxhawk and biker boots.
St Mary's Catholic School is the strict boarding school where she's currently trapped.

Despite trying everything she can to get expelled, she's still stuck with the nuns, the prudish attitude and the sexism. So Alex decides to take matters into her own hands. She's going to stage the school's first ever production of The Vagina Monologues . . .

Trouble is, no one else at St Mary's can even bear to say the word 'vagina' out loud!

A riotously funny novel about the importance of friendship and finding your voice.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

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).

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

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?’
Before I could stop myself, I looked down. Crap. The
distance to the prickle bushes made me dizzy and, much
worse, there was a giant yellow-white beast whose demon
eyes gleamed in the dark. Razor-sharp teeth flashed in its
black, cavernous mouth with each bloodthirsty bark.
‘Charlie,’ Colin told me. ‘Father Callahan’s dog. He
lives in our dorm. He’s a Labradoodle.’
‘Charlie the Labradoodle?’ I squinted at the monster
down below, which now looked to be foaming at the mouth.
‘That’s not Charlie the Labradoodle! I follow Charlie the
Labradoodle on Instagram! Charlie the Labradoodle is
adorable! He wears fedoras with ear holes! THAT down
there is some genetically modified wolf from a horror
movie! Do you hear how he’s barking at me?’
‘I don’t think he likes girls,’ Colin babbled anxiously.
‘I mean, he lives in a dorm full of guys, where girls aren’t
even allowed, so I think he’s kind of –’
‘A MISOGYNIST?’ I burst out. ‘Your dorm priest has
a MISOGYNIST Labradoodle? What, Father Callahan
isn’t scary enough, with the Rasputin beard and the thunder
voice?’
Right on cue, like the approaching rumble of a summer
storm, we heard that very thunder voice boom out. Father
Callahan, Colin Nowakowski’s dorm priest, was coming
around the back of the building, calling out in the dark,
‘What is it, Charlie boy? What’s going on back there?’
‘Oh FUDGE!’ Colin Nowakowski gasped. ‘Father
Callahan! Father Callahan’s coming!’ His face was so pale
and sweaty I thought he might barf on me, but I also
thought I might barf at the fact that I had let a guy who
says Fudge touch my ass. We were all screwed.
‘Quick, help me back up!’ I scrabbled against the stone
wall with my motorcycle boots, groping with desperate
fingers for a better handhold.
‘I’m sorry, Alex!’ His voice was squeaky with panic.
‘I can’t!’
‘You can’t what?’
‘I can’t get caught with a girl in my room! I can’t get in
trouble! I’m applying early to Georgetown for engineering!’
‘Engineering?’ I spluttered furiously. ‘You couldn’t even
unhook my bra! Now HELP. ME. UP!’
Father Callahan’s footsteps were approaching, snapping
twigs in the bushes below. Charlie’s barking was rising to
a vicious fever pitch, and I was grunting and pulling myself
up, reaching out for Colin. I was so close – my hand
outstretched –
Suddenly Colin blurted, ‘I’m sorry!’ and slammed the
window down.
Then I really was screwed.

2
The best view at St Mary’s Catholic School is from the top
floor of the main building, right under the famous golden
statue of the Virgin Mary. From there, you can see the
whole campus, which is laid out like a cross, with Academic
Quad to the north, the well-swept green Girls’ Quad of six
stone dorms to the east, the identical Boys’ Quad to the
west, and straight ahead an avenue of pine trees leading
down to the shining lake.
Unfortunately, the view inside isn’t quite so hot – because
it’s the principal’s office.
It’s a place I know all too well. I know the squeaky green
leather chairs that stick to the back of your thighs. I know
the framed mosaics of saints being martyred in gruesome
and bloody ways. I know the smell of old bibles and
disapproval. And I definitely know that look on Father
Hughes’s face; that grim, set-jaw look that makes the old
guy from Up look like a flirty fireman in a shirtless calendar.
‘Well, Ms Heck,’ he began, ‘here we are, only your
second day back on campus, and already I find you in
my office.’
‘Good to be back!’ I said cheerfully. ‘I see you put up a
new mosaic – St Agatha on a Bed of Hot Coals. It really
livens the place up.’
Clearing his throat, Father Hughes reached for a square
sheet of yellow paper that was also very familiar to me: a
St Mary’s Incident Report.
‘Last night,’ the principal pronounced, in his imminent-
plague-of-locusts voice, ‘you, Alexandra Heck, were found
face down in the shrubbery behind St Ambrose Hall. You
were uninjured apart from mild scratches and bruises . . .’
Pretty accurate, I thought – and it was nice of Father
Hughes not to mention the fact that I’d been found with
my miniskirt around my waist, my ‘Bow Down Bitches’
boyshorts in full view and Charlie the Labradoodle’s tongue
in my ear.
‘. . . and were obviously not in your own dorm at the
time of curfew.’
Father Hughes picked up a mahogany stamp from an
inkpad. The all-powerful seal of St Mary’s. Time to get
serious. He held it poised over the incident report and
asked, ‘Do you dispute the accuracy of this interpretation?’
‘No, I do not,’ I said primly. I could get serious, too. ‘I
missed curfew. I don’t dispute that.’
Father Hughes lowered the stamp towards the yellow
sheet. But, just as the ink was about to make contact
with the paper, I continued, ‘But I do wonder why Colin
Nowakowski isn’t also here right now.’ I gestured to the
...

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Verlag
Penguin
Erscheinungsdatum
2021
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0241407192
ISBN 13 
9780241407196
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
352
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