The Book of Luke

by Jenny O'Connell

  But I couldn’t tell them any of that. I knew who they were expecting. Nice Emily. Sweet Emily. Not bitching-about-everythingthat’s-wrong Emily. If you asked anyone at Heywood Academy what they remembered about Emily Abbott, nine out of ten people would say, “Emily Abbott, she was so nice!” The tenth person would probably remember I was the one who’d scraped dog crap on the school’s front steps.

  Even if Lucy and Josie were acting like no time at all had passed since we last saw one another, I wasn’t convinced it was that easy. A lot had happened in two-and-a-half years. Josie had practically become an instant heiress thanks to some software program her dad invented, and Lucy was being wooed with scholarships and promises of greatness by every Division I school with a women’s soccer team. And now I was supposed to jump-start our friendship with my own sucky life? No way. I’d give them the Emily they remembered.

  “There’s not enough time. You guys tell me what’s been going on here,” I demanded instead—in the nicest way, of course. The hallway was filling up with students and the sounds of locker doors slamming shut, and I only had a few minutes before Josie and Lucy would leave me and I’d be on my own. “And hurry up,” I insisted, feeling our time together ticking away.

  “Not much around here changes, unfortunately,” Lucy answered. “A few other people have moved away, and a few new people started, but otherwise it’s the same old faces you’ve known since sixth grade.”

  “Come on, there must be something? No cringe-worthy stories?” I asked, not bothering to hide my disappointment. I’d missed out on two whole years at Heywood, there had to be some piece of interesting news to tell me. “Any new guys?” I turned to Josie, remembering that the last time we spoke on the phone she had just gotten herself yet another new boyfriend. “What’s going on with Luke?”

  Josie’s hands flew up between us as if attempting to deflect the question. “Don’t even say his name.”

  “He cheated on her over Christmas vacation,” Lucy explained.

  “He didn’t just cheat on me, I caught him making out with someone else at Owen’s New Year’s party.”

  “A sophomore from St. Michael’s,” Lucy added, knowing that added insult to injury.

  For a second it occurred to me that a cheating boyfriend might be worse than a boyfriend who blindsided you with a breakup. Maybe my mom was right. Maybe things could be worse. At least Sean didn’t break up with me because he wanted to be with someone else. He broke up with me because he just didn’t want to go out with me anymore.

  Okay. That didn’t help at all.

  “That had to suck,” I empathized with Josie, attempting to put Sean out of my mind and focus on her cheating boyfriend instead.

  I had a hard time picturing the Luke Preston I remembered cheating on anybody, no less Josie. When Josie and I would still talk on the phone our sophomore year, she’d mentioned Luke had changed over the summer, but I figured he’d just gotten his braces off, maybe lost a few pounds, and finally shaved the brown fuzz that seemed to hover over his upper lip like something more in need of a Swiffer than a razor. And even though Josie told me she and Luke had started going out in October, I still couldn’t quite picture my Josie, the girl who totally had her act together, going out with Luke Preston, who was mediocre at best.

  “He kept swearing he sent me a breakup e-mail right before I left for the Bahamas, like that made any difference. What kind of an asshole breaks up with someone in an e-mail?”

  “And right before Christmas!” Lucy added in a show of support.

  I figured it was the same kind of guy who thinks he won’t get caught making out with a sophomore at Owen Lyle’s New Year’s party. Or the kind that tells his girlfriend he doesn’t want to go out with her anymore while he’s wearing the L.L.Bean field coat she gave him for Christmas and eating the sesame bagel she’d toasted for him.

  “When I told Luke I bought him a present in the Bahamas, he told me to just keep it.” Josie shook her head and frowned. “Then I called him a prick and he told me to get over it.”

  Get over it. As if catching your boyfriend with his tongue down someone else’s throat is akin to twisting an ankle during a football game. It was like Sean telling me he didn’t want to do the long-distance thing when I knew he had unlimited cell phone minutes. It was bullshit. I may have been gone from Heywood for almost three years, but it seemed like we were right back where we’d left off. So far we seemed to be having the same conversation we’d had the week before I moved to Chicago, when I’d nursed Lucy through three tubes of Toll House cookie dough after Matt LeFarge told the entire baseball team he’d popped her water bra with his watch band when he tried to feel her up. Add shitty guys next to Pantene on the list of things that just don’t seem to change.

  “I really can’t picture Luke cheating on you,” I admitted. “I can’t picture him cheating on anybody.”

  “Oh God, you have no idea. He’s nothing like the guy you remember. Totally different. ‘I’m sure I sent it to you,’ ” Josie mimicked. ‘Check your e-mail when you get home. Maybe it got put into your spam folder by mistake.’”

  Lucy and I tried not to smile. Josie did a wicked imitation of her ex-boyfriend.

  “Like it’s AOL’s fault he’s a prick. I swear, I am so done with guys,” Josie concluded. “The rest of the year, there’s nobody.”

  “There’s nobody left,” Lucy pointed out. “You’ve gone out with everyone.”

  “Well, in a school this small, the pickings are slim.”

  As if on cue, a few of those slim pickings came walking toward us.

  “Hey, Emily, what are you doing here?” Matt LeFarge asked.

  “I moved back.”

  He nodded in agreement, as if I needed his approval of my explanation.

  The water bra incident had happened almost three years ago, but still, I didn’t know how Lucy would react to Matt. I waited to see if she would ignore him or make a sarcastic comment about the piece of toilet paper pasted under his chin where he’d obviously nicked himself shaving, but there was nothing. When I left, the water bra incident was huge, but obviously Lucy had gotten over it. That’s why I couldn’t figure out the look on Josie’s face, a look of annoyance that verged on being completely and totally pissed. Maybe Josie still held a grudge against Matt out of loyalty to Lucy?

  And that’s when I saw him. Luke Preston. Except the guy coming toward us wasn’t the Luke Preston I remembered from freshman year. And all of a sudden I understood why Josie was so pissed. Luke Preston didn’t just get his braces off and buy a new electric razor. Luke Preston was gorgeous.

  Josie hopped off the radiator. “We should get going,” she told us, taking her books out of her locker and slamming the door shut so hard the lockers on either side flew open. “The bell’s going to ring any minute.”

  I glanced down the row. “I haven’t been assigned a locker yet.”

  “You can use mine until you get one,” Josie offered, waving her arm in front of locker number 117. “Voilà. Your new home away from home.”

  “I’m right here,” Lucy told me, pointing to number 115. “You can put your coat in mine for now.”

  How could I have doubted they’d be the same? How could I have even imagined we wouldn’t be best friends again? I stuffed my coat in the locker before taking a notebook out of my backpack.

  Even though I was facing Josie as she took my backpack and tucked it into her locker, I couldn’t help glancing over her shoulder at the guy standing a few feet away. And I wasn’t the only one. Down by the junior lockers a group of girls were watching as Luke Preston ran a hand through his floppy brown hair before telling a joke that had Matt LeFarge cracking up. He might be a prick, but that sophomore who snagged Luke Preston had to be one happy girl. She’d scored big-time.

  “Come on, we’ll walk you to your first class,” Lucy offered, looking down at my class schedule.

  If I’d been worried that things would be different between us, I wasn’t worried anymore. Heywo
od Academy could change the wall color and remove the locks from the lockers and paint them blue, but some things would always be the same. I looked down the hall at the freshman watching me walk away, and I couldn’t help smiling. I knew exactly what he was thinking. The new girl wasn’t new at all. She was Josie Holden and Lucy Denton’s best friend. And she was back.

  Chapter Three

  The Guy’s Guide Tip #9:

  Your penis will not shrivel up and die if you admit you want an umbrella instead of standing in the rain acting like a little water never killed anyone. It’s an umbrella, not a purse.

  Josie wasn’t sporting a new Rolex or channeling Paris Hilton. Lucy wasn’t fighting off recruiters or taping up offer letters in her locker (something a senior did a few years back when he was being courted by a few Ivies for their squash teams—it was completely obnoxious but it almost seemed cool at the time). All in all, as I followed Josie and Lucy down the stairwell toward the English classrooms, I was feeling a lot better about things. Lucy and Josie were on my side. And right now, that was the only thing I needed to get me through first period.

  Or so I thought.

  When we got to the lower level, Lucy pointed down the hallway. “Mrs. Blackwell’s class is the second on the left.”

  “I’ll see you in history,” Josie told me before they both said good-bye, wished me luck, and headed off to French class.

  As they walked away, their shoulders bumping into each other while Josie laughed at something Lucy had said, I felt on my own again.

  I walked the ten feet to Mrs. Blackwell’s room and reached for the doorknob. My fingers stayed wrapped around the smooth stainless steel while I watched Josie and Lucy disappear into the stairwell. They gave me one last wave before heading up the stairs, and I waved back like everything was fine. But instead of turning the knob and going in, I stepped away from the door, feeling like the monkey in the middle, wavering between being glad I was back and feeling like I just wanted to go home. To Chicago.

  It was an hour earlier back in Chicago. While I was standing outside Mrs. Blackwell’s classroom on the East Coast buying time before going in and facing a roomful of semistrangers, my two best friends for the past two years—the ones who knew that my boyfriend didn’t want to see me anymore and that my chances of getting into Brown at this point were slim and none—were probably finishing up breakfast and getting ready to catch the bus. Today was like any other day for them, except I wasn’t there. Lauren couldn’t bum a pencil from me before math class, and Jackie would be bumped up to salutatorian now that Will Simmons was going to take my place at the head of the class. It was only an hour earlier in Chicago, but it already felt like it was a world away.

  “Aren’t you going in?” a voice asked, jolting me back to the glossy beige hallway. I looked up and saw Owen Lyle coming toward me.

  “I guess I have to go in sooner or later,” I answered, waiting for Owen to reach me.

  “The bell’s going to ring in about fifteen seconds, so it better be sooner.”

  I used to consider Owen my first real boyfriend, until I started going out with Sean. Once Sean and I were together, all the boyfriends who came before him paled by comparison. It was like believing you liked chocolate and then tasting Ben & Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk—up until that point you had no idea how amazing chocolate ice cream could really be. There was no way to even compare how I felt about Owen to how I feel—make that felt—about Sean. Owen and I held hands and kissed. Sean and I could spend all night on his couch making out, and our hands were doing way more than holding. For the past four months I’d thought of Sean as my real first. Not the first in the way most people think about it. We never had sex, even if, before I found out we were moving, I did think it was inevitable. That’s probably why the thought of having sex with Sean consumed about eighty percent of my waking hours (the other twenty percent was evenly split between obsessing about my application to Brown and deciding what to get Sean for Christmas).

  After a while I actually started to feel like I’d be better off just having sex with him so I could stop planning for it like some elaborate event that required orchestration and forethought, if not a party planner. First there was the question of where it would happen. There were so many options, including my favorite, the beach. I knew the reality of sand creeping into my private parts didn’t sound all that comfortable, but it always looked so nice in music videos and romantic comedies. But being that it was almost December when I decided that Sean would be my first in that sense, the beach was pretty much out of the question. Then there was the how—a question that Jackie, Lauren, and I decided to answer by reading an old Kama Sutra Lauren found in her basement. After close examination and much discussion, we decided the how would definitely depend on the where due to potential space constraints and limited mobility. Admittedly, the illustrations also required a level of flexibility I had no hope of ever achieving, so it wasn’t like I was in danger of performing the Yugmapada with my lotus-crossed feet any time soon. Of course, there was also the when, which almost created more questions than it answered. It got to the point where I’d put so much thought and planning into it that I almost felt like I should send Sean an invitation to the grand event— please join me as I celebrate the loss of my virginity—and the appropriate instructions to RSVP.

  But even if we didn’t end up sleeping together, Sean was the first in an entirely different way. Owen may have been the first, and at that point the only, guy to feel me up, but Sean was the first person I thought I truly loved.

  Owen stopped in front of the classroom door. “I heard you were moving back. When did you get so tall?”

  I stood on my tippy toes and attempted to look down on him. “When did you get so short?”

  Actually, Owen wasn’t short at all. He was the perfect height for things like kissing, resting your head on his shoulder during movies, and staring into his grayish green eyes. Owen was always cute. He was the guy everyone liked.

  For a minute I wondered how easy it would be to get back together with Owen, even if it was just to get Sean out of my system. He could be the sprig of parsley that eliminated the bad taste of Sean from my mouth (parsley is a natural odor neutralizer, as pointed out in my mom’s best-selling book Everyday Etiquette for Everyone). So what if I was on the rebound? Owen was still cute, still had that mellow walk that made it seem like he was in no rush to get anywhere. I used to love watching him come down the hall toward me after history class, how it almost looked like he was walking in slow motion. Or maybe I’d just been brainwashed by the Hollywood idea that special effects were supposed to substitute for love.

  But, instead of being the least bit turned on by Owen, there was nothing. Not even a single spark for the first guy who’d successfully unhooked my bra. Sean had ruined it for me. Right now, the only sparks I wanted were the ones that could set Sean and his L.L.Bean field coat on fire.

  “You remember Luke, don’t you?” Owen asked, gesturing to his left where Luke now stood watching us.

  Luke nodded at me. “Hey, Emily.”

  “Hi Luke,” I answered cheerily, and then before I could stop myself added, “How’re you doing?”

  Damn!

  If I could have smacked myself, I would have. This was the guy who’d dumped my best friend and here I was acting like I actually cared about how he was doing. Why should I care about Luke? It was Josie I cared about. What kind of friend was I, chatting up the guy who’d screwed over my best friend?

  Luke smiled at me and I fought the instinct to smile back, which wasn’t all that easy. After a lifetime of my mother ingraining pleasant and proper greetings in my brain, I wasn’t sure how to kick the habit.

  Even though I could hear my mom’s voice telling me to say hello, maybe even extend a firm handshake and say it was nice to see him again, I didn’t. If I was going to break the nice habit, now was a good time to start.

  “Forget it,” I quickly recovered, not bothering to hide my disgust as I look
ed Luke up and down. “I know how you’ve been. I already heard all about you, and it’s more than I care to know.”

  At first, Luke seemed surprised by my reaction. In fact, he seemed almost confused.

  I could guess what he was thinking—the Emily Abbott he knew would never be such a bitch. But then again, the Luke Preston I’d known wouldn’t cheat on my best friend. And he wouldn’t look like a model out of an Abercrombie catalog.

  All of a sudden Luke smirked at me, and I knew he understood the situation. He knew he was too late. Josie had already gotten to me, and I was a loyal friend. I wouldn’t just ignore what Luke did to her. I cared about Josie’s feelings—I wasn’t a guy.

  “I’m sure you do,” Luke muttered, and I shot him a look that said, in no uncertain terms, that he and I would not be friends.

  Before I could lose my courage and dissolve into apologies for being so rude, I turned the doorknob and walked into the classroom just as the bell started to ring.

  By lunchtime I almost felt like I was getting back into the swing of things. I had four classes under my belt and, thankfully, I wasn’t completely lost. Not that it mattered much at this point. After hearing from Brown the day before Christmas—a lovely little Christmas Eve gift from the admissions committee who, come to think of it, should have just written “bah, humbug” on the envelope and called it a day—I’d sent in my applications to a bunch of other colleges, so the rest of this year was more about making it through in one piece, rather than attempting to graduate first in my class. I already knew that wasn’t going to happen. Mr. Wesley, the headmaster, made it clear that no matter how well I did my last semester at Heywood, and no matter how well I’d done in Chicago before I left, I couldn’t be valedictorian after returning midyear. My mom had actually thanked Mr. Wesley before hanging up the phone and telling me this news, and I’d wanted to tell her to call him back and say that wasn’t fair. That I’d busted my ass for four years, and there was no way I was going to sit with the rest of the class at graduation and act like it was no big deal. It was a big deal. But ultimately, like everything else that had taken place in the last three weeks, I had no choice in the matter. Everyone else was making decisions for me and I was just being handed my life on a plate—and I was supposed to graciously accept it and say thank you. Even if it was a plate I didn’t order and wanted to send back.