The Book of Luke (13 page)

As I replaced the cap on the marker and sat there admiring my handiwork, there was a knock at my door. “What are you doing?” my mom asked, coming into my room and taking a seat at the foot of my bed. “Homework?”

“You could say that,” I answered.

“Well, you certainly looked like you were concentrating when I came in.” She tried to get a glimpse at my work, but I’d turned the notebook over on my bedspread so only the plain brown cardboard backing showed.

“It’s just something I’m trying to learn.”

“Anything I can help with?” She looked hopeful.

I was about to say no when I decided that maybe she could help me with something after all. “Maybe. I have a question: If one of your readers wrote to you and asked how they could get someone to change undesirable behavior, how would you tell them to do that without making it too obvious?”

My mom let out a long breath and tipped her head to the side, like she does before answering audience questions at her seminars. “I think I know why you’re asking me this.”

I instantly froze and my fingers gripped the edge of the notebook. “You do?”

“I do. And that’s part of the reason I wanted to talk to you.”

This was it. This was when she told me that what I was doing was cruel and despicable. That I wasn’t just an affront to decent people everywhere, I was a professional liability, as well. Who’d attend seminars and buy books from a woman offering advice even her own child didn’t follow? I braced myself and tried to think of an explanation before she even started in on me.

“Just because your dad is a little
confused
at the moment doesn’t mean he feels any differently about you. He still loves you.”

“Dad?” She thought I was talking about my dad?

“Besides, he misses you terribly and wishes you’d call him and talk to him more often,” she continued, like she’d rehearsed this conversation in her head a million times, which she probably had. “In fact, he’d really like you and TJ to go out to Chicago and visit him for spring break.”

“No way.” I shook my head. “I can’t go.”

“You can’t?” she repeated, folding her hands and placing them on her knees in a gesture that was vintage Jackie O. “And why can’t you?”

“Josie invited me to go skiing for a few days.” I didn’t add that Jackie and Lauren had no idea my dad was still in Chicago, and if I went back they’d inevitably ask why I was visiting a father who was supposed to be in Boston.

“Emily, you can go skiing anytime. Your dad wants to see you. He misses you.”

I wanted to point out that if he missed us that much he would have gotten on the plane and come back with us in January. But that would be a smart-ass remark that would only piss off my mother even more, and wouldn’t do much to get her to say yes to the ski trip.

“Come on, all we’ll do is sit around some corporate apartment all week staring at four white walls with bad art bolted to the wall,” I pleaded, hoping to appeal to her sense of appropriate décor—she detested white walls and had no patience for bad reproductions of classic paintings. “Please?”

“Emily, I really wish you wouldn’t punish your dad like this.” She frowned at me like I was the one being unreasonable. Me!

I remember once hearing that if you try to hold in a sneeze you can rupture a blood vessel in your head and die. Well, I was tired of holding in every inappropriate thought and comment. It was either speak out or wait for that blood vessel to rupture. And, as much as I knew my mom wasn’t going to like what I was about to say, I had a feeling she’d like blood splattered on the walls even less.

“I’m punishing
him
?” I practically yelled. “If anyone’s doing the punishing, it’s Dad.”

My mom was silent while she tried to figure out how to respond—either that or she was trying to figure out how her perfect daughter had turned into a raging lunatic in the course of a few short days. “How can you say that?” she asked, her voice even and unemotional. “How can you even say that?”

“How can you
not
say that?” I demanded. “He’s punishing all of us! And we didn’t even do anything wrong. He’s the one who’s wrong.”

My mom seemed surprised that instead of backing down like I always did, I was actually being disagreeable for once. And that made me feel even bolder.

I stood up, finally ready to say what I’d really been thinking instead of being concerned about hurting people’s feelings. “You can pretend that nothing’s going on, that things are all hunky-dory around here, but I’m not going to. And I’m not going to visit him in Chicago. He was the one who wanted us to move, and that’s what we did. Now I’m not leaving.”

For once, my mother didn’t have a rational response. She sat there watching me, trying to figure out how to deal with the pissy girl who’d obviously taken up residence in her lovely daughter’s body.

“I think you’re making a mistake, Emily.”

“I’m making a mistake? What about you? You just let him stay there. You didn’t even try to get him to come with us.”

“This isn’t about me, Emily. It’s about you and your dad.”

“And I’m not going,” I reiterated.

“Fine. If you want to tell your dad that you’d prefer to go skiing with your friends instead, go ahead—if you think it’s the right thing to do.”

I knew her answer meant she thought it was the wrong thing to do, but I didn’t care.

“Fine, I’ll do that,” I said, sounding as snippy and obnoxious as possible.

My mom stood up and glanced around my room, as if she’d just noticed that my room was still in a state of postmove disarray, with boxes to be emptied and clothes to hang up.

“Before you do anything, finish unpacking and bring the empty boxes downstairs when you’re done,” she told me. “And hang your clothes up first. They’re getting wrinkled.”

“I will,” I answered, but when she left the room, I didn’t. Instead I went to the box clearly marked “Emily’s Room” and opened the flaps. I buried my hand deep into the cardboard box until I found what I was looking for. The picture of Sean I’d sworn I’d keep packed away.

There he was, his white football pants dirty after a game against Loyola. It was the first game of the season, and Jackie, Lauren, and I had gone to watch from the sidelines. The morning was warm, it was still early September, and when Sean walked back to the locker room after the game I was waiting for him, sunning myself on the bench outside the door. I don’t remember what he said to me, or why he decided that it was the right time to kiss me, but I do remember that he tasted salty from sweating, like how my fingers used to taste when I was little and we’d go to the beach on the cape (the fingers never stayed there very long; my mother always reminded me to get them out of my mouth). Later on, after we were officially dating, I learned that he always tasted salty after practice or a game. I always imagined that he’d taste the same way after sex, a slight sheen on his face and neck and an exhausted way about him.

But I didn’t take the picture frame out for one last trip down memory lane. No. This time I was putting Sean away for good. This was just one last look. Because that was how I wanted to remember him, grass-stained knees and all, his hair flattened down from his helmet, and those two black half-moons under his eyes to reflect the sun. I didn’t want to remember him with a small smattering of cream cheese on the right-hand corner of his mouth, and the L.L.Bean jacket I’d coughed up good library clerking money to buy. I mean, he didn’t even offer to give it back.
Hey, thanks for the coat—I’ll make sure and wear it when I take out my next girlfriend.
Jerk. Give me the sweaty guy with the helmet hair any day over the guy who stood in my driveway that morning.

Come to think of it, I’m sure he’d take the old Emily over the new Emily, too. He would never think I was capable of manipulating anyone. And he definitely wouldn’t believe I could come up with the idea for a guide that was going to shed light on every horrible, terrible thing about the opposite sex—and then tell them how to correct it. Sean would never think I had it in me. But, as I was discovering, he was wrong. And that alone already made me feel like a different person than the person I was in Chicago. That girl was still naïve enough to believe everything always turned out for the best, that being a good person paid off, and love conquered all. Now I knew better. And I wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

I
hated to admit it, but TJ was right. At Heywood, everyone really did know everything. By Monday afternoon the entire school seemed to know that there was something going on between Luke and me, even if no one knew exactly what it was—including me. Guys smiled at me with a new sense of appreciation, like I’d received Luke’s seal of approval. The middle schoolers practically genuflected when they passed by my locker on their way to class, as if my status had been elevated from mere senior to
that
senior. Upper-school girls seemed to slow down when they spotted me in the hallway, their eyes watching me with a look that was part reverence and part envy. Sometimes they’d even stop and just stare, waiting for me to be out of earshot before whispering something to their friends. And I had a feeling that what they were whispering was, “There goes Luke Preston’s new girlfriend.”

All Monday morning I felt invincible. Unbeatable. I felt like I was finally winning.

Only there were still people who didn’t seem to believe I
could
win. Not against the venerable Luke Preston.

“What do you think about Luke and Emily?” a faceless voice asked above the water rushing out of the girls’ room faucet.

My hand paused on the stall lock, just as I was about to exit. But instead of leaving the beige stall to see who was there, and who she was talking to, I stood still and listened, my ear pressed against the cold metal door.

“I don’t know. Maybe Emily doesn’t know about Luke. She’s been gone a few years, after all,” the other voice answered.

I bent down and peeked under the stall at two sets of shoes—one black, one navy blue—and tried to figure out who those feet belonged to. Nobody I instantly recognized, but then again, I wasn’t exactly used to scrutinizing the footwear of Heywood’s female students.

“I just hope she knows what she’s getting herself into,” the navy blue feet continued.

Thank God Heywood had paper towel dispensers. If they’d had to use hand dryers I never would have been able to hear what happened next. And what happened next was that those two pairs of feet totally underestimated me.

“She’s way too nice for him,” the black shoes stated, and then started for the door. “I hope she doesn’t get hurt.”

The blue shoes followed and the door opened just before she ended the conversation with a small sigh of resignation and a sad, “Me, too.”

Oh, poor misinformed girls. They had no idea what I was capable of doing to Luke. And that was going to make it all the more enjoyable.

I walked around Heywood mentally high-fiving Josie and Lucy, sending them secret signals that, yes, Luke had been waiting for me to walk to class with him, and, yes, I’d caught him looking at me from across the science lab. By lunchtime I felt like I should have a large
S
on my chest and a cape around my neck. But who needed to be faster than a speeding bullet or more powerful than a locomotive when you were capable of something even more amazing, something so few could lay claim to—the ability to change the biggest asshole in school. Look, down the hall, in the front seat of Luke’s car, it’s not Nice Emily offering to scrape the ice off his windshield, it’s New Emily—and she kicks ass!

I was on my way to the cafeteria to meet Josie and Lucy and report on my morning encounters with Luke when there he was, standing in the doorway to the cafeteria, waiting for me. At least, it looked like he was waiting for me. Maybe he was just debating whether or not he was in the mood for beef stew.

“Hey,” Luke called out when he saw me. And then he did something that I couldn’t quite process. I mean, it had only been two days since our kiss, and here he was offering to hold open the door for me? Had Luke gone out and bought one of my mother’s books or something?

“Hi,” I answered.

He stood there holding the door for me and I knew it was time to jump to step two, offering positive reinforcement for his sudden display of graciousness.

“Thanks for holding the door. I appreciate it.”

Luke just shrugged and let the door close behind us. “Hungry?”

I nodded. “Starving.”

Over by the lunch line I could see Luke’s Lunch Legion waiting for him, watching to see if he was going to stay and eat the food they were about to retrieve for him, or if he’d head out to Sam’s.

“I think there are a few people waiting to serve you.” I tipped my head in the direction of the four girls and turned to go find Lucy and Josie. “Enjoy your lunch.”

“Wait.” Luke reached out and grabbed my shoulder. “I’m not much in the mood for stew. Want to go out and get something?”

By “something,” I assumed he meant potato logs. It looked like, instead of joining Lucy and Josie, I was in for another working lunch. Maybe this time we could start working on how to keep the ketchup from falling on his chin in the first place instead of discussing how to wipe it off. And another bonus: a turkey sandwich beat beef stew any day.

“Sure. Let me go upstairs and grab my coat.”

Luke reached for the door and held it open for me once again, almost as if proving the first time hadn’t been a fluke. “I’ll go get my car and meet you out front.”

I started to leave the cafeteria but couldn’t resist taking one more glance over my shoulder at the Lunch Legion. Their eager smiles and hopeful eyes disappeared when they realized Luke and I were leaving. Together. I almost felt sorry for them, just standing there watching us with disappointment written all over their faces.

I said
almost
felt sorry for them, and even that only lasted a second. Because there wasn’t any room to feel sorry for anyone when I was feeling so victorious. Besides, someday they’d thank me for this.

“So, what are you in the mood for?” Luke asked, pulling out of Heywood’s driveway.

“Aren’t we going to Sam’s?” We were already heading in that direction.

“If you want.”

“You really like that place, don’t you?”

“It’s okay. Good potato logs.”

“And ketchup,” I added, and Luke smiled.

“And good ketchup.” He reached over and changed the radio station. “I think half the reason I go there is because I can, you know? Like, finally, after six years of watching seniors leave at lunchtime, it’s my turn.”

“So, you’re the new Billy Stratton?” I asked, thinking that he really was.

“I guess, but without the bong.”

“I still can’t believe that about him.”

“You just don’t want to,” he told me, and he was right. My beautiful, perfect Billy Stratton wasn’t just an introvert who was too sweet to tell the eighth grader lurking outside his economics class to leave him alone. He was just too stoned to notice me in the first place.

“So, Sam’s it is?”

“Unless you’ve got another suggestion. What was your favorite place to eat before you moved away?” Luke asked.

That was easy. “Friendly’s.”

“Friendly’s?” Luke laughed. “You have the best lobster and clam chowder in the entire world at your doorstep and you miss a place with burgers and ice cream?”

“Yeah, you know, there’s nothing like a Fribble in Chicago. No regular milkshake even comes close.”

“Fribbles are pretty damn good, I’ll give you that. What flavor?”

“Chocolate.”

“I’m a strawberry Fribble guy myself.”

He didn’t exactly strike me as a strawberry kind of guy. I would have guessed something more along the lines of butter pecan or pistachio. Those nutty ice creams always sounded like something a guy would order. But pink ice cream? No way.

Luke slowed down and I figured he was preparing to turn right toward Sam’s. But instead of turning, all of a sudden he sped up and kept driving straight.

I pointed to the passing street sign. “Hey, you missed the turn.”

“We’re not going to Sam’s.”

“We’re not?”

Luke shook his head. “Nope. Today we’re getting ourselves a couple of Fribbles.”

“I used to want to work here,” I told Luke after we’d been seated and given the waitress our order.

“Really? Why?”

“Well, there was the idea of free ice cream,” I told him, watching the waitress head our way with a completely unbalanced lunch. “Then there was the whole apron thing.”

“The apron thing?”

“Yeah. My mom is a big proponent of aprons.”

Luke smiled at me, like he was trying to picture me in an apron. I hoped that wasn’t all I was wearing.

“So, is it strange coming back here?” Luke asked, attempting to suck his superthick Fribble through a straw. It wasn’t working.

I waited for the waitress to place my order of fries on the table before answering. “Sort of.” I nodded my head toward our departing waitress. “Did you notice that?” I asked.

Luke leaned over the table and we both answered at that same time. “No more aprons.”

“Ah, it’s the end of an era.” Luke shook his head in mock disappointment. “There goes your dream of free ice cream.”

I reached for my fries and popped one in my mouth, burning a layer of skin off my tongue in the process.

“Little hot?” he asked, grinning at me. Under the table I felt his leg press against mine and I quickly moved it away.

“Little,” I told him, waving my hand in front of my mouth to cool it off.

Luke stopped sucking on his straw and decided to spoon out the ice cream instead. “So, what do you remember about me?”

Sure.
Enough about you, what do you think of me?
How typical.

I didn’t have a whole lot to tell him, at least not what I figured he wanted to hear (
I watched you from afar and imagined one day you’d take me to Friendly’s,
instead of,
You had that nasty cowlick and got winded playing badminton in gym
). My memories of Luke just weren’t that vivid. He was more like a bit player instead of having a starring role.

“I remember you were friends with Owen, but you didn’t say much. Why? What do you remember about me?” If Luke could be vain, so could I. Besides, I really wanted to know.

“Let’s see.” Luke took a big gulp of his Fribble and ended up with a strawberry mustache.

I probably should have pointed out to Luke that, if he kept a napkin on his lap, it would be easily accessible for the next gulp. It was a prime opportunity to impart a few table manners, but instead I reached for a napkin and handed it to him. There’d be plenty of opportunities to teach Luke about the appropriate placement of napkins, and right now I just wanted to enjoy my chocolate Fribble in a Guy’s Guide-free zone.

“I remember that you bent over that Bunsen burner in science class and singed one of your eyebrows off,” he told me.

“Okay, I can live without that memory.”

“I also remember that you and Lucy and Josie did that dance routine at the talent show,” he told me, wiping away the pink mustache.

Was he doing this on purpose? Didn’t he have any normal memories of me?

“And I remember you were slightly obsessed with going to Brown.”

“You do?”

“Diorama incident in sixth grade. Not to mention that brown felt pennant you had taped up inside your locker.”

“You remember that?”

“Are you kidding me? I felt like a total slacker—I could barely figure out where I wanted to go to camp and you’d already decided where you were going to college.”

“Yeah, well, things change,” I told him and hoped he’d let the subject drop. “Looks like Brown isn’t in the cards, after all.”

I had no idea why I said that. The last thing I wanted to do was share personal information with Luke. This was a purely professional lunch—I was just doing my job.

It was just that he made it seem so easy. Maybe because he didn’t seem to have any preconceived notions of what I’d do or say. Or maybe because I wasn’t supposed to give a crap about how he felt about what I did or said.

I caught Luke eyeing my fries. “Mind if I have one?” he asked, his fingers already on their way toward the plate.