The Book of Luke Read Online Free

ended up burying it at the bottom of one of the small white plastic garbage receptacles they mounted on the walls of the girls bathroom stalls). A ninth grader who, even though there were barely three hundred students in the whole school, had no idea who “E.A.” even was. Probably a ninth grader a lot like the guy staring at me right now, wondering, Why the hell is that girl checking me out?
    I didn’t recognize him, not that there was any reason I should. Although now he was wearing the upper school’s standard navy blazer, maroon tie, and khaki pants, he would have been a sixth grader when I moved to Chicago. And I wasn’t in the habit of getting to know the kids in the lower school beyond the mandatory Secret Santa chocolates we delivered to them before Christmas break. Besides, his locker would have been on the bottom level back then, safely tucked away from upper-school students and four-letter words that his innocent ears weren’t supposed to hear.
    But at that moment, he and three of his friends were watching me, sizing me up, trying to figure out if the new blond girl in the navy pleated skirt and blue oxford was someone they’d be interested in, or if she realized they were only freshmen.
    As they examined me like some specimen in biology class, I attempted to look like I fit in. Which I once did. Three years ago I would never have stood in the hall outside the bathrooms wondering what to do next, where to go. I would have known where I belonged. But as I glanced down at my watch and pretended to be waiting for someone, anyone, I didn’t feel like I belonged at all. And I was starting to feel like I was spending way too much time in the vicinity of restrooms.
    “Oh my God, Emily!” a voice called from the other end of the hallway, and I whipped around, knowing exactly who I’d find.
    “I can’t believe you’re back.” Josie rushed toward me and threw her arms around my shoulders, the small blond hairs on her arm highlighted against the tan she must have earned in the Bahamas over Christmas vacation. This wasn’t some orange-y pseudo tan, like the kind we used to pour out of a bottle that inevitably gave us carrot-colored cuticles for a week because we forgot to use soap when we washed our hands. No, this was real. And the idea of Josie hanging out on some tropical island for Christmas break was completely un real. So unreal I felt my stomach clench, like that time I drank that bad eggnog.
    “This is so great,” Josie gushed, still holding on to me.
    My first reaction was to return her hug like I’d done a million times before, but right away it was obvious that things were different—mainly that I was four inches taller and Josie was at least two cup sizes bigger. For a minute I thought maybe Josie had used her dad’s recently acquired fortune to purchase a new set of boobs. But she would have called to tell me about any silicone enhancements, wouldn’t she? Besides, Josie wasn’t like that. Or at least she wasn’t like that when I knew her.
    My heart sank. Not because Josie was perfectly bronzed and so clearly superseded me in the chest department, but because it was exactly what I’d been afraid of—that we’d be different. That we’d changed. And the reality of Josie’s chin barely reaching my shoulder was proof that, literally, Josie and I no longer saw eye to eye.
    With my boyfriend gone, my valedictorian title left behind, and the recent news that I’d been practically rejected at Brown, Josie and Lucy were the only consolation I had for the next five months. They were the only things that made the idea of moving back to Branford even remotely bearable. And, now that I was staring at the side part in Josie’s blond hair, and she was probably staring at the blackheads on my chin, even that consolation wasn’t so consoling anymore.
    Still, Josie pulled me in close, her sun-streaked hair falling across my face so that I had no choice but to inhale her long blond strands. And