Saving Maddie Read Online Free Page A

of water from the faucet. I plopped my elbows onto the table and buried my head in my hands.
    I probably should have been thinking about what I was going to say to Madeline—how I was going to lead her back to the path of the righteous—but all I could do was think about her lips. Their color. Their … taste.
    I had no doubt that Madeline Smith needed saving. I just wasn’t quite sure if I was interested in being her savior.

chapter 2
    I t had been four months since Jenn and I broke up—or rather, since she dumped me—but I still felt strange visiting the nursing home without her. Although it was my high school, not hers, that had adopted the Faith Nursing Home, she often came out and visited with me during the school year. Now that school was out, I was probably the only student who still came by during the summer months. Not that I minded—I really liked visiting the senior citizens. I just missed having someone to come visit them with me.
    It wasn’t just our trips to the nursing home that I missed. I missed playing Scrabble and watching oldmovies with her. I missed the way she laughed at my bad jokes. I missed seeing her at youth group meetings. I missed the way my parents would smile when she came over to visit.
    Of course, I also missed all the making out, but I wasn’t supposed to be focusing on the physical parts of the relationship, right? She wasn’t a piece of meat. She was my girlfriend. My perfect girlfriend.
    My perfect ex -girlfriend.
    Even now, I could still hear her sweet, high-pitched voice as she gave me the news.
    I’m sorry, Joshua, but I think we should break up. I want a boyfriend, not a saint.
    Truthfully, I was a little surprised, but I assumed it’d be like any of our other arguments. She’d be mad for a few days, but she’d eventually get over it. I mean, yeah, compared to other guys, maybe I was a “good guy.” But so what? She was a good girl. Good girls belonged with good guys.
    But then three days without her calling turned into three weeks. Jenn even stopped coming to church, instead attending Catholic Mass with her father.
    Charlotte, Tony’s girlfriend, attended the same school as Jenn, so I constantly prodded her for information. All Charlotte would do was change the subject.
    Finally, I broke down and called Jenn. And it was then that she told me she was seeing someone else.
    Later, Tony and Charlotte told me that not only was Jenn dating her lab partner (who, incidentally, was a studfootball player with hands big enough to rip a phone book in half), but she had slept with him.
    Jennifer Anne Dowling—my perfect ex-girlfriend—had lost her virginity to someone else.
    Of course, I was mad. No, not mad—livid. No, not livid— incensed. So what did I do?
    I prayed for her soul.
    And what’s worse, I prayed for her new boyfriend’s soul as well.
    Why? Because the Bible said that premarital sex was wrong. Because I was supposed to forgive her for her transgressions. Because that was what my parents would have wanted me to do.
    But even now, as I walked into the nursing home, all I wanted to do was find this new boyfriend of hers and smash my fist into his face. Then I wanted to find a new girlfriend and catch up on all the kissing and making out that I’d been missing out on.
    Part of me even wanted to do more than make out.
    But that wasn’t going to happen, because I was Joshua Wynn, the preacher’s son. I was supposed to be a shining example of what was good and righteous and wholesome in the world.
    “Joshua, you okay?” Becca, the receptionist, asked as I signed in. “You look mad.”
    I took a deep breath and forced a smile. “I’m okay.” I nodded toward the rec room. “Are they in there?”
    “Of course. Where else would they be?”
    I took a few more deep, calming breaths, then enteredthe rec room. Leonard King and Mr. Rollins sat at a table in the corner, deep in a chess game. I hovered over Leonard’s shoulder but didn’t say anything. I had been