Free The Book of Blood and Shadow by Robin Wasserman

the most appropriate spot for a victory party, but when Chris had one of what he termed his brain monsoons, he was nearly impossible to resist. The Hoff was long gone, off to dream of academic glory or librarian torture or whatever enlivened his fantasies—he’d left us to celebrate our triumph with “an exuberance commensurate with your youth.”
    We scavenged the pizza, downed the vodka—or at least Chris, Adriane, and Max did, while I weathered their mockery and stuck to water, arguing that, as resident “miracle worker,” it was probably part of my job description to stay pure—and speculated wildly about the shining futures we might have just ensured for ourselves. Chris foresaw a glowing recommendation for law school three years hence, paving the yellow-brick road all the way to the Supreme Court; I just wanted to make sure I got out of Chapman and into college, useless facsimile of knowledge or not; Adriane, unpersuaded that any of this was a deal big enough for ten-dollar pizza, much less a night of drunken blue-skying, was nonetheless set to write, produce, and costume our inevitable television appearance (albeit presumably on PBS); Max was silent.
    “Now can we get out of here and celebrate for real?” Adriane asked once the food and drink were gone.
    Chris leapt off his pew and grabbed her hand. “Not until I have my way with you, fair lady.”
    “Your way isn’t exactly churchly,” Adriane pointed out. But she held on as he danced her around the nave in a left-footed waltz, whirling with clownish grace.
    Max and I watched.
    “ ‘I found that ivory image there, dancing with her chosen youth,’ ” Max said. Then, realizing that I was staring at him, he blushed. “It’s a poem. Yeats.”
    “I know.”
    He looked surprised. “Really?”
    Of course not really—the only poetry I knew by heart was the first and last stanzas of T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” and that only because we’d been forced to memorize them for sophomore English—but I didn’t like that shocked expression, as if it were so out of the question I’d know a random Yeats line off the top of my head. I wondered if he’d been trying to impress me, then dismissed the idea. Max didn’t strike me as the type to make the effort.
    Then again, neither was I.
    “ ‘We have lingered in the chambers of the sea. By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown,’ ” I quoted, though it bore no relevance to anything, even in the loosest of poetically metaphorical terms. “Eliot.”
    “ ‘Till human voices wake us, and we drown.’ ” It was the next line.
    “Are we competing now?” I asked. “Over who knows more poetry by heart? Because if so, this is officially the geekiest conversation of my life.”
    He tensed, and another red flush crept across his face.
    “Joking,” I assured him. “Remember, I’m the funny one?”
    We fell silent again and watched them dance. Chris lurched about with the best of intentions and a congenital lack of rhythm, but Adriane—physically incapable of an awkward move—twirled and dipped like a Disney princess at the ball, absent only shimmering gown and diamond tiara. “She’s beautiful. Don’t you think?”
    Max shrugged.
    “She inspired you to poetry,” I pointed out.
    “So do spotted toads. And the occasional well-barbecued steak. Beauty’s not really a necessary criterion.”
    “Spotted toads ? You recite poetry to toads?”
    Max stood abruptly and reached out his hand. “Let’s take a walk.”
    I glanced at Chris and Adriane, who had dispensed with the ballroom theatrics and were swaying slowly back and forth, closing in on the very unchurchly inevitable.
    “Let’s.” I grabbed his hand. Wheelbarrow or not, sometimes three was an ugly number.
    Without discussion, Max led me up the narrow spiral staircase that rose to the church quire. It was a shallow balcony overlooking the nave, complete with choir risers and a dying pipe organ. “I’ve