Free The Book of Luke by Jenny O'Connell

urge to step on them. My mother would definitely not approve, which is why, when we were packing up our house back in Illinois, she forbade TJ to go near the bubble wrap. While my brother and I both knew better than to pop all the little air pockets, my mom knew us well enough to know that TJ wouldn’t follow the rules. And I would.
    “So, how was it?” my mom asked, stepping out from behind a stack of cardboard boxes, her hair held back by a red bandanna, looking vaguely like her idol, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, only without the dark sunglasses and presidential seal of approval.
    “It was okay,” I answered, almost surprised by how okay my first day back at Heywood had been. “It actually wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.”
    “It never is,” she singsonged, picking up a matching pair of candlesticks and walking them over to the fireplace mantel. “I knew you’d be fine all along.”
    Of course, my mom would never admit otherwise. She’s eternally optimistic. It’s an occupational hazard.
    “I’ll be upstairs,” I told her, even though I knew I should offer to help her unpack. I had my own unpacking to do.
    “Your dad already called to see how it went today,” she told me. “You can call him on his cell phone.”
    My dad. The man who’s lived with Polite Patty for twenty years and yet still managed to handle the past two weeks all wrong—which, come to think of it, didn’t bode well for our ability to change the way Heywood’s guys treat girls.
    I stopped next to the pile of bubble wrap. “Do I have to call him now?”
    My mom looked over at me and frowned. “It would be nice.”
    Of course it would. “Maybe later,” I told her, turning to go upstairs. And then I stopped. And instead of walking away on the hardwood floors, I stepped to the right and let my foot land on a sheet of bubble wrap, setting off a series of little pops that sounded a lot like firecrackers.
    “Emily.” My mom gave me her best disappointed look, which included a furrowed brow and a slight shaking of her head.
    But instead of apologizing I found myself smiling. Yeah, I knew better. But the new Emily didn’t care. And she certainly wasn’t returning her father’s phone call.
    “Don’t forget to call your dad,” my mom called after me as I headed upstairs, as if oblivious to the fact that she was reminding me to call a man who had decided he was better off nine hundred miles and an entire time zone away from us.
    But I wasn’t oblivious to that piece of information, and there was no way I’d be picking up the phone to call him. He’d made his choice, and now I was making mine.

Chapter Six
    The Guy’s Guide Tip #14:
    Do not blame my tone of voice, my lack of patience, or my bad mood on PMS. It’s not my period that’s my problem. More likely, it’s you.
    T he next day Lucy, Josie, and I went to work. We’d decided that the most efficient thing to do was split up the girls in our class and find a way to bring up a topic that would get us the information we wanted. We had to be subtle, so we wouldn’t give away our time capsule idea, but we needed to get honest answers.
    Before lunch I took a walk by the library and peeked in, looking for a few seniors I could start with. And I found exactly what I was looking for. Pam Stoddard and Carolyn Mills were hunched over a table, flipping through what looked like art history books.
    I couldn’t just walk over and start playing twenty questions. I needed a reason to sit down and start a conversation.
    I pulled open the library door and walked in, grabbed a National Geographic from the shelf, and sat down across from Carolyn and Pam.
    Art history. There had to be an opening there somewhere. I tried to remember everything I learned from class field trips to the Art Institute of Chicago. Statues of perfectly chiseled men who seemed to be superhumanly endowed? While it may give me a chance to bring up anatomical preferences, it wasn’t exactly the right direction.