Free The Book of Luke by Jenny O'Connell Page B

asked. “Which artist should we do?”
    “Mary Cassatt,” I told them, collecting my notebook and standing up.
    “Really? Why her? I thought you said we should do Van Gogh.”
    “I think the guys have gotten enough attention already. It’s time us girls got a little airtime, too.”
    “Hey, don’t you need your magazine?” Pam called after me as I made my way toward the door.
    “That’s okay,” I answered. “I’ve got everything I need.”
    This wasn’t going to be so hard after all. In fact, I almost wondered why someone hadn’t done this sooner.

    As I passed a guy in the hall or sat next to one in class, I started to look at all of them differently. I studied their every move, dissected every word they spoke. Out of the corner of my eye I caught some junior basketball player cupping his crotch, rearranging himself like it was the most normal thing in the world—almost something to be proud of—while a group of freshman girls diverted their gaze, embarrassed. I watched two sophomore guys sit with their eyes glued to a pair of boobs as they bounced down the hallway toward earth science class, and then break into big grins before making snide comments filled with innuendo.
    And, once I started looking at them as specimens to be scrutinized and examined before we cut them up into pieces, they almost became more interesting than annoying. Almost.
    Luke still bugged the crap out of me. I may have been on my way to looking at Matt LeFarge, Curtis Ludlow, and Ricky Barnett with a sort of detached scientific curiosity, but I couldn’t help but get irritated every time I saw Luke. Not that he had much to say to me; in fact, ever since our encounter outside Mrs. Blackwell’s class, he seemed to look right through me, instead focusing his attention on the adoring little twits who were dumb enough to get snagged in his web of floppy hair, perfect teeth, and an ass that begged to be wrapped in a pair of faded Levi’s. And it grated on me. Not just because his adoring posse of girls seemed incapable of seeing him for the asshole he was, or because, for the first time ever, I didn’t care if someone didn’t like me—because that part I loved. It felt great. I didn’t care if Luke thought I was a raging bitch. Let him. In the end we’d expose him, and the rest of the guys, for what they were. No, what bothered me was that I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how the Luke Preston I remembered could become just like the rest of them. Make that the worst of them.
    And it was obvious Luke knew how I felt. There was just no way he accidently bumped me while passing in the hall. And, yes, I am genetically programmed to utter polite phrases regardless of the situation, so I did mutter “excuse me” the first time—but the second time I knew better. And the third. And the fourth.
    Luke wasn’t just annoying, apparently he was persistent, as well.
    I still had a hard time reconciling everything Josie and Lucy said with the person who was Owen’s best friend. I could see it if they were talking about Ricky Barnett. He’d always been the kind of guy who went out of his way to be annoying, like the time he found a loose bolt behind my chair in algebra class and turned to me and asked, “Wanna screw?” But Luke Preston was nothing like Ricky. Until now.
    It didn’t seem possible that Luke could change that much. That I could move away for a few years and return to find an entirely different person. Because the person I remember was nothing like the Luke that Josie and Lucy described or the guy I watched walk down the hallway like he owned Heywood and the rest of us were just lucky to be visiting.
    In sixth grade I came home from school one day and noticed something strange in our mailbox. And, from the curved red cardboard keeping the mailbox door from closing, and the imitation lace etched along its edge, I knew exactly what it had to be. It was five days before Valentine’s Day, after all, and Carl Mattingly