The Book of Luke (24 page)

Mandy moved aside but grabbed my arm before I made it to the door. “I wouldn’t go out there if I were you—too many angry guys with a few choice words to say to you.”

“Damn,” I muttered, and this time when I walked into the stall I locked it behind me.

All I could think about was Luke and Saturday night. How could he have done this to me after Saturday night? A wave of nausea was making its way back into my throat.

“Emily?” Mandy rapped lightly on the door. “I know this might not be the best timing, but do you have a copy of the guide I could read?”

I flushed the toilet so I wouldn’t have to listen to her anymore.

“
H
ow could you do that to me?” I screamed. Finding Luke hadn’t been that difficult. It was the Friday before a Saturday-morning lacrosse game. He didn’t have practice, so I figured he’d just gone home. And that’s exactly where I found him, sitting in his kitchen eating a frozen pizza. Of course, I had to wait almost two hours for the school to clear out before venturing from my stall.

“How could
I
do that to
you
?” Luke laughed at me and reached for another slice. “Who are you kidding, Emily? I didn’t do anything to you that you didn’t do to me first.”

I smacked my head with the palm of my hand—a little to hard. “I’m such an idiot. Here I actually thought you’d changed.”

“Well, if anyone changed, it was you, Em. Who would have guessed that ‘the girl most likely to be nice’ could be such a bitch?”

“Look who’s talking?! You purposely humiliated me in front of the entire school! Here I thought you were acting differently because you’d changed, and you were still a jerk all along.”

“I didn’t act differently because I’d changed, Emily. I changed because you acted differently.”

I felt like I was listening to Luke recite a tongue twister—Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.

“And what is that supposed to mean? You changed because I acted differently?”

“What I mean is that I thought you weren’t playing the usual games with me. You didn’t tell me it was okay if I didn’t call and then get pissed when I didn’t. You didn’t say one thing and then do another.”

“That’s because I was trying to train you,” I yelled before realizing what I’d said.

“Train me.” Luke laughed again, as if this whole situation amused him—or was so completely unbelievable he just couldn’t figure out how else to react. “Like a dog? Was that the idea? You thought you could get me to sit and obey and all you had to do was reward me with
sex
?”

Even after the single syllable word rang in my ears, I couldn’t believe he’d said it.

“I cannot believe you just said that to me.” The lump growing in my throat didn’t allow it to come out as anything louder than a whisper.

“So, was it rewarding, Emily? I’m assuming after seeing your ex-boyfriend last weekend you had something to compare it to.”

I must have looked shocked, because Luke seemed pleased. “Josie told me about that, too.”

I managed to recover long enough to answer. “I did not sleep with my ex-boyfriend, Luke.”

“Really? Then why didn’t you tell me you were going to see him? Why did you lie to me?”

God, Josie had told him everything. And now that Luke was giving me a replay of what I’d said and done, I couldn’t exactly deny any of it. Everything he was saying was true.

Luke shook his head and made a
tsk-tsk
sound, feigning disappointment, but it came out sounding more sarcastic than truly disappointed. “Here I’d thought you were someone who didn’t play games and it turns out the whole thing was one big game for you.”

“I threw the guide out,” I reminded him. “Doesn’t that count for something? I wasn’t even going to put it in the capsule.”

“Oh, gee, thanks, Emily. That really makes up for the three months you lied to me.” Luke finished off his pizza and pushed back his chair to get up. “You know, Em, if you just needed to sleep with me to prove that you have the awe-inspiring ability to change another person, I wish you would have told me. I would have screwed you a hell of a lot sooner.”

“How can you even talk to me like that?” I tried not to blink, but the tears filling my eyes made that difficult. “How can you be so mean?”

“Me? You need to take a look in the mirror, Emily. And then ask yourself the same question.”

TJ
looked up from the Game Boy he held in one hand, and the bag of Doritos he held in the other. “Tough day?”

I flopped down on the couch next to him. “What do you think?”

The only sound in the room was the crunch of Doritos and some engine-revving noises coming from the Game Boy as TJ considered his answer.

“I think the mighty Emily has fallen,” he finally told me, licking orange dust from his fingers. “And finally, for the first time, she has nobody to blame but herself.”

“Gee, thanks for all your support, TJ.” I reached for a pillow and hugged it to my chest. “You really know how to make a girl feel better.”

“Look, I read what you wrote about Luke in the notebook. So, why do you care what he thinks of you?”

“Because I…” I stopped before the words came out, before I told TJ why I cared what Luke thought of me. Or that I cared what he thought of me at all. At this point there was no explanation that would make sense. “Because he said those things about me in front of the entire school.”

“Yeah, I guess there is the whole public humiliation thing.” TJ nodded, obviously seeing my point. “Still, if you don’t care what Luke thinks, it really shouldn’t matter, right?”

“Right,” I agreed. Only that was the problem. I did care what Luke thought. And it really did matter.

Even though TJ went out with his friends that night, I stayed in. As if I had any choice. With my two best friends convinced I was a complete backstabber, and my onetime pseudo boyfriend no longer talking to me because I was a complete liar, going out wasn’t exactly an option. Not that I really wanted to.

“How was your day?” my mom asked, coming over to my bed and sitting down.

I looked up and she got her answer.

“What’s wrong?”

I lost my two best friends. I lost my boyfriend who wasn’t supposed to really be my boyfriend. Not to mention my virginity—which of course, I wasn’t about to mention. I wanted sympathy, and telling my mother that I’d had sex with Luke surely wasn’t the best way to go about that.

“Nothing,” I answered, but as soon as she laid a hand on my head and started stroking my hair, I lost it. I felt my chest caving in, like my lungs were collapsing. I started gasping for breath, and as soon as I opened my mouth the tears started. Full, round drops landed on my comforter like water balloons and then seemed to explode before they seeped into the cotton.

My mom didn’t say anything; instead, she crawled into bed next to me and pulled my head to her chest. She continued to stroke my hair and make a
shh
noise, like she was trying to get a baby to go to sleep.

It could have been a few minutes or a few hours, I really didn’t know. Eventually all I had left in me was a few jagged breaths and the sniffles. My tears dried up and the only thing remaining in me was an empty hole. As I rested my head against my mom’s chest, I could hear her heart beating against my ear. For some reason I started counting the beats, maybe because I was sure my own heart would fail at any moment.

Finally, she pulled away and turned my head to face her. “Tell me what happened.”

So I did. I told her about the guide and how I wanted to change Luke. I told her I’d really started to have feelings for Luke, real feelings. And I told her about Josie.

“None of that sounds like the Emily I know,” she concluded, trying to understand my mishmash of names and events.

“That was the whole point.”

“What was the whole point?” Now she looked completely confused. “To manipulate Luke? To deceive him? To hurt Josie?”

When she put it that way, it sounded even worse. “No, the point was to not be nice.”

“Well, you achieved that, I think.”

“I was tired of being nice. Look what it got me—Sean bailed on me and I didn’t even do anything wrong.”

“No, you didn’t do anything wrong, but you did move away,” she reminded me.

“So, that’s just an excuse. Besides, I was tired of being nice. All it does is get you hurt. You teach people how to be nice for a living and look what happened to you!” As soon as the words were out, I regretted them.

She pulled away, like she’d been slapped. “And what exactly do you think happened to me?”

“It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? Dad isn’t here.”

“Your dad didn’t not move with us because I was too nice, Emily.”

“Well, being nice certainly didn’t do you any good.”

“Look, he’s a forty-seven-year-old man who needed some time to figure out what he wants. I’m not going to force him to do what I want just because it would be easier for me. You can’t force people to do what you want them to do, Emily. People don’t change unless they want to.”

“Lucy said I was the one who changed. She said the person she remembered would never screw over a friend.”

“The Emily I know wouldn’t do that, either. But she would fall for someone she thought was a good person.”

“I’m not sure he really was a good person—when he and Josie were going out, he broke up with her in an e-mail.”

I knew she’d agree. Last year my mom launched an entire series of seminars about the Web—she called it “Netiquette.”

“Yeah, that’s probably not the best idea.” She gave me a lopsided frown.

I nodded, but didn’t tell her that it was also the same way I’d broken up with Luke. I looked bad enough as it was.

“Still, one mistake doesn’t mean he’s a horrible person, does it?” my mom asked, clearly implying that I’d made a mistake and still wasn’t a horrible person.

“Luke made more than one mistake,” I pointed out, and that’s when I told her about how Luke got up in front of the whole school and lambasted me.

“Well, you can’t really blame him, can you?” she asked, her voice still soft.

Of course I could! What was she talking about?

“But he is to blame,” I insisted. “He was horrible.”

“So were you,” she reminded me.

“But he was horrible before. I just wanted to prove I could make him better.”

“Really? What you did was pretty thoughtless and kind of mean, and I know that’s not like you. So it seems to me that you’re the one who should have acted better.”

Her answer sounded eerily similar to Lucy’s.

“I’m sorry this happened, Emily, but I really don’t know what else to tell you.”

My mother had six books under her belt, years worth of columns, seminars that toured across the country, and she couldn’t come up with one piece of advice?

“If somebody wrote to you and asked what she should do in this situation, what would you tell her?” I asked.

My mom tipped her head to the side and considered my question. “I guess I’d tell her that being nice doesn’t get you hurt. Being human is what gets you hurt, and you can’t exactly help that.”

I knew she wouldn’t give me the answer I was looking for, which was that the situation called for a nicely written apology note to make it all better.

“Hey, why don’t you go take a hot shower,” she suggested before patting my leg and standing up to leave. “Maybe it will make you feel a little better.”

I seriously doubted that good personal hygiene would make my situation any better, but it was about the only option I had.

An hour later I was clean, shampooed, and smelling like freesia bath gel, but no less depressed. I figured as long as I was going to be miserable I may as well be well fed. But on my way downstairs I noticed the faint, fuzzy light of the TV coming from my mom’s room. I stopped and knocked on her door.

“Come on in,” she told me.

“I was going to get myself something to eat, do you want anything?”

She shook her head no and patted the empty spot next to her. “I’m just watching a movie. You can watch with me, if you’d like.”

Watch a movie or attack a pint of Ben & Jerry’s? While the Ben & Jerry’s would taste awfully good going down, I knew I’d hate myself tomorrow. Besides, we probably only had sorbet anyway. I crawled onto the bed and staked out the vacant spot my dad once occupied.

“What are you watching?” I asked.

She didn’t answer right away, and when she did there was an ironic grin on her face. “
My Fair Lady
.”

“How appropriate.”

“I promise it’s just a coincidence.”

I knew it was, it’s not like my mother has control over the televised programming of cable stations, but it was still impeccable timing. A commercial had just ended, so we both stopped talking and lay there quietly while we watched Professor Henry Higgins try to turn Eliza Doolittle into someone better, even if there was really nothing wrong with her to begin with. She just didn’t fit his view of what a woman should be like.

My mom never said a word, but I knew what she was thinking: that I was Henry Higgins without the accent. And Luke was Eliza Doolittle without the flower cart and corset.

When the movie was over, neither of us made an attempt to move.

“I’m so cozy,” I told her, burying myself even deeper under the comforter. It smelled like fabric softener, and I couldn’t help but wonder what my father’s new bed smelled like. There was no way it smelled this good.

“You know, I went by the old house,” I told her, leaving out the part about Luke taking me there. “Remember that huge tree where Dad hung the rope swing? The one in the side yard?”

“I sure do. I remember when your dad hung it up there. He almost killed himself.”

“They took down the tree. It’s gone.”

“The Dutch elm disease probably finally got it. We should have cut it down years ago, but you guys loved that swing, so we kept it up.”

“So you knew it was sick?”

“Yeah. For a while. I kept telling your dad to take it down but he refused. He said you and TJ enjoyed it too much to cut it down.”

“So he kept it up for me?”

She nodded.

“Then why isn’t he here?” I asked. “Why’d he stay in Chicago?”

My mom turned on her side and faced me. “I think that’s something you should ask him.”

I shrugged. “At least you could have told him it wasn’t okay for him to stay.”

“You know, Emily, I’m not perfect. Your dad isn’t perfect. Nobody is.” My mom reached for the remote control and turned off the TV. “Do you have any plans for tomorrow?”

I shook my head. “Nope.”

“Why don’t you come into the city with me and after my seminar we can go out for lunch or something?”

I knew she just felt sorry for me, but so did I. “Sure.”

My mom smiled. “So, here we are.”

“What’s going to happen to us?” I asked her, not really knowing if I wanted an honest answer.

“I think we’ll make it,” she assured me. “Good things happen to good people, right?”

I nodded into the pillow, hoping that old saying still applied to me.