The Book of Luke

by Jenny O'Connell

  I set the overturned garbage can upright and tossed the notebook into it, watching as it landed between two Gatorade bottles and a wad of paper towels.

  Lucy continued rubbing Josie’s back and I knew right then and there, as her hand circled Josie’s shoulder blades, that I’d lost her. Lucy was on Josie’s side.

  “How could you do this to her?” Lucy asked. “How could you lie to us all along?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. I didn’t mean to.”

  “How could you do this to me?” Josie yelled. “He was my boyfriend! And you decided to screw him?”

  I glanced over at TJ, who, from the way he uncomfortably looked down at his shoes, had obviously heard that last piece of information.

  “I didn’t mean—” I started to answer, but Josie wouldn’t let me.

  “Forget it,” she snapped, and then pushed open the door to the girls’ locker room and disappeared. “I’m out of here.”

  Lucy didn’t move. She didn’t yell at me or say it would all be okay. And I knew it wouldn’t.

  “Remember when Josie was caught shoplifting those earrings? She knew I had that necklace in my sneakers. She saw me drop it in there. And you know what? She didn’t say a word to that security guard, even though she could have. She got in trouble all by herself, and she didn’t have to.” Lucy let out a long breath and shook her head at me before starting for the door after Josie. “I feel like I don’t even know you anymore, Emily. When you said you were done being nice, you weren’t kidding. There is nothing nice about screwing over your best friend.”

  Then Lucy was gone and I was left standing alone.

  “Can we have the senior class down on the floor?” Mr. Wesley asked into the microphone set up in the center of the basketball court.

  Everyone sitting on the front row of the bleachers rose up and walked to center court. Lucy and Josie were sitting as far away from me as possible. Only Luke outdid them in the Emily avoidance department—he hadn’t even bothered to show up.

  “This is it,” Mandy Pinta whispered, and nudged me closer to the Rubbermaid container.

  Josie and Lucy made sure they were nowhere near me as the senior class made a semicircle around the time capsule and one by one Mr. Wesley called people up to place their contribution inside.

  Miranda, Elinor, and Carrie went first, and we watched as they put a People magazine and tube of MAC Pink Poodle lip gloss into the capsule.

  When Mr. Wesley called out our names, I walked up to the time capsule like a prisoner walking to the electric chair. I didn’t look to my left or right, I just kept my eyes on that Rubbermaid container as if it were the most important thing in the world. I didn’t have to look up to know that Lucy and Josie were watching me.

  “We don’t have anything,” I told Mr. Wesley.

  “Didn’t you know you were supposed to contribute something?” he asked me, obviously annoyed.

  “We couldn’t come up with anything,” I offered and then stepped back into the group, where I just wanted to disappear.

  After a few more useless contributions, Mr. Wesley reached for the plastic lid, ready to seal up the container for the next ten years. “Well, that does it.”

  “Wait!” Luke stepped forward from out of nowhere, his right arm bent behind his back so we couldn’t see what he was holding. “There’s one more thing.”

  He smirked at our class, but I could swear that smirk was meant just for me.

  Luke made his way over to the Rubbermaid container and then turned to face the bleachers. And that’s when I saw it. A brown spiral notebook with marker across the front.

  Luke looked right at me as he held the notebook up for everyone to see.

  “I have something here I thought you’d all find interesting. It’s a little book written by our very own Emily Abbott.” Luke paused and flipped through the notebook pages. “Emily thought it would be fun to write a book about how horrible I am—how horrible all guys are. I guess she thinks she’s so perfect, she can impart her infinite wisdom to the rest of us.”

  I stood frozen. It could only go downhill from here.

  “This is Emily’s contribution to the time capsule,” Luke continued, but at that point the room went blurry and his voice started to sound like he was speaking into a tunnel.

  There was no way this was happening. There was no way Luke got his hands on a notebook I’d thrown in the garbage.

  And that’s when I saw the familiar face standing beside the bleachers watching me. And I knew. It was the only explanation that made any of this make sense. I’d been ratted out by my very own brother. TJ had watched me toss the notebook in the garbage can and then he’d taken it out and given it to Luke!

  There was only one problem with my conspiracy theory—TJ looked as horrified as I felt by Luke’s revelation. He didn’t exactly seem thrilled with the idea of being related to me at the moment. And I couldn’t blame him.

  I glanced across the semicircle of seniors and caught the eye of the girl standing directly across from me. Josie was watching me with eyes so hard and cold I swear she never even blinked, not once. And those eyes told me everything I needed to know.

  My best friend had given Luke the guide.

  Mandy stood in the stall doorway watching me wipe my mouth with toilet paper.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  I nodded my head, which was still reeling from the scene in the gym.

  Mr. Wesley had refused to let Luke put the guide in the capsule but at that point it didn’t matter. Everyone knew. And before I could be further humiliated in front of the entire school, before Luke could continue his litany of sarcastic observations on the life of Emily Abbott, I had ran to the girls’ locker room to hide.

  “Wow, Emily, I can’t believe you did that!” Mandy held up her hand and waited for me to high-five her. “Way to go!”

  Like everything else, there were two sides to this situation—the people who applauded me, and the people who thought I sucked. I kind of sided with the latter.

  I could barely manage a meek “Thanks.”

  “Don’t listen to what Luke said, a lot of us think what you did was great. Long overdue, in my opinion.” Mandy handed me a wet paper towel and waited for me to leave the safety of my stall. “All the guys think you’re a bitch, of course, but so what? Right?”

  “I just can’t believe this,” I repeated for what must have been the hundredth time. “How could this have happened?”

  I had to get out of there. I had to go home and as far away from Heywood as possible. “I’m leaving.”

  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.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The Guy’s Guide Tip #86:

  Bed head is not a hair style. Show a little effort. It can go a long way.

  “How 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.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The Guy’s Guide Tip #89:

  It’s called a cold. We’ve all had one. Take some DayQuil and get over it.

  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. Peop
le 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.