The Next Chapter of Luke Read online

  “Thanks, but I’ll take a pass.” I stood up. “Is that it?”

  My mom slid open a desk drawer and removed a book, which she set down on her desk. “Well, promise me you’ll think about it. No one your age has ever done something like this before, so it’s a huge opportunity.”

  “I have to go change. Luke and I are going over to Josie’s to swim.” I swept my eyes toward the clock on her wall so she’d see I was losing time. “I’m already late.”

  I thought the late comment would get her. After all, being late for anything was a real no-no for Polite Patty. I actually thought I saw her struggle a little about what to do next—let me dash or let her finish our conversation. Getting in her parting words won that battle.

  “Well, before you head off, I bought you a little present.” She slid the book across her desk toward me. “In the event that you change your mind.”

  I reached over to take the book, which, it turned out, wasn’t a book at all. It was a leather-bound journal. I cracked the spine and thumbed through the pages, which were all blank.

  “You might get inspired during our travels. It’s a place for you to write down your ideas.”

  I took the book, which felt soft and smooth in my hands and had an earthy, sweet leathery smell. The back of the book was branded Hand Crafted Genuine Leather and ivory stitching ran around the edges of the cover. A cow died for this book, and some craftsman had probably spent an hour sticking a needle through the tough hide so I could fill one hundred empty pages with my sage advice. Talk about pressure.

  I was supposed to meet Luke at Josie’s in ten minutes, and I didn’t want to invite any more discussion about my resume-building opportunities or the burgeoning population of girls in long-distance relationships.

  “Thank you,” I told her, and then smiled so she’d know I meant it. “I promise I’ll think about it.”

  As I took the stairs two at a time on my way to my room, I already knew I wouldn’t think about it. There was nothing to think about, nothing that would make the next three weeks better, and definitely nothing that would make leaving for school at the end of the summer any easier. If there was a book in all of this, it wasn’t a how-to with advice. It was more like those sad romance novels where the main character says a tortured good-bye to the love of her life and embarks on a journey by herself, alone, only to look back wistfully at a kinder, gentler time.

  Okay, I’d read the book jackets of way too many novels lining the bookshelf of my grandmother’s bedroom, so maybe that was a little exaggerated. I knew I was supposed to be that other type of heroine—the independent one who wrote a book telling other people how to kick ass in the long-distance relationship department. The girl who laughed in the face of the challenge before her and blazed a trail for others. But right now, I just wanted to get to Josie’s pool. Not nearly as profound, but also not nearly as daunting.

  • • •

  Josie’s pool was like something you’d find at a five-star resort. After her dad sold his software company, her parents built a new house, which was nothing like the house they’d lived in before, when we first met in elementary school. Back then, the only water in her backyard came out of a hose, and the only entertainment we had was a Slip ’N Slide. Now, the kidney-shaped pool was fed from a rock formation with tumbling water on one side, and an infinity edge on the other, which made it appear as if the pool dropped off the side of a cliff. A water slide was hidden inside the rock formation, and swirled its way down through the boulders until it dumped you out into the deep end, where two hippopotamus statues waited to greet you.

  The thing is, Josie had always been deathly afraid of water, thanks to a bad experience in a Y swim class when she was five. Now, she’ll at least dip her toes in and even sit on the steps in the shallow end. That water slide, though? She’d never even tried it.

  “When’s your flight leave?” Josie asked me, and then went on without waiting for my answer. “Where are you staying? Are you going to have any time to actually do anything fun?”

  My mom’s head had practically exploded the first time she met Josie and realized she rarely paused to let anyone answer a question before rushing on with a few more. Polite Patty was adamant that a single question should be followed by the opportunity to provide a single answer. I was so used to Josie’s stream of consciousness approach by now, I never even started thinking about how to respond until she stopped to catch her breath.

  We were splayed out on lounge chairs on the pool deck while Luke and Owen raced each other down the water slide. When I heard Josie finally inhale between the sounds of splashing water, I knew that was my cue.

  “Tomorrow at nine o’clock, various hotels, and I seriously doubt it,” I told her, my eyes closed as I enjoyed the sun’s warmth spreading over my skin and the tropical smell of my coconut suntan lotion. It felt good to be horizontal after a week following the Freedom Trail around Boston, walking almost six miles of cliffs in Newport, and packing a month’s worth of activities with Luke into one week while working around my babysitting schedule. If Josie hadn’t spoken to me, I could have easily fallen asleep. Luke and I had jammed so much into the last seven days I was not only exhausted from all the fun, I was almost looking forward to a five-hour plane ride where I could do nothing but sleep. Almost.

  “It’ll go fast. When you think about it, three weeks is nothing in the grand scheme of things.” Lucy set down a tray of lemonades and Doritos—one of the benefits of having a pool house stocked with snacks and drinks within arm’s reach.

  I took one of the glasses, which was actually plastic. Mr. Holden didn’t allow glass anywhere near the pool. “Easy for you to say, you’ll be on the Cape in less than two days.”

  Lucy and Josie clinked their lemonade glasses together in a toast, splashing pale yellow liquid on the flagstone patio as they yelled, “To sun, sand, and summer!”

  Those three S’s had become their rallying cry in the weeks leading up to the Cape—only they were forgetting one all-important item in their alliteration.

  “And scooping,” I reminded them. “We still have to work.”

  Josie shrugged. “It’s going to be a blast. I wish you were coming with us now and not waiting until July.”

  I mirrored Josie’s shrug. “Tell that to Patty,” I reminded her, as if joining them any earlier had ever been in the plan. I’d committed to babysitting for the Brocks all summer, so when Josie invited us to spend the summer on the Cape with her, I’d still had to get out of that. When I’d asked Mrs. Brock if she could find someone else, she wasn’t happy, but she was able to line up someone to replace me, even if she couldn’t start until July first. So even though the plan was for us to spend the summer at Josie’s house, I was always going to miss the first few weeks. Which, even though I didn’t tell them, actually worked out kind of nice for me. It meant I could be with Lucy and Josie this summer, and still spend time with Luke before he went to camp—all without feeling bad about choosing Luke over them. It was what my mom would call a win-win. Of course, all it took was one phone call from mom and Mrs. Brock magically found someone to take my place while I went on a book tour, which felt like a Polite Patty win.

  Almost on cue, Luke and Owen cannonballed into the deep end. I watched as the water rained down on the dents they pounded in the surface, their heads popping up to find one another before swimming to the basketball net secured to the side of the pool.

  Lucy and Owen had been together since April and were, in my mother’s terms, about to also embark on a long-distance relationship for the summer. I knew that Josie couldn’t wait to meet a whole new group of guys on the Cape, but Lucy and Owen seemed to be working out, and I wasn’t sure Lucy was on board with the idea.

  I waited for Luke and Owen to start their battle for the hoop, making sure that between the splashing water and their attempts to dunk one another under the surface as they reached for the rim, there was no way Luke could hear me. “What about you and Owen? What’s going to happen when
you’re on the Cape and he’s here?”

  “Well, actually we decided that nothing will happen.” Lucy licked orange Doritos dust off the tips of her fingers. “We broke up.”

  “You what?” I asked, my voice louder than I intended. I glanced over at Luke and Owen before asking more quietly, “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  I waited for Josie to react, if not to their breakup than at least to the idea that Lucy hadn’t even told us such big news. I waited for her to react. But she stared down at her nails as if they were suddenly the most interesting thing in the world.

  “It just happened on our way here. I didn’t exactly want to make an announcement.” She nodded toward the pool, where Owen was celebrating a basket by high fiving himself with a four-foot long foam noodle.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, although Lucy certainly looked okay digging her hand into a mound of artificially nacho’d chips while turning her face to the sun. And Owen certainly wasn’t showing any signs of severe anguish.

  “I’m fine, we’re both fine. We just decided that neither of us wanted to stress out over what we should or shouldn’t be doing this summer.”

  Again, I waited for Josie to react, but she just sipped her lemonade through a pink curly straw.

  “I guess I’m surprised,” I admitted, as it occurred to me that Josie wasn’t. Which meant that Lucy had probably talked to her about breaking it off with Owen before it even happened. And she hadn’t talked to me. “It seemed like things were going great with you guys.”

  “They were, they are, but it is what it is. I’ll be in North Carolina for school and he’s heading up to Vermont. Besides, neither of us really had any expectations. I mean, it’s only been a few months.” Lucy paused, and even though she was wearing sunglasses, I could tell her eyes had shifted in Josie’s direction. “We were never as serious—”

  “As you and Luke,” Josie finished for her. “I wouldn’t worry if I were you. It was a totally different situation.”

  “I’m not worried,” I told them, even though the only real difference between Owen and Lucy and me and Luke was that the beginning of our relationship had come with way more drama and doubt, which would make you think we had a higher likelihood of falling apart over the summer, not lower.

  “That’s not what I meant,” Josie tried again. “I just meant that…” This time, Josie looked to Lucy for help.

  “We want us all to have a great time this summer, and we don’t want you to be all bummed about Luke not being around, and thinking about what he might be doing without you. That makes sense, right?” Lucy gave me a hopeful smile. “We just want to have fun with you.”

  “Is that why you didn’t tell me you were thinking about breaking up with Owen?” I asked, as much for an answer to my direct question as to find out if she really did tell Josie first. A part of me really hoped she hadn’t, that Josie was just immune to the news of their breakup because they were leaving for the Cape in a few days and it really didn’t matter what happened between Lucy and her boyfriend.

  I held my breath and waited for Lucy to stop hesitating. I should have known the long pause meant all the hoping in the world wouldn’t change that Lucy had told Josie first.

  “A little,” Lucy admitted. “It’s so not a big deal. I would have told you both at the same time, but you weren’t here yet.”

  Because I was with Luke. She didn’t have to say it, but I knew we were all thinking it.

  Josie handed me the Doritos. “Have you and Luke talked about what will happen when you’re apart?”

  I took the bag from her and shook my head.

  “It might be a good idea to talk about it before you leave, just to avoid any issues,” Lucy suggested, and I was pretty sure Lucy and Josie were imagining the same thing I was: the nights ahead with us all on the beach, a raging bonfire lighting up the faces of all the new people (and by people I meant guys) we’d meet this summer. “Like how often you’re going to see each other, any ground rules, is he going to visit you, are you going to visit him…that sort of thing.”

  “I can’t visit him, he’s working at a lacrosse camp for boys,” I reminded her. “He may as well be in lockdown.”

  “Yeah, I guess I didn’t really think about that.”

  I set the bag of chips down on the table between our lounge chairs. “Now you’re starting to freak me out.”

  “We’re not trying to freak you out,” Josie assured me. “It’s just that this long-distance relationship thing might not be so easy.”

  “That’s why Owen and I decided to end it now, as friends, before the really hard stuff started.” Lucy sat up and removed her sunglasses. She looked from me to the deep end of the pool, where Luke and Owen were drying off with the big monogrammed beach towels the Holdens provided to each pool guest. Lucy bit her cheek and slipped her sunglasses back on before I could tell whether she was wondering if she made a mistake by breaking up with Owen, or wondering if I was making a mistake by not breaking up with Luke. “Look, you and Luke went through a lot this year. I’m sure you can figure out how to survive being a car ride away from each other.”

  “You guys sound like my mom. You wouldn’t believe what she wants me to do.”

  Luke appeared next to me, his hair dripping cool beads of water onto my stomach. He wiped his damp hands on his wet bathing suit before reaching for a handful of chips.

  “What won’t we believe?” he wanted to know.

  “My mom and her editor think I should write a how-to book about long-distance relationships. They think there’s a huge college-aged market for something like that, but obviously given what happened the last time I did something similar… well, there’s no way I’m going to do it.”

  Lucy tapped her fingers on her lemonade glass as she pondered my announcement. “It’s actually not a bad idea.”

  I almost spit my drink at her. “You have got to be kidding me.”

  Josie nodded her head in agreement. “Your mom might be on to something.”

  “Sure, why not?” Owen draped his damp towel across the back of Lucy’s lounge chair, reached for the chips, and took them from Luke, who still hadn’t said anything.

  “What do you think?” I asked Luke.

  He took my glass of lemonade and washed down a mouthful of Doritos before answering. “I guess I haven’t thought about it much.”

  This was where I should have let it go. Instead, I could feel my pulse quicken—he hadn’t thought about it much?

  “We’re going to be apart for most of the summer and then…” I didn’t really need to remind him that we were going to school two hours apart. “How is that even possible?”

  “Um, because he’s a guy,” Josie answered.

  Okay, sure. He was a guy. I got that. But he was also the guy who’d just played a round of miniature golf with a pink ball because it was the only other color left and he knew I wanted the blue ball since blue is my favorite color. This was the guy who let a six-year-old girl bang the crap out of his bumper boat because every time she bounced off of his boat, she dissolved into a fit of giggles.

  Luke shrugged. “I guess I didn’t think about it because I don’t think it’s a big deal.”

  That should have made me feel better. And it did, a little. “I’m not saying it’s going to be a problem. I’m just saying it’s something we should probably plan for, so we both know what to expect.”

  “I’m spending my summer with a bunch of guys with lacrosse sticks. The only thing you can expect is that I’ll be hoping my roommate washes his socks.”

  Luke was right. He was one of twenty coach counselors at the camp, and he was going to be supervising a group of twelve-year-olds who were more likely to be interested in smacking each other in the head with their sticks than scoping out girls at the sister camp across the lake. (Okay, that was me totally making that up based on clichéd summer camp stereotypes. Luke’s camp was at a college in New Hampshire, and I had no idea if there was a lake, let alone a sister camp.)

&
nbsp; “It’s going to be fine, Emily.” Luke laid his hand on my shoulder, his damp, cool skin sending a shiver through me even though it had to be almost ninety degrees on Josie’s pool patio.

  “I know.” I brushed his wrinkly fingers with my chin.

  I caught Josie and Lucy shooting each other a glance that could have meant one of two things—either they’d gorged themselves on bean dip and salsa and wanted to throw up, or they weren’t so sure Luke and I knew what we were in for once we were apart.

  I told my mom I’d be home by four o’clock so I could pack and prepare for our cross-country promotional tour de force. My mom was an impeccable packer who secured her shoes in plastic bags—so they didn’t soil her clothes—and pressed everything before placing it in her suitcase just so, which meant stacked according to the date she planned to wear each piece. I can’t say I ascribed to her theory that a well-packed bag was truly the start of a well-planned trip (her words), but I knew she’d be hovering over my shoulder driving me nuts if I didn’t demonstrate a little pre-travel organization.

  “We should go,” I announced, and stood up from my lounge chair.

  Luke took another handful of chips and reached for his towel.

  “So this is it? The next time we see you, we’ll be on the Cape!” The force of Josie’s hand came close to pushing Lucy off her lounge as she high-fived her. “Let the fun begin!”

  Lucy regained her balance and leaned over to give me a hug. “We’ll miss you, try to enjoy your trip.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I told her. “You, too.”