April Love Story by Caroline B. Cooney

Author:Caroline B. Cooney [Cooney, Caroline B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4804-5171-1
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-09-27T00:44:00+00:00

Chapter IX

I TRIED TO STOP myself from being in love with Lucas.

It was obviously a lost cause and they say you shouldn’t bat your head on brick walls for fear of permanent damage to said skull.

So I dedicated time to remembering Joel, but he hadn’t written since last July, and I’d spent a lot more time with Lucas than I ever had with Joel. My picture of Joel would blur like a movie changing scenes and Lucas would be superimposed on it. I’d find myself smiling dreamily to myself until somebody would say, “Marnie, stop your giggling and get on with your work.”

Susannah wrote a very long letter I read constantly to keep my mind on things other than Lucas. She had gone to a terrific party where they danced to a live band, and she dated the drummer who was really cute, who introduced her to a college fraternity man who invited her to Yale for a weekend, and life was perfect and how was I?

I, I’d think, am in love with Lucas Peterson. How’s that for laughs, Susannah? Lucas doesn’t even know I’m alive. If he thinks of me at all, it’s because he needs a human sawhorse for his lumber cutting or he wants a hunk of homemade bread.

Susannah, pity me.

Lucas probably thinks I’m his sister.

Susannah, we pump buckets of water together and I’m thinking how strong and lithe he is and he’s looking off at the horizon dreaming of college, probably, and other girls. We feed the goats together and I’m thinking how nice and funny he is and he’s rubbing the goat under the chin. Not once has he ever stopped to think that maybe I wouldn’t mind having my chin rubbed. Or kissed. We clean the kerosene lamps together and I’m thinking how handsome he is and he’s repeating math formulas to himself because he has a test the next day.

I’m thinking of knitting another sweater for him, Susannah. I’ll include a letter saying, I am not your sister. Take another good, long look. Love, Marnie. I’ll draw arrows toward the word love. Include some candy kisses.

Or maybe I’ll just give the sweater to my father. Lucas would think it was pretty weird that a crabby old girl he happened to live with would knit him two sweaters.

Connie had a Welcome Spring Slumber Party.

It was the first time in precisely one year that I’d spent a night in a house with a real bathroom. Two real bathrooms, in fact: one brown and beige tiled, and the other pale blue and white tiled. Featuring paired taps, one of which said, HOT. Connie’s mother was really quite understanding when I said I’d rather take a hot, soaking bath in the blue tub than pull taffy with the other girls.

I watched television for the first time in months, but I couldn’t even follow the plot of this show that everybody had been talking about and I had never seen, because daydreaming about dumb old Lucas was so much more absorbing.

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