April Love Story by Caroline B. Cooney Read Free Book Online Page A

lecture on my shallow vending-machine values. Lucas looked as if he were having a wisdom tooth removed by a garage mechanic.
    “Good-bye,” said Joel uncertainly. We both blushed. A kiss was impossible with laughing grownups watching.
    “Good-bye,” I said, my well-rehearsed speech vanishing, replaced by a film of tears.
    “Well, son, you want first turn at driving?” said Uncle Bob.
    “No,” said Lucas curtly. I had never seen him without books before. I wondered what Lucas had been allowed to keep. What they had made him give up.
    “Good-bye,” cried Susannah, hugging me.
    The men got into the moving van, and we women squeezed into the Petersons’ old Volkswagen bus, jammed with cartons and trunks, and we were off, clad in blue jeans and hope, for the good life on a farm in North Carolina.

Chapter VI
    I T WAS SPRING WHEN we got to the farm that had been bought without my knowledge or my consent. A scrawny tree resembling a woody weed dotted the woods with lavender ribbons. Wild dogwood frothed pink and white in the pines, and in the field, daisies, black-eyed Susans, and all the members of their tribe waved in the wind. The hills were like green goose pimples on a giant’s skin: odd rounded bumps, covered with rough pasture and an occasional gnarled tree.
    I was not prepared for North Carolina to be beautiful. I hated the place for not being dreary and dark, like my thoughts.
    The little village where we would shop had only a handful of stores. Even the Sears Roebuck store had nothing in it but catalogs to order from. The largest stores were the tractor dealership and FCX. Farmers’ Cooperative Exchange, said my mother knowledgeably and happily.
    The only thing I wanted to exchange was my life.
    Off the main street was a rather small brick building with a sign in front that said, Valley Consolidated High School. The bevy of yellow school buses behind it made me ache for school. For my school, where Joel and Susannah and special chorus and the cheerleading team were going right on without me.
    Our farmland consisted of two bumping hills sprinkled with apple trees, which had just come into blossoms so beautiful it hurt my throat to see them. “Like bridal lace,” said Aunt Ellen, and she was right, but that made me think of falling off Susannah’s dating ladder, which made me angry again.
    Our home was seven miles from the village. On our narrow, long lane were two other houses. I wondered where the schoolbus would pick up next fall. If the other houses had teenagers in them. If they spoke English.
    “This is not Tibet, Marnie,” said my mother irritably.
    Lucas and I stood staring at what was to be our home while the adults peppered us with superlatives describing the place. “The previous owners thought the orchards were too much hard work,” said Uncle Bob, “and they left for the city and factory jobs.”
    “More misguided souls,” said my mother.
    “Smart as whips,” muttered Lucas.
    The house was an old frame building with front porch, side porch, and back porch. From the front you could look out over our little valley, gaze up the rounded hill in front of us, and see beyond it, smoky and blue, the distant mountains of the Ridge. From the back, a huge garden space sprawled in weedy abandon. The side was enclosed by a thick, dense screen of white, blooming shrubs.
    I didn’t want to look at mountains or shrubs or weeds. I wanted to use my binoculars out the east window of my eleventh floor and watch the construction of the high-rise parking lot going up where an old hotel had been.
    We went into the house. I began to see more clearly why the previous owners had left for better surroundings. There was nothing indoors that was not going to require scouring, sanding, painting, or staining.
    “Mother,” I said, after a complete tour, during which I opened every single door and cupboard.
    “Yes, dear?”
    “Where is the bathroom?”
    There was a pause. She seemed to deliberate how to answer