The Book of Luke by Jenny O'Connell Read Free Book Online Page B

H is for Holden, obviously, but I think it’s for horrifying. It’s obnoxious, I know,” Josie apologized, pointing to the gate. “Not to mention that it sucks when you’re in a rush.” Josie pushed a code into the number pad tucked inside the stone column and the black iron gate slowly opened.
    Lucy pointed toward the end of the long driveway. “You think this is good, wait until you see the house.”
    Calling what was waiting for us at the end of the driveway a house was like calling the ten acres of rolling lawns a yard. I mean, there was a stone turret, for God’s sake! I almost expected knights on horseback to be jousting on the front lawn, like the time Mandy Pinta had her eleventh birthday party at Medieval Times.
    “What, no moat?” I joked.
    “Oh, my parents would have tried, but the town probably wouldn’t have given them a permit,” Josie answered, and I couldn’t tell if she was joking or not. “So we have some CIA-endorsed security system instead. I swear, I’m lucky they didn’t go for the attack dogs. That was an option for a while.” In addition to horses, Josie is afraid of dogs.
    The massive stone mansion wasn’t anything like the house I used to go to for sleepovers, Crystal Light, and an endless supply of Pop-Tarts. It had to be five times the size of Josie’s old house.
    “Welcome to my world,” Josie announced, pulling around the circular drive before coming to a stop in front of two huge front doors with monstrous bronze door knockers that appeared to be staring at us.
    “Are those lions’ heads?” I asked, climbing out of the backseat.
    “Oh yeah,” Josie confirmed, shaking her head as if she couldn’t believe it herself. “Wait until you see the hippopotamus statues out back by the pool. It’s like freaking Wild Kingdom around here.”
    As Josie led us through the front door and down the cavernous marble hallways that twisted and turned around impeccably decorated rooms, I felt totally out of place. It was like visiting a museum, not somebody’s house. And definitely not Josie’s house. How could she possibly be comfortable surrounded by chandeliers and fluted columns and intricate oil paintings? And that was just in the powder room we passed on the way to her room. It almost made me wonder if this was how Josie used to feel around Heywood before she traded in her scholarship money for a field named after her dad.
    “Incredible, huh?” Lucy asked, grabbing my hand and pulling me around a corner before I could bump into a bubbling fountain of water in the center of the hall. “Come on, Josie’s room is this way.”
     
    It was surreal. Here we were sitting on Josie’s bed just like we used to, only the bed had been upgraded from a twin to a queen, and instead of a hodgepodge of pictures Scotch taped to the wall, Josie’s black-and-white photographs were artfully displayed in frames like something out of a Pottery Barn catalog. I would have killed for a room like this when I was younger, but it was slightly overkill for a seventeen-year-old. I mean, there was a sheer white canopy covering the bed and a huge quilted headboard with a billion little pink rosebuds. It looked like something out of a feminine hygiene commercial. The only thing missing was the gentle breeze and the billowing curtains—and the voiceover of a woman talking about feeling fresh as a daisy.
    No, this wasn’t the bedroom I remembered. In fact, Josie didn’t even have a bedroom anymore. She had what most people, like my mother, would refer to as a “suite.” There was the sleeping area, where we were sprawled out on the bed, and the sitting area, with a love seat and ottoman that looked as if they’d never been used. And then there were the panels of mirrors creating some sort of fun-house effect outside a walk-in closet that could have housed a family of four. Very comfortably.
    “It’s called the ‘ dressing area, ’” Josie explained, without me having to ask. “It’s ridiculous, I