The Book of Luke

chapter one

There are two problems with being the daughter of a best-selling etiquette guru. The first one is that everyone assumes you know how to do everything right. The second is that 99 percent of the time, you live with the fear you're doing everything wrong.
"You can't be serious!" I yelled when my parents broke the news to me. From the look on my mother's face, there was no doubt that yelling was the wrong thing to do in this situation. I did, however, resist the urge to fold my arms defiantly across my chest. It was one thing to stand my ground. It was another to look like a spoiled brat doing it. "There's no way I'm going."
My dad sat on the edge of my bed rubbing his knees while my mom waited for me to calm down so she could continue.
"We realize this isn't the best timing," she tried again, but I wasn't going for it.
"It's not just bad timing, it's halfway through my senior year. You can't expect me to leave my friends and everything right before graduation. I'm supposed to be the class valedictorian, for God's sake!"
Apparently my academic achievements weren't as important as the fact that my father's company was transferring him back to Boston, because my mother didn't even skip a beat. It almost made me wonder if she'd written a chapter on this in one of her books: Breaking Big News without Breaking a Sweat.
"I think you're making this out to be worse than it is," she went on, and then started rattling off all the wonderful, exciting things about moving "back to Boston." She kept saying "back to Boston" instead of "leaving Chicago," like somehow her choice of words would make it better. As if the fact that we used to live there made it easier.
"It's like going home," my mother insisted.
"No, it's like moving," I told her, and then added, "It's even worse than moving." At least if you moved somewhere new, you had an excuse for people not liking you -- they didn't know you. But when you were moving back to the same town you lived in for most of your life, going back to the same school you once attended, the possibility that people you once liked, and who once liked you, might not want anything to do with you anymore, was slightly horrifying to say the least.
I glanced over at my dad, who was still sitting on my bed staring at his khaki-covered knees as if they were infinitely more fascinating than the conversation taking place around him.
"This isn't fair," I told him, and he looked up at me with an expression of total innocence. Like none of this was his fault, and yet, he was the reason we were having this conversation in the first place. He was the reason the rest of my senior year was going to suck.
"Can't you tell them you'll move in May after graduation?" I pleaded, and for the first time since he came into my room my dad decided to speak.
Only instead of telling me what I wanted to hear, he shook his head. "Can't do that, Em."
"Look, it's all decided. We'll move right after Christmas." My mom laid a hand on my shoulder and squeezed lightly. I'm sure it was supposed to reassure me, but it just made me even angrier. While my mother said all the right things as usual, my father just sat there like none of this was fault. But it was. All of it.
"Maybe I could stay with Jackie or Lauren until school's out," I suggested in an attempt to try and rectify what was left of my senior year. "It's just a few months."
"Absolutely not." My mom shook her head and didn't even bother looking to my dad for agreement. She was handling this because obviously Patricia Abbott knew the right way to handle every awful, unpleasant situation. "Come on," she chided, giving me a smile that I knew I was expected to reciprocate. "Everything's going to be fine. Promise."