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

Southern for “hello.”) “Come sit with me. A bunch of rotten boys will be getting on at the next stop and I need a girl to fill up my seat.”
    I sat with her gratefully and we introduced ourselves. “I’m Connie,” she said, “and I’m a junior, too. You don’t know how glad I am to have another junior girl on the bus. All last year I rode with a sixth grader.”
    I was so glad to be talking with her! I felt like a puppy wagging my tail.
    “Who is that handsome hunk?” she said.
    I looked around, eager to see a handsome young man.
    Connie giggled. “Silly. The guy who got on with you.”
    Lucas? Lucas was this handsome hunk? I stared at him.
    Well, his complexion had cleared and tanned in the sun, and he had gotten pretty fit and muscular working at heavy jobs for five months. But if there was one thing I didn’t want to talk about, it was Lucas, who meant nothing more to me right now than the other half of a farm chore. “Oh, he’s the kid of the other family farming with us,” I said.
    “You’re the city people who moved down the lane from the Shields, then,” said Connie. “How I’d love to be from the city. The day I graduate from high school I’m headed for Atlanta. Or maybe Nashville. I want to work for an airline or a bank.”
    “There’s quite a difference.”
    “I’ve got two years to make up my mind. So how do you like it here?”
    I didn’t want to risk offending anybody who was a native, even a native who yearned for a city. “The mountains are beautiful,” I said, which was certainly true. “But I get homesick sometimes.”
    “Me, too. My parents divorced and when mother remarried we moved here. Two and a half years ago now. This is my stepfather’s hometown. I like Valley High, but sometimes I’m so homesick for Tennessee I could cry.”
    “I do cry,” I said.
    That was all it took: five minutes conversation between bus stops and Connie and I were friends.
    It was an incredible relief to have a friend. In the next several weeks nothing meant more to me than sitting with Connie on the bus, during class, at lunch.
    Connie could understand so much that I couldn’t say to my parents. My parents just confused me with all their joy and exuberance. And I couldn’t tell them what my feelings were without hurting theirs. As for Lucas, with whom Connie felt I should be discussing all this, since we shared it, well, he was certainly no longer an enemy (you can’t be an active enemy of the person who’s holding the chain saw when you’re holding the log), but he wasn’t exactly a friend either.
    Connie showed me around, introduced me, got me started with lots of other girls, and all in all, being a newcomer in school turned out to be something of an asset. There were hardly any rough moments, and no lonely ones.
    The homesickness didn’t go away, though. It moved to the back of my body, sort of, coming out when I least expected it, like indigestion.
    The boys in the junior class were polite and nice. Everybody said sir or ma’am to the teachers, and held doors for the girls, and complimented me on my pretty blouses. But nobody even hinted at wanting to ask me for a date. And since we had no telephone, nobody could have a sudden whim to call me to chat, or ask about homework, or invite me anywhere.
    I wanted so much to be part of a group. Any group. Gathering after school for hamburgers, or rehearsing for a play, or practicing for a ballgame. But after class, I had to catch the bus and go home to do chores.
    Sometimes when I thought about the dating ladder I’d be on if I were back home I’d have to choke back tears,, and I’d feel dowdy and plain and boring. I had to train myself not to think of home when I was in school.
    Lucas seemed to walk into the senior class and take over as Big Man On Campus. I wondered once if it surprised him as much as it surprised me.
    But he never went anywhere, either. He had as many chores waiting at the farm as I did.
    Connie was often sick