Deep Down (Lockhart Brothers #1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

gowns we’d bought from a secondhand store. She gave me a teased side ponytail and I gave her spiky bangs. We put on frosty pink lipstick and dark blue eyeshadow, posed for pictures in her living room and then watched Pretty in Pink.
    “This is better than my actual prom was,” she said, arching her brows and nodding seriously.
    I burst out laughing. “It’s hard to take you seriously with your bangs five inches in the air.”
    “I wish I’d grown up in the eighties. My prom was in 2005 and it was all about how much skin the girls could show.”
    “What was your dress like?”
    She smiled sheepishly. “Uh . . . I wore a strapless blue dress.”
    “Sounds modest.” I elbowed her as we both laughed.
    She tipped the fancy bottle of sparkling apple juice we were sharing and took a swig, passing it to me.
    “I was supposed to have sex for the first time tonight,” I said, clutching the bottle as I thought about the prom night that wasn’t meant to be. “With Levi.”
    “I’m sorry,” April said, wrapping her arm around my shoulders. “You’ve got that sad look in your eyes again.”
    “Sometimes things don’t go as planned.” I smiled weakly.
    “So true. I wish I hadn’t gotten the Seattle job now. I’d really like to be here to help you and the baby. Are you sure you won’t consider moving with me?”
    I shook my head. April had found out last week that she’d gotten a job she’d interviewed for a month ago and figured she was a long shot for. It was a great opportunity for her but it meant she was moving at the end of the school year.
    Which meant I was moving, too.
    “I want to start over somewhere new,” I said. “I’m twenty percent scared and eighty percent excited about it.”
    “Well, you’re one hundred percent amazing, Ivy. You’ve got more strength than a lot of people twice your age. And maybe you’ll meet your Blane in this new place.”
    I smiled at her reference to the movie we’d just watched. “That’s not what I want. I just want a quiet place where I can raise my baby and be anonymous.”
    “If anyone deserves to find that place, it’s you.”

    I SET OFF IN search of my new place the morning after graduation. I’d walked across the stage, which hadn’t been all that scary since April was the one standing next to the principal handing out diplomas. I’d kept a hand on my slightly rounded belly and my eyes on April the entire time. My gut told me my father wasn’t watching the graduation ceremony from the football stadium’s bleachers, and I didn’t have any other family to speak of.
    April had taken me out to dinner after the ceremony and given me the keys to her 2007 Honda Accord, telling me it was mine now. We’d gone back and forth for several minutes—me crying while saying I couldn’t accept it and her saying I had to. I’d been planning to take the bus out of town. A car of my own that was a tangible reminder of April changed my feelings about the trip. Now I was fifty percent scared and fifty percent excited.
    We both cried while saying our goodbyes. April tearfully assured me she was going shopping that day for a car fit for a single Seattle woman.
    “I can never thank you enough for what you’ve done for me,” I said, holding her close.
    “I’ve loved having you here, Ivy. I told you my guest room needed a guest, and you were the perfect one.”
    “I’m not talking about the room.” I burst into tears again.
    “Alright, you,” she said, pulling away and wiping my tears away with her thumb. “Go find where you’re meant to be. And let me know when you get there.”
    “I don’t have a phone anymore, and I can’t afford one.”
    “Find a payphone. Borrow someone’s phone. Go to the library and email me from a computer. You stay in touch with me, Ivy. I mean it.”
    “I will.” I covered my red, swollen eyes with my sunglasses and got into the car.
    Seeing April waving goodbye made me cry some more, but once she was out of sight, I turned