The Best of Fools (Jane Austen Book 2) Read Free

when this is finished."
    "Do you ever feel like you're in a glass box?" I ran my finger along the inside and lifted the hidden compartment. "There on the other side is everything you want and it seems so easy to touch, but when you reach out with a smile on your face, ready to wrap your fingers around it ... you hit glass. "
    He sat up and looked at me, but I didn't look up, only felt his eyes on me as he cleared his throat and said, "What are you reaching for?"
    I shook my head, not wanting to tell him. Or myself. I didn't want to admit what my dreams were. They seemed so childish. So stupid in a world full of starving families and destitution beyond my wildest imagination.
    My dreams were petty. And I knew that. Which is why I shoved them in the box and buried them years ago.
    I flipped it open and took a deep breath.
    Donovan peeked inside. "It's ... a paper? A note of some kind?"
    I lifted it in my hand. The paper shook like the last fall leaf on a sleepy tree. I fanned myself with it, inhaled again, then handed it to Donovan.
    "You want me—“
    I nodded.
    "Okay."
    The paper crinkled as it unfolded and the Polaroid slipped out on to his lap. I looked away, embarrassed to even have it. What would Mom and Dad think?
    Mom and Dad.
    Donovan lifted the photograph and turned it to the back side. No writing.
    "She looks like you," he said. "What is it?"
    He looked over the paper for some kind of hidden note, but there wasn't a note. Just the picture. The picture I buried, but never forgot.
    "It's my mother," I said, finally exhaling.
    "Your...."
    I pat his knee. "Yup."
    This is the point where Autumn would ask for every last detail in the known universe. She'd stop at nothing and ask questions I never knew the answer to and probably never would. And she'd try to convince me that I knew, somewhere deep inside, if only I just thought harder. For her sake, you know, because she liked stories and she liked to turn everyone around her into one.
    But honestly, I didn't always know.
    And sometimes what you need isn't a friend who wants details, but a friend who sits there, in the opaque silence, listening to you breath while feeling—yes, feeling so deeply and so intensely—every last good or bad emotion coursing through your mind and heart.
    That is why Donovan would forever be my best friend. That is why I wanted him there when I saw the picture for the first time in over a decade.
    He set it on my lap and I touched her face, then my eyes rested on her stomach. My first home. The place where it all began.
    No matter how many times I played the situation over in my head. The fifty thousand possible scenarios that could have been the story of why . Why? Why didn't she want me?
    "See, Don," I said shyly. "I'm not really Jane Austen anyway."

Chapter 3
    Autumn and Donovan sat next to each other in Honors English and I sat right behind them, next to Joey, our ultra strange class clown. I secretly hated sitting next to him because he would randomly stand on his chair and blurt out weird random movie quotes no one could figure out. Not that I cared much about that, but he did it so fast that he'd jerk my desk and I'd end up with a huge line of ink down my paper or a notebook with the rings popped open as it hit the floor. Not really my idea of funny, but the guy had some kind of major ADHD going on and I kinda felt bad for him so I'd laugh even if it wasn't funny.
    Like, oh I don't know, right now as he jumped on top of his desk and yelled, "Badges? We ain't got no badges! We don't need no badges! I don't have to show you any stinking badges."
    I held my desk in place as Mr. Granger lowered his glasses and huffed.
    "Joe, please have a seat."
    Joey took a bow and landed back in his chair.
    Yes, my friends, this is Honors English I'm talking about.
    Donovan slipped me a note. I pulled my notebook onto my lap and propped it against the desk, unfolded the note, and smoothed it over top of my notes from class.
    TWO THINGS, well, make that