Luke Willis Quotes

“ She remembers standing at her locker, hearing the whispers. Whispers about her. And about Luke. She remembers turning and seeing Dani and Lynn with a group of girls they knew from Yearbook. She remembers not understanding right away. And then Dani stared her down, eyes narrowed to slits. When Hallelujah dropped her gaze, she heard Lynn’s peal of laughter. “So anyway,” Lynn went on, “Luke said . . .”
She remembers the note, in English class. “You knew I liked him.” Dani’s clean cursive. Hallelujah stared at her friend’s back. Dani didn’t turn around. And she didn’t respond to calls or emails in the weeks that followed.
By winter break, Dani was dating Luke. The rumors about Hallelujah had circulated and changed and circulated again. Still, on the first day of the new semester, she mustered up the courage to say something. To warn her former friend about who Luke really was. Dani laughed in her face. Called her jealous. Luke dumped Dani in February. Dani and Lynn still refused to speak to Hallelujah. It was like they’d never been friends at all. ”
― Kathryn Holmes

“Someone else out there?” Luke squints in Hallelujah’s direction. He stands. He steps over his log bench and pushes past Rachel. Hallelujah can’t move, can’t breathe, and in four more steps, Luke has her by the arm. He’s marching her into the light.
When he sees who it is, he drops her arm quickly, looking disgusted. “Hallie. You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
Behind him, Brad’s on his feet. “Well, glory, Hallelujah!” he whoops. The girl next to him shushes him, and he lowers his voice. But he keeps talking, giving his words a preacher-at-a-revival ebb and flow. “I never thought, Hallelujah, I’d see the day, Hallelujah, where you’d have the guts to show up here, Hallelujah,praise Jesus—”
“Give it a rest,” Luke says.
“What, it’s only funny when you do it?”
“Nah, she’s always funny,” Luke says, looking back at Hallelujah, dismissing her with a roll of his eyes. “You just aren’t. You never do that joke right.” He walks back to his seat. He glances at Rachel. “Turns out, there’s a seat for you right here, next to me.” He pats the unclaimed bit of log to his right.”
― Kathryn Holmes

“After a few minutes, she speaks up again. “You’re next. Sing.”
Anxiety grips Hallelujah’s chest, squeezing. “I don’t sing,” she says.
“C’mon, it doesn’t matter if you’re bad. It’s not like this is a concert hall—”
“She’s not bad.” Jonah’s back. “She has a great voice.”
Rachel swings around to look from Jonah to Hallelujah. “Really? Now you have to—”
“No."
“But—”
“I don’t sing,” Hallelujah repeats, turning away.
Jonah joins them by the fire. The silence stretches out. Except it’s not really silent, not with the birds and wind and fire and how loud Hallelujah’s heart is beating. And then Jonah clears his throat. “You used to sing,” he says. “You were great.”
Hallelujah ignores the compliment. She looks into the fire. She feels the last of the day’s happiness fading away, already a memory.
“Why’d you quit?” Jonah asks. “Was it ’cause of Luke?”
Hallelujah inhales deeply. She feels the familiar spark of anger in her gut. “Yes,” she says. “It was because of Luke. And you. And everyone else. So thanks for that.” Jonah’s face drops. She can see that she’s hit a nerve. Well, he hurt her first. The way he took Luke’s side, shutting her out. The loss of his friendship, when she needed a friend most. The loss of their voices harmonizing, when she needed music most. How she just hurt him can’t begin to compare to all of that.”
― Kathryn Holmes

“He’s looking at her with so much compassion. Like he knows what she’s going through. Like he cares about her. This is what she wanted to see after everything happened with Luke. Instead, she saw Jonah’s back, every time he turned and walked away from her.
She blurts, “Why are you being nice to me?"
She regrets it immediately. It’s the vulnerability talking. The fear. The adrenaline. For a second, she forgot the aloof, thick-skinned Hallelujah she needs to be.
Jonah relaxes his grip. He looks away, out into the wet woods. He waits a long time before speaking. “Luke told me.”
Hallelujah is instantly tense. “Luke told you what?”
Another long pause. “That he lied. About what happened that night.”
“What happened?” Rachel cuts in. “What’d Luke lie about?”
Hallelujah ignores her. She stays focused on Jonah, even though he won’t look at her. “What’d he tell you originally?”
Jonah flinches. “He made it . . . worse. Than what he told the adults. He said that that wasn’t the first time. And he said that you—”
“Never mind,” Hallelujah cuts in. “I can guess.” She’s heard the rumors. The persistent ones and the surprising, weird, creative ones. She bets there are a lot that she hasn’t heard, too. “None of that happened,” she says softly but firmly, certain without even knowing exactly what Luke said. What Jonah heard. “None of it.”
“That’s what he told me yesterday. I wanted to know why he was still—” He swallows, his Adam’s apple moving up and down. “I’d heard him and Brad laughing about what they were gonna do to you this week, and I was like, enough is enough. Time to let it go. So I asked him what was up. Why he was still messing with you.”
“And?” Hallelujah asks.
“And he told me the truth: that he’d made most of it up. He said he had to keep you quiet. Plus, um. He said messing with you was fun.”
Hallelujah lets that sink in. “You really didn’t know it was a lie? You believed him this whole time?”
Jonah suddenly looks right at her. His eyes plead. “I saw you, Hallie. And Luke was the only one of the two of you with a story to explain it.”
― Kathryn Holmes

“She remembers talking to God a lot right after everything happened with Luke. She remembers crying and asking why, over and over. Asking for help, for strength, for understanding. Apologizing for what she did wrong. Talking through everything she could have, should have done differently. Begging for the torment to stop.
She remembers belief and trust slowly turning sour. Still, she kept talking to God out of habit. And because she didn’t have anyone else to talk to. At night, in the dark sanctuary of her bedroom, alone, she could say the things she’d been keeping quiet. But she stopped expecting an answer. Stopped hoping for one.
After a while, God felt as distant, as uncaring, as everyone else.
And her prayers faded away.”
― Kathryn Holmes

“So what was Jonah like before high school? As a kid?”
“As a kid?” Hallelujah brings up the picture in her mind. “He was . . . sweet, I guess. Dorky. He’d wear these outfits his mom picked out—pleated khaki pants and polo shirts, with his hair slicked down with gel. And he would get really enthusiastic about things. Too enthusiastic. He went through this cowboy phase where he wore a cowboy hat and boots to school every day. Didn’t care what anyone thought.” The mental image makes her smile.
“And he and Luke were best friends?”
“Starting in middle school, yeah. They played soccer together.”
“Huh.” Rachel pauses. “So when did Jonah get cute?”
“He was still pretty short in middle school. And skinny. But he did start dressing better.”
“No more pleated khakis?”
“No more pleated khakis. And then the summer before ninth grade, he had this growth spurt. And he started to, uh, fill out. So I guess ninth grade is when I noticed . . .” Hallelujah fades off. “This is embarrassing.”
“No, it’s not. This is what girls talk about.” Rachel grins. “Besides. I wanted to see if you were paying as close attention to him as he was to you.”
“I didn’t realize I was. We were just friends.”
“You can be friends and still objectively notice someone’s cuteness.”
― Kathryn Holmes

“In the silence, Hallelujah realizes that Jonah hasn’t said a word since confirming that Luke kicked him and Brad out of their hotel room. He has his eyes closed, but he’s definitely not sleeping. His mouth is tight. He’s breathing deeply too, but it’s on purpose. And when he opens his eyes to see Hallelujah looking at him, he gets up abruptly. He adds more wood to their fire. He paces a circle around their camp.
Then he says, in that low, dangerous voice Hallelujah heard for the first time at the party three nights ago, “I’m gonna kill him.” He circles the campfire again.
A part of Hallelujah feels a little thrill at Jonah’s anger. That he’s this worked up on her behalf. The other part of her—a bigger part—doesn’t like seeing him like this. She says, not because she believes it but because she wants to calm him down, “It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay,” Jonah says, but he stops pacing. He looks at her, and then at his fists. “Right. I won’t kill him. But it would feel really good to punch him in the face.” And then it’s like the anger drains out of him. He shakes his head. He pops his knuckles, slowly, one by one.”
― Kathryn Holmes