Read Blue Bloods: Keys to the Repository for Free Online

yet,
    and she relished having the place to herself. Soon enough, the hal ways would be fil ed with the sound of gossip and camaraderie, and Schuyler
    would feel even lonelier than when she was alone. It was so much easier when no one was around.
    As much as she was not the kind of girl who wished he would claim her as his own in front of everyone to see, a little part of her could not help but
    wish for it nonetheless. The problem with being alienated is that one is never alienated enough, she thought as students began to trickle in before the
    first bel . She could swath herself in black clothes and hide behind her hair, shut off the rest of the world and listen to angry music on her iPod, but
    somehow it was al a pose, wasn’t it? Was she just a poser? Because why was she drawn to him, then, the kind of boy that every girl wanted to date?
    Didn’t that mean she was just like everyone else? If only she didn’t care so much; but she did. At heart, behind the quiet and the scowl and the indifference, she cared very, very much.
    And then, there he was. Right in the middle of a group of laughing, joking boys—always right in the center, the tal est and handsomest one—the
    one you couldn’t help but stare at. . . .
    Jack Force. He must have just gotten back from crew practice on the Hudson. She could always tel when he had been rowing; she could smel
    the sea air on his skin, in his hair, his cheeks were ruddy and flushed. He looked happy.
    For the briefest second he caught her eye—but then turned away.
    Schuyler bent down to her books, biting her bottom lip. She had just imagined it, hadn’t she? The kisses, everything. They didn’t exist in the real
    world. In the real world, she and Jack were strangers. She wasn’t looking, and someone jostled her elbow so that she lost her grip on her bookbag,
    and the book— The Plague —tumbled out, and she thought, If this is what some people think is a love story, they are just kidding themselves.
    But aren’t all stories about love in some way?
    Schuyler startled to hear Jack’s voice in her head, and looked up, but the hal way was empty. The second bel rang, and she was late.
    Only the good ones, only the good stories , she thought, wondering if he could hear her, if he was listening.
    The next morning, another book had been slipped underneath her door. What was this al about? Was he building her a library? This time, since the
    book was too thick to fit completely, it had been shoved, stuffed in the opening between the door and the floor, halfway in and halfway out, so that
    when Schuyler pul ed it out, the paperback was bent in the middle and the pages were creased. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. This time,
    inside the book there was a note.
    173 Perry Street. #10 N. Midnight. Use the key.
    She touched the key that hung around her neck, for luck. The Plague yesterday. Now Pride and Prejudice . Was it an alphabetical choice? she
    wondered, amused. Talk about a love story. Pride and Prejudice —so obvious, wasn’t it? Schuyler had always been skeptical of its pul until she had
    spent a long, heady weekend wrapped up in the joys of its combative romance. Elizabeth and Darcy don’t so much fal in love as fight their attraction
    every step of the way. Schuyler had come to love the book despite her misgivings, to hold its promise of carriages and Pemberley to her chest as
    stoutly as she believed that Elizabeth should have inherited the carriages and the estate on her own. It was so difficult to imagine such a stringent,
    corseted world for women; to imagine a life completely dependent on one’s ability to land the right guy. Stil , there was something deeply appealing
    about such a story. It made the romance so much more . . . What did they cal it? High stakes.
    In any event, Pride and Prejudice was way more appealing than The Plague .
    Feeling reckless and giddy, and just a tad plucky —like the kind of girl who tramped around the marshes in the dark— she