Chance Harbor Read Online Free

grandparents immigrated here from Scotland before they moved to New York.”
    “So where do you live now? I mean, when you’re not here.”
    “Vermont. I was at the university there, in the engineering department, for many years. I still teach a class or two when the mood strikes.” Darcy whistled again. The dog finally wandered out of the barn, blinking in the sudden sunlight and making them both laugh. “Well, better let you get back to things. Thanks for looking after the dog.”
    “No problem. It was nice to have company,” Eve said.
    They shook hands good-bye, and she was struck by another jolt of recognition. What was it about this man that made her feel so comfortable?
    •   •   •
    You’d think sophomore year of high school would be less about pranks and posers, but so far none of the kids seemed to have gotten that memo. Matt Tracy had already set fire to a trash can during English, making the smoke alarm go off, and the alpha girls were taking selfies of themselves in geometry.
    Willow might have to throw herself out a window if she had to stay in geometry one more second. The teacher, Mr. James, was scary clean, using hand sanitizer every twelve seconds.
    He had tried teaching them about angles and vectors by having the class make paper airplanes while ranting about “making math fun.” This would have been okay if Mr. James weren’t so totally OCD. The poor guy folded and refolded the same stupid piece of paper, while the robotics nerds and gamer geeks made airplanes with weights and counterweights out of bent paper clips or whatever. The student planes zoomed around in circles until one of them hit Mr. James right between the eyes. Bitchy Shelly Paradiso practically peed her pants laughing.
    Now Mr. James was back at the board and Willow was drawing in her notebook. The only class she liked was art. She’d spend all day in art if she could. Last year, when Mrs. Lagrasso (whom the kids called “Mrs. Fat Asso”) taught her freshman art class, Willow had fallen in love.
    That’s what art felt like to her: love. She got goose bumps of happiness every time Mrs. Lagrasso showed them another series of paintings or sculptures. Willow had been to art museums with Catherine and Russell, of course, but when she saw art through the eyes of Mrs. Lagrasso, it was different. Mrs. Lagrasso understood the power of art to surprise you with feelings you didn’t know you had.
    “What are you drawing? A monkey?” a voice said over Willow’s shoulder.
    It was the new kid, Henry Something-or-Other the Third. Pretty much every boy in her school was named after somebody else, or two somebodies. Like it was too much work for their parents to think up original names.
    “It’s not anything. Just trying not to slit my wrists while we listen to this crap.” Willow flipped her notebook shut.
    “Man, you got that,” Henry said, leaning back again.
    They’d been seated alphabetically on the first day of class and had to keep those seats all year—another thing Willow hated about geometry.
    Henry’s desk was next to hers. He was a ginger giant, with hair the color of paprika, long legs, and eyes like pennies. He said something else, but Willow pretended not to hear him and focused on the board, which Mr. James was filling with formulas, while she thought about her drawing.
    It wasn’t a monkey, but it wasn’t nothing, either: it was actually a sketch of a homeless woman she’d seen this morning as she and Russell crossed Boston Common.
    Not even eight o’clock in the morning, and the woman was sitting on a bench by the Frog Pond with her metal cart stuffed with trash bags. She was blind; a white cane was leaning on the bench beside her. The woman was playing a scratched-up old guitar. A handful of coins lay in her open guitar case.
    Russell was speeding along ahead of her, but Willow slowed down to look at the woman. She was beautiful, in a strange cartoony way, with giant yellow sunglasses, a bright