Chance Harbor Read Online Free Page A

rainbow tam over shiny black licorice hair, a long black skirt, and a bright red shawl. Like a human-shaped piece of art.
    What kind of homeless person got pimped out to play music for a few coins before the benches were even dry? Had the woman slept here?
    Willow waited until she was about a dozen feet away, then turned around with her camera. She’d taken a photography class using a manual camera this summer; now she tried to always shoot in black-and-white. In geometry, she’d been sketching the woman because she was thinking about how to hand tint the photographs of her. She wanted to make hand-colored pictures like the ancient ones hanging in Nana’s house in Chance Harbor.
    Spanish II came after geometry. A brutal class. Senorita Yolanda didn’t assign seats, but Henry sat next to Willow anyway, wrapping his long legs around the chair rungs.
    Willow was thinking about her photographs when Senorita asked her a question in Spanish. Henry bailed her out by answering it for her. She answered the question after that, though, even using the right preterit tense for
ir
, always tricky:
fui
.
    “Thanks,” Willow said as she walked to lunch with Henry towering next to her. “I owe you.”
    He shrugged. “Thirty percent of our grade is participation, right? So, hey. I participated. What do you have next? Lunch, right?”
    “Lunch, then art and chemistry. You?”
    Henry looked pathetically hopeful. “Lunch. We could sit together. After that, English and European History.”
    He’d have Russell for history, Willow realized. She was about to say this, to give Henry a heads-up on Russell as a teacher, when there was a commotion in the hall. A group of senior girls was headed their way.
    One of them, Nola Simone, was the queen bee: wherever she went, the drones buzzed around her. As Willow watched, Nola shook her shining hair around her shoulders. Her hair was the color of oak leaves in fall, bright gold and yellow. Nola held her phone at arm’s length, taking selfies of herself surrounded by her friends as they moved through the hall, oblivious to the fact that everyone else had to paste themselves against the walls to make way.
    Not that anyone would have tried to stop them. Watching Nola walk by, with her heart-shaped face and hot bod, her hair like all of the autumn months captured into a single elastic, was like seeing a unicorn: all you could do was stand there with your mouth open and hope she might kick magic fairy dust in your face.
    “Hey, Willow,” said Trent, one of the juniors in Willow’s geometry class, a hockey player and a douche bag. He didn’t usually bother her, though; Willow prided herself on her high invisibility factor. She dressed to blend in and kept her mouth shut. Now she cringed as Trent shouted, “Why aren’t you walking with Nola and her posse? You should definitely be in that photo. Get in there, dude!”
    Willow gave an elaborate shrug. “No, thanks. Why should I?”
    “Because you’re one big family now,” Trent said, elbowing the guy next to him, another hockey kid whose fuzzy beard looked like a wild animal sleeping on his face.
    “Me? Right. Like Nola and I are even the same species.” Willow started walking again.
    Trent was trailing her, still talking. Henry kept up with her. This should have made Willow feel better. Instead, now she had to worry that Trent might start harassing Henry because he was with her.
    “Hey,” Trent said, still using his fucking hockey-rink voice. “Is it true Nola’s been getting some extra-special help in history? A little one-on-one? Some
hands-on
learning from your dad?” He cracked up.
    “Whatever,” Willow said without slowing down. She’d heard the rumors about Nola and Russell, too, but so what? Every guy in school wanted to hook up with Nola—teachers, students, coaches.
    “Wow, you sure shut down Trent,” Henry said, letting his breath out in a whoosh after they’d rounded a corner and made sure Trent wasn’t trailing them to