This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2013 by Kelley York. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

Entangled Publishing, LLC

2614 South Timberline Road

Suite 109

Fort Collins, CO 80525

Visit our website at
www.entangledpublishing.com
.

Edited by Stacy Abrams and Alycia Tornetta

Cover design by Alexandra Shostak

Ebook ISBN 978-1-62266-020-9

Print ISBN 978-1-62266-021-6

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition October 2013

The author acknowledges the copyrighted or trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction: Barbie, Jetta, Coca-Cola, Toyota, Sharpie, Cheerios, Olympics, The Godfather series,
Mission: Impossible,
Rolling Stone
, Kmart.

For Wifey.

Nobody loves my broken boys as much as you.

Hunter

When we first met Chance Harvey, he was playing with Barbies.

Not in the dressing-them-up sense. He had Malibu Barbie tied to the end of a fishing pole by her ankles and was reeling her in from the creek behind Dad’s house. Even at eight years old, my half sister, Ashlin, and I both thought this was pretty bizarre.

Chance turned to stare at us with wide, round green eyes that didn’t really fit his face. He was covered in grass and mud from crawling up and down the banks, camouflage paint smudged across his cheeks, and he stared at us like
we
were the weird ones.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

He was a runt, closer to Ash’s size than mine, and I knew I could scare him off if he was there to cause trouble. My eyes narrowed. “That’s my dad’s house,” I announced, pointing to the rooftop visible through the trees. “And this is
his
part of the creek. He’s a cop, and you’re gonna be in trouble if I tell him you’re here.”

In retrospect, I don’t know why I felt the need to be so mean. I was a kid, and I guess being tough seemed like the thing to do, especially in front of my sister. But Chance, frustratingly unbothered by my threat, turned his back to us. “Well, let me finish this and I’ll go away.”

I crossed my arms to wait for him to get lost, but didn’t it figure that Ashlin, in her mouse-sized voice, piped up with, “What are you doing?”

Chance regarded her with a crooked smile over his shoulder, like he’d been waiting for one of us to ask that very question. “I’m doing a rescue operation. Duh.”

Ash’s eyes widened and she took a step closer. “You’re rescuing Barbie?”

Chance stood up, straightened his back, and placed a hand on his hip. I remember thinking that with that one simple gesture, he looked more grown-up than we did. “Yeah! But see, there are so many down there, I don’t know where to start. You should help.”

My sister didn’t even wait for my opinion. She darted past me in her summer dress and grass-stained sneakers and crouched by Chance’s side while he gave instructions on how, exactly, we were supposed to go about this rescue mission. He spoke to Ash, but his eyes were always on me.

That was how it all started. Fishing Barbies out of the creek.

November

Hunter

We’ve spent our summers with Dad since I was five. Every year, when school let out, Ash flew to Otter’s Rest, Maine, from her mom’s on the West Coast, and I was put on a bus or train because my mom’s place is only across the state.

And, when we showed up, Chance would be waiting. “It’s about time,” he’d say, hands on his hips where he stood on our back porch in his bare feet with his messy hair and big glasses. I’m not even sure he
needed
those glasses, seeing as half the time he took them off and propped them on his head or lost them altogether, and we’d spend hours searching for them while Chance wandered in circles, hands outstretched, claiming he was too blind to help.

I couldn’t tell you where Chance lived, what school he went to, or what his parents’ names were. But I could tell you his favorite type of ice cream and exactly how he ate it (rocky road, picking out the nuts and marshmallows to eat last), how he could recite every lyric from every Queen song in existence, and that he had a soft spot for animals and sad movies that made him tear up.

In my opinion, I knew all the things about Chance that mattered most. Chance was strangeness and whimsy in human form. Chance was our friend unlike any other friend Ashlin and I have ever had.

Chance
was
our summer.

We didn’t see or talk to him through winter, but when we arrived for summer vacation, the three of us came together like we’d never been apart. For seven years, all I looked forward to as I plodded through school and my monotonous life with Mom and her boyfriend was the day I could pack my things and see Chance.

This is the first I’ve been at Dad’s for more than a few days since I was fifteen, and I know a lot can change in two years. I had to fight with Mom just to get here now: she wanted me at college, and I wanted to take a year off. To spend with Dad. To spend with Ashlin. To think about my future and what I want out of it. Maybe, just maybe, to see Chance again.

It’s weird showing up while there’s slush on the ground and the air is damp and cold. Dad’s house nestled off the side of the road looks different surrounded by skeleton trees instead of green, green, green.

There is no Chance waiting for me on the porch.

Not that I expected there to be; how would he know we were coming? We were here every summer without fail until Dad took a bullet to the spine in the line of duty two years ago, and while he recovered, we were kept at our respective homes. Away from Dad, away from each other, and away from Chance, with no way of contacting him.

I have no clue where or how to find him. Don’t know where he lives, don’t have a phone number, don’t know if he has any other friends in town… I called information once, but I didn’t know his parents’ names. Dad wasn’t exactly in the physical state to be doing some detective work to find out, either.

Ashlin and I will have to put our heads together on how to find him when she shows up. Until then, I’ll keep stepping outside, forgetting how cold it is even as the deck freezes my feet. I’ll keep watching and waiting for the guy I haven’t been able to get out of my head after all this time. That’s the sort of person Chance is. He gets under your skin, and even when he’s gone, you still feel him there like a dull ache. A warm memory you can never quite reclaim.

Ashlin arrives the next day. Dad and I pile into his old truck for the long drive to the airport. I haven’t seen my half sister in six months—not since I flew out for her high school graduation. We only had the money for one of us to buy a ticket, and because I wanted to get the hell out of my house for a while, it was decided I’d be the one visiting her.

When I see her emerging from her gate, she still has the remains of a summer tan and a splash of freckles across her nose and cheeks. Once upon a time, she hated those freckles, until Chance told her they were cute and now she never tries to cover them with makeup. She goes to Dad first, careful in the way she hugs him. A rare smile pulls at his mouth as he puts an arm around her, the other not leaving his cane for support.

“My girl.” He sighs. “I’ve missed you.”

“Say that again after you’ve had us around for a few months.” Ash pulls away and turns her attention to me.

“Hey, short stuff,” I say with a grin.

Ash smiles a mile wide, throwing her arms around my neck. She smells like fruity body spray and shampoo and home. Being away from her and Dad all winter never felt right.
This
is how things were meant to be: me, my sister, and Dad.

All we’re missing now is Chance.

…

Early on, Chance asked us about our parents. He knew that Dad was a cop, that we spent summers here with him. What he didn’t understand was why, for the rest of the year, we lived with separate mothers. The idea seemed to baffle him. For us, it was as normal as night and day. (It wasn’t until we got older and our friends at school
told
us our situation was weird that we realized how abnormal it really was.)

“Dad was dating my mom,” I’d explained. “And they had a fight so they broke up for a while, and Dad was seeing someone else…”

And, somehow, that had all spiraled out of control. Dad ended up with neither of those women and had two kids instead. Maybe he didn’t do right by our moms—as they so frequently remind us—but Dad has never failed to be a good parent. He says it’s hard to view his bad relationship choices as a mistake because he got Ash and me out of the deal.

I think I resented him a lot at first. Him and Ashlin both. I saw them as the cause of my mom’s unhappiness and, by extension, my own. It was hard to hang on to that resentment, though, when Dad tried so hard and Ash understood exactly how I was feeling because she was going through the same thing. Maybe our life was strange, but we loved each other. It worked for us.

Chance’s life, on the other hand, was a puzzle of a thousand pieces that never fit together quite right. According to him, his parents traveled for work a lot and often left him home alone, and so he had the freedom to spend practically every day with us. But when we tried getting Chance’s number or e-mail address to keep in touch, he insisted he wasn’t allowed phone calls and his parents wouldn’t get Internet connected at the house. Going to the library for computer access, he said, was too much of a hassle. It was one thing to walk to our place. It was another to walk all the way into town.

The more I think about it, the things that made little sense then make even less sense now.

That night, at dinner, Ash prods at her food and asks Dad, “Do you think maybe you could ask one of the guys at the station to pull up Chance’s address? I mean, otherwise he’s never going to know we’re here.”

“You know I’m not supposed to ask for information like that.” Dad doesn’t look up. And yet, after he takes another bite, he adds, “I’ll see what I can do.”

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