Avalon High Read Online Free PDF

had, I’d have remembered.
    You better believe I’d have remembered.
    “No,” he said, grinning. “Never been there. Look, really, forget I said anything. Things have been really weird lately, and I guess I just…”
    His expression darkened, just for a split second, almost as if a shadow had passed across it.
    Except that that was impossible, since there was nothing standing between him and the sun.
    Then he seemed to shrug off whatever dark thought had occurred to him, and said brightly, “Seriously, don’t worry about it. I’ll see you in school.”
    He turned like he was going to jump off Spider Rock and go away. I could almost hear my best friend Nancy’s voice screaming in my head, Don’t let him get away, you idiot! He’s hot! Make him stay!
    “Wait,” I said.
    Then, when he turned expectantly, I found myself frantically trying to think of something witty and brilliant to say…something that would make him want to stay.
    But before I could think of anything, I heard the sliding glass door being thrown back. A second later, my mom called down from the deck, “Ellie, would your friend like to borrow a suit and go for a swim, too? I’m sure one of Geoff’s would fit him.”
    Oh my God. My friend . I was sure I was going to die.Besides which, go for a swim ? With me ? She had no idea she was talking to one of the most popular guys at Avalon High, or that he was dating one of the prettiest girls there.
    But still. That’s no excuse.
    “Uh, no, Mom,” I called to her, giving Will an apologetic eye roll that he grinned at. “We’re okay.”
    “Actually,” Will said, looking up at my mom. I have to go now.
    That’s what I thought he was going to say. I have to go now , or I made a huge mistake , or even, Sorry, wrong house.
    Because guys like Will do not hang around girls like me. It just doesn’t happen. Clearly, Will had thought I was some other girl—maybe someone he’d met at camp and had a crush on when he was eight, or whatever—and now that he’d realized his error, he’d be leaving.
    Because that is how things are supposed to go in an ordered universe.
    But I guess the universe had tilted on its axis without anyone mentioning it to me, or something, because Will went on to say, “A swim might be nice.”
    And not three minutes later, against all laws of probability, Will was emerging from my house in a pair of Geoff’s baggy swim trunks, with a towel around his neck. He was also holding glasses of lemonade that my mom had scrounged up from somewhere, one of which he knelt down at the side of the pool to hand to me.
    “Free, fast delivery,” he said, with a wink, as I tookthe plastic glass from him. If he felt, as I did, a jolt of electricity race up his arm as our fingers accidentally brushed, he didn’t let on.
    “Oh my God,” I said, holding the already-sweating glass and staring at him. He had, I was not at all surprised to see, a terrific body. His skin was tanned bronze—from sailing, no doubt—and he was gorgeously well-muscled—but not in a crazy steroid sort of way.
    And he was in my pool.
    He was in my pool.
    “Did she—” I was in too much shock to think of anything else. “Did she talk to you?”
    “Who?” Will asked, draping himself over Geoff’s raft. “Your mom? Yeah. She’s nice. What is she, a writer or something?”
    “Professor,” I said, through lips that had gone numb. But not from the ice cubes in my drink. From the thought of Will Wagner, alone in my house with my parents, while I, too transfixed with horror to move from my raft, had lain in the pool, doing nothing to rescue him. “Both of them.”
    “Oh, well, that would explain it,” Will said lightly.
    My blood went as cold as the ice in my drink. What had they done? What had they said to him? It was too early for Jeopardy! so it couldn’t have been that. “Explain what?”
    “Your mom quoted some poem after I introduced myself,” Will said, leaning his head back and peering up at the