Chocolate Box Girls: Sweet Honey Read Online Free PDF

collecting up my empty smoothie glass.
     ‘OK?’ he asks.
    ‘Yeah, I’m fine!’
    He wipes the tabletop down with
     exaggerated swipes of his cloth.
    Riley rolls his eyes. ‘Got a
     problem, mate?’ he asks.
    ‘No problem,’ Ash says
     lightly. ‘Just doing my job.’
    Riley turns back to me.
     ‘You’re an art student, right?’ he says. ‘I live quite near
     to COFA, so maybe I’ll see you on campus. We can grab a coffee.’
    He thinks I’m older, that
     I’m at some kind of art college. I’m about to nod and say I’ll
     look out for him, but even though I’ve just met him I feel weird blatantly
     lying in front of the beach-cafe boy. I’ve just told him I’m starting at
     Willowbank, after all.
    ‘I’m not a student,’ I
     hear myself say to Riley. ‘I’m fifteen. Still at school.’
    His face clouds, and the magnetism
     fizzles away to nothing right in front of my eyes. He’s not interested in
     schoolkids. Why would he be?
    ‘I’d better be getting
     off,’ he says, sounding bored now, embarrassed. ‘See you around,
     maybe …’
    ‘Me and my big mouth,’ I say
     to the cafe boy as he gives the table one final polish. ‘Blown it.’
    Ash shrugs. ‘His loss,’ he
     says.
    I raise my hand to wave as Riley jogs up
     the beach to join his friends, but he doesn’t look back.
     

     

 
    Skye Tanberry
    
to me
    Hey, big sister, good to see you on
     Skype just now. We needed cheering up … it is very weird here without
     you. I came up the stairs last night, and your bedroom door was open. When I
     looked inside, Mum was just sitting on the window seat, hugging her knees. I
     think she’d been crying. I’m not telling you that to make you feel
     bad or anything – just that we miss you. Good luck for school and everything.
     Send my love to Dad … if he can remember who I am.
    Love ya,
    Skye oxox



5
    The minute I walk through the doors of
     Willowbank School for Girls I have a bad feeling, a feeling of doom. The foyer is
     crowded with girls in hideous, blue-checked school uniform. They gawp at me with
     undisguised curiosity the way I have been gawping at parakeets in the park or surfie
     boys on the beach; like I am something exotic and faintly scandalous.
    Don’t get me wrong, I
like
being exotic and faintly scandalous. It is my trademark look, but
     I think I may be an endangered species here at Willowbank.
    This morning when I tried on my new
     uniform for the first time, I almost cried.
    I looked in the mirror and saw a
     horrified girl in a polyester tent dress with a drooping yellow neckerchief. The
     dress flared out into an alarming triangle shape; knee-length white socks and ugly
     brown sandals completed the look. Luckily, I am an expert when it comes to adapting
     and improving. I used the kitchen scissors to chop three inches off the hem, hoisted
     it in with a belt and turned the yellow neckerchief into a hair accessory.
    It wasn’t good, but it was an
     improvement. I could tell by the way Emma’s jaw dropped when she saw me.
    ‘They’re strict about
     uniform at Willowbank,’ she argued, but I pointed out that I was wearing the
     uniform, every bit of it, so what was the problem?
    I think I am about to find out.
    The twitter of girly gossip fades into
     silence and I hear the clip-clop sound of high-heeled shoes approach. A woman
     strides towards me through the crowd, small and plump in a chiffon blouse and
     tailored skirt, hair fluffed and sprayed into a feathery bouffant. She peers at me
     over a pair of alarmingly winged glasses; she reminds me of a hen, anxious,
     clucking, easily ruffled.
    ‘I am Miss Bird, the head
     teacher,’ she tells me, and I swallow back my smirk. Miss Bird? Seriously?
    ‘I expect you’re the new
     girl, from England. Honey Tanberry?’
    ‘Yes, Miss Bird,’ I choke
     out.
    She glares at me as if I just arrived
     fresh from St Trinian’s with a
Danger
label tied to my wrist. I guess