The New Guy: Faint Hope High, #1

By Cathryne Marsden

Does Tim have something to hide?

Purity, Amity, and Clarity Blackwood have been looking forward to returning to Faint Hope High for the start of eleventh grade. Handsome new guy in town Tim Harmsworth is just the icing on the cake, at least as far as Purity is concerned.
But Amity thinks Tim is hiding something. She doesn’t believe that he’s elderly Miss Harmsworth’s nephew at all: she thinks he’s a con artist, and she’s determined to uncover the truth about him.
Clarity, meanwhile, has fallen under the sway of an older man: so much older, in fact, that he’s a ghost!
It’s the start of a whole new year at Faint Hope High. But will the Blackwood triplets ever sort out their various guy problems?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Short Attention Span Press
• Release date: Jun 14, 2013
• ISBN: 9781497750579

Book preview

This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

THE NEW GUY

First edition. June 14, 2013.

Copyright © 2013 Cathryne Marsden.

Written by Cathryne Marsden.

Table of Contents

The New Guy (Faint Hope High, #1)

Amity Blackwood shifted her weight from one foot to the other and sighed impatiently, setting her backpack on the floor by her feet. She'd been standing in the front hall for ten minutes already, waiting for her sister to make her way downstairs. It was typical of Purity to be late, even on their very first day of eleventh grade.

Amity blamed herself, for having agreed to wait. Tomorrow, she promised herself, I'll leave when I'm ready, and she can walk on her own.

Clarity, wrapped snugly in a fleece blanket in spite of the morning sun streaming through the window, smiled sympathetically. She was still in her favourite pyjamas, and had settled in on the chesterfield for the day, a cup of tea and a box of tissues on the coffee table next to her laptop.

It sucks that you had to get a cold this week, Amity said. Don't worry: I'll swing by your homeroom and tell them where you are, and after class I'll get your course outlines and book lists.

Half of that stuff will be online anyway. Finally: Purity was coming down the stairs, dressed in a summery dress that wasn't what she'd been wearing when Amity had last seen her. She'd probably changed outfits at least twice since then. You're fussing about nothing, Amity. As usual. We won't even have real classes today, you know that. The teachers will all introduce themselves and hand out dead-tree copies of stuff they should already have online, and then they'll let us go early.

She stopped in the front hall, admiring herself in the full-length mirror that took up half the wall adjacent to the livingroom entrance. But it does suck that you're sick on such a gorgeous day, she added, giving Purity a pitying look. Try and recover by this afternoon, and meet us downtown for coffee.

I don't mind. Purity, the youngest of the sixteen year old Blackwood triplets, spoke more softly than either of her sisters. The three were identical, with shoulder-length dark hair and grey-blue eyes the colour of Lake Superior during a summer storm.

But unless they were deliberately trying to confuse people, most of their friends had no trouble telling which triplet was which. Their personalities and interests were miles apart, and each girl had her own distinctive sense of style. Their mother often joked that, unlike most sisters, her daughters never squabbled over clothes or borrowed each other's stuff without permission: Purity would never be caught wearing what she called Amity's drab, respectable clothes, and Amity always tactfully brushed off offers to wear Purity's stuff with a gentle reminder that she preferred more modest outfits.

As for