I Kissed Shara Wheeler: Chapters 1–3

It took weeks to thrift the perfect dress (black chiffon and lace...), and it was supposed to be a perfect prom.

But thirty minutes before the prom court was announced, she saw her: Shara, rosy lips and a waterfall of almond-pink tulle, brushing past refreshments on her way to the door.

She finds the spare key inside a conspicuously smooth rock with Joshua 24:15 engraved on it.

It’d be a lie—a huge, Willowgrove-Christian-Academy-football-budget-sized lie—to say she’s never envisioned what sort of perfection incubator Shara Wheeler climbs inside when she goes home every day. A tank of goo to preserve her dewy complexion? A professional hairstylist on retainer?

Shara’s room is, of course, a nice, normal room. Suspiciously plain, even. Bed, dresser, nightstand, vanity, bookshelf-slash-desk combo, eggshell lamp with a silver chain.

All she finds are college brochures and a box of pink stationery monogrammed with Shara’s initials—thank-you cards for the imminent flood of graduation checks from rich family.

Underwear drawer: half-empty, enough modest petal-soft things gone for a week or two.

Rory Heron. Willowgrove’s answer to every brooding bad boy from every late ’90s teen drama.

Chloe stares at him, trying to reconcile Rory’s whole persona with the extreme uptightness of the False Beach Country Club.

He talks with the same kind of studied disaffection that he carries himself with, shoulders slumped and impartial.

Because if Shara’s really gone, that’s a forfeit, and Chloe Green does not win by default.

When Chloe follows his gaze, she finds an envelope sitting innocuously in a pink letter organizer.

Back in California, Chloe had never been inside a country club with a subdivision in it, sprawling acreage with a manned gate like a golf course bouncer.

“Threat received,” Rory says with a sullen salute, and she shuts him behind the gate.

She crosses the front yard of the Heron house and rounds the corner to a copse of trees and an elaborate fountain in the shape of a very ugly dolphin, where she parked her car.

AGAIN PLEASE DO NOT REACT you are calm you are a placid lake...

A tiny figure appears over Chloe’s shoulder in the mirror, right under the blunt edge of her bob but growing closer: Rory, looking deeply affronted at having to set foot on campus before third hour.

The entire ecosystem of Willowgrove depends on rigid divisions between each social stratum.

It’s covered in Thrasher patches and pretentious buttons and contains precisely zero schoolbooks.

“I’m working on it,” Chloe grouses.

She hiked up her dress, climbed the trellis by the dogwood tree onto the roof, said “hi,” and then she kissed me.

This year, Chloe and Benjy finally bullied
 Mr. Truman, the choir teacher, into choosing Phantom for the spring musical, and the two of them played Christine and Raoul, respectively.

Shara Wheeler’s dad is Principal Wheeler, the man enforcing Willowgrove’s archaic rules.

She’s tempestuous and vindictive and has been a part of the Green household almost as long as Chloe has.

But her favorite activity has been seeking out every possible Southern delicacy. Back home, the most Alabama thing about their kitchen was the pitcher of sweet tea Chloe’s mom always kept in the fridge. Now, her mama has insisted on learning how to fry chicken thighs and green tomatoes, sampled each item on the Bojangles menu, and become a regular at every soul-food joint in town.

Is this normal baseline Chloe curmudgeon behavior, or are you cranky because you miss your mama?

The two of them look a lot alike—brown eyes, thick eyebrows, angular jaws—but Chloe’s aesthetic is more dark academia and Georgia’s is more backpacking granola baby butch.

She’s too tall to look small, too gentle to be imposing, too smart in ways that have nothing to do with chemical formulas or antiderivatives to care about her GPA.

It’s a miracle that someone like Georgia coalesced from the primordial ooze of Alabama.

“Also, it’s romantic. ‘If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.’ Best line in Austen’s entire body of work. And I’ve read them all, Chloe.”
“How many of them have you read?” Chloe deadpans.

Georgia knows this, so she curates a stack of books behind the counter for Chloe and adds to it every time they get something Chloe might like.

While she does like boys, she generally finds the traits of a compelling villain—arrogance, malice, an angsty backstory—tedious in a man.

Rory arrives next, annoyed and surly in some kind of vintage ’80s convertible in cherry red.

He gives her a hearty glower, then extracts a Moleskine from the mess on his desk and lets it fall open to the center, where a pink card has been tucked.

“Right,” she concedes.