I Kissed Shara Wheeler: Chapters 10–14

They’ve been sitting ten careful feet apart for an hour and a half now, trying to look like two casual classmates who happen to both be spending their after-school time in the library and are certainly not going to abscond into the HVAC system as soon as the opportunity arises.

Across the library, there’s the sound of the office door being thrown open, followed by the portentous stomp of Ms. Dunbury’s orthopedic sneakers.

“Heyyyy, Ms. Dunbury!” says a sudden, jovial voice from what sounds like the library entrance. “How’s my favorite librarian doing this fine afternoon?”

“We’re over the hall,” he says, his quiet voice reverberating back to her.

Chloe never really thought Rory was that serious about music, because he doesn’t act very serious about anything, but the lilt of his voice when he talks about songwriting reminds her of Benjy talking about a new piece he’s learned.

She tries to transpose awkward middle school Rory over the one she knows.

He passes Chloe her file, and she spreads all three out on the desk. As expected, the card is in Rory’s. Picture-ready pink, sealed in its envelope and paperclipped to a middling progress report.

Vindication zips up her spine like a chill, and she can’t stop herself from smiling down at the card.
She knew there was a reason she didn’t like Shara, but she never had any concrete evidence against her, until now.

Ten minutes out from school, Jake pulls into Sonic and tips the roller-skating waitress ten dollars for four slushes, and they take off again, speakers going tinny from the boom of the bass as April shoots her straw wrapper at Rory.

At least there weren’t any football players in that cast, so she didn’t have to see Shara’s face while she was doing a G-rated burlesque act about the teachings of Jesus.

Rory is easy to find—she’s learned that he usually skulks around the back staircase for his study hall hour—and she fires off her theory.

Before Chloe has a chance to react to what Shara wrote about her, Ace saunters up the aisle, chugging Mountain Blast.

“I didn’t ditch you for the football guys,” Smith says, voice raw and earnest, “you ditched me because you didn’t like that I joined the team, even though I told you the whole reason my parents sent me to Willowgrove was to play football.”

Smith and Rory, who heretofore were both operating under the impression that they could win Shara if they made it to the end of the trail, really seem to be struggling with the idea that the princess in the tower might be more of a dragon.

They stop sniping at each other and start exchanging a lot of morose looks while Chloe does all the work on the clues.

She looks up at Ash two seats over on the choir risers, holding different sizes of fishing lures up to Benjy’s earlobes to test out which one they want to make into earrings while he begrudgingly sits still.

Burner email address, implicit threat that she can predict my every move

Manipulated student council secretary to rig homecoming court vote so she would lose in upset to Emma Grace Baker because she was “worried about overexposure”

The most recent editing date at the top of the page will sometimes change, but no words ever materialize.

“I, um, was gonna buy it but I changed my mind,” Chloe lies, shaking out Northanger Abbey to no avail.

How can that be possible to feel estranged from a place where everyone loves you?

Did she sit on her ivory quilt and plan a whole day around creating this moment, right now, Chloe sitting here with this letter, thinking about Shara thinking about her?
It feels even more intimate than the Shakespeare passage in the piano.

The postscripts on the cards always allude to something that only one of the three of them can translate, but when she lines them up next to one another, something doesn’t match.

The self-appointed keeper of tradition, Mr. Truman invented an iconic Willowgrove theater ritual when he played Conrad in Bye Bye Birdie in ’96 and performed the entire closing number as Rosie at the end-of-year party. It’s evolved over the years; now, as custom dictates, it’s Chloe and Benjy’s turn to swap roles and lead the seniors in an over-the-top, gender-bent performance of the titular number.

Three junior girls commandeer the sinks, climbing up to sit inside the bowls with their sneakers braced against the mirror to do their contour up close.

Her tux is draped over her arm, and it’s one of those camo monstrosities that are distressingly common in Alabama.

She steps up to the mirror and turns left and right, checking her jawline in the reflection, then smooths out her lapels with visible coolness.

Nearby, Smith is watching raptly.

“You look cool, Ace,” Chloe says.
“Thanks,” he preens.

He’s still watching Ash put the final flourish on Ace’s eye makeup.

The lowerclassmen pile on top of one another on gym mats with plastic cups of Sprite and smears of lipstick on their chins, and Mr. Truman climbs atop a row of bleachers with his phone horizontal, ready to film the whole thing so the seniors can have it for posterity.

Inexplicably, she kind of wishes Shara were in the front row again.

On top of hundreds of signatures and lewd scrawls, there’s a heart painted in pink nail polish.

She glares out the window as Smith and Rory elbow each other toward the glass doors, which are emblazoned with a giant, peeling picture of a 99-cent corn dog.

It seemed so accidental, such a stupid, fleeting chance that she and Shara wound up on the same elevator at all.