I Kissed Shara Wheeler(4)
Rory, whose eyes have been narrowing more and more the longer she talks, tucks in one corner of his mouth and says, “She really got you fucked up, huh?”
“Bye,” Chloe says, turning on her heel. “I’ll do it myself.”
“Wait,” Rory calls after her.
She stops.
“When tomorrow?”
“First thing,” Chloe says. “Football Physics is first hour.”
“Great.” He unlatches the gate for her. “I’ll get my affairs in order.”
“Why didn’t you ever audition for spring musical? You’re so dramatic.”
“Not my thing.”
They stand there, Chloe’s keys jingling in her hand, Rory looking like he’s going to start writing depressing poetry about Shara any second. Or whatever his deal is. It feels alarmingly like she’s just been assigned to the world’s worst group project, and she can’t imagine the addition of Smith Parker will be an improvement.
“Um.” Chloe clears her throat. “Maybe … don’t tell anyone else? About Shara kissing me? I don’t know if I should’ve … well, anyway, I don’t think it should be spread all over school unless she tells people herself.”
Rory shakes his head. “I wasn’t gonna tell anyone.”
Satisfied, Chloe lifts her chin and whips around, forcing the gate open. “See you at school tomorrow. You better show up. I know where you live now.”
“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.
In the driver’s seat, she finally lets her body relax the way it only can when she’s really, truly alone. Her shoulders slump. Her keys slide out of her hand and onto the floor mat. Her head drops against the steering wheel. The miniature lucky cat on her dashboard waves at her, nonplussed.
She’s been kissed and ditched by Shara Wheeler. And she’s not even the only one.
But … that lip gloss. Vanilla and mint. It’s absolutely, 100 percent the lip gloss she was wearing when they kissed. Chloe would never, ever forget that scent.
Which means Shara bought it specifically to kiss Chloe with.
Proof that Shara does, when she’s home at night in her powder-blue room, brushing her hair and painting her nails and winding a rubber band three times around a stack of study cards, think about Chloe.
And that feels a bit like winning.
FROM THE BURN PILE
Handwritten note from Chloe to Georgia
PLEASE DO NOT REACT AUDIBLY if Madame Clark picks this one up and reads it out loud like she did with Tanner’s ranking of girls’ butts I will literally kill you
Okay. So.
Shara Wheeler just kissed me. Like literally just now on my way to fifth hour.
AGAIN PLEASE DO NOT REACT you are calm you are a placid lake you are my moms after a pitcher of hemp tea
I was taking the faculty elevator shortcut, and she got on, and then she kissed me, out of NOWHERE.
And I think I kissed her back??? She’s hot! I panicked! She may be the bane of my existence, but she also looks like she lives in the hills of Sweden and spends all her time embroidering flowers on linen shirts like an extra in Midsommar. She looks like she smells nice and I’m here to report that she does in fact smell nice, like lilacs, except for her lip gloss, which was vanilla and mint. Like, what else am I supposed to do when a girl like that is about to kiss me? Anyone would have done the same thing.
ANYWAY. She kissed me, like really kissed me, like KISSED me, and then she was GONE.
What does it mean??? Shara Wheeler is the most tragic heterosexual to ever cram herself into a Brandy Melville crop top. She was obviously just screwing with me. This is mean straight girl behavior. Right???
What do I do????
Lilacs, Geo. LILACS.
2
DAYS SINCE SHARA WHEELER LEFT: 2
DAYS UNTIL GRADUATION: 41
The first thing Chloe saw when her moms’ Subaru crossed into False Beach city limits was Shara Wheeler’s face.
That’s not just what it felt like—although it does seem like Shara Wheeler is everywhere, all the time. It was literally looming forty feet wide over the interstate between a Waffle House and a Winn-Dixie under a swampy gray sky: a pretty blond girl with a pretty smile, holding a stack of textbooks and a protractor.
JESUS LOVES GEOMETRY! the billboard declared, which struck Chloe as a bit of a bold claim. A CHRIST-CENTERED EDUCATION AT WILLOWGROVE CHRISTIAN ACADEMY!
There are a total of five high schools in False Beach, and Willowgrove is the only one with a decent AP program and a theater department with the budget to do Phantom. As a fourteen-year-old literary nerd neck-deep in a goth phase, those seemed like the most important things a high school education could offer her. Her mom went to Willowgrove back in the ’90s, and she tried to warn her what it was like, but Chloe was insistent. If this was her only option, she could put up with the Jesus stuff.
“What kind of name is False Beach?” Chloe asked her mom for the five thousandth miserable time that day as they glided under Shara’s billboard. It was a question she’d been asking since her mom first told her the name of her hometown.