I Kissed Shara Wheeler(7)

“Really, dude?” Chloe says, nodding to the pies.

Smith shrugs. “Gotta keep my calorie intake up.”

As Smith searches the mess, Chloe stares at the picture on his locker door. It’s Smith and Shara at the homecoming dance last fall, him in a generic button-down-and-dress-pants combo, her in that dress.

Chloe didn’t go to homecoming, but she saw Shara’s dress on Instagram like everyone else alive. It was only a blue silk slip with a modest neckline, but it stuck to her like water, and she wasn’t wearing a bra. For a whole week, nobody at school would shut up about it. BBC News at 9, the headlines: GOD’S FAVORITE DAUGHTER SHOWS ONE HINT OF NIP.

She glances over at Rory to see if he’s looking at the same thing, but he’s focused on Smith, who’s yanked something out from behind his Gatorade stash.

“Hold up,” Smith says. “I didn’t put this in here.”

It’s a bag of candy, and there’s a second card from Shara’s stationery tied neatly to it with a pink ribbon. Smith’s name is written on the envelope.

“Peach rings?” Chloe asks.

“She always gives a pack to the cheerleaders who make my game day treat bag,” Smith says. “They’re my favorite.”

“Still?” Rory says.

Smith glares. “What?”

“Peach rings are just kinda middle school,” Rory says with a shrug.

“Are you gonna open it or what?” Chloe butts in.

Smith sighs and pulls the card out, and Chloe skims it over his shoulder before he has a chance to pull it away.

Smith,

I think that, maybe, the problem is that I don’t know how to tell you the truth. Maybe that’s why I had to do this. I don’t know how to tell you, but maybe I can show you.

I promise I’m okay. Don’t be too mad about the kisses. It wasn’t their fault.

XOXO

Shara

P.S. You’re not done with the P.S. from the last one yet. Make sure Rory holds on to it. Shouldn’t be hard.

P.P.S. Tell Chloe it’ll come to her.

“I have no idea what this is supposed to mean,” Smith says, lowering the card to his side. Rory tilts his head sideways to squint at the words.

“You don’t think she’s been like, Liam Neeson Taken, do you?” Chloe asks.

“No.”

“So, she would have left on purpose, then?”

“I guess.”

“Maybe she’s fleeing the scene of a crime? Maybe she killed someone.”

“Doubt it.”

Rory straightens up and cuts in: “Do you even care?”

Oof.

Smith pauses, then shuts his locker.

“Wanna try that again?”

“I mean, I don’t know,” Rory says. “Aren’t you gonna dump her for SEC groupies after graduation anyway? That’d make this pretty convenient for you.”

“Yikes.” Chloe exhales.

Smith bites down on the inside corner of his mouth, nodding slowly with his chin like Rory is an eighty-five-pound kicker on a visiting team. Then he pulls out his phone, unlocks it, and holds it out.

It’s open to his call log, and every single entry—ten calls in the last two hours alone—are the same. Shara, Shara, Shara, Shara, Shara.

“Me and Ace drove around every square mile of False Beach looking for her yesterday,” Smith says. “We checked everywhere she likes to go to see if maybe she was at the Cinemark on Houghton or Sonic or the park with all the magnolia trees by the Dick’s Sporting Goods, and she wasn’t at any of them. I was out there for hours. So, yeah. I care.”

The look on Rory’s face is a blinking cursor at the top of a blank Word document, so Chloe takes the opening.

“Then you need us,” she tells Smith. “Obviously this is … some kind of puzzle Shara set up for us, and we all have a piece of it. Once we solve it, we’ll know where she is.”

Smith finally breaks his glare at Rory to look at her.

“Where’s your piece?”

“I’m working on it,” Chloe grouses. “But there’s no point in finding it if we can’t all agree we’re in this together.”

Smith’s attention snaps back to Rory. “You’re cool with that?”

“Look, I don’t want to give a shit about this, but I do,” Rory says, having finally recovered. “If Shara keeps mentioning the three of us, it probably means we’re all supposed to be here, so like, whatever. I’ll do it.”

“So will I,” Chloe says. “Which means if you want to know where your girlfriend is, you gotta get over the fact that she kissed us. Like, quickly.”

All around them, the rest of Willowgrove is filtering into first hour, and every single one of them takes a second to stare as they pass. Chloe Green, the one who scored a 35 on the ACT. Smith Parker, the saint who led Willowgrove to the state champ title two years in a row. And Rory Heron, best known for flooding the bio lab on purpose. The three of them occupying the same spot is ripping a hole in the Willowgrove space-time continuum.

Smith is visibly doing some mental calculations. It’s obvious he and Rory would rather do just about anything than spend another second in each other’s company, which means Chloe’s life is about to be a nonstop tornado of egos, but she can deal with it as long as they get her to a fair victory. Like Willowgrove, it’s a necessary evil.