I Kissed Shara Wheeler, page 3
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.
“I’m in, I guess,” Smith says. He glances sidelong at Chloe. “I get what Shara meant about you.”
Chloe blinks. “What did she say about me?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Fine,” Chloe says, definitely worrying about it. “If there’s anything we need to know, like if she said or did anything unusual lately, you should tell me.”
“Us,” Rory corrects her.
“Us,” Chloe agrees.
“The only thing lately,” Smith says finally, “was that she kept saying she couldn’t hang out because she had homework. She does that a lot, but it was like, a lot of homework. So, I guess … maybe she was doing something else.”
“Did she seem … unhappy?” Chloe asks.
“It’s hard to tell with Shara sometimes,” Smith says. “Sometimes, she just like, dips. Like she won’t respond to texts for a whole weekend, or she’ll put her phone on airplane mode, no explanation, and two days later it’s like nothing happened.”
“And what do you do?” Rory asks. “When she dips?”
“I never had to do anything before,” Smith says. “She always came back.”
Group Chat Including Chloe Green, Smith Parker, and Rory Heron
sending this to create the chat. please don’t reply unless you have new SW info.
Smith
ok
Smith I literally said not to reply.
Smith
sorry
Chloe changed the name of the chat to “I Kissed Shara Wheeler”
Rory
Smith
hell no
Smith deleted the name of the chat
idk why you’re mad when it’s factually accurate
FROM THE BURN PILE
Contents of one of Rory’s tapes, unspooled. Marked with a green sticker for “personal.”
I kissed Shara Wheeler.
It went like this: I don’t believe in prom as an institution, but it’s still kind of morbidly fascinating, so I climbed out of my window to sit on the roof and watch everyone get out of their rented limos at the clubhouse across the golf course. And that’s where she found me. She hiked up her dress, climbed the trellis by the dogwood tree onto the roof, said “hi,” and then she kissed me. And then she was gone again.
It didn’t exactly feel like the earth-shattering moment I always thought it would, mostly because I was just … confused.
I sat there and watched Smith pull up to her house the way I’ve watched him pull up to her house a million times since sophomore year, smiling so wide, I could see how white his teeth are from the roof. He took pictures with Shara in front of her house like nothing had even happened.
Brooklyn Bennett posted a passive-aggressive Instagram story this morning about how the student council spent half their prom budget on a balloon drop for a prom queen announcement that never happened. Jake saw Ace at Sonic and Ace said Smith told him that he went to get Shara’s stuff from purse check, and she was gone before he got back to the dance floor. Everyone’s heard about it by now. Nobody knows where she went, or why.
But I kissed her.
3
DAYS SINCE SHARA WHEELER LEFT: 3
DAYS UNTIL GRADUATION: 40
In her bedroom Tuesday afternoon, Chloe winds a silver chain around her finger and thinks of California.
Before freshman year, Chloe had only visited False Beach a few times. She always found it unbearable—no In-N-Out, no boba, only gas station Polar Pops and an Olive Garden with a two-hour wait on Fridays because it was the fanciest restaurant in town. (There have been rumors for years that a P.F. Chang’s is coming, but Chloe still thinks that’s a little too adventurous for False Beach.)
But when her grandma got sick and it was obvious she wasn’t getting better, her mama gave up her spot in the cast of the LA Opera and Chloe gave up her middle school friends and her twice-weekly sashimi for False Beach. That was four years ago.
Four years since she asked a girl in freshman bio why the chapter on sexual reproduction was taped shut and met Georgia, a Willowgrove student since kindergarten. Three and a half years since she ditched her goth phase and Georgia started keeping their five-year post-Willowgrove plan posted up in her locker. 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.
And, it’s been four years since Chloe walked into her first class at Willowgrove and saw the girl from that billboard seated in the front row, highlighters lined up neatly. By the end of the day, she had heard: (1) That’s Shara Wheeler. (2) Shara Wheeler’s dad is Principal Wheeler, the man enforcing Willowgrove’s archaic rules. (3) Her family has more money than God. (4) Everyone—everyone—loves her.
Even Georgia, always unimpressed by Willowgrove in her own quiet way, said when Chloe asked that first week, “Yeah, honestly, Shara’s cool.”
Shara’s not cool. California was cool. Living in a place where it didn’t matter if everyone knew about her moms was cool. Shara is a vague mist of a person, checking all the right False Beach boxes so that everyone thinks they see a perfect girl in her place. What’s cool about that?
(No, Chloe still hasn’t found her own note from Shara. Yes, she has checked everywhere, including the pocket of the oxford that was pressed up against Shara’s cotton polo when they kissed.)
Chloe drops the delicate chain back into the drawer and shuts it, glaring at the bathroom mirror. Why is she looking at the only person in town immune to Shara Wheeler?
“You are cursed with flawless judgment,” Chloe says to her reflection.
In her room, she kicks a stack of college admissions booklets aside to reach her backpack. The hunt for her Shara note will have to wait for a couple of hours. She’s got a date with her French 4 final project, a full essay about uprisings in France from 1789 to 1832, which is due in three weeks. Georgia’s her partner.
“Mom, Titania ate my underwear again,” Chloe says as she sweeps into the kitchen.
Chloe’s mom, who is still wearing her work coveralls and shoving something enormous into the freezer, grunts out, “Sounds like a problem for someone who leaves their underwear on the floor, not me.”
“That’s the third pair this month. Can I have some money to go to Target tomorrow?”
Titania, the house cat in question, is perched on top of the refrigerator and surveying them both like a tiny panty-eating lord. She’s tempestuous and vindictive and has been a part of the Green household almost as long as Chloe has. Chloe’s moms like to blame her for Chloe’s personality.
“Check the change jar,” she says.
Chloe sighs and begins counting out quarters.
“What is that?” she asks, watching her mom rearrange frozen vegetables to make room for the mysterious icy bundle. “Did you kill someone?”
“Your mother,” she says as she finally manages to cram the thing in, “has requested a Southern feast when she gets home from Portugal this weekend. A very specific one.” She pats the hunk of meat once and turns to Chloe, a bit of short, dark hair falling over her forehead. She used to have Chloe help her dye it blue, but she’s kept it natural since the move. “This, my child, is a turducken.”
“You lost me at turd,” Chloe says. “But continue.”
“It’s a chicken stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a turkey.”
“Where did you even get that?”
“I know a guy.”
“That’s … upsetting.”
Her mom nods and shuts the freezer. “My wife is a woman of refinement.”
Because Chloe and her mom were both miserable about the move, her West Coast mama resolved to be aggressively positive about discovering the South. She bought a red Bama shirt to wear in her vegetable garden and a matching set of houndstooth luggage for her work trips abroad. She even put up a framed photo of Dolly Parton on the kitchen windowsill. It’s a whole thing.
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.
And apparently, she’s going to make Chloe eat some kind of nightmare poultry matryoshka, which is even worse than when she roasted a chicken by shoving a can of Miller Lite up its ass.
“I’m gonna walk across that stage to get my diploma and keep walking until I hit a city with a Trader Joe’s,” Chloe says.
“Hey.” Her mom folds her arms as she peers across the kitchen at her. “Is this normal baseline Chloe curmudgeon behavior, or are you cranky because you miss your mama? Is one mom not good enough for you?”
Chloe shrugs it off, gathering up her purse and keys from the table by the back door under one of her mama’s abstract paintings of boobs. “I’m fine.”
“Or is it whatever has been making you act weird since last week?”
“I’m fine!” Chloe snaps. “You try wearing bikini bottoms as underwear and see how pleasant you are!”
“Okay. But, you know. If you need to talk about anything. Girls, boys, whatever. The end of senior year brings up a lot of emotions for everyone. I know you’re—”
“Bye!” Chloe calls as she breaks for the door. If she slams it fast enough, she’s sure the ghost of Shara can’t follow.
* * *
It takes fifteen minutes to drive to the center of False Beach from Chloe’s house, and absolutely nothing of consequence but a Dairy Queen is passed along the way.
What the locals call “downtown” is a single main street lined with historic redbrick buildings and two-story shops pressed up against one another with iron balconies and Southern small-town charm. It all leads up to a white courthouse, towering with cast-iron pillars and a wide town square at its feet, Civil War era. There used to be some ugly Confederate monument at the square’s center, but two summers ago someone pulled it down in the middle of the night and rolled it into Lake Martin, which is the only cool thing that’s ever happened in False Beach. Last year, the city council held a contest to choose a new town mascot and installed a bronze statue of the winner: a rearing deer with huge antlers named Bucky the Buck.
Chloe takes a left at the square and parks in front of Webster’s Ice Cream right as the bell tower chimes five o’clock in the evening.
Belltower Books, so named because it sits inside the base of the tower, is pretty much the only place in False Beach worth being. It’s small, only two cramped rooms plus a third that requires a climb up a ladder and special permission, with books piled high on every available surface, like the floor, or the shelf above the toilet, or the top of a terrarium containing a fat iguana. Every hour on the hour, the bell in the tower echoes through the walls of the store, rattling all the way down to the front desk, where Georgia’s dad sits in his aviator glasses and listens to The Eagles.
She finds Georgia perched on the top of the ladder with a paperback, the bottom half of her uniform traded for rolled-up gray sweats and Tevas. 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. They even have almost the same short, dark hair, but Chloe has blunt, decisive bangs, while Georgia doesn’t care who sees her forehead.
Georgia is the kind of person who enters a room like she’s stepped inside it a thousand times, knows where everything is, including the exits, and isn’t worried that anything could have possibly changed since the last time she was there. 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. One time, in their creative writing elective, Chloe was assigned to describe a person with one word. She chose Georgia and described her as “sturdy,” like a tree, or a house.
It’s a miracle that someone like Georgia coalesced from the primordial ooze of Alabama. Life would be unbearable without her.
Chloe reaches up and taps twice on the side of Georgia’s ankle. “Whatcha readin’?”
Georgia flashes the cover without looking up from the page: Emma.
“Austen? Again?”
“Look.” Georgia sighs, apparently finished with the passage she was on. She never speaks when she’s mid-passage. “I tried one of those literary contemporaries Val suggested—”
“Please don’t call my mom Val.”
“—and the thing about books these days is, a lot of them are just not that good.”
“And yet you want to write a book these days.”
“The trick is,” Georgia says, shutting her book, “I will simply write a good one.”
“I don’t get the Austen thing with you,” Chloe says as Georgia slips between the rungs of the ladder to the shag rug below. “I always found Emma annoying.”
“The book or the character?”
“The character. The book is fine.”
Georgia leads the way to the front desk, announced by the echoing clangs of the water bottle she always carries as it collides with bookshelves and chairs. Georgia’s mom waves from across the store, headphones on as she does inventory.
“Why is Emma annoying?” Georgia asks.
“Because she’s manipulative,” Chloe says. “I don’t think she really makes up for everything she does to everyone else by the end.”
“The point of the book isn’t for her to make everything right. It’s for her to be interesting,” Georgia says, slipping behind the desk for her things. “And I think she is—she’s this girl trapped in the same place she was born, so bored with what she’s been given that she has to play around with people’s lives to entertain herself. It’s a good character.”
“Sure, okay.”
“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.
“All of them.”
Chloe laughs, eyeing the books behind the counter.
“Anything new in the ol’ CMFC?”
While Georgia rereads Regency classics, Chloe’s favorite stories are the ones where the headstrong young woman on a cinematic journey to master her powers falls for the monster who’s been antagonizing her all along. 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. She affectionately calls it Chloe’s Monster Fucker Collection.
“One,” Georgia says. She plucks a battered paperback off the top of the stack—one of those ’80s high fantasies with a loinclothed, mulleted elf on the cover. Her mama has a million. “Fairy princess on a heroic quest ravished by evil elf mercenary. Straight though.”
Chloe sighs. “Thanks, but I’m maxed out on male villains for the month,” she says.
“Thought so,” Georgia says. She chucks it toward a box of secondhand books to be shelved. “Still on the hunt for the megabitch of your dreams.”
“It doesn’t have to be an evil queen,” she says. “It’s just preferred.”
