I Kissed Shara Wheeler(15)

“Uh-huh,” Georgia hums.

“I—” Benjy starts, but he cuts himself off. A black Jeep has parked three spots down, and Benjy tries to turn a glare into a polite smile as Ace Torres climbs out. Ace spots them and offers his trademark shit-eating grin.

“Hey, Benjy!” he says with a wave. “Chloe, Jessica.”

He lumbers cheerfully off toward the courtyard where the jocks congregate before school, whistling to himself.

“Three months,” Georgia says, gesturing with her water bottle, which clangs against Benjy’s headlight. “For three entire months, I was stage manager and he was Phantom, and he still can’t bother to learn my name.”

Benjy releases a sigh like the bearer of a centuries-old feud. “What do you think goes on in that head?”

“I always picture a cute little hamster running on a wheel,” Chloe says.

“But it’s wearing an itty-bitty letterman jacket,” Benjy adds.

Georgia asks, “What did the hamster letter in?”

“Javelin,” Benjy says. “I’m surprised he remembers my name. God forbid people think we’re friends.”

“Do you want to be friends with Ace Torres?”

“No,” Benjy says haughtily. “I’m just saying; it’s one thing to steal a role that doesn’t belong to you”—here, he pauses to emphasize that he’s the one who deserved the role—“and it’s something else to steal it and then act like it never happened.”

Chloe watches as Ace enters the courtyard and pulls Smith into one of those bizarre, sideways bro-hugs. Because of course Ace’s best friend is Smith Parker, which means Smith came to the matinee performance of Phantom last month, which means he brought Shara, which means Chloe had to do an entire show pretending not to notice Shara front and center with her judgy face and shiny hair and—

She doesn’t realize how hard she’s squeezing her matcha until the lid pops off.

The bell rings, and Chloe shrugs off another look from Georgia and leads the way to B Building. They split at the double doors—Georgia’s first hour is calculus, Benjy’s is history—and Chloe heads straight down the hall to Mrs. Farley’s AP Lit classroom.

By the girls’ bathroom, Mrs. Sherman is at her usual post, permed and scrutinizing passing students like the Eye of Sauron but with clumpy mascara. Chloe waves with the tips of her fingers as she passes, making sure Mrs. Sherman gets a good, long look at her nonregulation black nail polish. That should do it.

In her seat, second row center, she pulls out her binder and sets it on the smooth, cool surface, then lays out all three of the novels they’ve been discussing, one on top of the other so their spines form a pleasing column. Almost enough to distract from Shara’s empty seat in front of hers.

Every morning of the past year, she’s deliberately beaten Shara to Mrs. Farley’s class. She figured out early on that English is Shara’s best subject, which means every bit of extra credit counts. If she can get an additional 0.5 percent participation grade from being two minutes earlier, she’s going to. She is not repeating the junior year travesty of losing her lead in Ms. Rodkey’s class by a single point.

And because she’s always in her seat before Shara, she always has to watch what happens when Shara enters a room.

There’s this stupid thing that people always say about girls in murder documentaries. She lit up a room when she walked in. Chloe used to think it was what people said to make someone sound better when they felt bad about what happened to them, or maybe a trick of the brain, a misinterpretation of the glow a person takes on in your memory once they’re gone.

But then she met Shara, who glides into every room like she’s on a parade float, beaming and waving and tossing her hair. Every morning, Shara walks into Mrs. Farley’s class, and every morning, people stop what they’re doing to see what shade of lip gloss she’s wearing that day. It’s the same whispery feeling that fills a room when a teacher announces it’s movie day, and every time it happens, Chloe feels like the only one who’d rather be talking about last night’s homework than watching The Crucible.

Today, though, the seat in front of hers never fills.



* * *



With five minutes to go in the period, she checks the clock over the whiteboard, then shuts her binder and packs it up.

To her left, Brooklyn Bennett leans over and whispers, “What are you doing?”

Nobody loves rules like Brooklyn, student body president, head of the debate team and Model UN, editor in chief of the yearbook—basically a list of extracurriculars with a skirt on. Chloe has to admire her fanatical tunnel vision, but if she’s high-strung, Brooklyn Bennett is a $20,000 viola.

“Chill, Brooklyn,” Chloe whispers back. “I’m getting out early.”

“Why?”

“You’ll see,” Chloe says. “Any minute now—”

Right on cue, the intercom sounds.

“Chloe Green, please come to the office. Chloe Green to the office, please.”

Brooklyn stares at her. Chloe shrugs, picks up her bag, and waves goodbye to Mrs. Farley.

It’s gone like this once a week since sophomore year: She gets dress coded and winds up in Principal Wheeler’s office getting lectured on the importance of “respecting guidelines set in place to minimize distractions in the classroom” by the end of first hour.