I Kissed Shara Wheeler(19)

“Not technically missing,” Ash points out.

“Not technically my favorites,” Mr. Truman says. “I don’t have those.”

“Uh-huh,” Benjy says. “That’s why I taught half the sectionals last semester, for free. Because you hate me.”

“That’s called field experience; it’s for your college applications,” Mr. Truman clarifies. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to go plead my case to the administration for the fifteenth time this month to hire someone to fix the piano.”

“I told you, it’s the strings,” Benjy says.

“I know, but someone lost the key to the lid lock, so I also have to convince them to hire a locksmith.”

“Okay, first of all, I did not lose the key. It went missing from your office,” Benjy says. “Second of all, I told you that installing a padlock on a piano was barbaric and you didn’t listen.”

“I wouldn’t have had to put a padlock on it if y’all would stop opening it up when I’m not looking.”

“That also was not me,” Benjy points out.

“All right, well,” Mr. Truman concludes. “Wish me luck.”

He heads for the door, but pauses at the risers, examining Ash’s sketchpad.

“That’s … huh.” He tilts his head sideways. “Did you make Benjy’s head—?”

“A fried egg?” Ash says. They nod serenely. “Yeah. Isn’t it cool?”

“You’re a visionary,” Mr. Truman says, hand over heart, and then he’s out the door.

“You drew me as an egg?” Benjy demands, dropping his leg so fast that Chloe narrowly avoids a roundhouse kick to the nose. “I thought this was figure drawing.”

“It is,” Ash insists. They flip their sketchbook around to show their work, which is a gorgeously detailed study of the human form topped off with a sunny-side-up egg where Benjy’s head should be. “It’s my interpretation of figure drawing.”

“I’m not posing for you anymore.”

“I already drew you.”

“Well, erase it.”

“No, I like it,” Ash says simply. “It’s my art. I don’t make you un-choreograph your Nicki Minaj songs.”

“Hard to argue with that one,” Chloe notes, and Benjy sighs hugely and retreats to the piano bench.

“Benjy,” Georgia says. “Play us a song.”

It works; Benjy’s scowl immediately transforms into a smile. There’s probably not a single thing Benjy loves more than someone asking him to play a song.

Back when they still had spring musical rehearsals, a handful of them would hang back afterward and Benjy would take requests. Chloe would sing along, then a junior in a supporting role would pick out a harmony, and eventually some strange quiet freshman would join in. It usually lasted fifteen minutes before Mr. Truman sent them home, but sometimes it would feel like hours on the tile floor with her back against Georgia’s back and her head tilted on Georgia’s shoulder so she could project her voice to the ceiling.

She smiles, the memory replacing Shara’s mysterious whereabouts and suspiciously healthy cuticles in her mind. Ash puts down their sketchbook and joins Benjy on the piano bench. It’s always funny to see them next to each other, because they have almost the exact same mullet-y haircut, one ginger, one brown. If the dress code allowed, they’d probably have given each other undercuts by now.

“There it is,” Benjy says, backtracking over the last few keys with his left hand. One of them brings a mysterious noise with it, like an angry little bee somewhere inside the piano, the one Mr. Truman was complaining about.

He twiddles with a few keys around the middle of the keyboard, searching for the faint buzz again, but what Chloe hears is one familiar note out of the jumble. What is it about that note?

Somewhere you go almost every day.

Keeping your vows.

Hiding in the brakes.

Wait.

Wedding vows.

I’ll run from thee and hide me in the brakes. That’s a line from A Midsummer’s Night Dream, and Midsummer is where the wedding march comes from, not the here-comes-the-bride one but the other one, and Shara mentioned vows—

“Benjy,” Chloe says. “Do you know the wedding march?”

“I have played all of my straight cousins’ weddings,” Benjy says wearily, “so, yes.”

“Play the first note.”

He does—that solid, resounding middle C—and Chloe hears it. The vibration of one of the interior strings against something flimsy, like paper.

“Huh,” she says. She does not fly across the room and rip the top off the piano and fling it out of the way like Smith throwing a touchdown pass, but she very, very badly wants to. In her head, she is punching the entire thing apart with her bare hands. In reality, she purses her lips and says, “That’s weird.”

If she’s right, and the thing inside the piano is what she thinks—Jesus, Mr. Truman said it’s been acting up since last month. That would mean Shara’s been crawling around leaving clues for weeks. Who is this girl?

When the bell rings for the end of lunch, she waves her friends off the way she always does to hang back for her sixth hour, Girls Select Chorus. As soon as the door shuts behind them, before Mr. Truman or any of her classmates come straggling in from lunch, she crosses to the upright piano.