I Kissed Shara Wheeler(22)
Every person she passes stops what they’re doing to watch her walk by. She straightens her shoulders and stares ahead, same as when she stood on stage in front of the whole school and put her heart into singing “Think of Me.” Eyes up, chin out, pretend that nobody is taking out their phone to do a mean Snapchat story about it.
“Chloe Green!” someone yells, and God, she hopes it’s Smith. She whips her head around—
Nope, it’s Ace Torres, shaggy dark hair dripping chlorine everywhere and that disconcertingly wide grin. Her jaw clenches automatically.
He reaches her in two enormous strides, looming like a wet bear with a slice of pizza. “Chloe! You’re here! That’s so crazy!”
Technically, Ace is harmless, and she wouldn’t have any reason to hate him more than the average meathead Willowgrove boy if he hadn’t imposed upon the most important spring musical of her high school career. She always thought Mr. Truman was above stunt-casting a football bro, but he practically had a stroke when Ace managed to sing four bars at tryouts.
“Yeah, I’m as surprised as you are,” she says, dodging a drop of pool water.
Ace laughs. “Dude, I miss seeing you guys at rehearsal.”
“You could still hang out with us,” Chloe points out.
“I kinda get the feeling you don’t actually want that,” Ace says. Chloe blinks at him. “But it’s cool! You’re here now! Dope! Are you here with somebody?”
There’s no easy answer to that, but she goes with, “Smith invited me.”
“That’s what’s up,” Ace says. “He needs more friends!”
She glances around the party, which seems to include more than a quarter of their grade and sizable delegations of the sophomore and junior classes. There are so many bodies in the pool, it’s impossible to tell where one naked trapezius ends and another begins. “Is this not enough friends?”
Before Ace can answer, he catches sight of someone over her shoulder. “Hey, Smith, look who’s here!”
And there’s Smith, emerging from the snack table. As soon as his eyes land on Chloe’s face, they dart guiltily to his pocket, where his phone must be.
“Hey, Chloe, uh, glad—glad you made it,” Smith says.
She sighs, not wasting any more time. “Hi. Can you show me where to get some water?” She glares at him pointedly until he takes the hint.
“Oh, uh, yeah, it’s right inside, over here,” he says, turning to lead her toward the house.
“Bye, Chloe!” Ace calls after them. “Don’t leave before upside-down margaritas!”
“What in the name of God is an upside-down margarita,” Chloe hisses at Smith as he opens one of the massive French doors.
“You don’t want to know.”
There’s nobody inside except for a couple of juniors making out on a couch, and Smith sidesteps them neatly and leads her into the kitchen.
“Holy shitballs,” Chloe swears when she steps into it. The marble island is nearly the length of her entire bedroom at home. The stainless steel refrigerator looks like it could fit a human body. Maybe two.
“Yeah.” Smith adds in a rush, “Look, I’m sorry I missed your text. I was talking to Summer about the whole Shara thing, and they used to be best friends until they had some weird falling-out this year that they both refuse to tell me anything about, and it’s all—”
“It’s fine,” Chloe interrupts. “Tell me where I’m supposed to be looking.”
Smith leans on one of the six leather barstools lining the island, thinking. The more time she spends with him, the more she notices that he doesn’t carry himself like all the other football players out in the yard. He’s big, but he’s graceful. He doesn’t walk from room to room as much as he flows through them.
He’s wearing a Willowgrove football T-shirt with the sleeves torn off and a pair of swim trunks patterned with little pink flamingos. She spares exactly one second to find them charming.
“So,” he says, “I was with her the whole time we were here for prom photos, except when she went to the bathroom.”
“Where’s the bathroom?”
Smith pulls a face. “I think there are five of them. Six if you count the one in the pool house. So, she could have passed through pretty much any part of the house to get to one.”
Chloe groans. “I’m really getting sick of these country club mansions.”
“I know,” Smith agrees.
They split up—Smith takes the pool house and the finished basement, leaving Chloe the first and second floor. She works her way across the ground floor first, through spare rooms and game rooms and rooms that seem to have no use except adding square footage to the already astronomical square footage. She stumbles across what appears to be a man cave, the kind she and her moms heckle on HGTV—just a huge room full of nothing but a massive TV and a lot of tacky Bama decor.
On the second floor, she finds Dixon’s room, which is a study in the worst of teenage boyhood. Chloe likes boys and their defined jawlines and crooked smiles, but the pile of sweaty laundry in the corner makes her want to quit them altogether. She squeezes a test shot of the spray-on deodorant on the dresser and gags. This time next year, Dixon Wells will be cracking open a cold one with the rest of Kappa Sig before his lawyer dad gets them off the hook for some Dateline-worthy hazing. Gross. There’s no way Shara set foot in this room.