I Kissed Shara Wheeler(23)

To be honest, it’s not only hard to imagine Shara in Dixon’s room; it’s hard to imagine Shara doing any of this.

The Shara that Chloe has spent four years alongside has always seemed like a passive, quiet thing. You hear stories about her weekends feeding the homeless or tutoring fifth graders or being an eyebrow model in Japan, but you never actually see her do any of it unless she posts a gorgeously composed photo to her 25,000 Instagram followers. She just floats around, never a hair out of place, wearing a uniform skirt that somehow looks shorter on her than everyone else but sits exactly at regulation length. She doesn’t get her hands dirty.

Chloe’s fingers twitch for the silver chain in her bathroom drawer. She’s always suspected there was something wrong with the math of Shara, but she’s never been able to prove what. And considering she can’t even picture Shara here, sneaking around someone else’s house with a fistful of clues and a plan to skip town—she’s never felt further from the answer.

She’s about to find Smith and tell him it’s a bust when she sees it.

On the landing between the first and second floors, tucked behind a stack of books and a fake plant, beneath a stuffed deer head, there’s a pink card.

She snatches it up and rips it open.

Inside, the first thing she finds is a polaroid of Shara and Smith smiling by the pool, the sun setting behind them. Shara’s in her pink prom dress, and Smith looks slightly uncomfortable in his tux but holds on tight to Shara’s hand. Chloe flips it over so she doesn’t have to look at them as she reads the card.

Smith,

I have to tell you something about this picture. I look happy, right? What I was thinking in this moment was, “We’re not going to make it to Graduation .”

P. S. Check the records, Rory. Chloe should know where they are. The key is already there, where I am .

Outside, she slips past the defensive line shotgunning White Claws and toward the pool house. The side door is slightly ajar—Smith must still be in there—and she reaches for the handle—

She tries to take another step, but she can’t. The heel of her boot is stuck, again, this time in a puddle of sucking mud between two of the pavers leading to the door. She tugs, but the ground tugs harder.

This far back in the yard, the sounds of the party are muted enough that she can hear Smith’s voice from within the pool house, and she opens her mouth to abandon her pride and ask him to pull her out of the lawn, but first, another voice speaks.

“… fine,” Chloe makes out. “Don’t worry about it.”

She doesn’t spend much time around people likely to be at a Dixon party, but it’s easy to assign a face to the voice. Summer Collins, softball star and homecoming court member. Pretty, popular, in Chloe’s AP Bio class, the only Black girl in the class of ’22. Her older sister famously came out as a lesbian two years after graduating, and her dad’s rich because he owns the car dealership across the road from Willowgrove.

“Remember eighth grade?” Smith’s voice asks. “When we had to take care of that bag of flour for life sciences?”

“Yeah,” Summer says, “I dropped it out of my mom’s car and exploded our baby all over the driveway the first night I had it.”

“Remember how your mom took us to the store to find the exact brand of flour and replace the bag, and we brought it to class, and I freaked out because I thought everyone could tell—”

“And you narced on us to Mrs. Young? Yeah, how could I forget? We failed. That’s the only time I’ve ever gotten a bad grade on a science project in my life. I was pissed.”

“Do you ever … I don’t know, feel like that sometimes?”

Hell. Chloe drops to one knee and starts clawing at her boot laces, attempting to free herself before she can accidentally hear any revelations about Smith Parker’s internal life.

“Feel like what?” she hears Summer ask. “Pissed at you?”

“No, I mean, like … like you were switched or something, but you look the way you’re supposed to look, and you’re still flour, so why should it feel like you’re wrong?”

“Oh,” Summer says. “Actually—”

With a final heave, Chloe manages to dislodge her foot, but the momentum sends her tumbling forward, through the doorway, and onto the polished concrete floor of the pool house. Right at Summer’s feet.

Summer and Smith both freeze, red Solo cups in hand, staring down at her sprawled out with one shoe on.

“Okay, well,” Chloe says, “someone should really look into the safety standards of this house party. Lawsuit waiting to happen.”

“You good?” Summer asks as Smith extends a hand to help Chloe up. “You shouldn’t drink more than one if it’s your first time.”

“Appreciate it, but I don’t drink,” Chloe says. Smith pulls her to her feet with the full force of his biceps, which almost sends her tumbling all over again, and now she’s embarrassed and motion sick. “Was looking for Smith. Hi, Smith.”

“Hey,” Smith says. He raises his eyebrows unsubtly at her. “Did you find the bathroom?”

“Yeah, I found it,” she says.

Summer looks them over, arches an eyebrow, and shakes her head. “Is there still pizza left?”

“Uh, I think so,” Chloe says.