I Kissed Shara Wheeler(31)

“Okay, tomorrow?”

“Yeah, definitely,” Chloe says. “Loveyoubye.”

She hangs up and copies the URL for the doc, pastes it into a blank email, puts the burner account into the address field, and hits send.

She imagines Shara getting that ping on her phone. Maybe she’s in a hotel with a stolen credit card, bundled up in a fuzzy white robe with a fake ID and cash fanned out on the nightstand, skimming her lips on the rim of a champagne flute. Maybe she’s locked away in some cabin in the woods, thumbing through her copy of Emma. Maybe she’s on a beach in Gulf Shores getting her toes licked by a college sophomore named Brayden.

Wherever she is, she’ll see the notification. And then she’ll open the email and see the link. And then she’ll click on the link, and she’ll see the document Chloe created and the three words typed at the top of the page.

Where are you?





FROM THE BURN PILE


Lab report in Chloe’s AP Chem binder Chloe Green & Shara Wheeler

Mr. Rowley

4th Hour

11/2/20

Acid-Base Titration

Objective: The purpose of the lab is to calculate the concentration of NaOH using a titration with 10 mL of 1.5M HCl.

Procedure: First, we added 50 mL of an unknown concentration of NaOH to the buret and recorded the starting volume for NaOH. Then, Shara told me to add 10 mL of 1.5M HCl to the Erlenmeyer flask because I’m her lab assistant apparently. Then she told me I was doing it wrong. I suggested she do it herself if she cares so much. She inquired as to why I was getting “so defensive.” (It should be noted that she was not wearing her hair back per lab rules. While this was not an issue for this particular lab, it is a liability and a distraction, and the rules apply to EVERYONE. I always wear my safety goggles.) Next, I added 2–3 drops of phenolphthalein to HCl.





9


DAYS SINCE SHARA LEFT: 9

DAYS UNTIL GRADUATION: 34


Of all the weird parts of life at Willowgrove, chapel day was the hardest for Chloe to get used to.

Once a week, classes shift to an abbreviated schedule to make room for a compulsory hour-long service in the sanctuary on campus. Usually it happens on Wednesdays, but since they also have part of this week off for Easter, it’s a special Monday chapel day.

There’s a praise band of Willowgrove upperclassmen plodding through Christian rock songs, then a sermon, usually led by a teacher or Principal Wheeler himself. Sometimes a student will be moved by the Spirit to do a shaky fifteen-minute personal testimony at the microphone, like the time Emma Grace Baker explained that her diabetes has brought her closer to Jesus.

Before Willowgrove, the closest Chloe had ever been to church was listening to her mama practice Mozart, and chapel day has made sure she won’t ever be back. Sermons have ranged from “Halloween is Satanic” to “a sophomore sent her boyfriend nudes and he forwarded them to all his friends, so now we are going to do a very shame-y talk on modesty and then next week she’s going to switch schools while her boyfriend experiences exactly zero consequences.” Once, the Spanish teacher got up with an easel pad, drew a diagram of two stick men on a deserted island, and told them the fact that humanity would go extinct on that island was proof God doesn’t want anyone to be gay. Occasionally, the school hires actors to do a skit about bullying.

Chloe turns to Georgia as they file into the sanctuary.

“What do you think it’s gonna be this week?” Chloe asks her.

“Probably something festive, like a table read of the Passion of the Christ,” she says. She’s fidgeting with her hair, pinning it behind her ear.

“Remember last year when they had that cop come and try to scare us about drugs, but he ended up telling us exactly how many ounces of weed you can carry without getting arrested?”

“Iconic.”

“Hey, Chloe,” says a voice, “can I talk to you real quick?”

When she turns, it’s Smith who has found his way to her in the crowd. He’s wearing his letterman jacket, and Chloe almost has to admire his commitment to jock flexing. It’s eighty degrees outside.

Georgia eyes him under a skeptical brow, then Chloe, then the letterman jacket, then Chloe again. Isengard?

Chloe shakes her head.

“Be right back,” she tells Georgia, and she slips into the current with Smith.

“Is this about the party?” she asks once they’re out of Georgia’s earshot. “I promise I won’t tell your friends you secretly hate them.”

“I don’t hate most of my friends,” Smith clarifies. “But that’s not what I was gonna say.”

“Oh my God, hi, Chloe,” Mackenzie Harris says. Smith has been absorbed into the popular-seniors pocket of the crowd, and Chloe’s along for the ride like an unfortunate barnacle. “You look really pretty today. Is your makeup different?”

She punctuates the question by turning to Emma Grace and exchanging a raised-eyebrow, too-big smile, the kind of popular girl move that immediately gets Chloe’s skin crawling.

“Anyway,” she says to Smith, who manages to look somewhat apologetic. “You were saying?”

Smith leans down, closing enough of their height gap that he can lower his voice.

“I was reading Shara’s note again last night, and it hit me that maybe we’re thinking about the wrong kind of records. What’s another place that Rory has records, that Shara would have a key to?”