I Kissed Shara Wheeler(32)
Records—? Oh, of course. Why didn’t she think of that? She’s only sat on the other side of the desk having her own file waved threateningly in her face approximately one billion times.
“Wheeler’s office,” Chloe concludes. “She meant his student records. Wait, are you saying you want to break into the admin offices?”
Smith holds up both hands, calloused palms out. “Nooo way. I’m not going anywhere near that.”
“What happened to ‘I’ll do anything to find my girlfriend’?” Chloe asks, cocking a brow.
“I can’t risk getting caught,” Smith says, and he adds, as if anyone has ever forgotten that Shara got recruited by Harvard and Smith got recruited by Texas A&M, “I signed with A&M, Chloe.”
“Isn’t that kind of an insurance policy though? Like, I don’t know anything about football, but I’m pretty sure Wheeler can’t put a famous quarterback in the Willowgrove recruitment brochures if he expels you before you get to start.”
Smith shakes his head. “It’s bigger than that. You know I already have my own page on the ESPN website? I’m gonna get an article written about me if I breathe wrong. It’s a miracle they haven’t found out about Shara, and I’m not about to push it.”
“Okay, fine,” Chloe concedes, “so what are you saying? You want me to do it?”
“Um,” says Mackenzie’s too-friendly voice beside her. “I was gonna sit there.”
Chloe looks up and realizes, to her horror, that they’ve moved into the pews, and she’s trapped in the middle of the Shara crowd. Mackenzie’s smiling that fake smile, but she doesn’t sell it the way Shara does. She has shark eyes.
Chloe glances toward the last pews, where Georgia is sitting wild-eyed between Ash and Benjy, looking ready to mount a Navy SEAL extraction mission.
“I don’t want to be here either,” Chloe tells Mackenzie.
“Then, um, leave?”
“I—”
“Shhhh.”
It’s Emma Grace this time, shushing her from three seats down. Chloe doesn’t know when the praise band wrapped up, but suddenly she, Smith, and Mackenzie are the last three people standing in the entire sanctuary. At the altar, Principal Wheeler has stepped behind the microphone.
“Ms. Green, can you please sit down and be respectful, sweetheart?” he says into the mic. A ripple of giggles breaks out, and Chloe feels her face flush. She wants to shout that Smith and Mackenzie were standing too, but they’ve already sunk into their seats. She drops down between them and slumps low enough for her face to disappear.
“Good morning, everyone,” Wheeler says. He takes the mic off the stand and paces across the stage in that way he likes to do, like he’s a cool, casual dude talking about super relatable topics for teens. “I wanted to say a few quick words before we pray today. I want to remind y’all what the Bible tells us about gossiping. We’re all tempted every day to talk about each other, but Ephesians 4:29 says, ‘Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.’”
On the projection screen above the altar, the Bible verse pops up in white letters on a blue PowerPoint slide. She remembers the note he jotted down in his office last week when she saw the card in his files. Sermon on gossip. Of course this was coming.
“I’ve been hearing that a lot of you have been gossiping about a member of the senior class who happens to be my daughter,” he goes on, immediately sucking all the air out of the sanctuary like a caught trout getting vacuum sealed for the freezer. “In fact, one of you took it upon yourself to personally ask me about it.”
Smith’s chin twitches, and Chloe sinks even lower until she’s eye level with the hymnal tucked into the back of the next pew.
She stares at the hymnal. The hymnal stares back.
The only days she likes Bible class are “spiritual devotion” days, when they get to go to the sanctuary and do free-range contemplation on God. She usually spends the hour crawling under pews with her friends, sharing vending machine snacks and hushed laughter. One of those days, about a month ago, Chloe left her favorite pen behind and had to sneak in between classes to retrieve it, only to find Shara.
The overhead lights were off, so the afternoon sun fell across the sanctuary in slashes through the tall, thin windows, and there Shara was, halfway illuminated in one. Even from the other side of the church, Chloe recognized her by her delicate quarter profile and the way her blond hair fanned behind her shoulders. She was by herself, her fingers resting on the spine of a hymnal in the next pew, and her head was bowed like she was praying.
Chloe left without her pen. She didn’t want to be alone in a room with Shara and God.
“I know you’re all very curious,” Principal Wheeler goes on. “When you care about someone, and they’re part of your community and your fellowship, it’s natural to worry about them. But it’s never okay to spread rumors, or to tell lies about another person. And if the Lord is calling someone to be somewhere else for a time, that’s nobody else’s business. All right?”
Chloe counts the rows quickly—it’s the same pew. The hymnal might be the same hymnal Shara touched that day.
Wasn’t it suspicious, actually, that Shara was in the sanctuary by herself? Praying in public is basically a competitive sport at Willowgrove—why would she be sneaking around to do it, unless she had something to hide?