I Kissed Shara Wheeler(33)
Something like a little pink card?
They haven’t found any clues that point toward the sanctuary yet, but if they’re already hidden, and she can guess a place one might be, she can take a shortcut off the trail.
She slides the hymnal from the pew and shakes it upside-down—Emma Grace makes a face like she’s kicked a puppy named Jesus down a flight of stairs—but no card falls out.
“I want to remind y’all that here at Willowgrove we have a zero-tolerance policy for bullying, and bullying can come in many forms,” Wheeler says. “And one of them is gossip. So, if you’re going to spread a rumor about someone, think real hard about whether it’s really, really worth it. And then do the right thing.”
After an excruciatingly long pause, Wheeler leads the student body in prayer and then passes the mic to the guest speaker for an unnecessarily grisly lecture on the crucifixion. Smith shifts in his seat, pressing his fist into his chin. Chloe crosses her arms and wishes she were in the back row exchanging harrowed eye contact with Georgia instead of feeling Mackenzie’s bony elbow in her side.
Afterward, Smith grabs her arm before she can make a break for it.
“Ask Rory about the office,” Smith says. “He’s good at stuff like this.”
* * *
When the lunch bell rings, Chloe clears out of French before Georgia is done zipping her backpack and heads in the opposite direction of the choir room.
Willowgrove does have a cafeteria, but most students don’t actually use it. The high schoolers disperse into unofficial designated areas of campus for lunch: freshmen against the brick cafeteria exterior, sophomores on the steps of the sanctuary, juniors in the courtyard, and seniors with the prime real estate of the benches outside C Building.
She passes Smith, perched on the armrest of a bench, surrounded by the same people she was trapped between two hours ago during chapel. Mackenzie turns to Emma Grace and says something behind her hand, and they dissolve into laughter. Chloe glances at Smith, hoping for a lifeline of annoyance.
But Smith’s attention is on something in the distance, and she follows his line of sight to find exactly the person she’s looking for: Rory, pointedly avoiding the rest of the grade by situating himself inside the campus live oak. One good thing about the weird, jealous feud between Rory and Smith: As long as she can find one, she’ll find the other.
The live oak is massive and technically off-limits to students, since its lower branches are perfect for both easy climbing and filing a lawsuit when you break your arm. For what it’s worth, she thinks, Rory does look like a cool rule-breaker lounging up there on a bough.
He’s not alone either. There’s also Jake Stone, the infamous Stone the Stoner, and on the branch above Rory, there’s April Butcher, most often spotted cruising around the parking lot after school on a longboard like girls Chloe used to see at the Santa Monica Pier. The only indication that she cares about anything at all is the fact that she’s on the marching band’s drumline.
“Yo, Chlo,” Rory calls down to her as she approaches.
She squints up at him and the acoustic guitar in his lap. “How’d you get a guitar up there?”
“The tree provides,” April answers for him. She unwraps a Tootsie Roll pop and puts it in her mouth.
“I’m assuming you come bearing Shara news,” Rory says, plucking a melancholic chord.
Chloe stares up at April and Jake, both exuding an air of disaffection that suggests they’d rather be hotboxing Rory’s Beemer right now.
“They know about the Shara thing?”
Rory furrows his brow. “They’re my friends. Of course they know about the Shara thing. Did you not tell your friends about the Shara thing?”
“You’re like,” Jake says from his tree nest like a lightly blazed owl, “taller than I thought you were like, up close.”
“Thanks?” Chloe says, and then she pulls herself up to a low branch and explains Smith’s theory about the clue and the office. “He doesn’t want to help us with this one, though, so it’s just us.”
“Oh.” Rory’s next chord goes unpleasantly flat. He glances up, and Chloe knows he’s looking at Smith, and that Smith is now trying to pretend he was squirrel-watching. “Figures.”
Chloe barrels on. “Can we talk logistics? I’ve spent a lot of time in Wheeler’s office, so I know the layout pretty well.”
“So have I,” Rory points out.
“You—” Right. She forgot she has that in common with Rory. She spares a thought for how much butt warmth they’ve unknowingly shared via Wheeler’s office chair over the years. “Well, I’ve also spent a lot of time at school after hours for rehearsals and club meetings, so I know that—”
“Every door in this school is on a timer and locks automatically at 5 p.m.?” Rory finishes for her. “Yeah, I know.”
“How?”
Rory shrugs. “You ever heard of this thing called loitering?”
“Okay,” Chloe says, “so, then—then you know that there’s no way to get in or out of the building outside of school hours without a key, and there’s no way to get to Wheeler’s office during the day without going through Mrs. Bailey and five other administrators, so basically our options are to get a key or evacuate the entire campus, which seems kind of extreme but I’m not totally against it—”