I Kissed Shara Wheeler(36)

“How is she, by the way? I heard she’s off taking care of her sick aunt. That’s our Shara, isn’t it?”

“Uh-huh,” Smith says. “Got your keys? Great, let’s go.”

The doors close, and half a second later, Chloe can barely make out the click of the automatic lock.

“Was that incredibly convenient timing,” Chloe says, squinting at Rory in the dark as he clambers off of her, “or did you tell him what we were doing?”

“I may have stopped by his locker after seventh hour and mentioned that some of us were actually going to be trying to find his girlfriend after school today.”

“You know what,” Chloe says, “it worked out for me, so, can’t complain.”

They take stock of their surroundings: the tunnels extending in different directions, the specks of light from vents, the low whoosh of air.

“Do you hear that?” Rory asks.

Chloe listens: a muffled, faint sound of music playing, echoing down the ducts to their left.

“Sounds like it’s coming from the admin office.”

“No,” Rory says, pointing right, “the office is that way.”

“No, that way is the chem lab.” She points left. “This way is the office.”

“But—but we’re—it’s—”

She points more emphatically. “That way.”

Rory grumbles but crawls to the left, and Chloe follows. After about ten feet, the duct splits off to the right, and Rory takes the fork and keeps crawling toward the noise. Another few yards, and he reaches another vent and peeks through it.

“We’re over the hall,” he says, his quiet voice reverberating back to her. “You were right. The office should be straight ahead.”

“Told you.”

“Shut up,” Rory says. The music’s getting louder the farther they crawl. “That sounds like—”

… straight up, what did you hope to learn about here …

“It’s Matchbox Twenty,” Chloe confirms. Someone is in the admin offices, burning the midnight oil to the greatest of late ’90s top-40 rock. As long as Wheeler’s office door is shut, they shouldn’t have a problem. “Keep going.”

After what feels like days dragging herself along sheet metal on her stomach, trying to keep her shoes from banging around and pretending nothing small and leggy could possibly crawl up her skirt, listening to the distant music switch from Matchbox Twenty to Hootie & the Blowfish, they take a left into another duct and reach the next vent. Rory checks it.

“Admin reception. Almost there.”

The closer they get, the more details Chloe adds to her fantasy of dropping into Wheeler’s office like a jewel thief, somersaulting through lasers, maybe having a French accent. She wonders if Shara has any idea how far Chloe would go to beat her. Maybe that’s why Shara hid a card here in the first place—to see if Chloe had the brains and the nerve to find a way.

Nice try, Shara. If there’s one thing Chloe’s good at, it’s tests.

“Fuck,” Rory curses suddenly.

“What?”

“Shhhhh.”

He’s peering down through the vent. It sounds like they’re right over the source of the music.

Rory scrubs a dusty hand over his face and whispers, “Well, the good news is, we found the right vent.”

“It’s Wheeler, isn’t it?” Chloe guesses. “He’s working late.”

“Yeah.” Hootie & the Blowfish fades out, and they both hold their breath until Matchbox Twenty picks back up. It’s really not a very creative playlist. “At least we have a sound buffer.”

“God, why is he still here? What is he doing? There’s no way his job is that hard. All he does is cut the arts budget and misinterpret the Bible. How many hours can that possibly take?”

Gingerly, Rory wriggles his phone out of his back pocket and starts a call. “April. We— Yeah, the ducts are everything we thought they would be. Yeah, it’s just like Die Hard. Yeah—uh, but you guys are gonna have to chill in the car. It might be a while.”



* * *



“Hey, Chloe,” Rory says. “Wanna see something cool?”

It’s been two and a half hours. One-hundred and fifty minutes of lying in a dusty air duct over the administrative offices, listening to the Spin Doctors. Chloe texted her moms that she’d be out late studying with Georgia, but she probably should have sent them her final farewell, because she’s definitely going to die here.

They’ve scooted back far enough in the duct system to find an intersection where they could lie head-to-head instead of feet-to-face, suffering in silence under the glow of Rory’s phone flashlight.

“Rory, if you show me that dead mouse again, I swear to God I’m gonna make you eat it.”

“Not that,” Rory says. “This.”

He puts his thumb and forefinger inside his nose, and for one hideous second she thinks he’s about to show her something his sinus cavity created, until a shiny piece of silver catches the light from his phone. He’s flipped down a hidden septum barbell.

“You have a secret nose piercing?”

“I told you it was cool,” he says. “April did it.”