I Kissed Shara Wheeler(38)

She does kind of understand what he means. If Willowgrove is the whole world, and every person in it sees themself as the main character of their own story, and Shara is the mandatory leading girl, she’s either the love interest or the antagonist. Chloe made her choice. Rory made his.

“But then,” Rory goes on, “I got my braces off, and I realized I could use a tape recorder to keep track of my songs, and my face finally figured its shit out, and I made a couple friends, so I got over it. Or thought I did. Until this one night, when Smith pulled up to Shara’s house with her in the passenger seat. I wasn’t trying to look. I was sitting at my desk, working on a song. But that little ceiling light in his car caught my eye, and when I looked, it was like they were inside a snow globe or something. And they kissed, and I—it felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. And it all came back.”

For some reason, she’s reminded of her first memory of Shara and Smith together: a pile of carnations on the lab table, Shara holding one to the tip of her nose and breathing in deep while Chloe tried to finish the experiment on her own.

“Is that what you write songs about?” Chloe asks. “Shara?”

“Sometimes,” Rory admits in a low voice. “Sometimes they’re about like, being jealous or sad or afraid something’s wrong with you. Or whatever.”

Chloe never really thought Rory was that serious about music, because he doesn’t act very serious about anything, but the lilt of his voice when he talks about songwriting reminds her of Benjy talking about a new piece he’s learned. Maybe she should introduce them sometime.

“That sounds cool,” she says.

Rory smiles softly, shyly. Chloe smiles back.

She thinks of what he said about his dad and remembers the bulletin board in his room.

“You and your dad,” she says. “You’re close?”

“Yeah,” Rory says, still smiling. “He’s really fucking cool. He’s a museum curator.”

“Why didn’t you just go with him when he moved?”

“My parents were afraid my grades would get even worse if I switched schools. So Mom got school months and Dad got summers.”

“That must have been hard.”

“Yeah, well,” Rory says. “Life sucks sometimes.”

She tries to transpose awkward middle school Rory over the one she knows. Must have been one hell of a shock for Smith when his ex–best friend showed up hot on the first day of freshman year—

The music from Wheeler’s office cuts out.

They listen to the muffled noises below: a pause, then a door opening and closing, then another farther away. Ten seconds. Twenty seconds. Nothing.

“I think he left,” Chloe whispers.

“Move it, Green,” Rory says, and he takes off down the duct.

Over Wheeler’s office, Rory pulls the vent up and lowers himself out feetfirst, narrowly avoiding the keyboard and papers as he drops onto the desk. Wheeler’s left the overhead light off, but the desk lamp is still on, so Chloe has to squint to see where to land when she jumps down behind him.

They split up, Chloe pacing the perimeter of the office while Rory opens each drawer of the desk. Chloe recites the clue in her head: The key is there, where I am.

Where isn’t Shara? Even in Chloe’s first visits here, the Shara of it all was suffocating, like a Bath & Body Works candle in a sickly sweet scent that someone left burning too long. She’d sit in the chair opposite the desk getting lectured and wonder, is this where Shara hides between the final bell and National Honor Society? When Shara was a kid, did she crawl under her dad’s desk, absorbing the essence of Willowgrove through the gray carpet? This is another episode of, Has Shara picked up that book? Touched that stapler? Printed a major works data sheet on that printer?

She’s checking the bookshelf when she notices, wedged between two different memoirs of Republican senators, something pink.

It’s not with the records, but it’s definitely one of Shara’s cards.

She glances over her shoulder—Rory’s occupied with the contents of the desk drawers.

She can have this one to herself for a second. Just her and Shara.

She slides it out.

Mom & Dad,

I’m fine. If you want to find me, I’m sure you can.

S

This must be the card Chloe saw that morning she got herself called in. One line. Two sentences, twelve words. That’s all Shara left for her parents. If it were Chloe, she’d get about fifteen minutes out before her moms pulled up in the truck and dragged her to Webster’s for sundaes and group therapy.

She slips the card back into its spot on the shelf and turns to the desk, where Rory is checking under the blotter.

“Anything?” Chloe asks him.

“No key,” Rory says.

And then Chloe’s eyes land on the picture.

The framed photo of Shara and her parents on their sailboat, the one that’s always bothered her because it faces out, for the benefit of visitors instead of the actual dad sitting at the desk.

Where I am.

Chloe snatches up the frame and flips it around, and there it is: a small key, taped to the back of the frame, under the hinge of the stand so it’s invisible from the desk chair. Shara hid it right in front of her dad’s face.

“I got it.”