I Kissed Shara Wheeler(41)

iii.??April Butcher is asked to leave the meeting by Secretary Bailey Hunt

iv.???April Butcher eats half of the sandwich President Brooklyn Bennett’s packed for lunch

v.????April Butcher is removed from the meeting





11


DAYS SINCE SHARA LEFT: 16

DAYS UNTIL GRADUATION: 27


Monday afternoon, Chloe is sitting on the floor of the choir room, tapping the eraser of a No. 2 pencil against a sheet music study guide. It feels ridiculous to be transcribing quarter notes into block letters when everyone in the room has been sight-reading since sophomore year. Everyone in Mr. Truman’s sixth hour, Girls Select Chorus, knows that the final exam is a technicality.

“Y’all know if they would let me count the spring festivals for the grade, I would,” Mr. Truman tells them.

She’s not thinking about sheet music though. She’s thinking about the note in Rory’s file, the postscript at the end. Take your heart back.

The reference is easy. Her brain filled in the rest of the lyric as soon as she got home: When you find that once again you long to take your heart back and be free …

“Think of Me” was her big solo in Phantom; she’ll probably have every line seared into her brain until she’s dead.

But she can’t figure out why Shara would specifically use that song as a reference unless there’s something more to it. Like maybe Andrew Lloyd Webber’s birthday corresponds to her coordinates. Or she’s starting a new life with a man named Raoul. Or she left to get a nose job and is recuperating in a subterranean labyrinth beneath an opera house in France.

She thinks about junior year, when she was Sonia in Godspell. At least there weren’t any football players in that cast, so she didn’t have to see Shara’s face while she was doing a G-rated burlesque act about the teachings of Jesus. When she’s on stage, she’s always thankful the spotlight’s too bright to see the audience beyond the first row.

Up close, with the light in your eyes, all you can see is what’s right in front of you.

She drops her pencil.

The front row of the auditorium. Where Shara sat to watch Chloe in Phantom.

Mr. Truman shrugs when she asks to go to the bathroom, and she books it toward C Building instead. Rory is easy to find—she’s learned that he usually skulks around the back staircase for his study hall hour—and she fires off her theory.

Rory nods. “We should probably get Smith for this.”

“I don’t know where he is for sixth hour,” Chloe says. “God, the fact that they don’t let us have phones—”

“Spanish,” Rory says.

“What?”

“Smith’s in Spanish right now.”

Chloe squints at him. Rory squints back. The speed with which he recited Smith’s schedule goes unaddressed but not unnoticed.

“Can you get him?” Chloe asks.

Rory heads off with a fake story about Smith being needed in the principal’s office and returns with him in tow, as well as—

“Why is Ace with you?” Chloe asks, eyes narrowed. Ace smiles.

“We ran into him in the hall on the way here,” Smith says, sounding only slightly annoyed.

“If y’all are skipping, I want in,” Ace says.

Chloe sighs. If Rory’s friends are involved, she guesses Smith’s might as well be too. She wonders, momentarily, if she should have just told Georgia, instead of lying about an overdue book to get the library key, or if Benjy could understand this elaborate Shara production better than Chloe if he got the chance—

No, Rory’s and Smith’s friends don’t count. It doesn’t matter if they know, because they think she’s weird anyway. Her friends will clock how far off the rails she’s going, and that’ll make everything even more complicated.

“I don’t even care anymore,” she says, and takes off for the auditorium.

Inside, Smith leads them to the front, where he and Shara sat for the matinee, and the three of them split up. Rory climbs onto the stage and inspects the bottom of the curtain while Chloe folds down the first row of seats one by one, but it’s Smith who finds the envelope stuck with a magnet to the metal leg of seat A21.

They all gather around—except for Ace, who stopped at the entrance for a Powerade from the vending machine—as Smith opens the envelope. This note is a long one. They’ve been getting longer and longer, Shara’s handwriting on the cards shrinking smaller and smaller. Smith reads out loud.

Hi,

Me again. Not sure which of you is reading this, but I’m sure all of you will at some point. Good job with the song lyric, Chloe, since I know that was you.

Smith, you sat right there, one seat over, rolling your program up in your hands because you were so nervous for Ace. You told me you didn’ t think he could do it, that you’d never heard him sing before. You were afraid he was going to humiliate himself in front of the entire school, and then your jaw dropped when he sang his first line. I really do admire that about you—the way you root for other people. You didn’ t know that I already knew he could sing, that he told me his mom raised him on Stephen Sondheim soundtracks. You didn’ t know that’s the reason Summer doesn’ t talk to me anymore—because she caught us.

Chloe, I remember your dress. God, they put you in that nightmare of a frilly white costume gown, more a robe than anything, absolutely hideous, tied at the waist. You should sue. You looked straight into the spotlight. You were avoiding my eyes, weren’ t you? Do you remember dropping the beginning of a line? (Don’ t worry, I don’ t think anyone else noticed.) You must have spent so many hours perfecting the delivery, internalizing the rhythm, and I felt it skip right on past you and your open mouth. You missed a cue by about a second and a half. I squeezed the armrest so I wouldn’ t smile.