I Kissed Shara Wheeler(46)
“You want me to Venmo you?”
“It’s fine.”
“Oh,” Smith says. Rory looks up in time to watch Smith’s smile break out across his face. It’s really something to see, Smith’s smile. It comes out of nowhere and hits like an earthquake, absolute and devastating. “Thanks, man.”
“You’re welcome,” Rory says, blinking like he’s looking into the sun.
“Wow,” Chloe observes. “A friendship reforged.”
Rory’s scowl immediately returns. “Fuck off, Chloe.”
But Smith hums happily as he unwraps the first taco, and the curl of Rory’s lip softens.
Meanwhile, Chloe digs through Shara’s entire Instagram feed yet again for anything she might have missed. She doesn’t find any new leads, only small surprises that amount to nothing. An unfamiliar angle that exposes a birthmark on the top of Shara’s shoulder. A well-camouflaged line from a Mary Oliver poem in a caption. There’s this one photo of Shara sitting next to Summer on a pier, both wearing sunglasses and smiling wide, and when Chloe zooms in, she can see the faint outline of a book in the tan on Shara’s stomach, like she fell asleep reading in the sun. All pieces of the puzzle, but none that complete it.
She checks the Google Doc she sent to Shara’s burner a dozen times a day, but it never changes. Always Chloe’s same three words, awaiting Shara’s answer. The most recent editing date at the top of the page will sometimes change, but no words ever materialize.
Still, she’s gaining ground. She’s got all these clues, these secrets. She knows she’s closing in.
If Shara were an SAT question, she’d be one of those confusing logic puzzles. Critical reasoning with no obvious answers to rule out. Simple, straightforward words arranged in a strange, winding order, something to get lost inside until you realize you’re way behind on time and you’re going to have to bubble in C for the last four problems.
If Shara leaves town on the highway traveling west at sixty miles per hour, and Chloe spends the next three weeks chasing after her, at what speed will Shara be traveling when they collide?
* * *
Time never moves correctly during the last few weeks of school, but especially not at the end of senior year. They’re standing before the end of school uniforms and major works data sheets and asking permission to pee, and everything feels exhausted and giddy. The spiritual frequency of the entire senior class is two in the morning at IHOP after the spring musical’s last show.
It seems impossible that Shara was standing across a dance floor in her pink gown only a couple of weekends ago.
By the same messed-up laws of time, it feels like ages since she last saw Georgia outside of school when she drives to Belltower with Starbucks late Saturday afternoon, even though it’s only been a few days.
Georgia’s at the front desk sorting through a box of literary fiction, and she gladly accepts the iced coffee Chloe hands her.
“Anything good this week?” Chloe asks.
“Not unless you’re into marriage dramas about straight white people who can’t stop having affairs,” Georgia says.
“I’m good,” Chloe says. “Let me know if you have any horny monsters though.”
“You know I’m always on horny monster watch for you,” Georgia says. She glances around, making sure they’re alone before she adds, lower, “And lesbians with swords.”
It’s not as simple for Georgia as it is for Chloe, being queer. Georgia isn’t sure how her parents will take it, much less her entire extended Southern Baptist family. The first time she came over to Chloe’s, she stood across the room staring at Chloe’s moms making dinner together for so long that Chloe worried she might be homophobic. It wasn’t until later, when they were on her bedroom floor cutting pictures out of magazines to stick to their notebooks, that Georgia quietly mentioned she’d never seen a married lesbian couple in real life, and Chloe figured out what was going on.
Chloe leans in to help unpack the box.
“Where’ve you been all week?” Georgia asks. “We were supposed to work on the French paper on Thursday.”
Chloe winces. “Crap. Were we?”
“We were,” Georgia says. “I went ahead and wrote the first three pages.”
“I got the last three, then,” Chloe says. “I promise.”
Georgia nods. “Okay.”
“And I promise I’ll make it up to you one day when I’m a hotshot editor and you’re my most prized author and we’re taking the literary world by storm.”
“All right, all right.”
“And I promise to give you more than your share of space in our fridge next year,” Chloe says. “You can store foraged mushrooms to your heart’s content.”
Georgia fusses with the barrette holding back her hair.
“Yeah. Um, there’s actually something I wanted to talk to you about,” Georgia says.
“Hm?”
She glances over Georgia’s shoulder, at the shelves behind her. The Austen section, specifically, where Shara must have stopped a few weeks ago when she came in to buy Emma.
Wait. Why would Shara come here, of all places, to buy a book?
“I’ve been—um, what are you doing?” Georgia calls after her, but Chloe’s already across the room and at the shelf, opening an illustrated edition of Pride & Prejudice. She should have ransacked the whole Austen selection as soon as Georgia told her the story.