I Kissed Shara Wheeler(48)

It feels even more intimate than the Shakespeare passage in the piano. Willowgrove is where Shara is—was—every day, but Belltower is Chloe’s. Shara doesn’t have a key. She had to walk through the doorway that Chloe repainted last summer and make polite small talk with Chloe’s best friend.

She thinks about the ends of Shara’s hair brushing her desk in precalc and the flutter of a pulse under her fingers. If Shara was really in control of that play, if that was all it meant to her, why was her heart beating so fast?

The deeper she gets into this, the more she pictures the hours Shara spent on it. On Smith and Rory too, yes, but Chloe’s the one who got a whole letter on loose-leaf paper addressed only to her. There’s no clue leading to or from this one. Her kiss was the one Shara bought brand-new lip gloss for.

The postscripts on the cards always allude to something that only one of the three of them can translate, but when she lines them up next to one another, something doesn’t match. The clues for Smith and Rory usually reference a specific memory, but the clues for Chloe reference art. Not just any art—books found at Belltower, Shakespeare, Phantom. She specifically picked Chloe’s favorite things, wrote riddles in Chloe’s own language, and hid them in Chloe’s favorite places. Like Chloe is special.

She wonders.

What if this is why Shara wants Chloe to know who she is?

What if that kiss on the elevator was more than the first phase of a plan?

What if Shara’s more than an evil shitbird? What if Shara is an evil shitbird who’s in love with her?



* * *



“Chloe, thank God you’re here,” her mama says when she finally stumbles inside. She holds up one of the thousand puzzle pieces spread across the kitchen table. “Would you describe this color as honey or amber?”

“It’s yellow,” she says.

“Thank you!” her mom says. “It goes in the yellow pile!”

“But the yellow pile has five subsections, Val.”

“You’re making this way harder than it needs to be, Jess.”

Thankful for the cover of distraction, Chloe slips off to her room. She snatches her laptop off her desk, balancing it on one hand while she unzips her skirt and shimmies it to the floor. She’s so desperate for one more piece of Shara, her whole body feels itchy. Her Google Doc is instantly open, and—

There, at the top of the page, in small gray letters: Last edit was seconds ago.

When her eyes fly to the space under her three words, Where are you?, there’s a green cursor holding steady. She hovers over it until the name of the person editing the document pops up: SW.

Shara’s there. Shara’s in the doc right now. For the first time since prom, they’re in the same place at the same time.

Chloe’s foot gets caught in her skirt, and she yelps and topples sideways to the carpet.

When she recovers her laptop from the floor, the cursor is gone—wherever Shara is, she must have realized Chloe had logged on and closed the window as fast as she could. There’s nothing new in the document, only the same blank stretch where Shara’s cursor vanished. But the timestamp at the top still says the last edit was seconds ago. She was so close.

But—wait. There shouldn’t be anywhere for Shara’s cursor to rest if there’s nothing below Chloe’s words.

Crumpled at the foot of her bed in her underwear, Chloe hits the command button with her thumb and the A key with her middle finger to highlight everything on the page.

Shara typed in white text. Invisible ink.

Beneath Where are you? she’s written a single line.

Come on. There are a million more interesting questions you could ask.

“You bitch,” Chloe exhales, and she types out, Fine. Why did you leave?

A pause. Chloe finally kicks her skirt off her ankles and holds her breath. Then a little SW appears in a bubble at the top of the document. Shara must have edit notifications on for the doc—God, why didn’t Chloe think of that?

Another sentence unfolds across the page, in black this time.

I don’t think you actually want me to make it that easy. And then, What are you thinking about right now?

You, she types out automatically, before remembering Shara can see it and hastily adding, ’re running out of time to come back. AP tests and finals are next week.

She waits.

Thanks for reminding me, Shara types. What’s the last note you found?

It was a letter, actually, Chloe types. The one you left me at Belltower and asked me not to show anyone.

A second passes, and another, and then Shara’s cursor disappears.





FROM THE BURN PILE


Note from Chloe Green to Shara Wheeler, written on the back of a major works data sheet on The Great Gatsby

Found this on the floor of Ms. Rodkey’s class—thought you might want to keep it. The stuff you wrote about the symbolism of the green light sounded kind of personal.





13


DAYS WITHOUT SHARA: 22

DAYS UNTIL GRADUATION: 21


Shara ghosts the doc for the rest of the weekend after finding out Chloe read the letter, and Chloe knows her theory is correct: Shara is in love with her.

How embarrassing for Shara.

All these years, Shara’s been sitting in her room, brushing her hair in front of her vanity mirror and thinking about how Chloe could be unraveled. Shara, Shara actual Wheeler, is obsessed with her. Willowgrove’s perfect little daughter of Christ wants the weird queer girl with too much eyeliner.