I Kissed Shara Wheeler(50)
“I’m not saying you didn’t!” Chloe immediately clarifies. “Or that he deserved it more! But he’s … he’s not as bad as we thought he was. You should ask him what his favorite Sondheim is.”
He’s still glaring, but he at least doesn’t seem like he might jump her. “You’ve changed.”
“Don’t be so dramatic.”
“We’re literally at a theater party right now.”
“Okay, everyone!” Mr. Truman yells, rolling a rack of tragic-looking secondhand gowns and tuxedo jackets into the gym. “Costumes! Makeup!”
“I’ll ask,” Benjy says. “But for the record, there is a wrong answer.”
“I know there is,” Chloe says, and she races him to the racks.
* * *
The gym connects to a back hallway, where two locker rooms sit across from the choir room, and once everyone finishes fighting for costumes, they disperse to get changed. It takes about five seconds for the girls’ locker room to transform into a near-perfect re-creation of the night Phantom closed. Makeup kits exploding over benches, someone pulling out a Bluetooth speaker and putting on the soundtrack, bobby pins somehow already everywhere. Three junior girls commandeer the sinks, climbing up to sit inside the bowls with their sneakers braced against the mirror to do their contour up close.
When Chloe tries to explain what she loves so much about high school theater, even though she’ll probably never set foot on another stage after graduation, she always ends up at this: the chaos of backstage. Sitting on the dressing room floor in a sweaty wig cap eating a box of McNuggets someone’s mom dropped off, accidentally catching a glimpse of a cute lead’s underwear when they’re quick-changing behind a towel in the wings, ranking the smelliest character shoes in the chorus, and the delirious, unsupervised hours between the morning and evening shows on a Saturday.
So much of Chloe’s life at Willowgrove is spent in absolute control to compensate for being different, but not here, not in this glittering shitshow.
“What color did you get?” Chloe asks Georgia, eyeing her own tux with extreme skepticism.
Georgia holds up hers, a shade of powder blue that looks right out of Hairspray. “Brought my great-uncle’s prom tux from home. Knew it would come in handy someday.”
“You genius,” Chloe says. “Mine looks like somebody died in it.”
Brooklyn brushes by, fussily tying her hair back. Her tux is draped over her arm, and it’s one of those camo monstrosities that are distressingly common in Alabama. “At least you didn’t get the Shotgun Wedding Special.”
Chloe retreats to a corner to pull on her tux, which also affords her the opportunity to check her phone without anyone asking her about it. Still nothing new from Shara.
“Did you see that Ace actually came?” she overhears one of the senior girls from the chorus say to another.
“No way. Really?”
“Yeah, and he brought Smith Parker with him.”
“Oh my God.”
They sound skeptical but not hostile, so Chloe kicks aside a confusing twinge of protectiveness. Since when did she start looking after jocks?
Once she’s buttoned up, she makes her way back to the full-length mirror. It could certainly fit better, but the dark gray doesn’t look as funeral home as she feared it might on her, and honestly, that’s kind of a vibe for Phantom anyway. She tugs on her sleeves, swishing her cape—some purple crushed velvet abomination that her mom unearthed from an old Halloween costume—and scrutinizing her reflection. It could be worse.
Over her shoulder, a stall door squeaks open, and Georgia emerges in her powder-blue tux.
“Does it look okay?” she asks. “Ash helped me take it in a little.”
Chloe turns around to look at her and gasps.
The pants have been hemmed and tapered into cigarette pants that end right at the top of her Vans, and she’s rolled the sleeves of the jacket up to her elbows. Her short hair is shoved back and messy, which makes her look at least three years older.
“Geo,” she says, “you look so fucking cool.”
She blushes. “Really?”
“You look like Kristen Stewart at the Oscars.”
“Kristen Stewart?” she repeats, blushing harder.
She steps up to the mirror and turns left and right, checking her jawline in the reflection, then smooths out her lapels with visible coolness.
“Can you—um—” She turns to Chloe, who’s still holding her phone. “Can you take a picture and send it to me?”
She eyes Georgia. She’s not really a selfie person, or a posting photos of things that aren’t dogs or books on her Instagram person. “Who are you sending it to?”
“Nobody,” she insists. “I just want to have it.”
Chloe shrugs and lines up the shot: Georgia with her hands in her pockets, one hip cocked, looking effortless and confident and honestly pretty hot.
Right before she hits the button, an email notification pops up at the top of the screen: SW edited your document.
Shara, back within reach.
“Chloe?” Georgia says.
“Sorry, sorry!” Chloe snaps the shot quickly. “Here, I’ll send it to you.”
She fires off the photo to Georgia, and then ducks into a stall and opens up the doc. It takes ages, since the locker rooms are basically a dead zone for cell service, so she climbs up on the toilet seat to boost her signal.