I Kissed Shara Wheeler(64)

She cuts her eyes over, like Chloe shouldn’t have the right to say Smith’s name in front of her, which is pretty rich, all things considered.

“I was always gonna break his heart.”

“Why?”

“Because I can’t love him back.”

“Why not?” Chloe demands.

“I just can’t, okay?” Shara finally snaps. She swats a loose strand of hair away from her face. “You’re still not getting it. I can’t. I can’t be with Smith. I can’t be what everyone wants. I can’t go to Harvard. All I can do is win this one last thing, so that can be the way everyone remembers me, and they’ll never need to know about the rest. And you’re in my way, so I did what I had to. That’s all I care about.”

Chloe’s experienced enough theater to know a rehearsed line when she hears one.

“Tell yourself whatever you want,” Chloe says. “Won’t change the fact that you’re so scared of what people in some fucking nothing town think of you that it made you do all this.”

She whips around and stomps up the steps, emerging topside into the wet night. Shara comes bursting up after her.

“Maybe I am scared,” Shara yells at her back, “but not as scared as you are!”

Chloe rounds on her. There Shara is again, in her ridiculous Greek tragedy of a prom dress, her face sharp and hateful.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“You know what I do? When I’m scared?” Shara asks. “I look at myself in the mirror and find something to fix. Like I’m the gardeners at the front of the club trimming rose bushes into the right shape. I moisturize my face and I condition my hair and I think about what I can say to exactly which person tomorrow to make them believe what I want them to about me. But you—you march into school every day like you know everything and you’re better than everyone, and that’s how I know you’re terrified. You have to decide that you’re so certain about everything, because uncertainty scares the shit out of you.”

“I cannot express how much none of this is about me,” Chloe says.

“You said it was about being scared of what people think,” Shara says. “I’m just saying, I’m not the only one.”

Chloe, who is out of patience for Shara’s maritime monologues on things she knows absolutely nothing about, takes a step toward her.

It’s then that Shara does something to betray her entire performance: she flinches backward, tripping on the dirty hem of her gown, stumbling until the small of her back hits the boat’s railing.

She’s afraid to let Chloe any closer. Because she knows what’ll happen. She knows what she’ll do.

Chloe was right. Shara wants her. She just doesn’t want to admit it.

Chloe takes another step. “You know, if this was really about valedictorian, there were easier ways. You could’ve had your dad kick me out, even. But that wouldn’t have gotten you what you really wanted, would it?”

Shara tries to pull off an eye roll, but behind her back, she’s fumbling for the railing with one hand. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Something hot curls around Chloe’s heart, but the words feel featherlight, cool, a soft breeze on sweat.

“You wanted to know I was looking at you,” she says. She’s almost close enough to touch her. “You liked it, didn’t you? You liked knowing I was thinking about you all the time.”

“I told you. I thought it was funny.”

“Maybe that’s what you told yourself,” Chloe says. “But deep down, somewhere under all this bullshit, you kissed me because you wanted to.”

“That’s not true,” Shara insists. “It didn’t mean anything.”

When Chloe leans in, she sees it: Shara’s gaze flickering to her lips.

“Then why do you want me to kiss you right now?”

“I don’t.”

“Okay,” Chloe says. “Then I won’t.”

She begins to turn away, but there’s that familiar feeling: Shara’s hand closing around her arm, pulling her in. Shara’s eyes are wide and green and furious, and a helpless, strangled sound crashes into the back of her bared teeth.

When she kisses Chloe this time, Chloe’s ready.

She knows exactly what she’s doing when she twists her fingers into the loose wisps of hair at the nape of Shara’s neck and kisses her back, hard. Her other hand grips the tulle where it fans out from Shara’s waist and holds Shara’s body up against hers like see, we’re a match, and it works—Shara sighs and lets go of the rail to slide her palm over Chloe’s cheek. The skin is cool from the metal; Chloe suppresses a shiver.

She doesn’t give herself time to think about the way Shara’s thumb brushes over her cheekbone or the way Shara’s lips feel against hers. Instead, she breaks off, abrupt enough that Shara’s left blinking and dazed, and God, finally Chloe isn’t the one doing the embarrassing leaning. She’s getting embarrassingly leaned at. Amazing. Top five Chloe moment.

“Told you,” Chloe says.

And with one solid shove, she pushes Shara—prom dress and all—over the railing and into Lake Martin.





FROM THE BURN PILE