I Kissed Shara Wheeler(67)
“Oh my God,” Chloe gasps, “you are in love with him.”
Smith’s eyes go wide. “Is that what Shara said? Am I—Does he—?”
“Uh-uh.” Chloe holds both hands up to ward him off. “I am not getting involved with that side of this love quadrilateral. Go back to the story.”
“Right,” Smith says, shaking his head. Chloe is definitely not attending Smith and Rory’s emotionally fraught MarioKart session tonight. “Anyway, next thing I knew, it’d been like, two and half years and Shara was my best friend other than Ace, and I realized she deserved to know before we decided what to do after graduation. So I told myself I was gonna come clean after prom, but then she dipped. And the worst part is, I was relieved, because it meant I could put the conversation off a little longer. That’s why I didn’t say anything after the note from Dixon’s house.”
Chloe tries to catch up. “What about the note from Dixon’s house?”
“She told me where she was in that note,” Smith says, rubbing the back of his neck. “The G in ‘Graduation’ was capitalized.”
It takes a second for the memory to snap into focus: the name on the back of Wheeler’s sailboat. Graduation.
Chloe, who’s still processing the revelation that Smith and Shara have been in the Willowgrove version of a lavender marriage since sophomore homecoming, tries not to scream when she says, “You’ve known where she was since Dixon’s party?”
“I know! I know! I’m an asshole!” Smith says. “You think I don’t feel like shit? I feel like shit! But the longer it went on, the longer I didn’t have to talk to her.”
“But…” Chloe presses her fingers to her temples. “But she knew you’d figure that out. Why would she tell you so early?”
“I think,” Smith says, “she wanted to give me the option to end the whole thing, but she trusted I’d let her do what she had to do first. We’ve always kind of gotten each other like that. Like, even with all of the stuff I’ve found out about her since she left, I still think that part was always true.”
“So, you … you let me and Rory run around like idiots for weeks. We went in the air ducts, Smith. The air ducts.”
“I told you, I’m not proud of it. Of any of it. But … I don’t know, Chloe. I kinda did want to let her do her thing,” Smith tells her. “And not just because I didn’t want to have the conversation, or because I felt guilty, or because I was starting to wonder who she even was. And not because it meant Rory was talking to me again for the first time since we were fourteen, though that was … definitely part of it.”
Chloe shakes her head. “What other possible reason is there?”
Smith considers the question, folding his hand under his chin.
“The other day, after the theater party and the lake,” Smith says, “I came home when everyone was asleep and pulled flowers out of my dad’s garden. And I sat in front of my mirror and put them in my hair. Just to see how it would look. And it looked dope. So I thought about what Ash said, and some stuff I talked to Summer about, and what I’m supposed to look like and act like to play football, and what actually feels like me, and the way Shara used to look at me sometimes … I mean, yeah. Shara’s done shitty things. That sucks. But at the same time, if you’re not what Willowgrove wants you to be, and if your family believes certain stuff, it can make you kind of crazy. You know what I mean?”
The words “not what Willowgrove wants you to be” send Chloe’s brain tumbling noisily away like Georgia’s water bottle when she dropped it down the C Building stairs. Her ears start ringing.
Why does everyone keep bringing that up?
“I, uh. Okay. I actually have to go.” She turns for the door, then pauses. “Um. Not because of you. You’re doing great, with all the, um. Identity stuff. Also, pronouns?”
Smith bites his lip. He looks like he might smile. “Same for now.”
“Okay, cool,” Chloe says. “Um. Talk more later?”
She hasn’t even told him about the kiss, but she has to go. She has to.
Maybe this was how Shara felt when she ran.
* * *
She doesn’t know where to drive. She can’t call Georgia. She’s too restless to go home, too full of Smith’s words, too afraid everything will catch up to her the second she stops moving.
It’s not until she pulls up to the curb that she realizes she automatically followed all the turns and back roads to the empty lot.
When they moved to False Beach, her grandma was still living in the house Chloe’s mom grew up in—a double-wide trailer on a stretch of road near the edge of town, out toward Lake Martin. Chloe remembers the smell of cigarettes and cinnamon air freshener, the hand-knit green and orange afghan on the armchair where her grandma would sit and watch tiny Chloe read Redwall during her few childhood trips to Alabama. Her grandma was mostly conservative, but a dogged commitment to Southern hospitality meant she was kind to everyone if they were her neighbor or her company. She didn’t speak to Chloe’s mom for three years after she came out as a lesbian, but when she heard about the engagement, she showed up in LA with a case of beers as an olive branch and her old wedding dress in a carry-on.