I Kissed Shara Wheeler(72)

“Oh. Fine.”

“Better than me?” Chloe asks.

One corner of Shara’s mouth tucks in. “Maybe.”

“Wanna make a bet?” Chloe says.

“What would I win?”

“You tell me,” Chloe says. “I’m sure you could come up with something of mine that you want.”

Shara finally succeeds in ripping her granola bar open.

“Yeah,” Shara says in an explosion of granola crumbs, “probably.”

And then she storms off.

That’s new. Not the running away part—that’s Shara’s thing—but the indignant way she looked at Chloe before she did it, like Chloe had betrayed her, somehow. Like Chloe’s done a crime to her, and the crime is “not taking her top off.”

“Oh,” she realizes out loud, “that’s fun.”

The next day, Chloe is punching in the number for a Three Musketeers and Shara’s reflection materializes next to hers in the vending machine glass.

“Are you growing your bangs out?” Shara asks. “They look different.”

Chloe sucks in a breath and turns to face her, relaxing her mouth into a soft smirk.

“I’ve been thinking about it, actually,” Chloe says. “I kind of want to grow it all out so I can put it up if I need to. You know how you need to put your hair up sometimes?”

“Uh-huh,” Shara says.

“Do you think I’d look good with long hair?” Chloe asks.

“I—” Shara begins. Her lip curls, and Chloe tamps down a laugh. “Sure. If you want.”

Shara huffs and leaves again.

That afternoon, in front of the mirrors in the girls’ bathroom, Chloe leans over the sink to fix the tip of her eyeliner wing while Shara perches on the next one.

“What brand of eyeliner do you use?” Shara asks.

“Why?” Chloe says, turning to her. “Do you want to try it?”

“Oh, that’s—”

“I can put it on for you,” Chloe says. “Come here.”

“I’m good, actually,” Shara says, jumping down. She tries to make a haughty exit, but her shoes squeak on the damp tile floor the whole way, which only seems to make her angrier.

When the door closes behind her, Chloe grins at her reflection.

She’s always thought of herself as somewhere to the left of hot. Pretty, probably, but in a Gucci-campaign, teeth-too-far-apart, eyes-too-big way. But this thing with Shara—a girl who grew up the kind of beautiful most people never even see in real life, the kind of gorgeous it almost hurts to look at—it’s like shimmering into new skin. Like being beamed into space and all her particles reassembling into someone who technically looks the same but is one version ahead of the last. She’s a scrappy galactic rebel, and Shara is a star, and she’s loading up a big-ass plasma cannon and leveling it right at Shara’s heart.

Like, how could that not be the best thing ever?



* * *



On Thursday afternoon, after her AP Bio exam, she emerges from the classroom to find Shara at Smith’s nearby locker.

It’s the first time Chloe has seen them together since Shara got back, which is … weird. She’s not sure what she expected—maybe Smith trying to fend her off with a chair like a lion tamer—but it certainly wasn’t the sense of quiet ease that hangs around them. They stand the way they’ve always stood, angled into each other like two stretching plants, even after everything. She says something inaudible to him, and he laughs that sun-warm laugh of his.

First Rory, now Smith? How does she get to drop back into their lives like nothing happened? Even if Smith does feel guilty for dating her under false pretenses, she still did everything else she did.

A dozen lockers down, Ash is cramming their art kit—basically a fishing tackle box of polymer clay and googly eyes—into their locker. They glance up, and Chloe almost raises a hand to wave, but Ash pulls a sad face and turns away.

Right. Chloe’s the only one who has to experience consequences for her actions. So far, at least.

She marches up to the locker two spots over from Smith’s, where Brooklyn Bennett is sifting wide-eyed through her stacks of rubber-banded notecards.

“Hi, Brooklyn,” she says, aggressively friendly. “What’s up?”

“About to have a mental breakdown, that’s what,” she says. Brooklyn launches into a long, itemized list of all the questions she thinks she got wrong on every one of her exams, and Chloe plasters on a sympathetic expression and tunes it out, listening instead to Shara and Smith’s conversation.

“… just started talking again,” Smith is saying quietly. “What if I mess this up, and he goes back to pretending I don’t exist?”

“Right,” Shara deadpans, “this whole time he’s been minding his business and not leering at you from his bedroom window.”

“I’m being serious, Shara,” Smith says. “I think this is my last chance.”

“I’m being serious,” Shara counters. “I don’t think you’re going to run out of chances there.”

Over their shoulders, Chloe can see the homecoming picture still stuck up on Smith’s locker door. The blue dress, Shara’s God-honoring nip shadows.