I Kissed Shara Wheeler(82)

“I feel like we’re losing track of the point,” Chloe says, refusing to respond to that, “which is: She’s not a good person!”

She shoots a hand out and grabs one of Rory’s ankles as he passes.

“Can I help you?” Rory says, frowning down at her.

“Tell Georgia that I’m right, that Shara isn’t a good person.”

Rory contemplates this, then sits between them. He’s eating a cup of mocha chip ice cream with a tiny pink plastic spoon, and when she looks at him, she realizes he’s flipped his septum barbell down.

“Explain,” he says.

“I want you to tell Georgia about the things she’s done to you and Smith.”

“Which things?”

“See?” Chloe says, waving a hand at Georgia. “How about the time she faked sick on Smith’s signing day?”

“You mean because she knew she was going to break up with Smith,” Rory says, “and she didn’t want him to have to edit her out of the pictures?”

“She—” Chloe rewinds what Rory said. “When did she tell you that?”

“When I was helping dye her hair.”

“You—what? Why?”

“After she got back, she snuck out to my house because it was the only place she could go without her parents noticing, and she said she was afraid everyone was gonna be staring at her at school, so I found some old dye and told her we could give them something to stare at. I got the idea from what you told me about dress code violations, actually.”

“Okay,” Chloe presses, “but what about how she made you and Smith jealous of each other on purpose to make you hate each other even more?”

“That, uh. Wasn’t really what that resulted in.”

“She blackmailed Dixon.”

“Dixon sucks though.”

“She blackmailed Ace.”

He pauses, looking up from his ice cream. “Yeah, okay, that one does suck. She’s weird about people knowing what she actually cares about.”

“She ghosted her boyfriend of two years instead of breaking up with him like a normal person,” Chloe says.

Rory points his tiny spoon across the room, to where Smith and one of the theater girls are having an animated conversation. “I have finally decided that Smith and Shara’s relationship is none of my business.”

“She’s mean.”

“Sometimes,” Rory says, returning to her. “Sometimes you are too. I still think you’re cool though.”

That strikes Chloe momentarily speechless. Rory shrugs, pats Chloe once on the shoulder, and rises to his feet.

“Okay,” Chloe says to Georgia once Rory is gone and Chloe remembers how to talk, “but surely Summer must still hate Shara. She broke Summer and Ace up for literally no reason.”

“Is that what Ace told you?”

Summer, who has apparently slipped behind them unnoticed under all the chatter and music, sits in the spot Rory vacated. She crosses her legs so her knee touches Georgia’s.

“He said that you freaked out when you caught her leaving his house,” Chloe tells her.

“Oh my God,” Summer says, rolling her eyes. “That is not what happened. I mean, I did get mad at him about that, because it was weird as hell, but I had been trying to break up with him for like, a week, and he kept dodging me.” She glances over to the picture book corner, where Ace has knocked over a display of novelty socks with one of his beefy shoulders. “He is just … way too chaotic for me. Total sweetheart, but a hot mess.”

Georgia nods, and Chloe realizes she must have already heard all of this. If she had actually talked to her about the Shara thing earlier, she could have understood so much more so much sooner.

“So,” Chloe says, “if that’s not what you fell out with Shara over, then what is?”

“I tried to come out to her,” Summer says, “and she freaked and jumped out of my car before I could finish. Like, a moving car. I thought she was a homophobe like her dad. Obviously, now I know what was up. One thing about that girl, she is gonna bail before anyone can make her think about being gay.”

Chloe finds herself struggling to argue with that.

“So, you’re not even mad at her for ghosting you when she ran away?” Chloe asks.

“No, I am,” Summer says, pushing her braids over her shoulder. “But she also helped save my girl today, so.”

Summer and Georgia slip away to chat about the call she had with her dad about using the dealership for the ceremony, but Chloe keeps sitting there.

She’s surrounded by a bunch of noisy, awkward, trying-their-best Alabama kids planning a protest against every instinct that Willowgrove has given them, and she’s thinking about Shara tearing across campus to catch Chloe before it was too late this afternoon. What would she do all that for, if not—

No. If Shara really cared about anyone but herself, she’d be here. She’d have stopped her dad herself instead of making Chloe do it. Maybe it was her last shot at getting Chloe out of her way. It worked, didn’t it?

She just doesn’t believe she’s wrong about Shara. She can’t. Everyone who matters is here. Shara isn’t.

This, Chloe thinks for the first time since she left California, this is where I belong.