I Kissed Shara Wheeler(83)

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Around sunset, people start clearing out. The shop closes at nine on weeknights anyway, so Georgia shuts down the register while Summer rummages through the books behind the counter and Benjy and Ash discuss a Bojangles run.

“Has anyone seen my keys?” Chloe asks.

“Nope,” Benjy says.

“Did you check the loft?” Georgia asks. “Maybe you dropped them while we were eating.”

Chloe makes her way to the ladder at the back of the store and climbs up. Sure enough, there they are behind some antique bird guides.

As she reaches for them, she hears a familiar voice drift up from below.

“I told you,” Rory says. “There’s no point reading the manga when I can watch the show.”

She peeks over the railing and sees Smith and Rory, standing close together by the shelf of graphic novels. She hasn’t seen them in at least half an hour, so she assumed they had left when she wasn’t looking, but they must have slipped quietly into the stacks.

“Man, you’re missing out on so much though.”

She can’t see Rory roll his eyes, but she can basically hear it. “Whatever.”

Smith gives him a friendly shove, and they drift toward the space under the loft. Chloe’s moving for the ladder when she hears Smith say, “Can I ask you something?”

Rory’s voices wobbles slightly when he says, “Sure.”

“Did you really flood the bio lab on frog week?”

A pause. “When’d you figure it out?”

“Last week, at the lake.”

“It was dumb.” Rory sounds genuinely embarrassed. “I knew you didn’t even think about me anymore, but … I don’t know. You really didn’t want to dissect those frogs.”

Smith says seriously, “I never stopped thinking about you.”

Oh, shit.

Is this the moment?

She has to get out of here, fast—but when she glances down the ladder, she realizes they’ve moved to a spot that makes it impossible for her to leave without interrupting them.

Her friends are waiting for her up front, and she really doesn’t want to spectate on this, but it’s taken Smith and Rory so long to get to here. What if she kills it, and they never get there again?

“Do you know what this is?” Smith asks. His voice is a moonbeam in the low light at the back of the store. Chloe chances a peek—he’s pulled out a small leather Moleskine.

It looks identical to the songbook on Rory’s desk, the one Chloe got a glimpse of back when this all started.

If Smith starts reading love poems to Rory, she’ll never be able to look either of them in the eye again.

She squeezes her keys in her hand to stop them from jingling and shuts her eyes. For the rest of her life, she vows, she will simply insist that she didn’t see or hear anything.

“Is that—?” Rory starts. “It looks like the one you gave me.”

“I never really told you how I picked it out,” Smith says. There’s a faint creak, like he’s leaning back against a shelf. “My mom wanted to get you a shirt for your birthday, but I told her you liked writing songs and you couldn’t write lyrics down as fast as you could think them up. So she said my gift should be that I’d transcribe your songs if you sang them to me, and she let me get a pack of leather notebooks, and I gave one to you and kept the other one. I’ve never used mine, but I couldn’t get rid of it.”

“I still use mine,” Rory says.

“I know,” Smith says. “I saw it in your room.”

Rory’s smirk is audible when he says, “I guess I got attached to the aesthetic.”

“Stubborn ass.”

“Takes way longer without you though.”

A pause. Another creak of a shelf.

“Can I hear one sometime?” Smith asks. “One of your new songs?”

“That depends,” Rory says.

“Depends on what?”

And with all the courage in his noodle-y body, Rory says, “Depends if you don’t mind that they’re all about you.”

Chloe has to stop herself from pumping her fist like the end of The Breakfast Club.

It’s silent below, except for Summer talking to the iguana in the tank by the front of the store and Ash snapping their art kit back up. Then, after a few seconds, just long enough for a nervous first kiss, Smith laughs.

“Chloe!” Georgia calls out from the front of the store. “Let’s go! I gotta lock up!”

“Oh, shit,” Rory whispers, and there’s the shuffling sound of them hustling out of the shelves together, muffled laughter and light grunts from elbows thrown. She still can’t see them. They could be two lonely seventh graders with notebooks full of song lyrics, or they could be two almost-adults who haven’t laughed like this together in years.

“Coming!” Chloe calls. She can’t stop smiling.





FROM THE BURN PILE


Personal essay exercise: Smith Parker Prompt: What is a moment in your life that you felt truly yourself?

When we stopped running.

Written on the back of the same paper, in the same handwriting

You look like sun in moonlight

You’re faster on your feet