I Kissed Shara Wheeler, page 15
“Thank you!” her mom says. “It goes in the yellow pile!”
“But the yellow pile has five subsections, Val.”
“You’re making this way harder than it needs to be, Jess.”
Thankful for the cover of distraction, Chloe slips off to her room. She snatches her laptop off her desk, balancing it on one hand while she unzips her skirt and shimmies it to the floor. She’s so desperate for one more piece of Shara, her whole body feels itchy. Her Google Doc is instantly open, and—
There, at the top of the page, in small gray letters: Last edit was seconds ago.
When her eyes fly to the space under her three words, Where are you?, there’s a green cursor holding steady. She hovers over it until the name of the person editing the document pops up: SW.
Shara’s there. Shara’s in the doc right now. For the first time since prom, they’re in the same place at the same time.
Chloe’s foot gets caught in her skirt, and she yelps and topples sideways to the carpet.
When she recovers her laptop from the floor, the cursor is gone—wherever Shara is, she must have realized Chloe had logged on and closed the window as fast as she could. There’s nothing new in the document, only the same blank stretch where Shara’s cursor vanished. But the timestamp at the top still says the last edit was seconds ago. She was so close.
But—wait. There shouldn’t be anywhere for Shara’s cursor to rest if there’s nothing below Chloe’s words.
Crumpled at the foot of her bed in her underwear, Chloe hits the command button with her thumb and the A key with her middle finger to highlight everything on the page.
Shara typed in white text. Invisible ink.
Beneath Where are you? she’s written a single line.
Come on. There are a million more interesting questions you could ask.
“You bitch,” Chloe exhales, and she types out, Fine. Why did you leave?
A pause. Chloe finally kicks her skirt off her ankles and holds her breath. Then a little SW appears in a bubble at the top of the document. Shara must have edit notifications on for the doc—God, why didn’t Chloe think of that?
Another sentence unfolds across the page, in black this time.
I don’t think you actually want me to make it that easy. And then, What are you thinking about right now?
You, she types out automatically, before remembering Shara can see it and hastily adding, ’re running out of time to come back. AP tests and finals are next week.
She waits.
Thanks for reminding me, Shara types. What’s the last note you found?
It was a letter, actually, Chloe types. The one you left me at Belltower and asked me not to show anyone.
A second passes, and another, and then Shara’s cursor disappears.
FROM THE BURN PILE
Note from Chloe Green to Shara Wheeler, written on the back of a major works data sheet on The Great Gatsby
Found this on the floor of Ms. Rodkey’s class—thought you might want to keep it. The stuff you wrote about the symbolism of the green light sounded kind of personal.
13
DAYS WITHOUT SHARA: 22
DAYS UNTIL GRADUATION: 21
Shara ghosts the doc for the rest of the weekend after finding out Chloe read the letter, and Chloe knows her theory is correct: Shara is in love with her.
How embarrassing for Shara.
All these years, Shara’s been sitting in her room, brushing her hair in front of her vanity mirror and thinking about how Chloe could be unraveled. Shara, Shara actual Wheeler, is obsessed with her. Willowgrove’s perfect little daughter of Christ wants the weird queer girl with too much eyeliner.
Even if Chloe doesn’t want Shara back, she does want to be a sharp-beaked little bird making a nest in that pretty head. If the next note is anything like the last, she needs it. Like, for entertainment purposes.
At least she has an idea of how to get it.
“The theater end-of-year party is tonight,” Chloe says on Monday when she catches Smith at his locker. She doesn’t remember when she learned Smith Parker’s locker number by heart, but she adds it to the list of ways Shara has derailed her life in a matter of weeks.
“Okay,” Smith says.
“Brooklyn’s coming, and she’s supposed to be taking pictures for the yearbook, so she’ll have her camera there, and we can check the memory card for the club photos,” Chloe goes on. “Everyone who did Phantom is invited, including Ace, so all you have to do is convince him he should actually show up—”
“He’s going.”
“That’s the spirit. Show him who’s boss.”
“No, I mean he already told me he’s going.”
Chloe blinks. “What?”
“Yeah, I think he’s looking forward to it. He bought a new shirt.”
“I—uh, okay. Well, then, you can just figure out an excuse to come with him. And then when Brooklyn’s doing the senior number, you can get to her camera.”
Smith sighs.
“We’re close, Smith,” Chloe reminds him. “You deserve answers. We all do.”
Smith chews on his thumbnail. “Okay. I’ll be there.”
* * *
“Let’s go, let’s go, the seven-layer dip ain’t gettin’ any fresher,” Mr. Truman says as he waves students into the gym like the emcee at the Kit Kat Club. “No, Taelynn, it’s fine that your mom didn’t put lime juice on the avocados like I told her last time and now they’re already brown— Hi, Chloe, you have a fire in your eyes tonight and I hope it’s for theater.”
“It’s definitely for something,” she says.
“Great, no further questions.”
Chloe has been looking forward to her senior theater party since freshman year, when she sat wide-eyed on the floor of the gym watching the senior leads from that year’s spring musical (who were basically celebrities to her at fourteen). The self-appointed keeper of tradition, Mr. Truman invented an iconic Willowgrove theater ritual when he played Conrad in Bye Bye Birdie in ’96 and performed the entire closing number as Rosie at the end-of-year party. It’s evolved over the years; now, as custom dictates, it’s Chloe and Benjy’s turn to swap roles and lead the seniors in an over-the-top, genderbent performance of the titular number.
Benjy, who takes nothing more seriously than an opportunity to commit to a bit, waylays her by the folding table of two-liter sodas and snacks.
“You’re like, thirty minutes late,” he says. “Did you get the blocking notes I sent you? Do you know your lyrics?”
“Benjy, I have known the words to this song since I was in utero,” she says. She mentally flips through the contents of her emails—she’s sure she skimmed Benjy’s plan for the number, but it’s been mostly overwritten in her mind by Shara in her Google Docs.
She wants to be here, in this moment, doing this thing she’s been dreaming of her whole high school career. But she’s also here because she needs to know where to follow Shara next.
She forces her hands to reach for a cupcake instead of her phone. “Did you bake these?”
“Please,” he says. “As if I have time. I— Wait. What is Ace doing here?”
He’s looking over her shoulder at the entrance to the gym, where Ace has appeared in all his lumbering glory.
“He was Phantom,” Chloe reminds him. “He got an invite.”
“Yeah, but he wasn’t supposed to come. He’s not supposed to act like any of us exist,” Benjy says, his expression going pointy and sour. “I planned our entire number around him not coming. What, are we gonna have two Christines? Like a bunch of idiots? And he’s going to screw it up because this whole thing is a joke to him.”
Chloe touches his shoulder in what she hopes is a calming way. She’s usually the one getting calmed down, so she’s not quite sure she’s doing it right. Hand goes like this?
“Okay, don’t tell anyone I told you this, but it turns out Ace Torres is like … actually really into musical theater.”
“What are you talking about?” Benjy snaps. “He was messing up his lines all the way up to tech week. I don’t know if he ever even read the script or just memorized the movie.”
“I know,” Chloe says. Even she can’t believe she’s saying this. “But I think that was because he was nervous. He practiced for weeks before tryouts.”
“He told you this? Since you’re friends with Smith Parker now, for some reason? Who is…” He frowns as Smith materializes behind Ace, looking decidedly awkward. “… Also here?”
“It’s a long story,” Chloe says. “But … please don’t kill me … I think Ace may have actually…” She retracts into her shoulders like a turtle. “Deserved the part?”
Benjy looks at her like she’s been replaced with a clone. “Chloe.”
“I’m not saying you didn’t!” Chloe immediately clarifies. “Or that he deserved it more! But he’s … he’s not as bad as we thought he was. You should ask him what his favorite Sondheim is.”
He’s still glaring, but he at least doesn’t seem like he might jump her. “You’ve changed.”
“Don’t be so dramatic.”
“We’re literally at a theater party right now.”
“Okay, everyone!” Mr. Truman yells, rolling a rack of tragic-looking secondhand gowns and tuxedo jackets into the gym. “Costumes! Makeup!”
“I’ll ask,” Benjy says. “But for the record, there is a wrong answer.”
“I know there is,” Chloe says, and she races him to the racks.
* * *
The gym connects to a back hallway, where two locker rooms sit across from the choir room, and once everyone finishes fighting for costumes, they disperse to get changed. It takes about five seconds for the girls’ locker room to transform into a near-perfect re-creation of the night Phantom closed. Makeup kits exploding over benches, someone pulling out a Bluetooth speaker and putting on the soundtrack, bobby pins somehow already everywhere. Three junior girls commandeer the sinks, climbing up to sit inside the bowls with their sneakers braced against the mirror to do their contour up close.
When Chloe tries to explain what she loves so much about high school theater, even though she’ll probably never set foot on another stage after graduation, she always ends up at this: the chaos of backstage. Sitting on the dressing room floor in a sweaty wig cap eating a box of McNuggets someone’s mom dropped off, accidentally catching a glimpse of a cute lead’s underwear when they’re quick-changing behind a towel in the wings, ranking the smelliest character shoes in the chorus, and the delirious, unsupervised hours between the morning and evening shows on a Saturday.
So much of Chloe’s life at Willowgrove is spent in absolute control to compensate for being different, but not here, not in this glittering shitshow.
“What color did you get?” Chloe asks Georgia, eyeing her own tux with extreme skepticism.
Georgia holds up hers, a shade of powder blue that looks right out of Hairspray. “Brought my great-uncle’s prom tux from home. Knew it would come in handy someday.”
“You genius,” Chloe says. “Mine looks like somebody died in it.”
Brooklyn brushes by, fussily tying her hair back. Her tux is draped over her arm, and it’s one of those camo monstrosities that are distressingly common in Alabama. “At least you didn’t get the Shotgun Wedding Special.”
Chloe retreats to a corner to pull on her tux, which also affords her the opportunity to check her phone without anyone asking her about it. Still nothing new from Shara.
“Did you see that Ace actually came?” she overhears one of the senior girls from the chorus say to another.
“No way. Really?”
“Yeah, and he brought Smith Parker with him.”
“Oh my God.”
They sound skeptical but not hostile, so Chloe kicks aside a confusing twinge of protectiveness. Since when did she start looking after jocks?
Once she’s buttoned up, she makes her way back to the full-length mirror. It could certainly fit better, but the dark gray doesn’t look as funeral home as she feared it might on her, and honestly, that’s kind of a vibe for Phantom anyway. She tugs on her sleeves, swishing her cape—some purple crushed velvet abomination that her mom unearthed from an old Halloween costume—and scrutinizing her reflection. It could be worse.
Over her shoulder, a stall door squeaks open, and Georgia emerges in her powder-blue tux.
“Does it look okay?” she asks. “Ash helped me take it in a little.”
Chloe turns around to look at her and gasps.
The pants have been hemmed and tapered into cigarette pants that end right at the top of her Vans, and she’s rolled the sleeves of the jacket up to her elbows. Her short hair is shoved back and messy, which makes her look at least three years older.
“Geo,” she says, “you look so fucking cool.”
She blushes. “Really?”
“You look like Kristen Stewart at the Oscars.”
“Kristen Stewart?” she repeats, blushing harder.
She steps up to the mirror and turns left and right, checking her jawline in the reflection, then smooths out her lapels with visible coolness.
“Can you—um—” She turns to Chloe, who’s still holding her phone. “Can you take a picture and send it to me?”
She eyes Georgia. She’s not really a selfie person, or a posting photos of things that aren’t dogs or books on her Instagram person. “Who are you sending it to?”
“Nobody,” she insists. “I just want to have it.”
Chloe shrugs and lines up the shot: Georgia with her hands in her pockets, one hip cocked, looking effortless and confident and honestly pretty hot.
Right before she hits the button, an email notification pops up at the top of the screen: SW edited your document.
Shara, back within reach.
“Chloe?” Georgia says.
“Sorry, sorry!” Chloe snaps the shot quickly. “Here, I’ll send it to you.”
She fires off the photo to Georgia, and then ducks into a stall and opens up the doc. It takes ages, since the locker rooms are basically a dead zone for cell service, so she climbs up on the toilet seat to boost her signal.
Under the last thing she wrote, new words finally appear.
Well, what did you think of the letter?
She slaps her phone against her chest and stares up at the water-stained ceiling, screams and laughter and music and gossip fading out under the deafening volume of Shara’s nerve.
I think you made your point pretty clearly, she types, thumbs jabbing at the keyboard. Shara’s cursor is waiting for her response. Though I’m surprised you actually showed your hand.
Shara types back immediately.
You figured it out, then. I knew I wasn’t overestimating you.
Chloe rolls her eyes. Of course Shara wants to play it cool, like she didn’t write a whole letter about how she’s in love with Chloe and then disappear when Chloe read it. Shara Wheeler, always running away and pretending it was all part of her plan.
What I can’t figure out is why you had to do it like this, Chloe types. Seems like a lot of work for something you could have done from your desk in Mrs. Farley’s class. I’ve been right here the whole time.
This time, Shara takes longer to start typing. Chloe stares at her cursor and imagines her on the other side of it, tucking her long hair behind her ear and frowning down at the keyboard.
That’s the problem, Shara types. I was too close to realize that you’re special. Took a while to figure out how to get you where I want you.
“Chloe!”
Chloe startles so hard, her foot almost goes straight into the toilet.
“Yeah!” she shouts back, jumping down. Her voice comes out strangled, so she clears her throat before she opens the door. “What’s up?”
Georgia’s waiting for her on the other side of the door with a fistful of lipsticks and a quizzical brow. “Do you have a minute?”
“Yeah, of course,” she says.
“I need to—”
“Bring those to Ash?” Chloe says, pulling the lipsticks out of her hand. “Got it.”
“Wait—”
“I know,” Chloe calls over her shoulder, already at the door. “No direct application! I’ll tell them to use a brush.”
* * *
In the choir room, Ash has set up an approximation of the makeup station they had for Phantom. They’re a bit of a legend within the theater program for being a wizard with a Morphe brush. They transformed Ace’s face into a complete horror show for Phantom with nothing but liquid latex, wet Kleenex, and a YouTube tutorial in unsubtitled Russian.
“Georgia wanted me to bring these to you,” Chloe says, dropping the lipsticks in Ash’s lap.
“Oh, really?” Ash says. “That’s nice of her.”
Most of the guys are still changing, but Ace is sitting cross-legged on a riser with a full contour and green eyeshadow. Nearby, Smith is watching raptly.
“You look cool, Ace,” Chloe says.
“Thanks,” he preens. “You do too. The cape is dope.”
“You’re a good sport,” she says, half-distracted, already pulling out her phone.
“I let Mackenzie put lipstick on me when we borrowed cheerleader uniforms for the homecoming pep rally, but this is like, so much cooler,” Ace says.
“Hold still, I’m almost done,” Ash says.
“Oops.” Ace freezes, and when he speaks again, it’s through his teeth and a locked jaw. “Sorry.”
In the doc on Chloe’s phone, Shara hasn’t typed anything else. Chloe lets the last four words settle in her stomach. Where I want you.
She types back carefully, Where is that? And then hides her phone before Smith can catch on.
When she looks up at Smith, though, he’s not paying attention to her at all. He’s still watching Ash put the final flourish on Ace’s eye makeup.
“Okay,” Ash says, putting down their brush. “You can go change now.”
“Thanks, Ash, you’re so cool,” Ace says, and he gets up and lumbers out, leaving Ash blinking owlishly after him.
“Do you think, um,” Smith says, “do you think you could put some on me?”
“But the yellow pile has five subsections, Val.”
“You’re making this way harder than it needs to be, Jess.”
Thankful for the cover of distraction, Chloe slips off to her room. She snatches her laptop off her desk, balancing it on one hand while she unzips her skirt and shimmies it to the floor. She’s so desperate for one more piece of Shara, her whole body feels itchy. Her Google Doc is instantly open, and—
There, at the top of the page, in small gray letters: Last edit was seconds ago.
When her eyes fly to the space under her three words, Where are you?, there’s a green cursor holding steady. She hovers over it until the name of the person editing the document pops up: SW.
Shara’s there. Shara’s in the doc right now. For the first time since prom, they’re in the same place at the same time.
Chloe’s foot gets caught in her skirt, and she yelps and topples sideways to the carpet.
When she recovers her laptop from the floor, the cursor is gone—wherever Shara is, she must have realized Chloe had logged on and closed the window as fast as she could. There’s nothing new in the document, only the same blank stretch where Shara’s cursor vanished. But the timestamp at the top still says the last edit was seconds ago. She was so close.
But—wait. There shouldn’t be anywhere for Shara’s cursor to rest if there’s nothing below Chloe’s words.
Crumpled at the foot of her bed in her underwear, Chloe hits the command button with her thumb and the A key with her middle finger to highlight everything on the page.
Shara typed in white text. Invisible ink.
Beneath Where are you? she’s written a single line.
Come on. There are a million more interesting questions you could ask.
“You bitch,” Chloe exhales, and she types out, Fine. Why did you leave?
A pause. Chloe finally kicks her skirt off her ankles and holds her breath. Then a little SW appears in a bubble at the top of the document. Shara must have edit notifications on for the doc—God, why didn’t Chloe think of that?
Another sentence unfolds across the page, in black this time.
I don’t think you actually want me to make it that easy. And then, What are you thinking about right now?
You, she types out automatically, before remembering Shara can see it and hastily adding, ’re running out of time to come back. AP tests and finals are next week.
She waits.
Thanks for reminding me, Shara types. What’s the last note you found?
It was a letter, actually, Chloe types. The one you left me at Belltower and asked me not to show anyone.
A second passes, and another, and then Shara’s cursor disappears.
FROM THE BURN PILE
Note from Chloe Green to Shara Wheeler, written on the back of a major works data sheet on The Great Gatsby
Found this on the floor of Ms. Rodkey’s class—thought you might want to keep it. The stuff you wrote about the symbolism of the green light sounded kind of personal.
13
DAYS WITHOUT SHARA: 22
DAYS UNTIL GRADUATION: 21
Shara ghosts the doc for the rest of the weekend after finding out Chloe read the letter, and Chloe knows her theory is correct: Shara is in love with her.
How embarrassing for Shara.
All these years, Shara’s been sitting in her room, brushing her hair in front of her vanity mirror and thinking about how Chloe could be unraveled. Shara, Shara actual Wheeler, is obsessed with her. Willowgrove’s perfect little daughter of Christ wants the weird queer girl with too much eyeliner.
Even if Chloe doesn’t want Shara back, she does want to be a sharp-beaked little bird making a nest in that pretty head. If the next note is anything like the last, she needs it. Like, for entertainment purposes.
At least she has an idea of how to get it.
“The theater end-of-year party is tonight,” Chloe says on Monday when she catches Smith at his locker. She doesn’t remember when she learned Smith Parker’s locker number by heart, but she adds it to the list of ways Shara has derailed her life in a matter of weeks.
“Okay,” Smith says.
“Brooklyn’s coming, and she’s supposed to be taking pictures for the yearbook, so she’ll have her camera there, and we can check the memory card for the club photos,” Chloe goes on. “Everyone who did Phantom is invited, including Ace, so all you have to do is convince him he should actually show up—”
“He’s going.”
“That’s the spirit. Show him who’s boss.”
“No, I mean he already told me he’s going.”
Chloe blinks. “What?”
“Yeah, I think he’s looking forward to it. He bought a new shirt.”
“I—uh, okay. Well, then, you can just figure out an excuse to come with him. And then when Brooklyn’s doing the senior number, you can get to her camera.”
Smith sighs.
“We’re close, Smith,” Chloe reminds him. “You deserve answers. We all do.”
Smith chews on his thumbnail. “Okay. I’ll be there.”
* * *
“Let’s go, let’s go, the seven-layer dip ain’t gettin’ any fresher,” Mr. Truman says as he waves students into the gym like the emcee at the Kit Kat Club. “No, Taelynn, it’s fine that your mom didn’t put lime juice on the avocados like I told her last time and now they’re already brown— Hi, Chloe, you have a fire in your eyes tonight and I hope it’s for theater.”
“It’s definitely for something,” she says.
“Great, no further questions.”
Chloe has been looking forward to her senior theater party since freshman year, when she sat wide-eyed on the floor of the gym watching the senior leads from that year’s spring musical (who were basically celebrities to her at fourteen). The self-appointed keeper of tradition, Mr. Truman invented an iconic Willowgrove theater ritual when he played Conrad in Bye Bye Birdie in ’96 and performed the entire closing number as Rosie at the end-of-year party. It’s evolved over the years; now, as custom dictates, it’s Chloe and Benjy’s turn to swap roles and lead the seniors in an over-the-top, genderbent performance of the titular number.
Benjy, who takes nothing more seriously than an opportunity to commit to a bit, waylays her by the folding table of two-liter sodas and snacks.
“You’re like, thirty minutes late,” he says. “Did you get the blocking notes I sent you? Do you know your lyrics?”
“Benjy, I have known the words to this song since I was in utero,” she says. She mentally flips through the contents of her emails—she’s sure she skimmed Benjy’s plan for the number, but it’s been mostly overwritten in her mind by Shara in her Google Docs.
She wants to be here, in this moment, doing this thing she’s been dreaming of her whole high school career. But she’s also here because she needs to know where to follow Shara next.
She forces her hands to reach for a cupcake instead of her phone. “Did you bake these?”
“Please,” he says. “As if I have time. I— Wait. What is Ace doing here?”
He’s looking over her shoulder at the entrance to the gym, where Ace has appeared in all his lumbering glory.
“He was Phantom,” Chloe reminds him. “He got an invite.”
“Yeah, but he wasn’t supposed to come. He’s not supposed to act like any of us exist,” Benjy says, his expression going pointy and sour. “I planned our entire number around him not coming. What, are we gonna have two Christines? Like a bunch of idiots? And he’s going to screw it up because this whole thing is a joke to him.”
Chloe touches his shoulder in what she hopes is a calming way. She’s usually the one getting calmed down, so she’s not quite sure she’s doing it right. Hand goes like this?
“Okay, don’t tell anyone I told you this, but it turns out Ace Torres is like … actually really into musical theater.”
“What are you talking about?” Benjy snaps. “He was messing up his lines all the way up to tech week. I don’t know if he ever even read the script or just memorized the movie.”
“I know,” Chloe says. Even she can’t believe she’s saying this. “But I think that was because he was nervous. He practiced for weeks before tryouts.”
“He told you this? Since you’re friends with Smith Parker now, for some reason? Who is…” He frowns as Smith materializes behind Ace, looking decidedly awkward. “… Also here?”
“It’s a long story,” Chloe says. “But … please don’t kill me … I think Ace may have actually…” She retracts into her shoulders like a turtle. “Deserved the part?”
Benjy looks at her like she’s been replaced with a clone. “Chloe.”
“I’m not saying you didn’t!” Chloe immediately clarifies. “Or that he deserved it more! But he’s … he’s not as bad as we thought he was. You should ask him what his favorite Sondheim is.”
He’s still glaring, but he at least doesn’t seem like he might jump her. “You’ve changed.”
“Don’t be so dramatic.”
“We’re literally at a theater party right now.”
“Okay, everyone!” Mr. Truman yells, rolling a rack of tragic-looking secondhand gowns and tuxedo jackets into the gym. “Costumes! Makeup!”
“I’ll ask,” Benjy says. “But for the record, there is a wrong answer.”
“I know there is,” Chloe says, and she races him to the racks.
* * *
The gym connects to a back hallway, where two locker rooms sit across from the choir room, and once everyone finishes fighting for costumes, they disperse to get changed. It takes about five seconds for the girls’ locker room to transform into a near-perfect re-creation of the night Phantom closed. Makeup kits exploding over benches, someone pulling out a Bluetooth speaker and putting on the soundtrack, bobby pins somehow already everywhere. Three junior girls commandeer the sinks, climbing up to sit inside the bowls with their sneakers braced against the mirror to do their contour up close.
When Chloe tries to explain what she loves so much about high school theater, even though she’ll probably never set foot on another stage after graduation, she always ends up at this: the chaos of backstage. Sitting on the dressing room floor in a sweaty wig cap eating a box of McNuggets someone’s mom dropped off, accidentally catching a glimpse of a cute lead’s underwear when they’re quick-changing behind a towel in the wings, ranking the smelliest character shoes in the chorus, and the delirious, unsupervised hours between the morning and evening shows on a Saturday.
So much of Chloe’s life at Willowgrove is spent in absolute control to compensate for being different, but not here, not in this glittering shitshow.
“What color did you get?” Chloe asks Georgia, eyeing her own tux with extreme skepticism.
Georgia holds up hers, a shade of powder blue that looks right out of Hairspray. “Brought my great-uncle’s prom tux from home. Knew it would come in handy someday.”
“You genius,” Chloe says. “Mine looks like somebody died in it.”
Brooklyn brushes by, fussily tying her hair back. Her tux is draped over her arm, and it’s one of those camo monstrosities that are distressingly common in Alabama. “At least you didn’t get the Shotgun Wedding Special.”
Chloe retreats to a corner to pull on her tux, which also affords her the opportunity to check her phone without anyone asking her about it. Still nothing new from Shara.
“Did you see that Ace actually came?” she overhears one of the senior girls from the chorus say to another.
“No way. Really?”
“Yeah, and he brought Smith Parker with him.”
“Oh my God.”
They sound skeptical but not hostile, so Chloe kicks aside a confusing twinge of protectiveness. Since when did she start looking after jocks?
Once she’s buttoned up, she makes her way back to the full-length mirror. It could certainly fit better, but the dark gray doesn’t look as funeral home as she feared it might on her, and honestly, that’s kind of a vibe for Phantom anyway. She tugs on her sleeves, swishing her cape—some purple crushed velvet abomination that her mom unearthed from an old Halloween costume—and scrutinizing her reflection. It could be worse.
Over her shoulder, a stall door squeaks open, and Georgia emerges in her powder-blue tux.
“Does it look okay?” she asks. “Ash helped me take it in a little.”
Chloe turns around to look at her and gasps.
The pants have been hemmed and tapered into cigarette pants that end right at the top of her Vans, and she’s rolled the sleeves of the jacket up to her elbows. Her short hair is shoved back and messy, which makes her look at least three years older.
“Geo,” she says, “you look so fucking cool.”
She blushes. “Really?”
“You look like Kristen Stewart at the Oscars.”
“Kristen Stewart?” she repeats, blushing harder.
She steps up to the mirror and turns left and right, checking her jawline in the reflection, then smooths out her lapels with visible coolness.
“Can you—um—” She turns to Chloe, who’s still holding her phone. “Can you take a picture and send it to me?”
She eyes Georgia. She’s not really a selfie person, or a posting photos of things that aren’t dogs or books on her Instagram person. “Who are you sending it to?”
“Nobody,” she insists. “I just want to have it.”
Chloe shrugs and lines up the shot: Georgia with her hands in her pockets, one hip cocked, looking effortless and confident and honestly pretty hot.
Right before she hits the button, an email notification pops up at the top of the screen: SW edited your document.
Shara, back within reach.
“Chloe?” Georgia says.
“Sorry, sorry!” Chloe snaps the shot quickly. “Here, I’ll send it to you.”
She fires off the photo to Georgia, and then ducks into a stall and opens up the doc. It takes ages, since the locker rooms are basically a dead zone for cell service, so she climbs up on the toilet seat to boost her signal.
Under the last thing she wrote, new words finally appear.
Well, what did you think of the letter?
She slaps her phone against her chest and stares up at the water-stained ceiling, screams and laughter and music and gossip fading out under the deafening volume of Shara’s nerve.
I think you made your point pretty clearly, she types, thumbs jabbing at the keyboard. Shara’s cursor is waiting for her response. Though I’m surprised you actually showed your hand.
Shara types back immediately.
You figured it out, then. I knew I wasn’t overestimating you.
Chloe rolls her eyes. Of course Shara wants to play it cool, like she didn’t write a whole letter about how she’s in love with Chloe and then disappear when Chloe read it. Shara Wheeler, always running away and pretending it was all part of her plan.
What I can’t figure out is why you had to do it like this, Chloe types. Seems like a lot of work for something you could have done from your desk in Mrs. Farley’s class. I’ve been right here the whole time.
This time, Shara takes longer to start typing. Chloe stares at her cursor and imagines her on the other side of it, tucking her long hair behind her ear and frowning down at the keyboard.
That’s the problem, Shara types. I was too close to realize that you’re special. Took a while to figure out how to get you where I want you.
“Chloe!”
Chloe startles so hard, her foot almost goes straight into the toilet.
“Yeah!” she shouts back, jumping down. Her voice comes out strangled, so she clears her throat before she opens the door. “What’s up?”
Georgia’s waiting for her on the other side of the door with a fistful of lipsticks and a quizzical brow. “Do you have a minute?”
“Yeah, of course,” she says.
“I need to—”
“Bring those to Ash?” Chloe says, pulling the lipsticks out of her hand. “Got it.”
“Wait—”
“I know,” Chloe calls over her shoulder, already at the door. “No direct application! I’ll tell them to use a brush.”
* * *
In the choir room, Ash has set up an approximation of the makeup station they had for Phantom. They’re a bit of a legend within the theater program for being a wizard with a Morphe brush. They transformed Ace’s face into a complete horror show for Phantom with nothing but liquid latex, wet Kleenex, and a YouTube tutorial in unsubtitled Russian.
“Georgia wanted me to bring these to you,” Chloe says, dropping the lipsticks in Ash’s lap.
“Oh, really?” Ash says. “That’s nice of her.”
Most of the guys are still changing, but Ace is sitting cross-legged on a riser with a full contour and green eyeshadow. Nearby, Smith is watching raptly.
“You look cool, Ace,” Chloe says.
“Thanks,” he preens. “You do too. The cape is dope.”
“You’re a good sport,” she says, half-distracted, already pulling out her phone.
“I let Mackenzie put lipstick on me when we borrowed cheerleader uniforms for the homecoming pep rally, but this is like, so much cooler,” Ace says.
“Hold still, I’m almost done,” Ash says.
“Oops.” Ace freezes, and when he speaks again, it’s through his teeth and a locked jaw. “Sorry.”
In the doc on Chloe’s phone, Shara hasn’t typed anything else. Chloe lets the last four words settle in her stomach. Where I want you.
She types back carefully, Where is that? And then hides her phone before Smith can catch on.
When she looks up at Smith, though, he’s not paying attention to her at all. He’s still watching Ash put the final flourish on Ace’s eye makeup.
“Okay,” Ash says, putting down their brush. “You can go change now.”
“Thanks, Ash, you’re so cool,” Ace says, and he gets up and lumbers out, leaving Ash blinking owlishly after him.
“Do you think, um,” Smith says, “do you think you could put some on me?”
