It’s her mom welcoming every one of her friends into their house without hesitation, Georgia hiking out to the cliffs to read a book from Belltower, Smith with flowers in his hair and Rory yanking down street signs, the stars above the lake and midnight drives, hand-painted signs and improvised spaces in parking lots. All the things that people can make False Beach into.
None of the people she loves in this town are separate from it. Benjy grew up on Dolly Parton. Ash named themself after Alabama ash trees.
And Shara—Shara’s an Alabama girl no matter what color she dyes her hair, and she’s always been an Alabama girl, every second she was breathing down Chloe’s neck. An Alabama girl outsmarted her with Shakespeare. An Alabama girl kissed her life into chaos.
She used to imagine lying to her future NYU classmates, telling them she never left California. Now she imagines telling them this.
“So, that’s the main thing I wanted to say,” Chloe goes on. “I also want to say thank you to a few people. To my friends, Georgia, Benjy, Ash—thank you for being my place here when I didn’t have anywhere else.
“To Smith and Rory, I will never stop feeling lucky to have gotten to know you.”
The last line on the page says, To Shara, but that’s all. She never could figure out what to say.
“And to the girl who kissed me,” she says, “I have done some of the best work of my life because of you. And I know you have done some of the best work of your life because of me. I don’t know a better way to explain what love means to two people like us.”
* * *
After the diplomas, while everyone’s squeezing together for photos and Chloe’s moms are busy wrangling her friends for a group shot, after the news crews have gotten their footage but before they’ve finished packing their cameras and big spongy microphones, Smith sidles up between Chloe and Shara.
“I got a question,” he says.
“Flowers still looking great,” Chloe says promptly.
“Appreciated,” he says. “What exactly is the church board planning to do about your dad, Shara?”
Shara sighs and shrugs. “I think they’re trying to throw enough money around to make it go away. They hired a legal team to shut down anybody who tries to post about it anywhere, and the only cop I’ve seen around my house is Mackenzie Harris’s dad, so.”
“So, in other words,” Smith says. He squints into the sun, eyes flashing gold. “If something’s gonna happen, the story has to get out of False Beach.”
“I guess so,” Shara says.
“All right,” Smith says as he leaves them, “I’m gonna go win somebody a broadcast journalism award.”
Smith Parker is always, always a quarterback. He’s a strategist. He plans five steps ahead. So, he’s subtle about swaggering up to a camera guy and slapping palms like they’re old friends. It looks natural when he leans in and says something to the guy that Chloe can’t hear, finishing off with a smile. Nobody would ever know what he’s done. Certainly not whoever updates his ESPN profile.
It takes another minute for the cameraman to whip around, grab his reporter, and yank her into the van.
They peel out of the dealership, cutting a U-turn in the middle of the highway to screech into the Willowgrove parking lot, gunning straight for the auditorium.
The nearest reporter, one from Birmingham, turns to his crew and says, “Pack y’all’s shit up now.”
When the auditorium doors swing open and grads come streaming out of the building, the crews are waiting. Principal Wheeler steps out of the air conditioning and directly into a mob of microphones.
From Chloe’s side, Shara shades her eyes with her hand and watches.
“Well,” she says, white teeth glinting, “bless his heart.”
FROM THE BURN PILE
Note from Chloe’s mom to her on her first day of school Chloe,
I promise I will let you go wherever you want to go, as long as it makes you happy. I promise I will stand up for you against anyone who tries to make you feel small, but only if you ask me to. I know you prefer to take care of yourself, and I believe that you can.
Show them you’re not someone to fuck with.
All my love,
Mom
25
DAYS UNTIL FALL SEMESTER COMMENCES AT NYU: 100
The bonfire comes later.
One of Willowgrove’s oldest senior rites of passage is a bonfire in the cow pasture near campus the day after graduation, set up by the student body president and a few volunteers from the 4-H club. Everyone’s supposed to bring all their notebooks, leftover exams, homework packets, study guides, C-minus essays, and assorted high school debris they never want to see again, and burn it.