Benjy’s still going to Tuscaloosa in the fall, and Ash is packing up for Rhode Island. Last week, Georgia finally scored a cheap car from Craigslist, and Chloe helped her practice the drive to Auburn and back. Ace is going to Ole Miss, Brooklyn’s going to Yale, Jake’s going to UA Birmingham, April is going to UNO.
She takes a slow lap around the fire, trying to see everyone. It’s strange to know she’ll never see some of them again, and some will stay in her life long after her moms have donated the last of her uniforms to Goodwill. She lets Ace squeeze her into his continent of a chest and promises to sneak him a video of the first Broadway show she sees. She screams along to a song with Smith. She links arms with Georgia to dance and sends up her only prayer of the past four years: May they always come back to each other.
Finally, she circles back to Shara. She’s sitting in the grass near the fire, watching Ash and Ace argue the ideal level of marshmallow doneness while she roasts her own.
Chloe feels that familiar tug into another world, one where Shara’s a siren disrupting a long voyage or a princess with secret letters tucked into her chemise. But the thing she unfurls in her mind is Shara, just like this, but two years from now.
Shara with her hair growing out but still pink, driving them across the desert to California, yelling complaints about the water pressure from a cheap motel shower. Fighting over books, over who stole whose sweater, fighting for real the way she knows they will and furiously reconciling in the back of Chloe’s car. Smooth legs tangled up with hers, perfectly buffed nails scraping her shoulders. Georgia texting Shara jokes that Chloe doesn’t get, her mom showing Shara how to check her oil, Chloe’s life mixed up with Shara’s until everything tastes like vanilla and mint.
And she imagines herself from Shara’s point of view. Her fingers on a lecture hall desk, a MetroCard in her wallet, her shoes up on the fountain’s edge in Washington Square Park. Her laugh in profile and a swish of dark hair as she leads Shara by the hand through an NYU dorm for a weekend visit. Sleeping two in a twin and eating french fries on the floor, working at this thing between them that only they really understand.
Difficult, frustrating, razor-sharp, feather-soft Shara, leaving lilacs on her pillow in the morning.
She doesn’t really know if she’ll get to have any of that. Shara hasn’t decided what’s next yet. There’s still time for her to enroll for the spring semester at Bama, the only school her parents will agree to pay for, but it would come with a lot of strings. Shara hates strings.
When they’re alone, she talks about applying for student loans and running away to study in France or Italy or China, or riding the Trans-Siberian Railroad, or going on The Bachelor so she can live on Instagram sponcon. Once, she half joked she might find whatever crappy waitressing job she can in New York and sleep on Chloe’s couch. She’ll figure it out. She’s the smartest person Chloe knows. She has time.
And, at least until the end of the summer, she has Chloe. That much Chloe knows for sure.
She sits down at Shara’s side and drops her bag onto the ground between them. Shara’s preoccupied with a smoldering marshmallow.
“I have a question for you,” she says.
“No, I didn’t mean to burn it,” Shara says. “I’m not perfect.”
She laughs, reaching into her purse. “Actually, I was going to ask if you think I should burn these.”
Shara glances over, and there in Chloe’s hand are her cards. Some are worn down at the edges from being carried around. One has a matcha stain on it. All of them are monogrammed pink artifacts of a Shara who would rather tear her own life apart than tell the truth, even to herself.
Chloe’s grown attached to them, to be honest, but this isn’t a game anymore. Feels weird to keep the pieces.
Shara says, “Burn ’em.”
So Chloe does.
Under the curl of smoke, Shara reaches over and smears melted marshmallow down the length of Chloe’s nose.
“Ah!” Chloe gasps while Shara laughs. “Why!”
Shara grins an extremely self-satisfied grin, which is something Chloe is still getting used to. Shara has so many more expressions than she did before. It’s like she’s unlocked Shara Premium.
“Because it’s funny.”
“I hate you!”
“Can’t believe it took you four whole years to finally say that to my face,” Shara says, settling back on her elbows.
“I can only say it because I don’t mean it anymore,” Chloe counters. She turns onto her side so she can lean over Shara and smear the marshmallow into the sleeve of her shirt.