“Maybe he’ll have cute friends,” Chloe suggests.
“I don’t have high hopes for the gays of Tuscaloosa,” Benjy says.
“It’s gonna be great,” Georgia says. “You’ll either meet a guy who owns five seersucker suits or a guy who wants to drive you around on the back of his ATV, and either way, you get to have a whirlwind romance under a dramatic canopy of oak trees.”
“Are you gonna write me a coming-of-age movie or what?” Benjy asks her. “I’m ready to put Timothée Chalamet out of work.”
“Sorry, I don’t do screenplays,” Georgia says, taking a swig from her water bottle.
“Did y’all apply for your cool NYU apartment yet?” Benjy asks them.
Chloe nods. “We don’t get assigned until July though. I’m just glad I don’t have to live with a random.”
“Uh-huh,” Georgia hums.
“I—” Benjy starts, but he cuts himself off. A black Jeep has parked three spots down, and Benjy tries to turn a glare into a polite smile as Ace Torres climbs out. Ace spots them and offers his trademark shit-eating grin.
“Hey, Benjy!” he says with a wave. “Chloe, Jessica.”
He lumbers cheerfully off toward the courtyard where the jocks congregate before school, whistling to himself.
“Three months,” Georgia says, gesturing with her water bottle, which clangs against Benjy’s headlight. “For three entire months, I was stage manager and he was Phantom, and he still can’t bother to learn my name.”
Benjy releases a sigh like the bearer of a centuries-old feud. “What do you think goes on in that head?”
“I always picture a cute little hamster running on a wheel,” Chloe says.
“But it’s wearing an itty-bitty letterman jacket,” Benjy adds.
Georgia asks, “What did the hamster letter in?”
“Javelin,” Benjy says. “I’m surprised he remembers my name. God forbid people think we’re friends.”
“Do you want to be friends with Ace Torres?”
“No,” Benjy says haughtily. “I’m just saying; it’s one thing to steal a role that doesn’t belong to you”—here, he pauses to emphasize that he’s the one who deserved the role—“and it’s something else to steal it and then act like it never happened.”
Chloe watches as Ace enters the courtyard and pulls Smith into one of those bizarre, sideways bro-hugs. Because of course Ace’s best friend is Smith Parker, which means Smith came to the matinee performance of Phantom last month, which means he brought Shara, which means Chloe had to do an entire show pretending not to notice Shara front and center with her judgy face and shiny hair and—
She doesn’t realize how hard she’s squeezing her matcha until the lid pops off.
The bell rings, and Chloe shrugs off another look from Georgia and leads the way to B Building. They split at the double doors—Georgia’s first hour is calculus, Benjy’s is history—and Chloe heads straight down the hall to Mrs. Farley’s AP Lit classroom.
By the girls’ bathroom, Mrs. Sherman is at her usual post, permed and scrutinizing passing students like the Eye of Sauron but with clumpy mascara. Chloe waves with the tips of her fingers as she passes, making sure Mrs. Sherman gets a good, long look at her nonregulation black nail polish. That should do it.
In her seat, second row center, she pulls out her binder and sets it on the smooth, cool surface, then lays out all three of the novels they’ve been discussing, one on top of the other so their spines form a pleasing column. Almost enough to distract from Shara’s empty seat in front of hers.
Every morning of the past year, she’s deliberately beaten Shara to Mrs. Farley’s class. She figured out early on that English is Shara’s best subject, which means every bit of extra credit counts. If she can get an additional 0.5 percent participation grade from being two minutes earlier, she’s going to. She is not repeating the junior year travesty of losing her lead in Ms. Rodkey’s class by a single point.
And because she’s always in her seat before Shara, she always has to watch what happens when Shara enters a room.
There’s this stupid thing that people always say about girls in murder documentaries. She lit up a room when she walked in. Chloe used to think it was what people said to make someone sound better when they felt bad about what happened to them, or maybe a trick of the brain, a misinterpretation of the glow a person takes on in your memory once they’re gone.