“Huh,” she says. She does not fly across the room and rip the top off the piano and fling it out of the way like Smith throwing a touchdown pass, but she very, very badly wants to. In her head, she is punching the entire thing apart with her bare hands. In reality, she purses her lips and says, “That’s weird.”
If she’s right, and the thing inside the piano is what she thinks—Jesus, Mr. Truman said it’s been acting up since last month. That would mean Shara’s been crawling around leaving clues for weeks. Who is this girl?
When the bell rings for the end of lunch, she waves her friends off the way she always does to hang back for her sixth hour, Girls Select Chorus. As soon as the door shuts behind them, before Mr. Truman or any of her classmates come straggling in from lunch, she crosses to the upright piano.
The silver key from Shara’s card is already in her pocket, just in case, and when she pushes it into the padlock on the piano lid, it’s a perfect fit.
Guess that explains who stole the piano key.
Carefully, she eases the case open and peers down into its guts, all its dozens of levers and mysterious pieces, and there, paperclipped to one of the strings, is an unpleasantly familiar pink card.
And leave thee to the mercy of wild beasts. That’s the rest of the line.
Junior year. AP Lang. Chloe and Shara were paired up for a project—involuntarily, of course. Ms. Rodkey split the class up in twos and forced them to memorize and perform a conversation from one of the plays they covered in their Shakespeare unit. She’ll never forget Drew Taylor in his tube socks stammering through King Lear.
She remembers pushing her desk together with Shara’s, glaring when Shara’s skirt had the audacity to cross the invisible barrier between them and brush her knee. She remembers Shara smiling brightly at the teacher over the printed list of sample scenes before turning to Chloe and saying, “We’re doing Midsummer.” Like she was the only one who got to decide. Like Chloe hadn’t grown up listening to her moms recite Twelfth Night at each other over morning coffee.
She remembers their argument—Chloe wanted to do Olivia and Cesario meeting, Shara wanted Demetrius and Helena in the wood—and the way Shara’s fingers were warm on the back of her hand when she reached over to point out the lines she didn’t like. She remembers wanting to throw her copy of Midsummer at Shara’s perfect, polite face, but that they did, eventually, agree to do it.
They met in the library after school and read lines at each other for an hour, Shara’s cheeks going pinker and pinker with quiet anger the more Chloe recited without glancing at the page. Chloe chewed on a smile, off-book. It was obvious which of them was going to do better on the assignment. For once, it didn’t matter that Shara had gotten her way.
She remembers the way Shara left in a huff, swinging her backpack over her shoulder, and then walked into class the next day with every word committed to memory. Chloe stood at the front of the room as Shara recited in her sugary drawl, I’ll follow thee and make a heaven of hell, and she stared at Shara’s face, at the pearl studs on her earlobes and the lock of hair tucked there behind her ear and her lip balm catching the light from the window when her mouth moved, and she willed her to miss a line, just one line. She didn’t, and in the end, they were graded as a team anyway.
Chloe reaches inside the piano, slips the card out from between the strings, and opens it.
On the top flap of the card, Shara’s written out another quote from Midsummer. Chloe knows this one from memory too. Hermia and Helena.
As if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds,
Had been incorporate. So we grew together,
Like to a double cherry—seeming parted
But yet an union in partition—
Two lovely berries molded on one stem;
On the other flap, the note is addressed to her:
Chloe,
Being the principal’s daughter does have at least one perk: a master key makes everything easier. Mr. Truman seems nice, though, so I did feel a little bad.
Glad you figured this one out . I stayed up all night memorizing our scene, but this was the one I really wanted to do. It’s such a nice image, a double-stemmed cherry. I think we’re like that. You always seemed to be right next to me, even though we never could get that close to each other. But then, I don’t have to explain metaphors to you, do I?
XOXO
S
“So, you’re back in?” Rory says when they meet behind the gym after seventh hour.
“I was never officially out, and this isn’t Ocean’s 8,” Chloe tells him. “Though if it was, I would be Cate Blanchett.”