“Never saw it,” Rory says, examining his cuticles. Then, so quietly she’s not sure she’s meant to hear it, he adds, “I’m Rihanna.”
Smith’s still reading over the postscript at the bottom of the card Shara left in the piano. It’s addressed to him.
There are a couple more things I need you to know about me, it says. I left a photo of us in the last place you kissed me. Maybe it’ll help.
“The last place I kissed her?” Smith says incredulously. The three of them are maintaining a careful two feet of distance like they’re saving room for Jesus at a homecoming dance. Smith looks at Rory while Rory looks down at his feet, then Rory looks up, and Smith dedicates himself to studying the toes of his Air Forces. Chloe longs for last week, when she’d never had Shara’s mouth on hers and her biggest problem was finding a sticky bra for prom.
“You don’t remember the last place you kissed her?” Chloe asks.
“No, I do,” Smith says. “It was at Dixon Wells’s house when we were taking prom photos.”
“Okay, so,” Rory says, “ask him if you can come over and look for it.”
“It’s not that easy,” Smith says. He rubs a hand over the buzzed hairs on the back of his neck. “Dixon is kind of an asshole.”
“Yeah,” Chloe agrees. “No joke.”
“I thought he was your friend,” Rory says.
“Dixon is a guy I hang out with,” Smith tells him. “That’s not the same thing.”
“What are you saying?” Chloe asks.
“I’m saying that if I ask to come over to look for something Shara left there, he’s probably gonna be a dick about it and want to know what it is, and if he finds out my girlfriend cheated on me with both of you, he’s definitely gonna be a dick about it.”
Chloe takes a second to think about that one. Shara may have dragged them into this, but she doesn’t deserve for the school’s most unapologetic d-bag to know she kissed a girl. Even if Chloe doesn’t care about Smith’s reputation, she does care about that. Like, in a general moral sense.
“Okay,” Chloe says. “So, how else can we get into Dixon’s house?”
“He’s throwing a party tomorrow night,” Smith says. “I’ll look for it then.”
“You need help,” Rory says. “Dixon lives across the golf course from me. I’ve seen his house. It’s basically a small country.”
“You could—well, one of you could come with me. Two might be pushing it. He gets weird about people he doesn’t know showing up. If we want to keep this to ourselves, only one of you can come.”
“She wrote it on my note,” Chloe says quickly. “I’ll go.”
FROM THE BURN PILE
Found in the back of Chloe’s sophomore chemistry notebook
VALEDICTORIAN SPEECH: DRAFT #3
Good morning, friends, family, faculty, and my fellow graduating class of Willowgrove Christian Academy 2022. I’m Chloe Green, and I’m so honored to be representing our class as valedictorian. It was a tough fight to the top, and I’m thankful to each of you whose hard work encouraged me to work that much harder.
Unlike almost every member of this graduating class, I didn’t grow up here in False Beach. I grew up in southern California, near an actual beach. Moving here for high school is the first time I’ve lived among so many people who care this deeply about college football, who have never in their lives eaten a sushi roll, who believe bootcut jeans are still acceptable to wear in public. In fact, from the moment I arrived at Willowgrove, I was confident that I would spend the next four years of my high school career counting the days until I could escape this place, which has the spiritual aura of a Mountain Dew bottle filled with dip spit in the tour bus cupholder of a Christian rock Lynyrd Skynyrd cover band
Annotation from Georgia:
It’s a graduation, not a roast. Consider making a list of things you actually like about False Beach, if possible.
6
DAYS SINCE SHARA LEFT: 6
DAYS UNTIL GRADUATION: 37
The last thing Chloe wants to do, definitely at this moment and maybe ever for the rest of her life, is spend her Friday night watching Dixon Wells slobber all over a beer bong with Shara Wheeler’s boyfriend.
It’s not that she doesn’t enjoy parties, or large groups of screaming people, or Saturday nights that get a little sloppy. It’s very well-documented by Benjy’s Snapchat stories that she enjoys all those things. She even once almost got French-kissed by Tucker Price from the Quiz Bowl team in his parents’ saltwater jacuzzi. Straight A’s and being capable of having fun are not mutually exclusive.