“Ah,” Chloe says. From this angle, the phone light catches on his curls in the places where he’s bleached them, and she imagines him huddled in the bathroom with April and Jake and a bleach kit the same way she and her friends gathered around the sink to help Ash cut off all their hair. “Okay. Well, the piercing is cool.”
“Thanks.”
“You should wear it to school.”
“I wear it to school every day.”
“I meant visibly.”
Rory shrugs, his shoulders sliding up and down the sheet metal. “Yeah, I don’t know. If you’re gonna break rules, I don’t really see the point in dress code violations. Low-hanging fruit. Draws too much attention. Doesn’t even inconvenience anyone that bad.”
Chloe frowns. “Feeling subtweeted right now.”
“Why do you do it, then?”
“I guess because … I already know people are going to be staring at me, and that teachers are going to find some reason to punish me, so at least this way I control why.”
“Fair enough.”
“Also, I look fucking cool. And the dress code is stupid.”
Rory smirks. “I’m with you on the last part, at least.”
“And…” Chloe goes on. “I mean, it’s probably also that I can’t really break any bigger rules than that, because then I’d actually be risking valedictorian, and I can’t risk that.”
“Aren’t you kind of risking it right now?” Rory asks, gesturing with one hand to their whole insane situation.
“This is different,” Chloe insists. “Nobody’s ever gonna know we did this. And we’re doing it so I can find Shara before grades are finalized and make her come back. I didn’t work my ass off for the last four years not to see her face when she loses.”
“Jesus,” Rory says. “Is that really the only reason you’re doing this? Valedictorian?”
“Better than trying to get in her pants.”
“That’s—” Rory blinks a few times, like she’s managed to unsettle him. “That’s not how I see Shara.”
“Then how?”
He considers the question, then rolls over onto his side and says, “What was middle school like for you?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
He smirks. “Humor me.”
“Okay,” she says. “Um, grew five inches, started taking high school English, briefly got into cosplay. Best friend was this girl named Priya who taught me how to do my eyeliner, but we haven’t really kept in touch. Told my moms I was bi when I was thirteen and they weren’t even surprised. Realized I was weird but that I kinda liked it.”
“Yeah,” Rory says. “So, for me, it sucked ass. My parents split up. I had no friends. I was this awkward, ugly kid who liked poetry but hated reading it, so I got really into music instead, but I couldn’t read guitar tabs either so I had to learn from YouTube, and then I had double jaw surgery in eighth grade to fix my underbite, and I was the only Black kid in the grade other than Summer, who was way too cool to hang out with me. I was roasted every day of my life. Dixon Wells used to call me Snore-y Rory because I had really bad asthma and sometimes I would breathe weird during tests.”
“His name literally has the word ‘dicks’ in it,” Chloe says, “and that’s the best he could come up with?”
“I know,” says Rory, whose face in profile is such a work of art that she should have guessed someone designed it on purpose. “So, seventh grade, Smith shows up. Said my Naruto backpack was cool. He was my first best friend, or whatever—my only friend, unless you count my older brother. He’d help me with my homework and with writing down my songs, and I was like, maybe high school won’t totally wreck my shit. But then he ditched me, and everything sucked again. My dad took a job in Texas, and my brother left for college, and my mom got remarried so we had to move—but when I looked out the window of my new room, I saw a girl next door reading a book, and it was Shara fucking Wheeler.”
“And you thought she was going to solve all your problems,” Chloe guesses.
“You don’t get it, Chloe. Shara has been the ultimate girl since I was in kindergarten. And that’s not my opinion—literally everyone I’ve ever met thinks Shara Wheeler is the ultimate.”
Chloe grinds her molars together. “I’m well aware.”
“What I’m saying is, everyone said she was the dream girl, so I grew up believing it,” Rory explains. “She’s the only girl I’ve ever thought about. Like, it had to be her. So, I thought if Shara Wheeler ever looked over the fence and noticed me, if that was all I had going for me, it would be enough. Because it would be her.”