So yeah, this is more likely to end in tears, which might be worse.
“I mean, Summer did, technically, break up with me because of Shara, but—”
“Man, if you’ve been pretending to help me all this time when you—”
Ace holds up both hands in front of his chest. “She was helping me practice for spring musical auditions, okay?”
What.
“What?” Chloe interjects.
“What?” Smith asks, eyebrows near his hairline.
“It’s—it’s stupid.” Ace sinks down into one of the folding seats, running a hand through his floppy hair. “But I’ve always wanted to try out for spring musical. Always. But it scared the shit out of me, because like, what if I wasn’t any good? Or what if I was good, and Dixon and them roasted me for being into showtunes until graduation? And then it was senior year, and it was my last chance, and Truman was doing rehearsals before auditions, and I almost went to one, but I kept thinking, what if I don’t get the part? What if I don’t even get cast, or they make me like, a tree, and then everyone knows I really wanted it but I wasn’t good enough? But I remembered that Shara used to play piano in the talent show when we were kids, so I asked if she could help me with the sheet music. And we started meeting up at my house after school to work on my audition song.”
He looks up at Smith and raises his hands helplessly, letting them drop back into his lap. “That was it, I swear.”
Never, not in all the evenings after school blocking scenes with Ace in the choir room, not even when she had to practice kissing his big mouth, did it occur to Chloe that Ace didn’t audition as a joke.
Smith looks skeptical.
“You’re telling me Summer dumped you over that?”
“No, Summer dumped me because I blew off a date to practice, and when she came by my house that night, she saw Shara coming out of the front door and freaked out.”
Smith shakes his head, incredulous. “Why didn’t you just tell her what y’all were doing?”
“Because Shara said if I ever told anyone she helped me with the music, she’d report me to her dad for smoking weed.”
“Okay, now that I don’t understand,” Chloe butts in. “Shara loves it when people know she’s done a good deed.”
“I don’t know,” Ace says. “But she was dead serious. I believed her. And like, Summer is so dope, but I can’t get expelled right before I graduate. I’ll lose my scholarship.”
“So,” Smith says. He crosses back toward Ace, his hip brushing Rory’s knees as he passes. Rory absently reaches down to touch his own knee as he watches. “You … you tried to pull a High School Musical, basically.”
“Yeah.”
“And Shara blackmailed you for it.”
“Wouldn’t be the first person she’s blackmailed,” Rory points out.
Smith rubs both palms over the back of his head.
“You could have told me before you asked Shara for help,” he says finally, softly. “My sister could have helped you. You know she’s good at that stuff. And I know everyone else we know has to be all no-homo about everything, but I kinda thought I’d made it clear we’re not like that. I mean, I showed you my Sailor Moon collection.”
“I know.”
“I told you I shared clothes with my sister until I was thirteen.”
Chloe leans in. “Quick question: necessity or preference?”
“It’s not like that,” Ace says, ignoring her. “You’re the only one I didn’t think would judge me. I was afraid of being bad.”
“Well, you’re not. You were pretty fucking great, actually.”
Ace grins at that, wide as ever, and he’s on a beach in Tahiti again, all palm trees and coconuts with tiny umbrellas. Chloe doesn’t know how he does it.
“Thanks.”
“Okay, well,” Rory says, apparently bored. He hops down from the stage. “Congratulations on being best friends forever. Can we go get the next note before seventh hour?”
“I don’t know where it is,” Smith says.
Rory sighs. “I do.”
* * *
The next card is in the football stadium. Shara’s tucked it inside a plastic sandwich bag to protect it from rain and taped it to the underside of a row of bleachers so high up that Chloe has to climb onto Rory’s shoulders to retrieve it. Rory looks and sounds like he’s about to snap in half from the effort.
“You know, you could have counted the rows, climbed up to that seat on the topside, and reached through the gap in the bleachers,” Smith points out as Chloe clambers down Rory’s back. “That’s probably how Shara put it there.”