Smith shrugs. “It’s almost graduation. I mean, look at Ace.”
He points, and she looks: Ace has wandered away from his usual spot and is having an animated conversation with one of the junior theater girls. Summer’s nowhere to be seen either, she realizes.
She shakes her head and pulls herself up higher.
“Okay,” she says, “about what Shara wrote on the elevator— I already told you. I think it means there’s a clue in one of the notes that explains where she is, and we’re supposed to figure it out and meet her there.”
Rory swallows a bite of burrito and nods slowly. “Uh-huh.”
“We should go back over the cards,” she goes on. “Do y’all wanna do it now or meet up after seventh hour?”
Rory and Smith exchange a look, like they’ve recovered whatever unspoken language they must have developed when they were thirteen, which is nice for them and incredibly inconvenient for Chloe.
“What?” she demands.
“Chloe,” Rory says. “If she wanted us to know, we would.”
“But maybe we do,” Chloe insists, “and we haven’t realized it yet.”
Another silent look between Smith and Rory.
“What?” she says again. “Are you actually giving up?”
“Look,” Smith says. “I care about Shara. A lot. But I’m tired. And I’m starting to wonder if she ever wanted us to catch her at all. Like, maybe this whole thing was one big goodbye.”
She shakes her head. “Rory?”
“I don’t know what else we have to go on,” he says. “Kinda feels like a dead end.”
A dead end?
“Well, I might lose all my friends over this, and finals are next week, which means if she’s not back by then, she won’t even be eligible for valedictorian, which means my salutatorian will be Drew Taylor, which is just embarrassing,” Chloe snaps. “He has a YouTube channel about why girls at Willowgrove are sluts for taking birth control pills. He doesn’t deserve to come second to me.”
“But you still win,” Smith points out. “Isn’t that enough?”
“No! It’s not! Not if she lets me win!”
She jumps down, landing untidily on her feet and storming off toward sixth hour, spiking the uneaten taco from her pocket into the first trash can she passes.
She didn’t ask for any of this. But she’s going to finish it, even if she has to do it alone.
* * *
Georgia takes one look at Chloe outside her house and says, “You’re kidding.”
“Hang on.” Chloe sticks her foot in the door so it can’t be slammed in her face. “Please, listen for a second.”
“All I do is listen to you, Chloe. That’s the whole problem.”
“If you just let me show you what’s been up with me, it’ll all make sense. I promise.”
Chloe went straight to Belltower after school, but Georgia wasn’t there, which is why she’s standing on this tiny front porch with her makeup pouch, trying to prove that Shara’s the one who ruined everything, not her.
“Fine.” Georgia crosses her arms. “What’s in the bag?”
“You remember how Shara kissed me?”
It takes a moment for the outrage to dawn on Georgia’s face.
“Shara Wheeler?” Georgia says, eyes wide. “This is about Shara Wheeler?”
“Stay with me. Shara kissed me, and then she ran away, and then she left me that note. The one I got in the Taco Bell drive-thru.”
“Uh-huh.”
She unzips the bag and hands it to Georgia.
“She left notes for Rory and Smith too,” Chloe says as Georgia starts pulling out pink card after pink card. “With clues in them, all leading to another clue, and another, and another. And they’re in these ridiculous places. I’m telling you, Georgia, it’s been a full-time job finding them, that’s why I’ve been spending so much time with Smith and Rory. I had to go to that Dixon party because she hid one there, and then I had to break into the principal’s office to get one out of her dad’s filing cabinet—I mean, it’s like, unbelievable. And every clue has a note from her, and every single one proves that I was right about her. I mean, she’s evil—”
Georgia stops shuffling the cards.
“Hang on,” Georgia interrupts. “You said you broke into the office? How?”
“I had a key,” Chloe answers automatically.
“To the office?”