Her moms exchange a look.
“Where’s this coming from?” her mom asks.
“I—I just need to know.”
“You take care of yourself, and that’s important,” her mom says. “And you don’t hurt anyone.”
“But I do hurt people,” Chloe insists.
“Do you do it on purpose?”
“No.”
“Okay, then, you’re human.”
“But Georgia said I don’t care about her, and I’m—if I’m so mean that my best friend doesn’t even know I care about her, then—then what’s wrong with me?”
“There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re just you.”
“I’m not a nice person,” she says.
“Chloe,” her mom says, “your mama and I decided long before you were born that we would let you be whoever you are, no matter who that is.”
“And if who you are is a snarling little Pomeranian with eyes like fire, then that’s who you are, darling,” her mama adds.
“Jess,” her mom hisses. “What she means is that nice and kind are not the same thing. Plenty of people aren’t nice at all, but they’re kind. And that’s what matters.”
“Sometimes,” Chloe blurts out, squeezing her temples between both hands, “sometimes it feels like I’m gonna explode, like everything I’m feeling is the first time anyone’s felt it, ever, in the history of the universe, and then I get so angry when people don’t understand that I’m walking around feeling like this and still doing everything I’m supposed to do and making As and getting into NYU and putting up with all of the Willowgrove bullshit. I—I can’t even explain how I feel, and it feels wrong to say it without the right words, so I don’t say it at all, but then nobody knows, and I’m mad that nobody knows, even though I don’t even want them to know.”
“To know what?” her mom asks gently.
“That—” Chloe says, but it sticks in her throat. “That it’s hard. That I have to be like this, because it’s all so fucking hard.”
“I know,” her mama says. “It’s enough to get through it though.”
“No, it’s not,” Chloe says, shoving away from the counter. “It’s not.”
* * *
Her moms try to drag her with them to Olive Garden for dinner, but Chloe finds the idea so depressing that she shouts through her bedroom door for them to go without her. Once she hears their car pull out, she rolls out of bed and trudges into her bathroom.
The silver chain is in the same place she left it, and she takes it out and holds it in the palm of her hand. It’s a necklace, with a thin, ornate charm: a diamond-studded crucifix.
Cross necklaces are a status symbol at Willowgrove. If your parents can afford to buy you a dainty diamond crucifix before you get your learner’s permit, you’re somebody. Chloe’s moms couldn’t afford to get her one even if she wanted it.
Every popular girl who ever made Chloe feel like a freak had one gleaming from the opening of her uniform polo.
Shara had one until halfway through freshman year.
Chloe had been sentenced to writing lines from the Bible in after-school detention, and she was avoiding it. She stopped in the empty library and hid behind a shelf in case anybody came looking for her.
That’s where she saw Shara, staring at the wastepaper basket near the study tables.
She watched Shara hesitate briefly, biting one of her buffed pink nails with shiny white teeth before she swept her hair over one shoulder and unclasped the chain at the nape of her neck. She dropped it in the trash can, and she left.
Looking back, Chloe can’t completely recall deciding to fish the necklace out. She’d overheard her moms the night before, arguing in low voices on the back porch about the cost of Chloe’s tuition when they thought she’d gone to bed. Maybe she took it with some half-formed idea of pawning it like they do on the A&E shows her mama likes to watch. But she’s never once thought about selling it.
Because Shara came back for it. Ten minutes later, she watched Shara burst into the library, go straight for the trash can, and grow more and more panicked as she pulled out bits of paper and vending machine candy wrappers. She turned the whole thing upside down and shook it, then gave up. She never even realized Chloe was there.
And Chloe was there the next week at the gym lockers when Shara put on a tearful performance of realizing she must have lost it running laps around the football field in PE. The entire PE class went out to search through the turf on their hands and knees, and Shara stood there and let them. Chloe got grass stains, but it was worth it to know that Shara isn’t who everyone thinks she is.