“Chloe. You’re smarter than this.”
“Stop screwing with me and answer the question, Shara.”
Shara pauses, reaching for another chocolate. She doesn’t unwrap this one. It rolls around in her palm as she thinks about what she’s going to say. “You’ve seen the way they look at each other, haven’t you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Smith didn’t have any interest in me until he found out Rory moved in next door. Then, all of a sudden, he was asking me to homecoming, and he seemed all right, so I thought I’d give him a chance. But when he came to pick me up, I swear Rory almost fell off his roof when they saw each other, and I got it. I knew what I was to them. You weren’t around in eighth grade, but I saw what they were like together.” Shara’s still rolling the chocolate around in her hand, letting it go soft at the edges from her body heat. “They both think they love me, but I’m not the one they’re here for.”
The bleachers note. Shara said she kissed Smith to make Rory jealous, but if she knew how he felt—
She never said which of them he was supposed to be jealous of.
“Everybody wants to use me for something, Chloe,” Shara says. “At least with them, there was something in it for me too.”
“Like what?”
“Social capital and entertainment, mainly. But I’m bored, and high school’s almost over, so I thought I’d point them at each other and see what happens.” She drops the chocolate unceremoniously back into the bag. “And I knew the three of you would keep each other on the trail, so I wrapped everything up together. Two birds and all. Nice and neat.”
“Smith would never use anyone like that,” Chloe says. “You broke his heart.”
She cuts her eyes over, like Chloe shouldn’t have the right to say Smith’s name in front of her, which is pretty rich, all things considered.
“I was always gonna break his heart.”
“Why?”
“Because I can’t love him back.”
“Why not?” Chloe demands.
“I just can’t, okay?” Shara finally snaps. She swats a loose strand of hair away from her face. “You’re still not getting it. I can’t. I can’t be with Smith. I can’t be what everyone wants. I can’t go to Harvard. All I can do is win this one last thing, so that can be the way everyone remembers me, and they’ll never need to know about the rest. And you’re in my way, so I did what I had to. That’s all I care about.”
Chloe’s experienced enough theater to know a rehearsed line when she hears one.
“Tell yourself whatever you want,” Chloe says. “Won’t change the fact that you’re so scared of what people in some fucking nothing town think of you that it made you do all this.”
She whips around and stomps up the steps, emerging topside into the wet night. Shara comes bursting up after her.
“Maybe I am scared,” Shara yells at her back, “but not as scared as you are!”
Chloe rounds on her. There Shara is again, in her ridiculous Greek tragedy of a prom dress, her face sharp and hateful.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“You know what I do? When I’m scared?” Shara asks. “I look at myself in the mirror and find something to fix. Like I’m the gardeners at the front of the club trimming rose bushes into the right shape. I moisturize my face and I condition my hair and I think about what I can say to exactly which person tomorrow to make them believe what I want them to about me. But you—you march into school every day like you know everything and you’re better than everyone, and that’s how I know you’re terrified. You have to decide that you’re so certain about everything, because uncertainty scares the shit out of you.”
“I cannot express how much none of this is about me,” Chloe says.
“You said it was about being scared of what people think,” Shara says. “I’m just saying, I’m not the only one.”
Chloe, who is out of patience for Shara’s maritime monologues on things she knows absolutely nothing about, takes a step toward her.
It’s then that Shara does something to betray her entire performance: she flinches backward, tripping on the dirty hem of her gown, stumbling until the small of her back hits the boat’s railing.
She’s afraid to let Chloe any closer. Because she knows what’ll happen. She knows what she’ll do.
Chloe was right. Shara wants her. She just doesn’t want to admit it.