All around them, the rest of Willowgrove is filtering into first hour, and every single one of them takes a second to stare as they pass. Chloe Green, the one who scored a 35 on the ACT. Smith Parker, the saint who led Willowgrove to the state champ title two years in a row. And Rory Heron, best known for flooding the bio lab on purpose. The three of them occupying the same spot is ripping a hole in the Willowgrove space-time continuum.
Smith is visibly doing some mental calculations. It’s obvious he and Rory would rather do just about anything than spend another second in each other’s company, which means Chloe’s life is about to be a nonstop tornado of egos, but she can deal with it as long as they get her to a fair victory. Like Willowgrove, it’s a necessary evil.
“I’m in, I guess,” Smith says. He glances sidelong at Chloe. “I get what Shara meant about you.”
Chloe blinks. “What did she say about me?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Fine,” Chloe says, definitely worrying about it. “If there’s anything we need to know, like if she said or did anything unusual lately, you should tell me.”
“Us,” Rory corrects her.
“Us,” Chloe agrees.
“The only thing lately,” Smith says finally, “was that she kept saying she couldn’t hang out because she had homework. She does that a lot, but it was like, a lot of homework. So, I guess … maybe she was doing something else.”
“Did she seem … unhappy?” Chloe asks.
“It’s hard to tell with Shara sometimes,” Smith says. “Sometimes, she just like, dips. Like she won’t respond to texts for a whole weekend, or she’ll put her phone on airplane mode, no explanation, and two days later it’s like nothing happened.”
“And what do you do?” Rory asks. “When she dips?”
“I never had to do anything before,” Smith says. “She always came back.”
Group Chat Including Chloe Green, Smith Parker, and Rory Heron
sending this to create the chat. please don’t reply unless you have new SW info.
Smith
ok
Smith I literally said not to reply.
Smith
sorry
Chloe changed the name of the chat to “I Kissed Shara Wheeler”
Rory
Smith
hell no
Smith deleted the name of the chat
idk why you’re mad when it’s factually accurate
FROM THE BURN PILE
Contents of one of Rory’s tapes, unspooled. Marked with a green sticker for “personal.”
I kissed Shara Wheeler.
It went like this: I don’t believe in prom as an institution, but it’s still kind of morbidly fascinating, so I climbed out of my window to sit on the roof and watch everyone get out of their rented limos at the clubhouse across the golf course. And that’s where she found me. She hiked up her dress, climbed the trellis by the dogwood tree onto the roof, said “hi,” and then she kissed me. And then she was gone again.
It didn’t exactly feel like the earth-shattering moment I always thought it would, mostly because I was just … confused.
I sat there and watched Smith pull up to her house the way I’ve watched him pull up to her house a million times since sophomore year, smiling so wide, I could see how white his teeth are from the roof. He took pictures with Shara in front of her house like nothing had even happened.
Brooklyn Bennett posted a passive-aggressive Instagram story this morning about how the student council spent half their prom budget on a balloon drop for a prom queen announcement that never happened. Jake saw Ace at Sonic and Ace said Smith told him that he went to get Shara’s stuff from purse check, and she was gone before he got back to the dance floor. Everyone’s heard about it by now. Nobody knows where she went, or why.
But I kissed her.
3
DAYS SINCE SHARA WHEELER LEFT: 3
DAYS UNTIL GRADUATION: 40
In her bedroom Tuesday afternoon, Chloe winds a silver chain around her finger and thinks of California.
Before freshman year, Chloe had only visited False Beach a few times. She always found it unbearable—no In-N-Out, no boba, only gas station Polar Pops and an Olive Garden with a two-hour wait on Fridays because it was the fanciest restaurant in town. （There have been rumors for years that a P.F. Chang’s is coming, but Chloe still thinks that’s a little too adventurous for False Beach.）
But when her grandma got sick and it was obvious she wasn’t getting better, her mama gave up her spot in the cast of the LA Opera and Chloe gave up her middle school friends and her twice-weekly sashimi for False Beach. That was four years ago.