Page 36 of I Kissed Shara Wheeler
It’s why she can’t stop poking around the place where Shara’s supposed to be. As long as they’ve both been at Willowgrove, Chloe finally had someone to fight for dominance, and that gave some kind of reason to life here. It’s not like Shara is that important; it’s just that, without her, Chloe’s not sure what the point of anything is.
Her friends, she recalls suddenly. That’s the point of her life here. Georgia and Benjy and Ash, her friends she was supposed to spend Friday night with before Shara got in the way.
She rolls over, picks up her phone, and FaceTimes Georgia.
“’Sup,” Georgia answers after two rings.
“Geoooo,” Chloe says back.
The shot is backdropped by the overstuffed shelves of Belltower. Georgia’s wearing her favorite T-shirt, an off-white tee with a picture of Smokey Bear surrounded by woodland creatures and the slogan Be careful, there are babes in the forest, and she’s chugging from her emotional support water bottle. The store must have gotten a shipment of new releases—that’s the only reason she’d go in when the shop’s closed on Sundays.
“You know, I’m really glad you landed on your gay aesthetic,” Chloe tells her. “Aspiring park ranger looks great on you.”
“Thanks,” she says. “I don’t know why it took me so long. I guess I didn’t realize being a Girl Scout and being gay could be the same thing.”
“Remember your ‘Hey Mamas’ phase,” Chloe says.
“Please, that was like, one week,” Georgia groans.
In the year since Georgia first told Chloe she liked girls, she’s cycled through a half dozen different lesbian aesthetics trying to figure out which one was her. First was tying her hair up and wearing Nike sports bras and researching face exercises to sharpen her jawline, then it was high femme red lipstick and drawn-on tattoos, next were ripped jeans and thrifted leather jackets, and exactly once, she considered cutting off her hair entirely and trying out for the soccer team. In the end, Chloe’s mom gifted Georgia a carabiner for her seventeenth birthday, and she chopped off her hair above her shoulders and it all came together.
“Where have you been?” Georgia asks. “I texted you like, three times last night to see if you were coming to Ash’s for movie night.”
Chloe winces.
“My mama came home from Portugal today,” she says. “My mom’s been going nuts cleaning the house. She roasted an actual turducken. It’s a whole thing. How was the movie?”
“We got sidetracked doing a mozzarella stick tasting.”
“A what?”
“Benjy drove us around and we picked up mozzarella sticks from every place in town. Then we ranked them on a scale of one to ten for flavor, presentation, structural integrity, and dipping sauce.”
“Oh my God. I’m so mad I missed that. Did you average the results at the end? Who won?”
“Chloe, we’re gay. We can’t do math.”
“Okay, well, next time I’ll come and make a spreadsheet.”
“This is why we need you,” Georgia says. “Once in a generation, there is born a bisexual who can do math. You’re the chosen one.”
She switches the call to her laptop and slides Georgia’s face to the side, opening up Chrome while Georgia describes how Ash almost threw up in a bush because they keep insisting they’re not lactose intolerant even though they obviously are. Georgia and her do this a lot—sitting on FaceTime for hours while they work on homework or scroll silently through their phones. What she loves most about Georgia is how she’s only ever felt completely comfortable in her company, even when she’s pissed off or stressed or insecure or weird. Everything’s easy with Georgia.
“Did you ever figure out what that card was about?” Georgia asks. “The one Shara left for you at Taco Bell?”
Ah. That’s why everything’s easy with Georgia. Because she can read Chloe’s mind.
“Popular girl wants attention, I guess,” Chloe says. Her hands fidget on the keyboard, and somehow she’s pulling up the burner email account Shara left for them. Hm. Well, since she’s here, might as well check the drafts. Maybe there’s something new since the last five times she checked. “Who cares?”
“Uh, you, like three days ago?” Georgia points out. “Like, a lot?”
“I thought you were sick of me complaining about Shara,” Chloe says. She doesn’t find any new drafts, but the editing timestamp on the one in the folder says someone logged in this morning. Suspicious.
“I mean, kind of,” Georgia says. “But getting kissed by Shara Wheeler is the most interesting thing that’s happened to either of us in a long time, so I’m kind of invested.”
“It wasn’t even a good kiss,” Chloe lies spectacularly. “Anyway, that’s Smith’s problem now.”
“Fine, starve me.”
