Page 6 of I Kissed Shara Wheeler
DAYS UNTIL GRADUATION: 41
The first thing Chloe saw when her moms’ Subaru crossed into False Beach city limits was Shara Wheeler’s face.
That’s not just what it felt like—although it does seem like Shara Wheeler is everywhere, all the time. It was literally looming forty feet wide over the interstate between a Waffle House and a Winn-Dixie under a swampy gray sky: a pretty blond girl with a pretty smile, holding a stack of textbooks and a protractor.
JESUS LOVES GEOMETRY! the billboard declared, which struck Chloe as a bit of a bold claim. A CHRIST-CENTERED EDUCATION AT WILLOWGROVE CHRISTIAN ACADEMY!
There are a total of five high schools in False Beach, and Willowgrove is the only one with a decent AP program and a theater department with the budget to do Phantom. As a fourteen-year-old literary nerd neck-deep in a goth phase, those seemed like the most important things a high school education could offer her. Her mom went to Willowgrove back in the ’90s, and she tried to warn her what it was like, but Chloe was insistent. If this was her only option, she could put up with the Jesus stuff.
“What kind of name is False Beach?” Chloe asked her mom for the five thousandth miserable time that day as they glided under Shara’s billboard. It was a question she’d been asking since her mom first told her the name of her hometown.
“It’s a beach but it’s not,” her mom answered, same as always, and her other mom flipped a page in The Canterbury Tales, and they kept driving out of the California sunset and into the buttcrack of Alabama.
False Beach sits on the wide banks of Lake Martin, which gives the slight illusion that it might be a beach town like Gulf Shores or Mobile down on the coast, but it’s not. It’s four hours inland from the Gulf of Mexico, closer to Atlanta than to Pensacola, nearly smack in the center of the state. The lakeshore isn’t even sandy, because the lake isn’t a real lake. It’s a reservoir made in the 1920s, surrounded by marshy banks and woods and cliffs.
It’s just a town by some water where nothing interesting ever happens. And, in what Chloe has learned is the nature of small towns, when one thing does happen, everyone knows about it. Which means by Monday morning, all anyone wants to talk about is where Shara could have gone.
Frankly, it’s not that different from every other day at Willowgrove. Here, Shara Wheeler is like Helen of Troy, if she were famous for being both beautiful and too tragically, terribly brilliant for her small town, or Regina George, if her brand was logging double the school-mandated volunteer service hours.
Shara Wheeler’s so pretty. Shara Wheeler’s so smart. Shara Wheeler has never been mean to anyone in her life. Shara Wheeler has the voice of an angel, actually, but she’s never auditioned for a spring musical because she doesn’t want to take the spotlight away from students who need it more. Shara Wheeler is the football team’s good luck charm, and if she misses a game, they’re doomed. Last year, there was a whole movement of freshman girls eyelash-gluing their own Cupid’s bows to re- create Shara’s signature naturally full, upturned upper lip. It’s a miracle nobody has put her likeness on like, the side of a butter container yet.
Today:
“I heard nobody’s seen her since prom night.”
“I heard Smith broke up with her and she lost it.”
“I heard she ran away to build houses for the homeless.”
“I heard she’s secretly pregnant and her parents sent her away until she gives birth so nobody finds out.”
“That’s literally a plotline from Riverdale, idiot,” Benjy calls after a passing sophomore. He sighs and carefully lays his folded Sonic uniform polo for his after-school shift at the bottom of his locker.
Chloe scowls at the mirror on her locker door. Annoying that her life should also have to revolve around Shara Wheeler right now.
“You good, Chloe?” Benjy asks.
“Of course I’m good,” Chloe says, straightening her shiny silver collar pins. Georgia describes her interpretation of the uniform as “doing the most.” Chloe describes it as “please let me feel one sweet hit of individuality before it’s squeezed out of me by lunch.” It’s whatever. “Why wouldn’t I be good?”
“Because you only did one eye.”
“What?” She checks her reflection again. Left eye: expertly executed eyeliner wing in Blackest Black. Right eye: naked as a newborn baby. “Oh my God.”
She whips a liner pen out of the emergency makeup pouch in her locker. It’s been in there so long, she has to scribble on the back of her hand to get it going. She never thought she’d need it.
“Anyway,” Benjy says, picking their conversation back up. “I told Georgia that we have to do movie night at her place this week because Ash wants to watch that Labyrinth movie your mom mentioned, and if my dad walks in and sees David Bowie’s junk in white spandex, he is going to have some questions that I’m not interested in answering. So, we’re—” He breaks off. “Um. Why is Rory Heron coming over here?”
A tiny figure appears over Chloe’s shoulder in the mirror, right under the blunt edge of her bob but growing closer: Rory, looking deeply affronted at having to set foot on campus before third hour.
“I owe him money for a class gift for Madame Clark,” Chloe lies quickly, finishing off her wing and capping the pen.
“Have fun,” Benjy says, and then he’s off to first hour.
Chloe shuts her locker and turns to face Rory. “Glad I don’t have to go back to the country club.”
Rory blinks. “You know your whole deal is like… exhausting, right?”
“Thank you,” she says. “Come on.”
