Page 103 of I Kissed Shara Wheeler
“We need more people though,” Georgia points out. “If we’re actually gonna make a statement.”
“Bet,” Smith says, and he pulls out his phone.
The way Willowgrove has always worked, from what Chloe has seen and heard, is that there are enough students comfortable with the way things are to create the feeling that you’re the only one who doesn’t belong. It can be hard, when all the rules claim to be good and moral and godly, to feel like you can challenge them without admitting something bad and wrong about yourself. And if you can get past that, it’s a free-fall into small-town gossip, and you never come out the other side with all your best intentions intact.
But that’s a world where Willowgrove royalty doesn’t call you on the phone to say you’re not the only one, after all.
The first person to turn up is Ace, wearing sunglasses and declaring himself ready to join whatever cause Smith is joining. Then come April and Jake, who may not care much about graduation but do care about doing things that piss the administration off.
After that: Ash’s friends from art club, guys on the drumline with April, friends of the girl who got expelled for sending nudes, girls who filled out the chorus in Phantom, Summer’s softball teammates, kids from Chloe’s Quiz Bowl group who are still slightly afraid of her. Brooklyn Bennett, the world’s leading fan of rules, charges in like an angry Chihuahua.
“I am the student body president,” she says to the first person she sees, who is a nonplussed April with a sucker stick in the corner of her mouth. “If you’re going to stage a protest, you have to loop me in.”
April removes her sucker with a pop and points it at Brooklyn. “Why, so you can narc on us?”
“So I can organize it.”
From there, it’s a steady stream of people busting through the front door of Belltower like the cavalry: baseball players, stoners, victims of runaway rumors, weebs, Tyler Miller flanked by a band contingent, including clarinet girls who Chloe always kind of suspected might be a little gay (she’s heard plenty rumors about the back of the band bus). Within half an hour, at least four dozen seniors have gathered inside Belltower like a makeshift rally, nearly a third of the graduating class. Some even bring along lowerclassmen friends and siblings.
All of them are talking over one another, comparing notes on the gossip they’ve heard about what happened today, about times they got detention for talking about sex in sex ed or arguing in Bible class or putting a Bernie Sanders sticker on their locker.
Chloe stands next to the front counter between Georgia and Ash, trying to take in what exactly is happening. All she ever wanted was to launch a revolution at Willowgrove. Somehow, it looks like her graduation ban may have done it by accident.
Summer turns to Georgia.
“Is it okay if I stand on the counter?”
Georgia nods, her eyes big cartoon hearts. “Let me help you up.”
“Hey, y’all!” Summer yells over the crowd once Georgia has boosted her up. “Let’s talk plans!”
Summer calls her dad, then sweet-talks the butcher across the square into giving her a roll of paper while Georgia digs pencils and paint out of Belltower’s back storage room. Ash gathers it all at the center of the floor and gets to work designing a banner to hang up at their ceremony, big enough to be read from across the two-lane highway: CHANGE THE RULES AT WILLOWGROVE. On a second roll of paper, Summer and Chloe dictate their demands while Ash writes them down. Chloe picks the first one: FIRE PRINCIPAL WHEELER.
It turns out Brooklyn has the number for a Tuscaloosa News editor because of course she interned there last summer, so they give her the number for a False Beach TV news reporter, and within five minutes, she’s contacted every local news team in central Alabama. The story: a contingent of Willowgrove Christian Academy students are boycotting their own graduation ceremony in protest of the school’s code of conduct, and also, yes, they are speaking to the student body president, thank you very much.
In one corner, Benjy rounds up April and Rory to discuss a plan for procession music. In another, Jake and Ash are painting shapes on each other’s faces. In between, they all travel in shifts to Webster’s next door, where Ace stubbornly insists on paying for Chloe’s double scoop of strawberry with sprinkles and marshmallows. He claims that it’s the Southern gentlemanly thing to do when you’ve kissed someone, even if it was months ago in character as an opera phantom. He passes Chloe her cone and then takes an ungentlemanly lick of Smith’s scoop of butter pecan.
Jake pulls out a Bluetooth speaker and puts on a shockingly good playlist, and the whole thing becomes a sort of haphazard rally-meets-party. Chloe looks around Belltower, and she sees things she’s never seen before. A softball girl hitting it off with a clarinet girl. Benjy asking Ace how big his biceps are. Brooklyn clumsily talking to April, who sits on a table in front of her looking deeply amused and poking Brooklyn’s knee with the toe of her sneaker. There’s something in the air, like a collective release of tension.
She passes a sponge to Ash and says, “This is nuts, huh?”
Ash nods. They’ve already got paint splattered up the side of their neck, matting tufts of ginger hair together. “The coolest.”
“Where did all of this come from?” she says. “Like, has everyone secretly been waiting for a chance to overthrow Wheeler? I definitely thought it was only us.”
“Yeah, it seems that way sometimes,” Ash says. “You know what it reminds me of?”
“What?”
“MMORPGs.”
Ah. A classic Ash tangent. Chloe can’t wait to see where this one goes. “Say more.”
“So, everyone is running around the same world doing the same quests, but all of them are on different timelines and at different points in the story,” Ash says. “Like you could meet up with a friend, and at the exact same point on the map at the exact same time, you might be able to see a character that they can’t see, because that character’s already dead at the point of the game where your friend is playing.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Or maybe you’re on a mission to save a villager from a bunch of giant squirrels in the forest outside town, but nobody else can see that villager, because they’re not on that mission.” Ash looks up from their work to smile at Chloe. “It’s not that they choose to let the villager get mauled by squirrels. It’s just that they’re on a whole different quest.”
