Page 30 of I Kissed Shara Wheeler
Ace bounds over, slinging his arm around Smith’s shoulders and wiping his face on Smith’s shirt.
“Man, I love this song!” Ace announces, shaking his shoulders in gratitude to the playlist. “You know what’s funny? By the end of the song, he never says if he’s jealous of the guy or the girl.”
Chloe arches an eyebrow at him. “I’m surprised you know it.”
“Chloe,” Ace says, smirking, “everyone knows ‘Mr. Brightside.’”
She stares at him and Smith. They’re being so nice to her. Like, suspiciously nice. She wonders if this is that sneaky type of shittiness, the mocking, popular-kid fakery. But it’s impossible to look at Ace’s big dumb cabana-boy-at-Margaritaville face and Smith’s wide, pretty smile and see bad intentions.
“You’re up,” Smith tells her.
“No,” she says. “No way. I don’t drink.”
“Bro,” Ace says, “I don’t either. I did mine with the mixer.”
She squints at him. “But you seem drunk.”
Ace shrugs. “That’s just my personality. Come on.”
And the next thing she knows, she’s being whisked away to a corner of the yard, where some girl from the track team takes one of her arms and Ace takes the other.
Summer steps in front of her, margarita mixer in hand.
“Keep your arms and legs loose and you’ll be fine,” she says, almost businesslike.
“Have you done this before?” Chloe asks.
Summer snorts. “No, I’m smart.” She tilts Chloe’s chin up with her free hand, raising the jug of mixer. Chloe has to respect a girl who gets straight to the point. “Open up.”
And then Chloe’s flying across the grass.
She gets a second of airtime, lime burning in her sinuses and a flash of starry sky, before tumbling into a pile of donuts and palm trees and red-white-and-blue popsicles. For a moment, all she can see is neon vinyl, and then she flails out onto the wet ground.
There’s silence, until she pulls herself to her feet and raises her arms over her head, opening her mouth wide to show that it’s empty, and the onlooking crowd erupts into cheers.
So, Chloe parties.
Ace yells about ordering more pizza, Smith and Summer pull her up to dance on the ledge of the hot tub waterfall, juniors document everything for Snapchat, and Chloe parties. At some point, by complete accident, she ends up in the pool fully clothed, and Smith pulls her out and wraps his letterman jacket around her shoulders. She fishes the card out of her skirt pocket and dries it off on the backup quarterback’s T-shirt before tucking it safely away again.
She slips in and out of the crowd, into the area where the softball team is watching the Auburn game on an outdoor TV. Summer leans her head on the shoulder of a teammate and laughs, and a memory hits Chloe: Shara, at a pep rally last football season, huddled on the other side of the bleachers with her friends, confetti in her hair and Smith’s football number painted on her cheek, laughing.
She pictures the two cherries from Midsummer, her and Shara sitting side by side in class after class, taking the same notes and then walking out into the hallway in opposite directions. How many times has Shara worn Smith’s jacket like this? She looks down at her fingertips peeking out of the too-long sleeves, her bitten-down nails, and imagines Shara’s perfect, pastel pink manicure.
This is Shara’s life, and for half a second, it feels like it could be Chloe’s too. A girl with a perfect academic record and more friends than can fit in one pool.
“Nah,” she overhears from a nearby group. Dixon, talking too loud as always. His light brown hair has dried from the pool in the way he favors for school: flipping out in every direction like he just took off a football helmet. “I’m telling you, we can do it with four-wheelers.”
“Where are we gonna put it, though, man?” Tanner asks him.
“We can borrow a trailer to haul it. My dad has like, five.”
“There’s no way we don’t get caught though.”
“If we do, we’ll make Mackenzie call her dad.”
“What are you guys talking about?” Chloe interjects, too curious to ignore them.
Dixon looks at her like she’s something that crawled out of the robotic pool vacuum before switching on a wide grin. “This one yours, Smith? Shara’s only been gone a few days. That’s cap.”
