Page 44 of I Kissed Shara Wheeler
“How is she, by the way? I heard she’s off taking care of her sick aunt. That’s our Shara, isn’t it?”
“Uh-huh,” Smith says. “Got your keys? Great, let’s go.”
The doors close, and half a second later, Chloe can barely make out the click of the automatic lock.
“Was that incredibly convenient timing,” Chloe says, squinting at Rory in the dark as he clambers off of her, “or did you tell him what we were doing?”
“I may have stopped by his locker after seventh hour and mentioned that some of us were actually going to be trying to find his girlfriend after school today.”
“You know what,” Chloe says, “it worked out for me, so, can’t complain.”
They take stock of their surroundings: the tunnels extending in different directions, the specks of light from vents, the low whoosh of air.
“Do you hear that?” Rory asks.
Chloe listens: a muffled, faint sound of music playing, echoing down the ducts to their left.
“Sounds like it’s coming from the admin office.”
“No,” Rory says, pointing right, “the office is that way.”
“No, that way is the chem lab.” She points left. “This way is the office.”
“But—but we’re—it’s—”
She points more emphatically. “That way.”
Rory grumbles but crawls to the left, and Chloe follows. After about ten feet, the duct splits off to the right, and Rory takes the fork and keeps crawling toward the noise. Another few yards, and he reaches another vent and peeks through it.
“We’re over the hall,” he says, his quiet voice reverberating back to her. “You were right. The office should be straight ahead.”
“Told you.”
“Shut up,” Rory says. The music’s getting louder the farther they crawl. “That sounds like—”
… straight up, what did you hope to learn about here…
“It’s Matchbox Twenty,” Chloe confirms. Someone is in the admin offices, burning the midnight oil to the greatest of late ’90s top-40 rock. As long as Wheeler’s office door is shut, they shouldn’t have a problem. “Keep going.”
After what feels like days dragging herself along sheet metal on her stomach, trying to keep her shoes from banging around and pretending nothing small and leggy could possibly crawl up her skirt, listening to the distant music switch from Matchbox Twenty to Hootie & the Blowfish, they take a left into another duct and reach the next vent. Rory checks it.
“Admin reception. Almost there.”
The closer they get, the more details Chloe adds to her fantasy of dropping into Wheeler’s office like a jewel thief, somersaulting through lasers, maybe having a French accent. She wonders if Shara has any idea how far Chloe would go to beat her. Maybe that’s why Shara hid a card here in the first place—to see if Chloe had the brains and the nerve to find a way.
Nice try, Shara. If there’s one thing Chloe’s good at, it’s tests.
“Fuck,” Rory curses suddenly.
“What?”
“Shhhhh.”
He’s peering down through the vent. It sounds like they’re right over the source of the music.
Rory scrubs a dusty hand over his face and whispers, “Well, the good news is, we found the right vent.”
“It’s Wheeler, isn’t it?” Chloe guesses. “He’s working late.”
