Page 45 of I Kissed Shara Wheeler
“Yeah.” Hootie & the Blowfish fades out, and they both hold their breath until Matchbox Twenty picks back up. It’s really not a very creative playlist. “At least we have a sound buffer.”
“God, why is he still here? What is he doing? There’s no way his job is that hard. All he does is cut the arts budget and misinterpret the Bible. How many hours can that possibly take?”
Gingerly, Rory wriggles his phone out of his back pocket and starts a call. “April. We— Yeah, the ducts are everything we thought they would be. Yeah, it’s just like Die Hard. Yeah—uh, but you guys are gonna have to chill in the car. It might be a while.”
“Hey, Chloe,” Rory says. “Wanna see something cool?”
It’s been two and a half hours. One-hundred and fifty minutes of lying in a dusty air duct over the administrative offices, listening to the Spin Doctors. Chloe texted her moms that she’d be out late studying with Georgia, but she probably should have sent them her final farewell, because she’s definitely going to die here.
They’ve scooted back far enough in the duct system to find an intersection where they could lie head-to-head instead of feet-to-face, suffering in silence under the glow of Rory’s phone flashlight.
“Rory, if you show me that dead mouse again, I swear to God I’m gonna make you eat it.”
“Not that,” Rory says. “This.”
He puts his thumb and forefinger inside his nose, and for one hideous second she thinks he’s about to show her something his sinus cavity created, until a shiny piece of silver catches the light from his phone. He’s flipped down a hidden septum barbell.
“You have a secret nose piercing?”
“I told you it was cool,” he says. “April did it.”
“Don’t you have like, money? You could pay a professional who won’t give you a staph infection.”
“That would totally kill the vibe,” Rory says. “And my stepdad has money, not me.”
“So he’s the one who buys all your nice guitars?” Chloe asks, remembering Rory’s collection of glittering Strats. “I grew up around musicians. I know what those things cost.”
“My mom buys guitars for me because she knows I like them, and she feels bad for making me move into the country club so she could marry some douchebag lawyer and ditch me for trips to Cancun. My dad calls them ‘guilt-tars,’ which I also hate, but I like my dad.”
“Ah,” Chloe says. From this angle, the phone light catches on his curls in the places where he’s bleached them, and she imagines him huddled in the bathroom with April and Jake and a bleach kit the same way she and her friends gathered around the sink to help Ash cut off all their hair. “Okay. Well, the piercing is cool.”
“Thanks.”
“You should wear it to school.”
“I wear it to school every day.”
“I meant visibly.”
Rory shrugs, his shoulders sliding up and down the sheet metal. “Yeah, I don’t know. If you’re gonna break rules, I don’t really see the point in dress code violations. Low-hanging fruit. Draws too much attention. Doesn’t even inconvenience anyone that bad.”
Chloe frowns. “Feeling subtweeted right now.”
“Why do you do it, then?”
“I guess because… I already know people are going to be staring at me, and that teachers are going to find some reason to punish me, so at least this way I control why.”
“Fair enough.”
“Also, I look fucking cool. And the dress code is stupid.”
Rory smirks. “I’m with you on the last part, at least.”
“And…” Chloe goes on. “I mean, it’s probably also that I can’t really break any bigger rules than that, because then I’d actually be risking valedictorian, and I can’t risk that.”
“Aren’t you kind of risking it right now?” Rory asks, gesturing with one hand to their whole insane situation.
“This is different,” Chloe insists. “Nobody’s ever gonna know we did this. And we’re doing it so I can find Shara before grades are finalized and make her come back. I didn’t work my ass off for the last four years not to see her face when she loses.”
