Page 46 of I Kissed Shara Wheeler
“Jesus,” Rory says. “Is that really the only reason you’re doing this? Valedictorian?”
“Better than trying to get in her pants.”
“That’s—” Rory blinks a few times, like she’s managed to unsettle him. “That’s not how I see Shara.”
“Then how?”
He considers the question, then rolls over onto his side and says, “What was middle school like for you?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
He smirks. “Humor me.”
“Okay,” she says. “Um, grew five inches, started taking high school English, briefly got into cosplay. Best friend was this girl named Priya who taught me how to do my eyeliner, but we haven’t really kept in touch. Told my moms I was bi when I was thirteen and they weren’t even surprised. Realized I was weird but that I kinda liked it.”
“Yeah,” Rory says. “So, for me, it sucked ass. My parents split up. I had no friends. I was this awkward, ugly kid who liked poetry but hated reading it, so I got really into music instead, but I couldn’t read guitar tabs either so I had to learn from YouTube, and then I had double jaw surgery in eighth grade to fix my underbite, and I was the only Black kid in the grade other than Summer, who was way too cool to hang out with me. I was roasted every day of my life. Dixon Wells used to call me Snore-y Rory because I had really bad asthma and sometimes I would breathe weird during tests.”
“His name literally has the word ‘dicks’ in it,” Chloe says, “and that’s the best he could come up with?”
“I know,” says Rory, whose face in profile is such a work of art that she should have guessed someone designed it on purpose. “So, seventh grade, Smith shows up. Said my Naruto backpack was cool. He was my first best friend, or whatever—my only friend, unless you count my older brother. He’d help me with my homework and with writing down my songs, and I was like, maybe high school won’t totally wreck my shit. But then he ditched me, and everything sucked again. My dad took a job in Texas, and my brother left for college, and my mom got remarried so we had to move—but when I looked out the window of my new room, I saw a girl next door reading a book, and it was Shara fucking Wheeler.”
“And you thought she was going to solve all your problems,” Chloe guesses.
“You don’t get it, Chloe. Shara has been the ultimate girl since I was in kindergarten. And that’s not my opinion—literally everyone I’ve ever met thinks Shara Wheeler is the ultimate.”
Chloe grinds her molars together. “I’m well aware.”
“What I’m saying is, everyone said she was the dream girl, so I grew up believing it,” Rory explains. “She’s the only girl I’ve ever thought about. Like, it had to be her. So, I thought if Shara Wheeler ever looked over the fence and noticed me, if that was all I had going for me, it would be enough. Because it would be her.”
She does kind of understand what he means. If Willowgrove is the whole world, and every person in it sees themself as the main character of their own story, and Shara is the mandatory leading girl, she’s either the love interest or the antagonist. Chloe made her choice. Rory made his.
“But then,” Rory goes on, “I got my braces off, and I realized I could use a tape recorder to keep track of my songs, and my face finally figured its shit out, and I made a couple friends, so I got over it. Or thought I did. Until this one night, when Smith pulled up to Shara’s house with her in the passenger seat. I wasn’t trying to look. I was sitting at my desk, working on a song. But that little ceiling light in his car caught my eye, and when I looked, it was like they were inside a snow globe or something. And they kissed, and I—it felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. And it all came back.”
For some reason, she’s reminded of her first memory of Shara and Smith together: a pile of carnations on the lab table, Shara holding one to the tip of her nose and breathing in deep while Chloe tried to finish the experiment on her own.
“Is that what you write songs about?” Chloe asks. “Shara?”
“Sometimes,” Rory admits in a low voice. “Sometimes they’re about like, being jealous or sad or afraid something’s wrong with you. Or whatever.”
Chloe never really thought Rory was that serious about music, because he doesn’t act very serious about anything, but the lilt of his voice when he talks about songwriting reminds her of Benjy talking about a new piece he’s learned. Maybe she should introduce them sometime.
“That sounds cool,” she says.
Rory smiles softly, shyly. Chloe smiles back.
She thinks of what he said about his dad and remembers the bulletin board in his room.
“You and your dad,” she says. “You’re close?”
“Yeah,” Rory says, still smiling. “He’s really fucking cool. He’s a museum curator.”
“Why didn’t you just go with him when he moved?”
“My parents were afraid my grades would get even worse if I switched schools. So Mom got school months and Dad got summers.”
“That must have been hard.”
“Yeah, well,” Rory says. “Life sucks sometimes.”
