Page 56 of I Kissed Shara Wheeler
The bleachers note changes things.
Smith and Rory, who heretofore were both operating under the impression that they could win Shara if they made it to the end of the trail, really seem to be struggling with the idea that the princess in the tower might be more of a dragon. They stop sniping at each other and start exchanging a lot of morose looks while Chloe does all the work on the clues. She practically has to drag them to the next one.
As for Chloe… well, it’s not that Chloe forgets how to think about anything other than Shara Wheeler. But nothing else seems half as interesting, which isn’t her fault. Honestly, maybe other things should try harder.
“Are you coming tonight, Chloe?” Ash asks.
Chloe blinks, startled out of thought. She looks up at Ash two seats over on the choir risers, holding different sizes of fishing lures up to Benjy’s earlobes to test out which one they want to make into earrings while he begrudgingly sits still.
“What?” Chloe asks.
“Me, Georgia, foraging in the park by Winn-Dixie,” Ash says. “Georgia got that book about mushroom identification? I told you about it last week and you said you’d think about it?”
“Oh,” Chloe says. She honestly can’t quite remember that conversation, but she pretends she does. “Yeah, I can’t. I have too much homework.”
Georgia squints at Chloe over her lunch, and Chloe feels bad. She does. But there’s only one thing she wants to do right now. She promises herself that she’ll find time to hang out with Georgia over the weekend.
The rest of the week brings three more clues, one each day. Each one contains a new revelation, some evil deed Shara’s kept locked away. Chloe rips a sheet of graph paper from a notebook and makes a table to track them from memory.
Every single card is another pink shot of satisfaction. She collects them in the makeup pouch at the bottom of her locker like it’s a crime scene evidence bag, cataloging all the things she suspected Shara was—dishonest and calculating and fake—and a million others she never could have otherwise proven. Vindictive. Destructive. Mean. An absolute wrecking ball bitch, swinging in silence from a divertingly beautiful crane.
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