Page 8 of I Kissed Shara Wheeler
“She left us that,” Chloe says when he gives Smith the card. “Do you know what the last part means?”
Smith stares at it for a long minute, then he folds it closed and calmly hands it back.
“You like her, don’t you?” Smith says to Rory. “Still?”
Chloe glances between them, at the pinched set of Smith’s mouth and the unhappy crease between Rory’s thick eyebrows. She doesn’t usually credit too many complicated feelings to teenage boys, but there’s definitely some kind of messed-up history there. The Shara Vortex.
“Kind of,” Rory says, in the voice of a boy who climbed through Shara’s bedroom window the day before.
Smith nods with grim satisfaction and turns to Chloe.
“What about you?”
Chloe blinks and lowers her voice. “I barely even know her. I have no idea why she kissed me. I just want to beat her to valedictorian.”
Smith considers that and nods again. Chloe is starting to suspect she doesn’t get jocks at all.
“I don’t know what peach means,” Smith says, “but the numbers are my locker combination.”
Smith Parker’s locker is a mess.
It at least smells better than the other football players’ lockers, but it’s crammed with textbooks and overstuffed notebooks and more books than he could possibly have to read for a regular English class. There is also a surprising number of cosmetics: tubes of moisturizer, hair ties, dark brown concealer, pomegranate lip balm. He shoves those behind a box of Little Debbie oatmeal pies.
“Really, dude?” Chloe says, nodding to the pies.
Smith shrugs. “Gotta keep my calorie intake up.”
As Smith searches the mess, Chloe stares at the picture on his locker door. It’s Smith and Shara at the homecoming dance last fall, him in a generic button-down-and-dress-pants combo, her in that dress.
Chloe didn’t go to homecoming, but she saw Shara’s dress on Instagram like everyone else alive. It was only a blue silk slip with a modest neckline, but it stuck to her like water, and she wasn’t wearing a bra. For a whole week, nobody at school would shut up about it. BBC News at 9, the headlines: GOD’S FAVORITE DAUGHTER SHOWS ONE HINT OF NIP.
She glances over at Rory to see if he’s looking at the same thing, but he’s focused on Smith, who’s yanked something out from behind his Gatorade stash.
“Hold up,” Smith says. “I didn’t put this in here.”
It’s a bag of candy, and there’s a second card from Shara’s stationery tied neatly to it with a pink ribbon. Smith’s name is written on the envelope.
“Peach rings?” Chloe asks.
“She always gives a pack to the cheerleaders who make my game day treat bag,” Smith says. “They’re my favorite.”
“Still?” Rory says.
Smith glares. “What?”
“Peach rings are just kinda middle school,” Rory says with a shrug.
“Are you gonna open it or what?” Chloe butts in.
Smith sighs and pulls the card out, and Chloe skims it over his shoulder before he has a chance to pull it away.
Smith,
I think that, maybe, the problem is that I don’t know how to tell you the truth. Maybe that’s why I had to do this. I don’t know how to tell you, but maybe I can show you.
I promise I’m okay. Don’t be too mad about the kisses. It wasn’t their fault.
XOXO
