Page 81 of I Kissed Shara Wheeler
VALEDICTORIAN SPEECH: DRAFT #17
Hi, everyone. I’m Chloe Green. You may know me as the girl who always volunteers to do her presentation in front of the class first. I’m proud to say I’ve never been the girl who reminded the teacher we have homework, though I have thought about it more than once, because, I mean, I did do the homework, and it took me a whole hour, and I know my answers are right, and I deserve a 100% participation grade, but who cares? It’s fine.
You may also know me as the girl who beat Shara Wheeler for the prize of standing at this podium. I know most of you were probably rooting for her, but turns out, she doesn’t always get what she wants. By the way, her hair isn’t even that great. It’s just long. And I think—
Annotation from Chloe:
Maybe slightly less personal???
16
DAYS WITHOUT SHARA: 27
Anchor Bay Marina is nearly silent, blue under a cloudless night sky with only the sounds of water lapping at the shore and the broad hulls of fancy boats. Wooden piers separate twenty individual slips, wrapping in a U shape around a squat boathouse that’s closed for the night. Shara’s white Jeep is tucked neatly into the back corner of the parking lot. Chloe’s insides turn to jet fuel at the sight.
From the shore, she can’t see where the Wheelers’ boat should be, so she starts at the slip with the number one painted in faded white on a pylon and counts down the pier.
Slip 2, slip 3, slip 4.
Slip 7, 8, 9.
Slip 12, 13, 14—she rounds the corner—
In the weeks since Shara left, she’s always looked the same in Chloe’s mind: frozen in her ball gown, her hair spilling over her shoulders like sunlight and her lips stained a soft, berry red, remote and unreachable under a sparkling country club chandelier.
Now, waiting under the moon in the fifteenth slip, Shara looks like she tumbled right out of Chloe’s memory. Mostly because, for some infernal reason, she’s still wearing her prom dress.
She’s sitting on the front of the sailboat like the smug figurehead of a voyaging ship, almond-pink tulle fanning out behind her on the deck and frothing over the sides of the bow.
Shara in the flesh. Not a line on a card or a picture in Smith’s locker or a memory nipping at the back of Chloe’s neck, but actual Shara, with her pointy nose and elegant shoulders and annoyingly innocent facial expression.
Chloe feels, more so than usual, like she might explode.
And then Shara opens her mouth and says, “I had a feeling you’d show up.”
Yeah, explode. A full-on spontaneous combustion. Five million tiny, angry little Chloes raining down over the Anchor Bay Marina, all giving Shara the finger.
Now that she’s standing in front of the boat, she can see that Shara doesn’t look exactly like she did on prom night. Her face is scrubbed clean, her lips their natural pink. Her hair is tied up on top of her head with a scrunchie.
To Chloe’s immense displeasure, her first thought is of the silk scrunchie on Shara’s bathroom counter. This is her first time seeing Shara with her hair up. What a stupid thing to realize.
“I have to say,” Chloe says, taking a step forward until the toes of her sneakers are hanging over the edge of the pier, “this is a little anticlimactic.”
Shara raises an eyebrow. “What were you expecting?”
“Don’t get me wrong. I’m not surprised you’re just some boring bitch on a boat,” Chloe clarifies, “but I guess part of me was still holding out for a plot twist. Is there a dead body in an ice chest around here somewhere?”
“You’re the one who came all the way here to see some boring bitch on a boat,” Shara says.
“I did,” Chloe confirms. Her mouth feels unpleasantly dry. Shara’s exposed collarbones seem very confrontational. “So I can tell everyone where you’ve been.”
Shara stands, lifting her dress as she turns away. She’s not wearing any shoes, just socks with bumblebees on them. Sucks that bumblebees are going to be ruined for Chloe forever now.
“That’s not what you’re gonna do right now, though, is it?”
Chloe glares at the back of her head one more time for posterity. “You don’t know what I’m gonna do.”
“Sure,” Shara says, and then she opens a white door in the center of the boat and disappears down a set of steps.
