Chapter 22

22

DAYS UNTIL GRADUATION: IRRELEVANT

The ugly dolphin fountain looks different from last time—still ugly, but now it’s also overflowing with thick clouds of lilac-scented suds. Someone put laundry detergent in it. Even rich kids get bored, Chloe guesses.

She doesn’t head straight for the house. Instead, she loops around Rory’s driveway, ducking behind the Beemer and slipping unseen to the front door. She rings the doorbell, waits thirty seconds, and jabs it two more times.

“Yo, chill,” Rory is saying before the door is even open, and when he sees Chloe, he rolls his eyes like, I don’t know who else I expected.

“I,” Chloe says. She forgot to prepare a cover story. “I need to borrow your ladder. For, uh. My gutters.”

“Your gutters?”

“Yeah. My gutters. They need … adjusting.”

Rory sucks on his tongue, nodding slowly, then leans back into the house and yells, “Smith!”

Smith appears at Rory’s shoulder, a bit rumpled and in a radiantly good mood, until his eyes land on Chloe.

“Oh, hey, Chloe.”

She stares at him. He stares at Rory. They all stand there, staring at one another. Looks like those “plans” Rory mentioned were six feet of quarterback.

“Chloe needs to borrow my ladder,” Rory says.

“Oh, uh, okay,” Smith says. “Want me to bring it out to your car?”

“Actually,” Chloe says. “I was, uh. I was gonna bring it right back. I just need to bring it, um, next door.”

“Next door?” Smith says.

“Yeah.”

“You—oh. Okay.”

“But I need help getting it over the fence.”

“For gutters,” Rory adds.

“Uh-huh.”

And then Smith laughs, and Rory’s laughing too, and Chloe’s own laugh comes out high-pitched and terrified. It reminds her of that first Monday at Smith’s locker, trying to avoid the fact that they were all chasing the same girl. It’s kind of surreal to realize she’s the only one still running.

“Okay,” Smith says.

Smith blessedly doesn’t say anything else as Rory leads them past the living room, which is messy with snacks and hastily jettisoned throw pillows, or as he heaves the ladder over the fence. It’s not until she’s at the top that he calls after her, “Hey, Green!”

She stops and looks, and he’s standing there in the grass, biting back that sunshine smile of his. Ten feet behind, Rory is hovering near the patio furniture, pretending not to watch.

“Good luck,” Smith says.

Chloe swallows a hysterical sound and salutes him, of all the stupid things. Off to a great start. She tips herself into Shara’s yard before she can embarrass herself further.

When she climbs up to Shara’s open window, she can tell Shara’s really back, because the room looks less like a meticulously arranged movie set and more like an actual human teenager lives in it. Finals notecards and paperbacks spill across the desk, and three dresses have been laid out across the bed like she’s trying to choose one. On the bookshelf, the infamous box of pink stationery has been crammed between a book of devotionals and the copy of Emma from Belltower. The only thing missing is Shara.

Then there she is, coming in through her bedroom door, fastening an earring. She’s halfway into a white sundress. Chloe gets the briefest glimpse of a lacy bralette she once saw in Shara’s underwear drawer, and then they make eye contact and she falls off the ladder.

Chloe hears a faint Oh my God—can’t tell if it’s her or Shara, maybe both—before a hand catches her.

Above her, Shara hangs out of the window, eyes wide, hair falling around her face, cheeks flushed. Her knuckles are white around Chloe’s wrist, and Chloe has to swallow another hysterical laugh.

“I’m good!” Chloe says. The toe of her sneaker finally finds the rung again. Shara’s expression pinches into an incredulous mix of relief and exasperation, like maybe she should have let Chloe break an arm. “I’m fine! Thanks for the assist, but I got it!”

Together, they pull Chloe through the window. As soon as she hits the carpet, Shara retreats to the walk-in closet and emerges in a fuzzy pink bathrobe.

Chloe opens her mouth to speak, but Shara shushes her, pointing to the open doorway. It’s not just open, Chloe realizes. The door has been taken off the hinges completely.

“What are you doing here?” Shara whispers.

Chloe grunts to her feet, pitching her voice low. “I need to talk to you.”

“I meant, what are you doing in my literal bedroom window?”

“Took the back way.” Suddenly Chloe wishes she hadn’t been in such a hurry that she left in her grubby after-school clothes. She’s going to have the most important conversation of her life so far in a Godspell cast T-shirt and Benjy’s gym shorts. “I, uh, figured I should probably avoid your parents.”

“Probably smart,” Shara concedes airily. “We can talk, but I’m supposed to be leaving for Bible study with my mom in like, ten minutes.”

“Even with the whole … uh, thing with your dad?”

“She’s counting on everyone being too polite to bring it up.” Shara shrugs. “What did you want to talk about?”

Chloe takes a breath. “Was it—Rory said—was it really you? Did you leak your dad’s emails?”

Something like disappointment flickers across Shara’s face before it settles into unimpressed aloofness, as if someone in class raised their hand too fast with a painfully obvious answer.

“He deserves it, don’t you think?” Shara says, tugging her robe around her.

“Obviously I think he does, but like … he’s your dad.”

“Chloe, if you think he’s hard on you, you should come to dinner sometime.”

There’s a pause as Chloe takes that in. She can see it’s more complicated than that. Shara looks tired, like she’s lost some sleep over it. The pink in her hair is fading faster than it should. Chloe wonders how many times her parents have made her wash it.

“Is that why you did it? To get back at him?” Chloe asks. “Or was there another reason?”

“There were a lot of reasons,” Shara says, glaring at her missing bedroom door. “I guess, though, if you’re asking, I hadn’t decided if I was gonna do anything with what Rory gave me until I heard what my dad was gonna do to Georgia. And then what he did to you.”

Once she’s said it, she turns back to Chloe.

“Is that all?”

“Yes,” Chloe says. Of course it’s not. “I mean, no, there’s—why didn’t you come to Belltower on Friday?”

“My parents took my phone when I got back,” Shara says. “I didn’t know about it.”

“Oh,” Chloe says. When she puts it like that, it does seem obvious.

“And even if I had heard,” Shara goes on, “I promised to leave you alone.”

“Oh,” Chloe repeats. “Right.”

Shara tilts her head back, realizing. “You never read that card, did you?”

“No, I did,” Chloe says. “Like, twenty minutes ago.”

Shara purses her lips. “So you’re here because—”

“Because I know what it means,” Chloe says. “Although, it does feel worth mentioning that you could have gotten the same thing across by kissing me like I told you to.”

“Sorry, what part of you sitting on my chest screaming at me was supposed to make me think that was actually a good idea?” Shara says.

“Okay, but—school last week,” Chloe says. “You could have—”

“I kissed you first,” she points out. “Twice.”

“But those times didn’t count,” Chloe says. “They weren’t real.”

“They were,” Shara finally admits. “I just … didn’t know it at the time.”

“So you were following me around last week, because you—”

“Because I was trying to work up the nerve to do it right, but you kept acting like it was still a game.” She sounds the way her handwriting looked in the wrinkled postscript: worn out. “So if you came here to reject me, do it already. It’ll give me something to ruminate on during Bible study.”

“That’s not what I came for,” Chloe tells her.

Shara blinks. “It’s not?”

“Technically, that was part of the plan at one point,” Chloe confesses in a rush, “when I thought you were still— But, no, I—I came here to tell you that—that—”

She didn’t have time to prepare what she was going to say. She feels like the spine of a book about to crack and spill out all the love story guts.

How does she say this?

“That my best mornings are the ones when I pull into school right after you, because I know you’ll have to watch me walk past your car.”

What.

“What?”

“Or, no, it’s—that time I had to peer edit your essay in AP Lang?” She can’t believe she’s going to admit all this, but she doesn’t know how else to explain it. “I still remember it. Like, entire sentences from it, because I was trying so hard to come up with notes that were smarter than what you wrote, so you’d go home and think about it. I’ve found out your locker number the first week of every year, so that I’d know exactly how many times a day I’d pass it.”

“Chloe—”

“Shut up, I’m not finished,” Chloe says, and Shara shuts her pretty mouth. “Sophomore year, when we were lab partners, I’d go to the bathroom every day before chem and fix my hair because I knew that was the closest I’d ever be to you, and I—I wanted to be as much of a distraction to you as you were to me. Do you get it? I wanted you to see me.”

Shara doesn’t say anything, only nods. Chloe has to swallow a smile. It’s a rush—the feeling of explaining something about herself that feels insane and being met with Yes, of course.

“So then, when I read your notes and I realized that you did—that you saw me, that you thought about me so much, that you noticed me—God, I thought I’d won. But it didn’t feel the way it was supposed to. And that pissed me off. And I couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t enough, and then I read your last card and I realized that I didn’t just want you to see me. I wanted someone who sees me, and I wanted it to be you, because I think I always knew you were the only one it could be.”

After a long pause, Shara says, “Can I talk now?”

“Yes.”

“So. To summarize. You’re not rejecting me.”

“Correct,” Chloe confirms. “In fact, if you kissed me right now, I would probably die.”

“Really this time?” Shara says.

“Really.”

“No more games?”

“I promise if you promise.”

“Okay,” Shara says.

She steps closer. Chloe can feel the warmth of her body now. She wonders if Shara can feel hers too.

“Okay, then. Wow.”

The fuzz of Shara’s robe brushes against Chloe’s skin.

“Wow,” Chloe agrees.

When Shara lifts her hand, Chloe sees it splayed open in the grass outside her bedroom window. She (slowly, tentatively) touches the side of Chloe’s face, and Chloe feels the cool press of a sailboat railing. She could close her eyes and hear the fluorescent hum of elevator lights. Shara searches her face with the wary, reverent interest of stumbling upon a poem in an English textbook that breaks your heart open in the middle of class. Chloe knows that feeling. She knows Shara knows it too.

She tips her head forward, and Shara kisses her. Chloe puts her arms around Shara’s neck and kisses her back.

They’re standing in Shara’s bedroom, but they’re two blocks over at the clubhouse. She’s in Benjy’s T-shirt, but she’s in black chiffon and lace with her hair set in waves. Shara’s in her bathrobe, but she’s in a tiara under a dance floor chandelier, and there’s the distant, dreamy echo of a slow electric guitar, and they’re swaying to the last song of the night. Shara sighs, and the balloons drop.

It’s a prom night they never had, and she’s found the only person like her in a small town the size of the world, and they’re alone in a quiet room kissing in front of God and everybody.

Someone calls Shara’s name from downstairs.

“Let’s go!” Shara’s mom yells. “We’re supposed to be bringing cookies! We gotta stop at the store on the way to church!”

Shara breaks off, eyes wide.

Chloe whispers, “My car’s around the corner.”

One second of consideration, two, and then Shara calls out, “I’m almost done with my hair! Hang on!”

She throws off her robe and grabs a pair of sneakers, spinning around to show Chloe the open back of her dress.

“Zip me up.”

When Chloe reaches for the zipper, her fingertips graze warm skin, and her heart is five million bits of stage glitter swirling in an overture spotlight, and then Shara’s stomping her sneakers on and climbing over the windowsill. She pauses at the top of the ladder and looks back at Chloe.

“Are you coming or what?”

“This was literally my idea!” Chloe hisses, but Shara’s already out of sight.