On the surface level I
Kissed Shara Wheeler is an often hysterical, frequently moving, story about
being LGBTQ+ in the most conservative school in the buckle on the Bible Belt
and that you can find love and your people in the worst possible place. On a
subtler level I think there’s a deeper message about our polarized society, how
the culture shock from going deep blue to dark red in this country can blind us
even if we don’t know it and how we can be so fixed on both our vision and our
present that we can miss signs that America is more purple then it looks.
Casey McQuiston, most famous
for writing the novel that became the inspiration for the hit TV film Red,
White & Royal Blue makes it clear in the acknowledgements that even
though she was born in Louisiana and now lives in New York City and even though
she is proudly out “I am not Chloe Green and Chloe Green is not me” and that
Chloe’s story is by no means autobiographical. She makes it clear she
identifies with all of the queer characters she writes about proudly and with
great affection in this novel. She wants them to know that they are not alone
and in parentheses she adds “And also because you deserve ridiculous,
over-the-top, high school rom-coms about teenagers like you, just like the
straight kids have!”
The reason I Kissed Shara
Wheeler works at this level is because Chloe, the central character of the
novel, not only doesn’t know she’s in a rom-com you get the feeling she loathes
the idea of any of them, LGBTQ+ or straight for most of the book. She has spent
her four yours at Willowgrove Christian Academy with one goal in mind: winning.
To Chloe that means becoming valedictorian, giving a huge middle finger to the
entire student body in her speech (we see several rejected drafts in the novel)
and then getting the hell out of False Beach, Alabama where she’s clearly
resented every minute since she and her two moms had to move her when her
grandmother was dying and have never been able to leave. The only thing
standing in her way is Shara Wheeler, who is not only her sole rival for the
title of valedictorian but the son of the principal of the school and who has
been her enemy ever since she was forced to enroll.
To Chloe Shara is a symbol
of everything she hates about Willowgrove: her picture is on the billboard
welcoming students to school every day. She is beautiful, she is smart, she’s
the homecoming queen who dates the quarterback, she gets whatever she wants. In
Chloe’s mind she’s Regina George personified even though she never bothered to
get to know her. Which is why it comes as a shock to her that half an hour
before the end of prom, Shara corners her and kisses her.
Chloe wants answers and
drives to the Wheeler house when Shara’s a no-show in class the next day. She
then ends up breaking into the house and finding Shara isn’t there either. When
Rory, Shara’s neighbor with a crush ends up entering Shara’s room for the
balcony, he’s stunned to see Chloe here and just as stunned to learn that Chloe
was kissed by Shara – so was he. She also gave Rory a mysterious pink card,
telling them to see Smith, Chloe’s boyfriend.
When Rory asks the obvious
question as to why Chloe drove across town and broke into Shara’s house to find
her if she barely knew her, Chloe tells herself this is why:
“The only thing Chloe has
ever wanted as much as (being valedictorian) is the satisfaction of knowing
Shara Wheeler can’t have it…Because if Shara’s really gone, that’s a forfeit,
and Chloe Green does not win by default.”
She then hides the fact the
kiss caused her to forget an entire semester of French and she doesn’t know
why. If Chloe was as smart emotionally as she is intellectually she would have
saved herself almost the entire book. But whereas the rivals turned lovers trope
is familiar in many YA novels, in McQuiston’s narrative there is a far more
darker subtext. Shara Wheeler has everything that Chloe doesn’t.
When they moved to False
Beach, one of Chloe’s mothers made it very clear to her how horrible this place
was. (Her mother was a student but there was a far darker subtext which the novel
doesn’t reveal until its almost over.) The Wheeler’s had moved to California years
ago and Chloe grew up Her mother was an opera singer but when their grandmother
got ill they moved to False Beach to take care of her. At the time Chloe was a
fourteen year old Goth, which makes you wonder how happy she was in the grand
old world of LA.
Willowgrove makes it very
clear what it is:
“Four years since she asked
a girl in Freshman bio why the chapter on sexual reproduction was taped shut
and met Georgia…Three and a half years since she ditched her goth phase and
Georgia started keeping their five year post-Willowgrove plan posted up in her
locker. This year, Chloe and Benjy finally bullied the choir teacher into
choosing Phantom of the Opera.
Shara’s had a contempt for
False Beach since moving her, and to her credit there’s a lot about False Beach
to hate. We get a rewritten version of the student manual and its everything
you expect: no smoking, drinking, dancing or having sex, you must take responsibility
for any and all smear campaigns against your character (of which Chloe is the
prime witness) and there aren’t even any dances for the student body. The final
rule is “Love God first, love Shara Wheeler second.” Chloe is the best student
at Willowgrove but the teachers never use her work as an example for the class,
the student body makes horrible jokes about her mothers and the girls refuse to
change in front of her. Wheeler has spent four years involved in a campaign of
microaggressions directed at her clearly designed to get her kicked out and she’s
never broken. Before Chloe went in she told her mother confidently there was no
way the school could be the same as it was when she was growing up and if
anything it’s clearly worse.
No as long as she can go
home at the end of the day and see the two women who raised her sitting on
either side of the kitchen table she knows that its not true (that she is a blasphemy.)
But that’s not counting the
time in between.
Chloe has clearly put up a
mask and a front of pure range and determination to prove that Willowgrove will
not beat her. That is why she’s determined to become valedictorian and that’s
why she tells herself she needs to find Shara Wheeler. In her mind Shara Wheeler
is a fake and she is the only one who sees it. As it turns out she only half right:
as we find as the search for her goes on, Shara has been putting up a front.
But the thing as she ends up
searching for Shara, she convinces Rory and Smith that they need to find her
too. In her mind, she needs to prove to the two young men who have spent their
lives devoted to her that she’s been lying to them all this time. Smith seems
reluctant to do so from the start and Rory seems determined to do so just in a
way to show off. Only Chloe follows through with devotion in order to find all
of the pink cards she left the three of them. She doesn’t notice that Shara’s
cards to her are not only longer but far more intimate then to her actual boyfriend:
as far as she’s concerned Shara recognizes how smart she is and is making it more
intricate for her.
And as the search goes on
Chloe spends less time with her actual friends, most of whom are the few openly
LGBTQ+ people at Willow Grove (this includes the choir teacher who everyone is
convinced is in the closet) and increasingly hanging out with the more popular
kids who she and her friends have cast stones at over the years. Against her
will she ends up going to parties and events and finding out that there are
more layers to these red-state teens that they don’t want to share. Sometimes
its subtle – Rory denies he ever saw Ocean’s 8 before whispering “I’m
Rhianna”. Other times it becomes more direct. When Smith, who is
African-American is asked why he tolerated Dixon Wells, the prime model of the
homophobic racist, he tells Chloe: “I have to pick my battles” something that
the white Chloe has never considered before. She learns that Ace who ended up
crashing the production of Phantom actually wanted to audition for it
but was embarrassed by the idea of a jock taking part in musicals. And the
reason that Shara sought out Rory and Smith is more complicated then Chloe
thinks – and that the two of them may want to admit.
And Chloe has missed similar
symbols by her best friend. As the novel continues she neglects Georgia and
eventually learns that her fellow lesbian is dealing with issues of her own.
Her family owns the one truly fancy bookstore in town and its been struggling
for a while. When Chloe learns that Georgia is going to Auburn she takes this
even harder than Shara’s disappearance, mainly because she can’t comprehend why
anyone who want to state in False Beach. Later in the book Georgia reveals she’s
been secretly dating someone at school (I won’t reveal who) and when Chloe asks
how it fits with Christianity Georgia tells her that the church believes “Jesus
is a brown socialist, then the whole eternal damnation thing.”
Chloe feels her eyebrows go
up. “I didn’t know that variation of Christian existed in Alabama.”
“That’s because you’re not
from here,” Georgia points out. “All you’ve ever known of Alabama is Willowgrove.”
Chloe is struck dumb.
She’s never been to a church
cookout or met a practicing Christian who was also gay. She’s never even
stepped inside a church where she felt safe. Maybe if she had – maybe if her
mom hadn’t been burned so bad that she never brought Chloe near Jesus until she
absolutely had to – she’d feel different.
It's understandable that
Chloe is an angry as she is and that she’s focused only on the horizon, never
around her. But because of her vision – which may very well be based on being a
California native and having a deeply biased opinion of all things Alabama
before she moved there – she has spent the last four years refusing to
acknowledge that everyone else might not only feel as resentful towards Willowgrove
as her friends do – they just didn’t know how to put into the words. Throughout
the novel many of them start making an effort to reach out, talking about
pronouns, trying to deal with their hidden identities, realizing that Willowgrove
has a very specific way of wanting you to be.
It probably won’t come as a
shock that Shara herself is deeply closeted. What is a bigger one is that is
only the first of the secrets that she’s been keeping all her life. Late in the
novel we see a draft of Shara’ journal in which she makes it clear that she’s
never liked the pedestal her parents have put her on, let alone being the face
of her father’s school. Late in the book Shara tells Chloe: “If you think he’s
hard on you, you should come to dinner sometime” and it shines a light
on her that reveals everything she’s had to live with her entire life.
I won’t reveal how Chloe
finds Shara, why Shara disappeared (which isn’t the real reason) and how many
battles that go on between her and the hierarchy of Willowgrove. They are the
real story of I Kissed Shara Wheeler rather than why Shara kissed Chloe
and if you can’t figure out why, well, this is a rom-com after all.
I will however mention one
thing. Throughout the novel we get insights into not only Chloe and Shara but
the entire student body in sections that are labeled only “From the Burn Pile.”
It’s not until the final chapter we understand what that means. When the final
chapter takes place they are following a grand Willowgrove tradition but one
that the new class has managed to reclaim as their own. In it they are saying
goodbye not only to the school that was pretty much a prison to most of them
but perhaps an entire way of life and a better future for not only their younger
siblings but for generations of False Beach students to come. This may be more
of a fantasy then the romances we see unfold, but aren’t dreams what the end of
high school – and rom-coms – all about?
No comments:
Post a Comment