Page 13 of Room to Breathe

“Maybe you should be getting higher than a B in biology.”

“I’m getting the grade I deserve, right?” I said.

“You act like a B is terrible,” he said.

I wanted to laugh because tohima B would be terrible. But apparently I was supposed to thank the universe for mine. “Oh, right. I deserve worse?”

He raised an eyebrow. “You said it.”

I wanted to flip him off. I should’ve. “Glad you’re still keeping track of my grades. You obsessed with me or something?”

His jaw jumped as he gritted his teeth and I felt smugly happy about that reaction, knowing my words got to him.

I picked up the cellphone lock bag again and started stabbing the side with a pen, dragging the point along the seam. It didn’t accomplish anything but adding a dark blue line down the bag.

Once again I tossed it to the side.

“You’d think you’d have figured the bags out by now with how many times your phone has been locked up,” he said.

“You really have been paying attention,” I said.

“You’re not exactly quiet in your rebellion.”

“We can’t all sit in silent judgment on our extra-high perfect pedestals,” I said with a bitter edge to my voice.

“Well, some of us didn’t take a nosedive off of ours.”

If that’s what I’d done, it felt like I’d landed directly on asphalt, with nobody around to give me a hand up. But I would never admit that to him. “I like it better down here. It’s much more relaxing.” That wasn’t true. I’d lost my one and only thing—being one of the smart students. I wasn’t sure who I was without it.

“I think that’s calledgiving up,” he said.

“Screw you, Beau. I’m better off.”

Chapter 6

Then

“We should’ve gone as thePowerpuff Girls,” Ava said as we shuffled together toward the party; our steps were out of sync, making it really hard. “Their costumes are sexier.”

“They’re children,” I said.

“Butweare not,” she said.

“Well, technically,” I started, but didn’t finish because she reached over and smacked my green-clad shoulder. My whole body, minus my head, was green-clad, actually. We were wearing green bodysuits.

I laughed but was unable to defend myself because I was in the middle, my arms through two holes at the back of our felt-made peapod and then wrapped around each of them. “You agreed to this.”

“Before I saw it in action,” Ava said.

“It’s fine,” Caroline chimed in from my left. “We’ll be fine.” I wondered if she was talking herself out of turning around.

“We cannot trip,” I said, “or I will face-plant.” My phone buzzed in my pocket, but I couldn’t get to it. I wondered if it was my mom.She’d seemed stressed the past couple of days, but any time I asked her about it, she said it was nothing. I couldn’t worry about something that she wouldn’t even tell me. Okay, maybe I could, because she was the first person I thought of with my buzzing phone when it could’ve been anyone. It was probably Beau, wondering where we were. He’d sent me a dozen texts today trying to get me to tell him our costume. I’d held firm.

“We are not staying in the pod part of this costume all night,” Ava said.

“We have to,” I said. “That’s the funny part.”

“She’s right,” Caroline said.