Page 4 of Room to Breathe

“And?” she prompted.

“Thank you, our benevolent ruler, for driving,” I said with an eye roll, knowing everyone else in this car had already said this today. Ava had straight dark hair, and the way she raised one black eyebrow at me in the rearview mirror made her look regal, like she reallycouldbe the leader of our little group.

She pulled onto the road. “You’re welcome.”

My eyes skimmed over the drawing of the cell on the flash card.

“Are you both studying?” Caroline asked, looking back. She had strawberry-blond hair that was naturally wavy and big brown eyes.

“I don’t know how much more we can possibly smash into our brains,” Ava said.

“Have to maintain my class rank,” Beau said with a smirk. He acted like he was kidding, but I knew there was truth to his statement. He was number four in our class, one tiny spot ahead of me, and he wanted to be number one. I didn’t necessarily care about beating him; I just wanted to stay top ten by the time we graduated. I knew it would help with college and scholarship applications. Okay, maybe beating him would give me a little satisfaction as well. Only because it would bother him so much.

I tucked the card back into his stack and he offered me a distracted smile. Beau was cute. Big blue eyes, thick brown hair, a crooked smile. Annoyingly my heart fluttered. It did that sometimes around Beau. I always chalked it up to the fact that I cared about him a lot. He was my best friend. The four of us had been friends since seventh grade, when our parents connected through some rideshare app that organized carpools by proximity. Before we got our licenses, our moms did the driving. Now Ava did because she didn’t like Beau’s car and because Caroline and I didn’t have cars yet.

My parents told me when I could save a thousand dollars, they’d help me buy one. Something about appreciating something more when you had to sacrifice for it. I thought I’d appreciate a car regardless of my sacrifice, but I’d managed to save six hundred so far.

A truck pulled in front of Ava from a side road. She lay on her horn.

Caroline put her hand to her chest. “Don’t trigger road rage.” Caroline was the kind of person who didn’t like to draw attention to herself or risk offending people.

Ava was the opposite. “I had to let him know that he’s an idiot.”

Beau had his nose back in his flash cards.

“Maybe if you eat those flash cards you’ll assimilate the information better,” I said.

He raised an eyebrow in my direction. “You should write that down as one of your essay answers for the test. See what Ms. Crane thinks of that biological theory.”

“She’d think it was sound.”

This time he shoved my shoulder. I laughed.

“Do I have to separate you two for the drive home?” Ava asked in a spot-on impersonation of her mother.

“That was creepy,” Caroline said.

“Your mom used to hate it when we laughed in the car,” I said.

“She doesn’t like noise, happy or sad,” Ava said.

“Then she had way too many kids,” Beau said. Ava was the second-youngest of five.

“I think her noise intolerance is aresultof the kids, not a precursor.” She pulled into the school lot and parked where she always did—underneath the third row of solar-paneled shade structures.

Beau’s girlfriend, Harper, was waiting for us on the grass bordering the asphalt. Well, she was waiting for Beau, but our foursome was often seen as one entity, so sometimes I used collective verbiage to denote both the individual and the group.

For example,We ran a great race today, when Caroline participated in any cross-country meet.We look adorable, when Ava put on pretty much any outfit in her closet.We have an amazing singing voice, when Beau sang along to car songs or participated in a choir performance.

I didn’t really have a thing that the group could collectively claim. I mean, I did. I was smart. That was my only thing. And since it was my only thing, I worked hard at it. Would not let myself slip. But we were all smart, so my friends didn’t need to claim my abilities for that.

We climbed out of the car and Beau scooped Harper up in a hug. She was short, much shorter than my five-foot-nine height. The perfect height to scoop, it seemed. She let out a squeal.

I liked Harper. They’d only been dating a few months, but she was funny and seemed to like Beau a lot, so that was a plus.

“I’m having a Halloween party,” she announced when Beau set her down. “You all have to come.”

“I haven’t celebrated Halloween since I was ten,” I said.