Page 58 of Room to Breathe

“Nobody wants to sit in the back seat of your car,” I teased, trying to find our friendship rhythm again.

Instead of laughing at my joke, he mumbled something like “It’s not that small,” then unzipped the backpack on the floor between his feet and started riffling through it.

“Speaking of carpool.” Ava held up the Slurpee cup. “It’s Friday.”

“Oh,” I said. “Can I add later? I forgot cash.” I had no cash. Zero. I felt bad. Another thing I’d have to ask my mom for. Maybe I’d ask my dad.

Ava replaced the cup in the holder. It had several bills in there—contributions from Caroline and Beau, I was sure.

“Oh!” Caroline said, looking at her phone and letting out the surprised exclamation.

“What?” I asked.

“Class rankings came out.”

That made sense. They always came out on Fridays.

“Okay,” I said. We didn’t normally make a big deal over them. Beau and I were always in the top ten of our class. Caroline and Ava weren’t. The only person who ever looked them up and rubbed them in was Beau, because he was always ahead of me and he thought that was funny. I mostly did too.

“You jumped in front of Beau,” Caroline said.

Beau’s head shot up from whatever he was doing in his backpack and locked onto the back of Caroline’s head. “What?”

“Indy is three now, you are four.”

“How?” he asked. “We’ve only had one test since the last rankings came out.”

Thetest. The one I’d gotten a third of my answers for off his paper. I was not about to sayGuess I scored higher than you.But I must’ve. I must’ve gotten a couple of the other questions right that he didn’t. I was stunned silent.

“Oh, poor Beau,” Ava said. “You’re in the same place Indy was last week and somehow this is devastating to you.” She said this in a fun, mocking voice, a voice that on any other day, after any other test, he would’ve just laughed at or done some pretend angry fist at the sky. But this time his eyes went dark, his scowl deepened.

“Seriously?” Ava asked. “You’re for real mad about this?”

“He can be mad,” I said.

“Don’t,” he said to me.

Something in me shifted. For the first time since the seventh grade, I felt a huge crater between Beau and me, one I didn’t know how to cross.

To Ava, Beau said, “It’s fine. I’m not mad.”

Caroline cringed, raised her eyebrows, and kept her eyes out the side window for the rest of the drive.

When we approached the school, Ava slowed down and asked, “Is something going on with you and Cody?”

He was riding on the sidewalk next to us. He gestured for me to roll down the window. I did, and as Ava turned into the parking lot he grabbed hold of the door. “Hey,” he said.

“Cody,” Ava said. “You’re going to face-plant.”

“This isn’t my first rodeo,” he said. Then he leaned in and kissed me on the lips. I assumed he meant that it wasn’t his first time holding on to a moving car while skateboarding. But he also could’ve meant that it wasn’t his first time kissing someone through an open car window.

“Seriously, Cody,” Ava said. “Let go of my car.”

He laughed and did just that, riding away.

It wasn’t great timing as far as the tension that already existed in this car with my friends went, but my heart was racing with the stunt.

“A new car, a new boyfriend,” Caroline said. “What else aren’t you telling us?”