Page 8 of Room to Breathe

“What you’re hearing is hate.”

“Goes both ways.”

Chapter 4

Then

“The Powerpuff Girls?” Caroline asked.

“Yes, sounds perfect,” I said.

“Or maybe Alvin and the Chipmunks.”

“Ew, no,” Ava said. She was on the floor in front of my full-length mirror, touching up her makeup. “My mom says we should go as Charlie’s Angels—the Lucy Liu version.” Her mom sometimes called us Charlie’s Angels because we sort of fit the visual: Ava was Asian, and Caroline and I kind of looked like the other two angels in that we were white with the right hair color. She called Beau our Charlie.

I would shake my head at Beau whenever she’d say this and mouth,In your dreams.

He would say, out loud, “My little angels.”

Ava’s mom found this very charming. I would never let him know that it kind of was.

“I don’t think anyone our own age will get the reference,” Caroline said now, “unless we write it across our foreheads or something. Angel.” She pretended to drawangelon her forehead.

“Plus, without Beau, who would be our Charlie?” Ava said, uncapping her lip gloss.

“We are spending way too much brainpower thinking of these costumes,” I said. I was lying on my back on my bed, my head over the side, looking at the world upside down.

“We only have like three weeks until the party,” Caroline said. She was scrolling her phone, looking for good choices. Caroline liked to have things planned. It helped her feel less anxious if she knew exactly what was going to happen. “Harper didn’t give us a whole lot of notice.”

“I don’t think people will take it too seriously,” I said. I didn’t want her to stress over something that was supposed to be fun.

She continued to scroll. “You heard what she said. She won’t let people in who aren’t dressed up. That sounds pretty serious to me.”

“What are Beau and Harper going as, again?” I asked.

“They won’t tell us because they said we’ll try to highjack their costumes and be the villains from their story, or something,” Ava said, rolling her eyes, her mascara wand close to her face.

I laughed. That’s exactly why I had asked. I’d wanted to go as the villains in their story. I lifted my legs in the air and flipped off my bed, landing on my knees on the floor. “You ready?”

“Yes,” Ava said, tucking her makeup bag back into her purse and standing up.

They followed me out of my room and down the stairs.

My mom stood from where she’d been sitting on the couch. “Hi, girls! You off?”

“We are.”

“Be back by curfew,” she said.

I gave her a hug. “Okay, I will.”

We hadn’t quite made it to the front door when my dad appeared in the hall to our right. “Indy, a minute.”

Ava gave me an alarmed expression, but I was used to my dad’s speech patterns. He was about to ask me a business question, not a dad question. Like how much money did I anticipate needing for school supplies next semester or was the balance on my lunch account sufficient. I guess those were kind of dad questions too, but they were more business. I actually appreciated the warning that I wasn’t sure he was even aware he’d given.

“I’ll meet you in the car,” I said to my friends, and they walked out the front door.

“You have your serious face on,” I said to my dad.