Chapter 6 Then
Then
“We should’ve gone as the Powerpuff 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.
“But we are 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.
“I might hate both of you after tonight,” Ava teased.
“I’m the one in the middle,” I said, guiding us toward the side gate that was propped open.
Ava pretended to trip and I hip-checked her.
“This would’ve been even funnier with four,” I said. “Maybe next year we can reprise it with Beau.”
“You don’t think Beau will be doing another couples costume next year?” Ava asked.
My brows drew together. “You think? Harper is endgame?”
“You don’t like Harper?” Caroline asked.
“I like Harper a lot,” I said, perhaps a bit defensively.
“But?” Ava asked.
“I just don’t think she’s the love of his life. They’re too different. She thinks all the things that make him him are weird.”
“I’ve never noticed,” Ava said. “Like what?”
“Like when he sings songs in odd voices or how he is the biggest know-it-all about the most random stuff or how he remembers every tiny thing anyone tells him.”
Caroline gave me a sideways glance but didn’t say anything. Did she think I was wrong? That he didn’t remember every tiny thing about everyone? Maybe that was just for me. Because we were closer.
The music was loud; I could hear it from the street when we’d gotten out of the car as individuals and pulled the pod portion of the costume out of the trunk, positioning ourselves inside of it. Now it was even louder as we walked through the gate.
I’d never been to Harper’s house, but her yard was big—a lit-up gazebo in the middle, surrounded by cement, which was surrounded by grass.
Most of the people standing around had not fully committed to their costumes.
There was someone in a pirate hat holding a hook for a hand, but the rest of his outfit was just street clothes.
There was someone in a witch hat and a supercute black dress and flip-flops.
One person was wearing glow-in-the-dark vampire teeth—I could see them across the yard—but there was nothing else to the costume.
The rest of their outfit was just a striped T-shirt and shorts.
And then there was Harper. I couldn’t even tell what she was. She was wearing a purple minidress with a purple headband. My eyes scanned the yard for Beau. I found him adding sodas to an ice chest, wearing a white long-sleeved shirt and blue jeans.
“I’m beginning to think that Harper pulled a prank on us. Or maybe she wasn’t serious when she said she would turn uncostumed people away,” I said.
“Worse,” Ava said. “I think these people think they are costumed.”
“What are they supposed to be?” I asked.
“Which underachievers are you referring to?” Ava asked.
“Beau and Harper.”
“Fred and Daphne?” Caroline guessed.
“From Scooby-Doo?” I asked. “That’s a five-person team!” Why was I so offended that they didn’t want to include us in their costume?
“That’s probably why they didn’t want to tell us,” Ava said.
“Fred and Daphne don’t even exist without Scooby and Shaggy,” I huffed.
“They are independent characters with their own dreams and goals,” Ava teased.
“I would’ve been a good Velma,” Caroline said.
“You would’ve rocked Velma,” Ava agreed.
“Is it too late to go change?” Caroline asked.
“Yes,” I said. “We are here. We are owning this.” When I said the words, I propelled us forward. “Right foot first,” I said when we all stepped at different times with random feet. “Do we need to count steps?”
The movement must’ve caught Beau’s eye because he saw us and laughed. Hard.
He came striding across the grass. “Oh wow. This is…”
“Amazing is the only correct end to that sentence,” I said.
He smirked at me.
Both Caroline and Ava went in for a hug and enclosed him into our little pod, my body smashed against his because I was in the middle and I had no arms to stop it.
“It is amazing,” he said by my ear. My brain knew he meant the costume, but my body, in a deep betrayal of everything I knew to be right in the world, had a reaction to his words, his closeness.
More than just a fluttering heart. My stomach flip-flopped and my skin tingled to life.
I tried to step back, but I was at the mercy of my counterparts.
They were too busy laughing and telling him that he was a loser for underdressing for his character.
“You could’ve at least sprayed your hair blond,” Ava said. “Or worn an orange kerchief. Is that what they’re called? Kerchiefs? Kerchieves?”
“Claustrophobic!” I yelled to the sky.
They thought this was funny too and smashed together even closer.
“You’re horrible people,” I said, and finally Caroline backed up, setting Beau free. He took a few steps back. We met eyes for a brief second and quickly averted them. His body didn’t betray him just now. That’s not why he gave me that look. He has a girlfriend after all. We are just friends.
“You’re the one who said we couldn’t leave the pod all night,” Ava said.
“I might be reconsidering my stance,” I said.
“How were you planning to eat in this?” Beau asked me.
“I have two hands.” I nodded toward Caroline and Ava.
“Yes, she does. We get our little pea anything she needs,” Ava said.
“We are one,” Caroline said.
“Jealous?” I asked Beau.
“Actually,” he said, our eyes colliding again, “kind of.”
I laughed. “Don’t worry, Beau. You’ll always be a pea in our pod. Now point us to the food.”
For the next hour we stayed together as a group of three. It was nearly impossible to do anything, even sit. All the chairs had armrests. We tried to sit on the grass at one point but fell onto our backs and rocked there like flipped tortoises until someone helped us up.
Now we were just standing, talking to the girl with the glow-in-the-dark vampire teeth—Ali. I was having to listen hard because her words were contorted by the teeth. Considering it was the only piece of her costume, I appreciated that she hadn’t removed them, was sticking to the bit.
“Oh, Cudy is here,” she said.
“Cudy?” I asked.
“No, her namer, Cudy.”
I was confused. She pointed.
I craned my neck but couldn’t turn enough to see anything.
“Her neighbor?” Caroline said. “Harper’s?”
“Yes!” Ali agreed. “He must’ve crashed, he wasn’t inmited.”
“I have to pee!” Ava announced. “And I’m doing it alone.”
“Did you really think we were going to pee with you?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I thought you’d insist on it.”
“I’m taking this opportunity to eat with both hands, then,” Caroline said, and they were out of the pod and gone, leaving me with Ali the vampire.
“Can you eat with those things in?” I asked, nodding to her teeth, the empty pod stretched out on either side of me like wings.
“No, I take them out to eat. I need to go find Harper. Make sure she knows about Cudy.”
I should’ve slipped my arms out of the pod, but I didn’t. It wasn’t uncomfortable. It was made of felt, soft and flexible. If I left it on the ground, I had no doubt other people would put it on, probably ruin it.
I walked around the patio in search of Beau. Before I could find him, I came face to face with the tall, lanky, skateboard-riding guy from school who’d flipped Beau off a few weeks back.
“Oh! Cudy,” I said.
“Cody,” he corrected.
“Well, with vampire teeth, you’re Cudy.”
“What?” Cody wasn’t wearing a costume. Unless he was going as a skater boy—baggy pants, graphic tee, shaggy brown hair. But that was his everyday look, so I didn’t think he was.
“You had to be there,” I said.
“What are you? Like a stick bug or something? A praying mantis?” He nodded to the pod.
“I’m a pea. My other two peas left me.”
“A pea?” he asked, giving me a once-over. I hadn’t felt exposed in my tight green body suit all night until then.
“You flipped my friend off a few weeks ago,” I said, trying to fold my arms but failing. The motion did close the pod around the sides of my body, though.
“Probably,” he said, like that was a standard occurrence for him.
“You almost knocked me over on your skateboard.”
“My bad,” he said with a sly smile.
Why was I smiling back? “Mr. Lopez yelled at you not to skate on campus.” I wasn’t sure why I was recounting, beat for beat, the events of our first interaction, just that I didn’t know what else to say and he wasn’t contributing to the conversation.
“Sounds about right.”
“You need to leave.” Beau’s voice interrupted our conversation. “You weren’t invited.”
Cody turned toward Beau. “The wide-open side gate and Come In sign say otherwise.”
I mean, he wasn’t wrong. I tried not to laugh.
Beau looked at me; I wondered if my face had given away my struggle. My face often did that for him.
“Still, you need to leave,” he said to Cody.
“I might. After I get some pizza.” As Cody was heading for the food table, he turned and walked backward a few steps. To me he said, while pointing at Beau, “Is that the friend I flipped off?”
I nodded.
He shrugged as if to say Yeah, he deserved it, then turned and walked away.
“What was that about?” Beau asked.
“I was just reminding him of his offenses.”
“He didn’t seem to care,” he said.
“Yeah, not so much. You going to chase him out of here?”
“I was mainly just trying to chase him away from you. It worked.”
My heart thumped heavily for several beats, reminding me that my body was on a completely different page than my brain tonight. We were friends. “Why?”
“You seemed uncomfortable. I figured he was annoying you.”
“He was fine. He thought I was a praying mantis, though.” I held my arms out, to lift the sides of the pod higher. “Do I look like a praying mantis?”
He took a step back and studied me. My skin prickled to life with his assessment.
“I don’t see it,” he said.
I folded myself up again. “Yeah, well, one pea does not a pod make.”
“Let me in, then,” he said, stepping forward.
I automatically took a step back. “What?”
He laughed. “I can’t be part of your costume?”
“It’s not my fault you’re regretting your life choice of unimpressive Fred,” I said.
“Let me in, Indy,” he said with a laugh.
“Come on, then,” I said, but my body once again took a step back. What was wrong with me?
His brows furrowed; then his eyes met mine in a question.
“It’s fine, just lost my balance.” This time I forced myself to stay still, but my body knew what it had been doing. It was trying to protect me, because once he slid his arms into the holes and was smashed up against my side, I melted against him.
“This is supposed to be a couples costume, isn’t it?” he said. “Two peas in a pod.”
“There are actually a lot more than two peas in a pea pod. Six, eight, ten,” I answered, probably too quickly.
“Right. That’s true. But I mean, the saying.”
“Yeah, the saying is wrong.”
He barked out a laugh. “Okay, no need to get defensive.”
“I wasn’t,” I said, but I was.
“I want to try walking. I think we can do it better than you three were doing it earlier.”
“It’s not as easy as it looks,” I said, but then we were walking and it was so easy. We were in sync without even having to count it off.
“It’s easier than it looks?” he teased.
“It’s harder with three,” I said.
“We should get Harper in here,” he said.
“Yeah,” I responded, and that was the reminder my body needed. It shouldn’t have needed one at all, but I was glad for it. I immediately felt better.
“Oh, first I have to show you her tree house.” He steered us toward the back of the yard.
“What about Harper?” I said. “We were going to get her to join us.” My eyes scanned the yard. I couldn’t find her.
“After.” He led us toward a tree at the back of the yard.
“Why didn’t you spray your hair or wear a kerchief?” I asked, curious. But before he answered, my mind filled in the reason. “Your mom?”
He sighed. “You know how she is.”
She was all about appearances. She probably thought sprayed hair or orange kerchiefs looked tacky. She would hate our peapod outfit.
We came to a large tree and he nodded up at the branches.
I looked up to see a house built around the trunk. “Is there a way up?”
“In this costume? No.”
“Out of it?” I said.
“Yes, but you’re scared of heights,” he pointed out.
“True.”
We turned back toward the party but didn’t move.
“Speaking of parents, something is going on with mine,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. My mom is stressed. I think it’s because my dad has been in a bad mood for weeks.” Ever since that day he couldn’t find his papers. Was he still mad about that? I hadn’t gone back in his office since. “And neither of them will tell me what the problem is.”
“Your parents are usually so chill…well, your dad can be kind of scary sometimes, but mostly chill.”
“Right?”
“What do they say when you ask what’s going on?”
“My mom keeps telling me it’s nothing.”
“What do you think it is, then?” he asked.
“Maybe it’s another confidentiality thing.”
“Something with one of his clients?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I’m trying not to think of worst-case scenarios.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, tightening his arm around my shoulder. “It probably is a client thing.”
I swallowed as tingles went down my arm. “Yeah, probably.” But he’d obviously had clients his whole career, kept their secrets, and never acted like this. “Let’s go find everyone.”
“Wait,” he said.
“What?”
“Look.” He pointed up at the sky. The black night above us was dotted with light.
A star streaked across the sky. I gasped. “How did you know that was going to happen?”
He chuckled. “I can tell the future.”
I wished he could tell the future. Tell me what was going on with my parents. Tell me what I was going to do with my life. Being smart wasn’t a career, and that’s all I seemed to know about myself at the moment. At least I had that.