Donnie scowled at me, finally handing over my coffee. The costume didn’t have any holes for hands, so he’d had to cup it with his blue fin. “I think my costume looks pretty good, thank you very much. Don’t be a jerk-o-lantern.”
“Oh my gosh, that was so cringy.”
“Hey, I look better than Mike Apton in his stupid clownfish costume. He just painted orange stripes on his shirt. Boooring.”
I smirked as I took my cup, bringing it to my nose to make sure he hadn’t ruined this one too. The delightful bitterness greeted me, making me shiver. “Hey, I have some money for the coffee,” I told him, reaching into my backpack. It hadn’t occurred to me to start paying Donnie—I used to give Lucas money for them, but it had kind of slipped my mind to pay Donnie. Those lattes and espressos added up. I pulled out the small envelope I’d put it in, offering it out to him. “That should cover next month.”
“Sorry, sharks don’t have pockets,” he said automatically.
“Seriously. Take it.”
Donnie wiggled his fin. “I can’t. No fingers. Can’t grab.”
“Fine.” As quickly as I could manage, I shoved the envelope down the face hole of his costume, effectively getting it stuck inside his suit. “It’s like one giant pocket.”
“Aw, come on, Blaire. I’m going to have to take this thing off to get that.”
A group of students hurried down the hallway, all in the same direction. They were dressed as some sort of sea creatures—fish, eels, different things. I caught a girl pulling her cell phone out of her pocket, quickly swiping to the camera mode.
“What’s going on?” I asked Donnie, trying to see what they looked at. “School doesn’t start for ten more minutes.”
“The envelope is poking me in the stomach,” he complained, as if he hadn’t heard me. “What’d you go and put it in an envelope for, anyway? Only rich people buying people off do that. Envelopes are for hush money.”
“You’re so weird, Donnie. And you watch way too much TV.”
The shark stuck his tongue out at me.
I sipped at my espresso, the taste coating my tongue and making it shrivel. Donnie said the bitterness in my coffee rubbed off on me, but I almost thought the opposite was true. Maybe my coffee kept my bitter personality at bay. All the anger and the negativity were held off by the amazingness of coffee. I could buy into that fact.
But my hypothesis proved false when I finally saw what all those students hurried toward, and a huge wave of resentment hit me at once. And pain. Lots of that.
“And you thought my costume was bad,” Donnie said from beside me, pulling his pumpkin-spice nonsense to his lips.
If things were different, I would’ve burst out laughing. I would’ve had to press a hand over my mouth to keep from full-on ugly cackling, because this was a sight to see.
Lucas walked down the hallway clad in a green-and-teal mermaid tail and a bright coral seashell bra. He had on a white t-shirt underneath his bra, but it only made the vibrant color pop more. He’d dampened his hair down to sweep across his forehead, and even from here, it looked dripping wet.
All in all, he looked ridiculous. Worse than Donnie for sure. But that wasn’t what made my insides tie in angry, aching knots.
Hailey Moore walked beside him, in a mermaid tail and seashell bra of her own. Her blonde hair flowed over her shoulders in beautiful waves, and her makeup had contours of pink and purple, blended out perfectly.
Of course, she looked beautiful.
They weren’t holding hands or even touching, but in my mind, they might as well have had their arms wrapped around each other. Everything was perfectly clear. They planned this.
“It could’ve been an accident,” Donnie said from beside me, easily reading my thoughts. His voice sounded tentative, his expression probably anxious. There would’ve been a tightness to his eyes, his teeth worrying at his lip. “Like they both showed up as the same thing?”
It would’ve been a good argument if their seashell bras weren’t the same color and their tails didn’t match.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said instead, taking a sip of my coffee. I let it fill my mouth, burning my taste buds. “It’s good that she’s doing it with him—no way would I have dressed up like a fish.”
Donnie choked on his pumpkin-spice garbage. “Too bad. What a great Christmas card that would’ve been.”
In that moment, I was the one who felt like a dork in that hallway. The only one not wearing a costume, watching my ex and his ex walk down the hallway with matching outfits. And they couldn’t have dressed as anything ugly, like a stonefish—no, they had to be mermaids, which were beautiful and unique. So not fair.
I wanted to break something.
This time, when Lucas walked past, he never even glanced my way.
I wanted this, didn’t I? Space? So why did it feel as if someone had reached inside and ripped my lungs into shreds?
“Blaire?” Donnie laid a fin on my shoulder. “Are you okay?”
I shrugged it off, slamming my locker shut. “Let’s go to class.”
“But your coffee—”
As I headed in the opposite direction Lucas and Hailey had gone, I tipped my coffee cup high, filling my mouth with the blistering liquid. Neither the heat nor the bitterness chased the feeling away. But the empty cup rattled in my grip as I lowered it, dumping it in a nearby trash can. “All gone,” I told him, knowing I’d be jittery for the rest of the day.
Classes passed slowly. I had to suffer through stupid ocean puns—“Shell we go over our homework?” and “Seas the day, kids!” and “Who’s feeling fin-tastic today?”—and I was about ready to smack anyone who spoke to me. I’d have to endure a whole week of this nonsense. Dressing up, stupid puns. It was going to be a rough week.
As the day went on, I got to see that many people had the wise ideas to dress up as mermaids, which only served as a potent reminder of this morning. Would Lucas and Hailey match every day of costume week? Were they going to the Halloween Bash together?
Something inside me went very still very fast. For high schoolers, the Halloween Boo-Bash was considered to be bigger than the homecoming dance. Not quite as grand as prom, but close. Like Lucas had said, people dressed up as couples with their dates.
Would Lucas and Hailey dress up together?
I pulled my backpack over my shoulder and brought it around to my chest, peeking inside to find Dad’s orange letter winking at me. Inexplicably, looking at the thing made me it easier to breathe. Like I could remember more important things existed than Lucas and Hailey and stupid Halloween parties and princess costumes.
I reached in and ran my fingertip along the front of it, tracing the blocky black penmanship.
Ridiculous. After zipping my backpack shut, I slung it over my shoulder, heading for the double doors. Tomorrow was “dress like your favorite celebrity” day, so that would be the best. I’d be trading in shell yeahs for stupid celebrity catchphrases and TV show quotes. Maybe I’ll call in sick. Yeah, Gram, I’m not feeling too well.
“You ready for your next October activity?” Without warning, Lucas saddled up next to me, a textbook in his hand, jacket in the other. His mermaid tail swooshed against the linoleum floors as we walked, his steps more of a shuffle. “It’s going to be fun.”