Six girls.
White, black, white, white, black, black.
We look good. The bodysuits fit us perfectly. The wings are clipped. The nylons hold. Penelope’s hair is up in a smooth knot at the back of her head. Lucy’s is down and curled. Gianna’s is in some kind of half-up tousled thing she did in twenty minutes. Mara has a smoky eye she is very proud of. Mila is wearing dark red lipstick. I have rosy cheeks and a halo that has decided to lean slightly to the left, no matter how many times I adjust it.
Mara screams. Then we all scream. Just a little.
Mila grabs my phone off the dresser. “Pictures.”
We do pictures. Mara has a tripod in her bag, and we trade off phones and take individual shots by the window where the light is. We do pairs. Lucy and Gianna in matching half-up hair. Penelope and Mara — chic and chaos. Mila and me with our cheeks pressed together. We do the serious ones. We do the dumb ones. We do the one where we are all biting our halos or horns. We do the one where Gianna gives Mara a piggyback ride that ends within four seconds because Gianna’s wings collapse, and Mara hits the bed laughing.
Then Mila pulls out the Jell-O shots.
“Everyone. One each. We are pre-gaming.”
She passes them out. Six little plastic cups. Black, orange, red. I get red. Mila gets black. Penelope holds hers with the suspicion of a person who has never done a Jell-O shot before.
Gianna sets up her phone, filming us. “On three.”
“On three,” Mara agrees, swaying side to side to make her wings flap.
“One —”
“Two —”
“Three —”
We eat them.
Penelope coughs.
Mara’s eyes water. “Oh, that’s good.”
Lucy asks, “What is in this?”
“It’s so strong,” I wince.
Mila winks at Lucy. “Don’t ask.”
The Uber comes at seven. It’s already dark — October dark, the kind that starts at five-thirty and is total by seven — and there’s a thin cold wind on Linden when we pile out of the building and load ourselves into a mini van driven by a confused Uber driver named Daniel who has, by the look on his face, never had six women in matching angel costumes get into his van before.
“Hi,” Mila says.
“Hi,” Daniel says.
“We’re going three blocks. We could walk, but we didn’t want to. Sorry.”
We pay him in chocolate for the short drive. I’m in the back middle seat. Mila on my left. Lucy on my right. Mara, Penelope, and Gianna are crammed in the back.
I keep looking at my phone. I don’t know why. I have nothing to check. Chase isn’t going to text me. Chase hasn’t texted me since the breakup call on Tuesday afternoon, and there’s no way he’s going to text me, but I keep looking anyway. Mila looks over and catches me.
“Melly. Give me your phone for the night.”
I’m holding the platter of pretzels on my lap. She has the Tupperware of Jell-O shots. “Mila.”
“Give it. I’ll keep it for you. You don’t need it. You’re not going to text Chase. We agreed. You don’t need to be on your phone all night.”
Gianna leans between the seats. “We can all put them in a basket.”
