Read Get Happy for Free Online Page B

nudged my box toward him. “Wanna switch?”
    He smiled. “I guess cowboy ain’t so bad.”
    Dimples aren’t fair. They make it very hard to focus.
    “Try on your costumes and let me know if anything needs adjusting.” Joy gestured to the back. Curtains suspended from rods separated the back of the room into two changing areas. “Hayes, you can wear your own jeans with your outfit.”
    Cassie and I took our costumes into our area.
This is going to be fun
, I told myself.
Just have fun.
    With serious difficulty and mounting horror, I pulled on the tan bodysuit, positioned the stiff,seashell-shaped pink cups, and then struggled into a tight green tube skirt with iridescent chiffon flounces at the bottom — the fins of a mermaid tail.
    “That is so pretty,” Cassie lied through her perfect teeth. “I wish I got the mermaid.”
    I looked at myself in the mirror. My hips and thighs looked enormous.
    “Help me with mine.” She turned so I could zip up her white satin princess dress. “It fits.” She spun around in front of the mirror and then she went out to show Joy.
    Fin’s voice came from the other side of the curtain. “These pants make my butt look HUGE. I want to wear my own jeans, like Hayes.”
    “No,” Joy called out.
    “Can I skip the wig and wear my own hair?” I called.
    “No.”
    “This is a disaster,” I whispered to Fin through the curtain. “I hate you for getting me involved with this.” I put on my long red wig and tiara, picked up the glittering pink trident.
    “Rattlefinks, I need eyeliner,” Fin said, and then started laughing.
    “Boys do not wear eyeliner,” Joy called out.
    I braced for the side view. “This is truly hideous. Fin …”
    “Seriously. I need eyeliner,” he whispered through the curtain. “And a tan.”
    “I need a tan, too,” I said. “I look like a corpse.”
    “We need to buy some of that fake tan-in-a-tube stuff. Wait. I think I put the shirt on backward.”
    Hayes’s voice came through: “These buttonholes are too small for the buttons. How do cowboys live this like?”
    I turned to see how the tail looked from the back. “Joy, can I be something different?” I asked through the curtain. “This costume doesn’t fit.”
    “Absolutely not.”
    “You
have
to be a mermaid, Minerva,” Fin said, and did the evil witch laugh from the
Little Mermaid
movie. “Remember how we decided that our utility closet was Ursula’s true lair and that her evil minions lived in the water heater?”
    “We didn’t decide that,” I said. “You told me that, and you were completely convincing. I was terrified. I’ve been terrified of utility closets ever since.”
    Hayes’s voice: “I look ridiculous.”
    Fin: “I want those boots. You are so lucky. Trade.”
    Hayes: “Dude, the wig is hilarious.”
    Joy: “Come out!”
    Cassie, Fin, and Hayes were all together, laughing. I peeked out. Cassie linked arms with Hayes and Fin and started singing the Get Happy song. She looked amazing. They looked funny, but really cute. Fin’s pants were too long and the dreadlock wig was crooked, but he was rocking the frilly white pirate shirt and the vest. Hayes, lean and taller, looked uncomfortably adorable, like a cowboy who woke up and found himself in somebody else’s dream, with boots a little too big and hat a little too small.
    “Get out here, Minerva,” Fin cried.
    I could have dissolved into a puddle of self-loathing or taken off the costume and quit on the spot, but the less embarrassing thing was to play the clown. I put on a fake smile and walked out singing “Under the Sea.”
    Fin howled and hugged me, crushing my pink shell cups. “Ariel.”
    I bowed and my tiara fell off, which gave me something to do while Joy took a million photos of Cassie.
    When she took one of Fin, he said, “Arrrrrgh,” andtried to pull his fake sword from his scabbard, but it got stuck and he swore.
    “For heaven’s sake, don’t say that, Finnegan,” Joy said. “Say