Queen of Broken Hearts (8 page)

“Now, girls.” Mrs. Larue said, holding up her hands. “I don’t want any antics today. Make your statements quick so the students can cast their votes.” She smiled at us, like this was a silly race for an inconsequential prize instead of everything I had left.

Everything I had left. I closed my eyes tightly. Thought of Pak in the storm. My mother skipping the country. Sam, leaving me. My throat closed up.

“Birdie?” Mrs. Larue cut through my inner monologue. “Would you like to go first?”

No. I opened my eyes. “Yes.” The camera clicked on. Every eye in the school was on me. “Happy end of the school day, Holl—” My voice caught. I cleared my throat. “Hollywood Hills. High School.” I looked around. At Mrs. Larue, nodding encouragement. At my classmates holding the cameras, one of them trembling in leftover terror as he watched me. At Skittle, holding herself faux-regally in her seat, eyes gleaming with the sick light of revenge. “It is just high school, isn’t it?” The words escaped my mouth before I thought them through.

Had I really lost everything? I thought of Annabelle, saying she’d missed me. My mother holding my hand. Pak, trying to help me after everything I’d done to him. Sam, trying to love me with all my broken bits making a mess of things. I blinked tears out of my eyes.

“Birdie?” Mrs. Larue whispered, waving a hand at the cameras.

“I’m an idiot,” I told the entire population of Hollywood Hills High School. Skittle made a choking sound beside me. “I’ve made mistake after mistake while everyone who mattered stood beside me, and I was too preoccupied to notice.” I stood up. “I’m sorry. For everything. I’m sorry. I have somewhere to be.”

I walked out of the studio, peace settling over me for the first time… ever. I knew exactly where I needed to be.

“Birdie!” Skittle’s shrill voice called after me. “What was that? Some sort of power play? It won’t work. No one is going to vote for you.”

I turned around. Skittle wasn’t wearing her dress as much as it was wearing her. She’d gotten scary thin since I’d taken her under my not-so-nurturing wing, and I hadn’t even noticed. Her eyes belonged to a frightened animal.

“I really am sorry,” I whispered, just loud enough for her to hear.

Her face went red. “You
bitch
. Do you think you can just get away with this?”

“No.” I smiled. Maybe this was what going mad felt like. “I really don’t.” I walked away.

It took me five minutes of aimless walking to realize I had no idea where Sam’s school was. Or if the game was even at the school. I ended up sitting on a park bench with no real idea what to do next. I pulled out my phone. This was silly. I’d just call Sam and
ask
him where his stupid game was.

The phone rang three times before it was cut off. He’d hung up on me. Well. It wasn’t like I didn’t deserve it. My finger found number four on my speed dial. I held my breath as the phone rang once, twice. Click.

“What?”

“Pak?”

“
Birdie
?”

“What, am I not in your contacts anymore?” I said, only half joking.

His silence was answer enough.

“I need help.” I didn’t let myself think about the words. If I started thinking, it would all fall apart.

“True. And?”

I licked my lips. “I need
your
help. Finding out where the Abernathy High School mathletes’ competition is.”

Pak’s breath crackled over the phone. “That… has got to be the weirdest series of words I’ve ever heard come out of your mouth.”

I couldn’t help it. I laughed. I laughed until my sides ached and I started to sob right there in the middle of Boulevard Park.

“Hey,” he said. I clutched my phone like it was the end of a very short rope. “I’ll figure it out and call you back. How do you spell that school name?”

I spelled it out for him, then hung up. People were staring at me. I gave them a small wave. I could see the headlines now:
Birdie Anders arrested for public display of emotion
. My mother would kill me.

My mother. I squeezed my eyes shut against the thought. One mess at a time.

Pak called back to tell me it was being held at the library on Fifth. “Have you ever been to a library?” he asked.

“Maybe. Once.”

“Uh huh. Remember, books are for
read
-ing. Not kindling. They won’t like that much.”

“Wait. Pak?” The lion might eat you for pulling the thorn out of its paw, but that doesn’t mean the thing isn’t worth doing. Right? I gathered up my pride and let it go. “Thank you.”

“Well, you know how it is. Damsel in distress, knight in shining armor.” He paused. “And Birdie? Good luck. With whatever it is you think you’re doing.”

I stared at my phone for a minute after he hung up. I’d be the first to admit I’m better at burning bridges then mending them, but the feeling rising in my chest felt vaguely like hope.

The library on Fifth wasn’t anything like what I imagined libraries were supposed to look like. It wasn’t imposing in the slightest. It was a small, squarish building with two stories and, as far as I could tell, no AC. Signs posted on the door declared the mathletes’ meeting to be in the basement meeting room. As I headed down the stairwell, I had to admit that at least it was cooler down here.

I threw open the door at the end of the staircase harder than I should have. What can I say? Love makes us do desperate things. There was that abrupt moment of silence, where you just know someone has stopped talking midstream and everyone in the room turns to look at you. Normally I love that feeling. At that point I wanted to melt into the floor.

“Sorry,” I said with a small, stupid wave.

Sam was sitting behind an old wooden table with the rest of his teammates, who I recognized from Olive Garden. I didn’t spare a glance for anyone else. Still, declaring my love in the middle of whatever kind of confused tournament this was seemed like a bad idea, so I took a seat in the back. Slowly, there was a shuffling of papers, and the game took back up.

God, it was boring. The kind of boring that makes you envy squirrels. Some old guy would write something on a whiteboard, and all the mathletes would scramble to write things on the paper in front of them until one scrambled up and wrote on the whiteboard. I had no idea what was going on, but I made a point to cheer every time I thought Abernathy got a point or whatever it was called here. No one else seemed to be cheering, but I suspected half of them weren’t awake anyway.

Finally,
finally
the game ended, and I jumped to my feet.

In case you’re curious, I have no idea who won.

Sam bolted out a back door. Fabulous. I ran after him like a boy-seeking missile. His teammates gathered around the door, blocking it. I shoved through the group, knocking aside a girl who may or may not have been named Melinda on my way to the door.

“Sam!” I called as he hurried up a steep set of stairs that led to the parking lot. He ignored me.
He
ignored
me.

Like hell. No one ignored me. No one.

By the time I made the parking lot, he was already in his car. “
Wait
.” I threw myself in front of his car. My ankle gave out, and my side hit the pavement hard.

Sam threw open the door of his car. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

“No.” I coughed. “I need to talk to you.”

Sam glowered. I don’t think I’d ever seen him glower before. He wasn’t really tall enough to be intimidating, but it still made my stomach twist a little. For once, it wasn’t my neck I was watching out for. “What are you doing here, Birdie?”

“You invited me. I wanted to support you. And there’s the talking part I need to do. To tell you the truth. Like you said. That one time. That thing about telling the truth.”

My fall might have caused brain damage. I held out my hands, like, I don’t know, like somehow that would show him I was being sincere. I realized that I knew how to do a lot of things. Sabotage, scheme, lie, steal. But I had no idea how to actually be honest.

“And you made your opinion on the matter perfectly clear. We’re done, Birdie. Get out of my way.”

“No. I’m not letting you leave me again.” I pushed myself up to my knees. “I’m Birdie
fucking
Anders, and you do not get to leave me twice.”

His friends wandered out to the parking lot and stood to the side like some sort of teenage hit squad. Maybe Melinda whispered something to Bad-Haircut-Guy. My face began to heat up. I’m not used to publicly making a fool of myself, and now I’d done it twice in one day. All for a boy who didn’t even want me. The Boy Who Didn’t Want Me watched me with his clear, too-good-for-me eyes. “Fine. First question: What’s your real name?”

I froze. That question hadn’t even occurred to me. “Can we talk somewhere less public?” I said. Telling the truth was one thing, but telling it in front of five other people was another thing.

“I don’t have time for a stranger whose name I don’t even know.”

I opened my mouth, then snapped it closed.

“Good-bye, Birdie.” He got back in his car and threw it into reverse. I should have thought of that.

I stood there, the utter fool. “Wait,” I finally called as he drove away. “I’ll—
Wait
.”

He didn’t. I ran after him until the heel of my shoe snapped, then fell down and watched him leave me again.

My feet wanted to die by the time I staggered through the front door of Cheesey’s. I collapsed at the table and buried my head in my arms.

“He’s not scheduled today,” Chad said, like I showed up sweating through expensive dresses all the time. Actually… I kind of did.

“I’ll wait,” I mumbled against the table.

“It’s two dollars an hour to sit at the table,” he said. I lifted my head enough to glare at him then dug through my purse. My phone had five missed calls. I was supposed to be catching a plane. I was supposed to have changed Sam’s mind. I was supposed to…

It didn’t matter. I turned my phone off.

“You realize this place closes, right?” Chad said.

“I’ll figure it out,” I snapped.

Chad shrugged before going back to texting on his phone.

I watched the time tick by, cataloguing my faults.

Fifteen minutes: If I’d only think first, I wouldn’t be here now.

Thirty minutes: If I were kinder and more considerate, I wouldn’t be here now.

Forty-five minutes: If I didn’t want all the wrong things, I wouldn’t be here now.

Fifty minutes: My mother pulled up to Cheesey’s.

“Honey!” She half-sobbed as she threw open the door. “I’ve looked everywhere for you. Are you out of your mind?”

I tried to say yes, but she muffled it with a hug.

“I was so worried they’d taken you. Don’t you know how dangerous it is?” She took a step back, keeping my shoulders in her rigor mortis-like grip.

I closed my eyes. “They must not have been looking very hard.”

“Would you stop acting like this is some silly game? It’s serious. We need to leave right this minute.”

“I can’t, Mother, I…” There are a few things I know with absolute certainty about my mother, the most important at the moment being that if the FBI was really after her, she wouldn’t be tramping around as herself in broad daylight. “How did you say they found out about us again?”

“I told you, it was your high school. They raised a red flag.”

“By investigating a single robbery charge?”

Mother pursed her lips. I knew the look in her eyes. She was recalculating.

I pulled away from her. “You lied to me.”

“No,” she said, too quickly.

I couldn’t think past the headache growing behind my eyes. “Get out.”

“Sweetie, I—”

“
No
. I trusted you, and you thought you could just lead me around because it was convenient for
you
.” My voice caught. I knew a thing or two about betraying trusts. “Just leave me alone.”

Mother pulled herself straight. “The plane leaves at ten. Your ticket is still waiting for you.”

Chad shifted his feet as he stood awkwardly over my table. “I need to clean the table.”

I sniffled. “Sorry I inconvenienced you.” I pushed my chair back.

“Nice mother,” he said as he wiped the table down.

“Well.” I tore a napkin into smaller pieces.

“Could you not?”

“Sorry.” I tossed the pieces on the table. I found my voice hiding in the back of my throat. “I hurt Sam, didn’t I?”

Chad stopped. He didn’t look up at me. “Yeah, you did.”

“I didn’t mean to.” Tears began to drip down my face. I wiped them away, but not in time to save my mascara.

“You’re really bad at this, aren’t you?” Chad said.

A heaving sob wracked my body. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Lucky for you, I know Sam better than anyone. Except for his parents. And most of his other friends. The point is, I know what he’ll be doing tonight.”

“What?” I grabbed a napkin to wipe snot off my face.

“Watching my vlog. He’s, like, half of my viewership.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“I was thinking about having a guest on.” Chad looked all blurry through my tears.

“Me?”

“Unless you’ve got J.Lo’s number.”

“I don’t know what to tell him.”

“Try starting with the truth. That usually works pretty well.”

So, I guess that brings us to now. That’s all the truth I can think of. Umm, for now. I’ve spent a lot of time lying. Look, I don’t know if you even like me after all that.

But.

I think I’m falling in love with you. And I just wanted you to know. So that’s my truth.

Oh. One more.

My name is Sky.

Now I’ve got a plane to catch.

The webcam clicked off. Birdie sat back and stretched out her arms. “What time is it?”

Chad punched a few buttons on his laptop. “Past seven, I think. That had to be the longest vlog of all time.”

Birdie rubbed her forehead. “You’re sure Sam will watch it?”

“Every word. And just to be clear, I’m not doing this for you. I think you’re some kind of terrifying mixture of a psycho bitch and a devil slut. I’m doing this so Sam will stop moping around like a kicked puppy.”