“I’m no longer your assistant,” Andie interrupted. “Get your own goddamn Tylenol. But I’m here because you have slept through the stampede that has barreled through Barton.”
Birdie swallowed down something awful that had risen from her gut and tried to make sense of what Andie was saying. She couldn’t.
“What? What stampede? And what does that have to do with me?”
Andie pulled out the wad of toilet paper before answering. She examined it, saw she was still gushing, and pushed it back in.
“The stampede of reporters,” she snapped as if this should have been obvious. “I opened the door this morning to go for a run, and it was like a zombie horde out there. I do not like zombie hordes, Birdie. As you may remember.”
Indeed, Birdie had been offered an eye-popping figure topivotto the horror genre back when Andie was living with her inLos Angeles, and Andie talked her out of it. The film flopped terribly, but by then Andie had returned to Barton, having quit (or having been fired—it depended on whose account you believed), and Birdie never had the chance to thank her.
“Seriously, you need to get out of Barton ASAP or else you need to go tell them, not to be too literal, toget off my damn lawn,” her sister said. “I had to slip out the back alley to get here, and, Birdie, I do notlikeslipping out like I’m the one who has something to be ashamed of.”
Now Birdie was awake. Wide-awake. Electrifyingly wide-awake. She flung the comforter to the floor and was on her feet before she realized her body wasn’t ready for such rapid movements. The floor tilted and the room spun, and she staggered forward toward the windowsill, where she steadied herself. She angled her head so she could peer down the street, and sure enough, she saw at least five vans, some with satellite dishes on their roofs, parked in front of her house, along with crews milling about and reporters pacing with cell phones to their ears.
“Holy mother of hell.” She spun around and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror on the closet door. She’d fallen asleep in her ridiculous caftan, which, against the dated backdrop of Mona’s guest room, looked even more absurd than it had last night, like she was a boozy housewife stuck in the late nineties. She had sheet marks embedded on the left side of her face; her mascara had flaked and run under her eyes, making her look even more exhausted than she already was. Her hair, which she’d been letting grow out forLove Grenade—focus groups liked Birdie better with soft, flowing waves—was matted in the back and snarled in the front, like she’d had a wrestling match with her pillow.
The guest room door flung open, and Elliot and Mona flanked the doorway. Elliot had that serious look on his face that wasimmediately so familiar. In high school, Birdie used to sit high in the stands at his swim meets—she was too mortified to let him know that she was always there when he already had a very vocal cheering section of significantly more popular girls sitting in the lower tiers, sometimes even carrying signs. Every time he stepped up on a block, she’d see that look, even from her bird’s-eye perch. Elliot putting himself through the paces of the race; Elliot blocking out any distractions because distractions meant that he might slip up, and slipping up meant that he might lose, and losing was not something that Elliot O’Brien did.
“We need to get you out of here,” he said.
“I can’t leave,” Birdie said. “Not... like this.” She gestured frantically to the outfit meant for her wellness retreat. “They’ll use this photo in my obituary and a hundred times before then.”
Andie held up a bag. “Yes, I brought you this.” She glared at her sister like she couldn’t believe she was doing her this favor. “They’re mine, so sorry that they’re, like, from Target, but you’ll survive.”
“I love Target,” Birdie said, like that was at all relevant.
“Elliot has my keys,” Mona said. “I’ll just use his car in the meantime.”
“Wait, why doesElliothave your keys?”
“San Francisco,” Elliot said. “Ian’s there.”
San Francisco? Ian?Birdie felt like she had gone to bed drunk and woken up in the twilight zone. Andie unzipped the overnight bag and handed her a neon tie-dye hoodie that was definitely intended for tweens.
“I can’t wear—” Birdie started to protest. “Also, how did they find your address, our address, Andie?” Everything was starting to spin and absolutely nothing was making sense.
“That... might have been Nelson’s fault.” Mona cringed.
“Bird, we have about four minutes before they google Monads and find Mona’s name and connect her to the house three doors down. So if you want to hold a press conference on our front stoop, then by all means, take your time,” Elliot said, using his TV reporter voice and taking charge, which Birdie found both incredibly frustratingly sexy and also extremely annoying. “But I’m pretty sure your publicist told you to lie low, so I’m trying to do you a favor here.”
Birdie threw the hoodie over her caftan and flopped her arms against her sides as if to say,See, I told you I would look like an absolute ding-dong, but no one paid her any mind.
“Can I at least brush my teeth?” she said.
“There’s a sink in the RV,” Elliot said. “Come on, we have to move.”
There’s. A. Sink. In. The. RV.
Birdie replayed the sentence over in her head again, as if she were expected to be up to speed.
“Wait...” The three of them had already hustled out the door, but she found her feet were firmly planted to the shag carpet that Mona’s mom had installed when they moved in twenty-three years back. “Wait!” she cried again. “I didn’t agree to an RV!”
The doorbell rang, and she jumped, her feet suddenly no longer stuck. She considered the enormity of her fictitious backstory about her childhood in Medford, Oregon; she’d spoken about it in at least a dozen interviews, she’d done that stupidVogueshoot against the bluffs by the Pacific Ocean, which hadn’t felt stupid at the time, but now, with the press literally pounding on her door, she could see that it was, indeed, ill-advised. The last thing that Birdie Robinson needed right now was even a whiff of another scandal. Imani had already warned her, and though she hadn’t even glanced at her phone since Andie’s rude awakening, she wellknew that her confrontation with Nelson had likely gained speed like a cannonball shot out of the barrel overnight.
“Goddammit,” she said to her reflection in the mirror. The violent yellow and orange sweatshirt turned her skin green, and she felt certain that Andie had chosen only the most putrid of her clothes to pack. The doorbell rang again.
And Birdie, ever the actress, met her eyes in the mirror and decided that she would improvise. And so she grabbed the duffel and ran.
