“Oh no, you don’t,” Andie said, a little out of breath, like she’d been racing to beat Birdie here. “You don’t get to backdoor your way into this either.”
“Technically, not the back door,” Birdie said from the floor. “Technically, a window.” She winced. “Where is my couch? Did you do this on purpose?”
“Where is your couch? Seriously?”
Birdie rolled to her side and pressed herself toward sitting like she would do at the end of one of her yoga classes. She was pretty sure she had bruised her pelvis. They always had mats on set if she was going to do a stunt like this herself.
“Why is my room packed up?” she asked.
“Why is yourroompacked up?” Andie parroted.
“Are you just going to repeat everything I say back to me or are you going to explain?”
“Do youevercheck your email?” Andie snapped.
No. Birdie really did not check her email. She had an assistant, Miranda, for that. If anyone truly needed to reach her urgently, they had her cell. Also, once the shit hit the fan with Sebastian and the studio and the public, Birdie certainly never checked her email.
“Yes,” Birdie said. “Of course I check my email.”
“Then you would know that I have sent you several messages asking what you wanted to keep and what you wanted to trash.”
“Are they finally turning my room into that library they always threatened to?” Birdie asked. She thought her parents found this ironic and/or hilarious, that they’d stuff the room from floor to ceiling with books and first editions. “Possibly the first time a book made it across the threshold,” her dad had joked, but it pricked Birdie all the same. She wanted to point out that she’d readThe Lord of the Ringsfor pleasure when she was twelve, but that she could so clearly cite one book, one time, probably proved his thesis.
“Because they just left on sabbatical,” Andie said. “Seriously? Do youneverread your email?”
Now that she mentioned it, it did sound familiar. Birdie had glanced at something about her dad and Susana spending a year in Spain, but it was shortly before the dustup with Sebastian and then she was watching her entire career unravel, so she didn’t think she should be blamed for forgetting.
“Spain,” Birdie said, like she was an authority. “Madrid, yes?”
“Barcelona.” Andie sighed. “And I packed up your room because they want to sublet the house. I emailed you to ask if you could come help. Then I emailed you to ask if—”
“I got it,” Birdie said. “You sent me a lot of emails. Many, many emails. So many emails I’m the worst sister in the world, inthe solar system. In case you didn’t realize, my life has come untethered.”
Andie made a face. “I did see that apology. Looked closer to a hostage video, if I’m being honest.”
“No one asked you to be honest,” Birdie said.
“Welcome home.” Andie shrugged. “Sorry your fan club isn’t waiting.” She turned to leave. “I was taking all of these boxes to the dump tomorrow. Anything you want, I suggest you salvage it now.”
3
BIRDIE
Birdie would havehappily tossed every box, every last thing, but there were at least a couple of childhood mementos that she wanted to keep. The yearbook in which she was named Most Likely to Win an Oscar, the folder she’d stuffed with notes that she and Mona passed back and forth in middle school, all full of withering insults about their fellow classmates. The CD compilation she’d made for Mona’s twin brother, Elliot, but had never screwed up the nerve to give to him; the dried-up corsage he’d bought for her at prom, even though it had been a pity date. Elliot, unlike Mona and Birdie, was ridiculously beloved, exceptionally handsome, and never without a girlfriend or at least someone to make out with, a habit that had stuck—at least the last Birdie had heard—well into his thirties. Elliot O’Brien was now a hotshot reporter whose byline landed on page one of theNew York Timesand whose face popped up on television more times than Birdie wished. Still, he’d been momentarily single for their senior prom, and when Mona prodded him, he did Birdie akindness and took her as his date. When she first saw him in a tux, she honestly thought she would drop dead from shock. Chestnut hair, blue eyes, cheekbones to sharpen a knife on, a swimmer’s body. No one should be that attractive.
She plunged her hands into the second box, the first filled with folders and mail from colleges that she never applied to and junk that had accumulated over the years. A hat from when she worked at Sbarro to earn money for a move to New York after her senior year, a Girl Scout sash that was patchless because she refused to join in for reasons she couldn’t remember now and made Susana sign up Andie instead. (Andie, of course, had made an exceptional Girl Scout.)
Birdie was half glancing at the papers and trash that she had dumped on the floor when an envelope addressed toBirdie Maxwell Robinsonlanded at her feet. Almost no one ever called her by both her real name and her assumed one because almost no one everknewabout both her real name and her assumed one, and so she couldn’t help but startle. She honestly nearly jumped out of her skin.
Her pulse was flying as she reached down, swiped the letter, and ran her finger under the lip of the plain white envelope.
She read the letter once, twice, then a third time to be certain because her brain had never been particularly good at math, and now she was trying to add it all up. She checked the postmark but it had faded so much it was barely detectable.
Once she reread it for a fourth time, she was sure: someone had sent her an anonymous love letter. Here. To Barton. Using her real name. Which meant—Birdie’s blood was really racing now, her breath a little shallow, her cheeks a little flushed—that it wasn’t a crazy fan, it wasn’t her old stalker against whom she had filed a restraining order. Someone who had once loved her—and whom she had evidently once loved—had concocted a romantic chess move straight out of one of her movies.
Bird—
Beautiful, complicated Birdie. This may come as a shock to you, as it did to me, or perhaps you understood this all along, but well, I’ll cut to it, as I know you’d prefer dramatic plot points, big effects, maximum impact. So I’ll just say: I regret everything.
