“Okay, but I still would prefer a shot to rewrite it, edit it,” Elliot said. “Birdie is pretty upset.”
“Since when do you give a shit about if you’re hurting a subject’s feelings?” Francesca barked out a laugh. “Are youaskingto get fired?”
“No,” Elliot parroted. “I am certainly not asking to get fired.”
“Great,” she replied. “Then we agree. The story stands. Now, goodbye.”
Hours later, with the RV parked in his childhood driveway, he started toward Mona with her grimace and her curled fists and, he knew, her oncoming extremely wordy dressing-down. He stopped for a beat, glancing toward Birdie’s house, which was now blessedly free of TV vans, and he imagined Andie chasing them off with a baseball bat. Then he heard Birdie scream frominside the camper, and even though they weren’t speaking, he flew up the steps and flung the door open like he was goddamn Superman. But she pushed past him and raced toward Mona.
“Shit,” she cried, her face pale, her eyes wild. “Shit—”
“What?” Mona asked. “Are you okay? What can I do? Tell me.”
Birdie was staring at her phone, mouth agape, chest visibly rising and falling. Then she held up her screen toward his twin.
“What?” Mona asked, beside her in an instant. “What are we looking at?”
Birdie lowered the phone in front of her.
“A letter,” she whispered. “I got a second one.”
30
BIRDIE
This is ridiculous,”Mona said once they were back inside.
“I’m completely aware,” Birdie whined, sliding out a chair at Mona’s kitchen table and sinking into it, as if her legs couldn’t hold her for another second. She honestly wasn’t sure if they could hold her for another second. “But don’t kick a girl when she’s down.”
“Not you, Bird. I understand why you’d get dozens of love letters. I meant the copycat. I meant that the copycat is bullshit. At least the first guy had a little gumption, some nerve.”
Birdie flopped her head down to the table and moaned.
“Fame is intoxicating,” Elliot offered, as if this could be the only explanation. Actually, it probablywasthe only explanation. Friends and lovers and coworkers and even fans forgive all sorts of things when you’re famous. Until they have a reason not to. “Also, it could just be the first guy, doubling down,” Elliot added. “Like a trail of bread crumbs trying to lead you back to him.”
Birdie dropped her hands and stared at Elliot. She didn’t know why she hadn’t taken her first instinct more seriously—thatit could have been Elliot all along. He’d denied it, sure, but like that meant anything. Words were words were words. She, of all people, recited words all the time that meant nothing,werenothing, other than fictional little entities that flitted from her mouth and then dissolved. So it would be so clever of Elliot, Birdie thought, to pitch this article, to disguise his true intentions, to pull back the curtain at the final hour and reveal himself like it was a triumph.
She narrowed her eyes, suspicious. He certainly seemed game this morning. Had certainly returned her (absolutely moronic) kiss with as much gusto, if not more. She replayed the scene while Mona and Elliot bickered between themselves, and she wondered if a human could spontaneously combust from unrequited lust. If she could just blow to a million pieces, right here in the kitchen where she used to ask Elliot for help in geometry because she probably could have figured out how to use the protractor, but it was much more interesting when he leaned over her shoulder and explained it.
“My hunch is that it’s a new guy,” Mona said. “Why send a letter to your house initially, if he could have just emailed? Why follow up a second time when you’re out here already looking for him? Actually, why bother with any of it and not come clean?” She drummed her hands on the counter, then waited, as if the two of them had any answers.
“It’s the romantic gesture,” Elliot said in his irritating TV voice. Birdie was starting to suspect that he slipped into it unconsciously whenever he thought he should be the authority in the room but really was just overcompensating. “Maybe this guy mistook who you were in movies with who you are in real life and thought you wanted,needed, the gesture.”
Sounds like you know what you’re talking about, Birdie thought.“So someone has tomistakeme to fall in love with me? Extremely flattering, thank you.”
Elliot blew out his breath. “That’s not what I—”
Mona interrupted. “Okay, okay, whatever you two are sniping about, drop it.” Birdie bit the inside of her cheek, and Elliot turned pink. “Yeah, I’m not oblivious to this extremely bad juju circulating between you two right now,” Mona added, like a teacher chastising her students. “Also, if thisisa plot right out of the movies, then I think we need to discuss the elephant in the room.”
Birdie felt the blood drain from her face. After all she’d been through the past few weeks, she didn’t have it in her to fight with Mona. Now she wondered if she could spontaneously combust by choice. That would be so much easier than cleaning up the mess of Mona knowing about Elliot, about their night together. The omissions they’d embraced, the lies they’d told.
For a long time, really since she was twenty-five and her fame outpaced even her wildest ambitions, Birdie had thought that she knew everything, which was a blessed relief compared to her first eighteen years. She’d believed Sydney when she said that Birdie was sitting atop a mountain. She’d believed Imani when she said that Birdie was untouchable. She’d blossomed from the theater loser at Barton to someone the whole world fell in love with, and so she thought, she supposed, that she was invincible.
But that form of adoration was much flimsier, much more delicate, than she realized. Climbing the mountain took so much effort; falling off it required only a simple mistake. A slip of your foot, and you tumbled all the way down. So if Mona knew about her long-simmering feelings for Elliot, if she had discovered that she and Elliot had actually spent the night together in her apartment at twenty-seven when she was on a break from Kai, and thatthey’d explored every last inch of each other’s bodies until they were sweaty and exhausted and a little delirious, well, then, it wouldn’t be much of a surprise. Her foot had slipped, her ankle had turned, and she tumbled over the side of the crest.
The doorbell clanged unexpectedly, and Birdie, already on high alert, jumped out of her chair like a panicky house cat. This reminded her of Imani, and Imani reminded her of the apology video, and the apology video reminded her of Sebastian. And Sebastian, needless to say, reminded her of Kai. The very last thing she could handle right now was a come-to-Jesus moment with her best friend when she was already unraveling at the seams. Birdie well knew that Mona wasn’t a child any longer, but the three of them had understood the math both implicitly and explicitly, as expressed by Mona at prom: Birdie and Mona. Elliot and Mona. The lines were never meant to intersect.
Birdie had assumed Elliot would remember the Cheetos. It had been a gimme, an easy lay-up. She’d gotten them intentionally at the rest stop as a test. If he remembered how they once raided the vending machine at the school cafeteria, how she had been there late for a rehearsal ofLittle Shop of Horrors, how he had been there late because he was getting in an extra workout after swim practice. They were starving and delirious. Elliot suggested they break into the cafeteria, and Birdie, trying on the role of rebel much like she tried on the role of Audrey fromLittle Shop, jumped at the chance. Really, it was just to spend time with Elliot.
