The cafeteria had been padlocked. Birdie remembered even now how Elliot howled and she dissolved into a fit of tears at that.
“Do. They. Think,” Elliot had sputtered between gasps, “that people”—breath—“would choose”—breath—“to eat here”—breath—“voluntarily?”
It was true. The school lunches were abysmal. Birdie had tosquat down to stop from peeing in her pants, she was laughing so hard. They could have gotten into his Accord, gone to a drive-through by the strip mall on the way home, but they were in deep now, and the fun was in the adventure of it.
“To the vending machines!” Elliot had said, a finger in the air like he was suggesting they storm the castle. His hair was still wet from his swim practice or his workout, and Birdie thought he looked like he was fresh out of the shower. She would have liked to have seen him fresh out of the shower.
“To expired Cheetos!” Birdie had cheered, and they scrambled down the dimly lit hall to the machines outside the gym. She didn’t know what she was thinking would happen. That he would glance over at her and something electric would pass between them, like it had that week in carpool when Mona was out with mono, and he’d lay her down on the weight benches and do all sorts of torrid things to her with his mouth, with his hands? Even then, she had an aptitude for romantic comedy, for wish fulfillment.
Neither one of them had any cash for the vending machine, but Elliot was undeterred. He hit the buttons in random order, over and over again, claiming he had heard that sometimes you could short-circuit the wiring and swamp the motherboard. These sounded like words he was just saying to appear knowledgeable and not actually a real thing, but Birdie didn’t want to say anything to break the magic spell. There weren’t many boys she knew who accepted her at face value, who made her feel perfect even when she was well aware, thanks to her parents, of her shortcomings. When the buttons didn’t work, he butted it with his hip several times until Birdie started giggling again and he said, “What?”
And she said, “You look like you could have auditioned for themusical. You have some pretty good hip movement going, some really nice thrusting.” And she immediately felt her face glow red, her ears burn. She probably had hives all over her chest. The forthrightness, the audacity. But she decided that she was going to play the part, the ingenue, the girl who could roll up her sleeves and get ’er done. Also, she thought Elliot was looking at her with, well, she wasn’t sure, she wasn’t in any way an expert on men, but he looked... delighted. Entertained. Happy. This new role, she could finesse.
“Step aside,” she said, fluttering her hand to usher him away. He held his arms up likeWhoa, okay, let’s see what you got, Birdie Maxwell, and she stopped and assessed the machine, like it was a problem she needed to solve. She took five steps back.
“Birdie,” Elliot said.
“I got this,” she said. She didn’t. But she was operating from a place of relative lunacy being in such proximity to Elliot, like he was a drug and she’d injected him into her bloodstream.
She took in a deep breath and then closed those five steps between her and the machine, hurling her body against the front window with a thud and bouncing off it onto the floor. Elliot’s eyes went wide, and he was beside her in an instant, crouching down and meeting her where she was.
“You okay?” he asked. “Jesus, you are actually bonkers.”
Birdie’s shoulder was throbbing, but she was well into the part now, the role of a lifetime, wooing Elliot O’Brien. He was so, so close, and she could have tilted toward him and kissed him. If she were a different person, if she were in a film. Instead, she looked past him, and there, on the ground, were at least half the items from the vending machine.
“Look.” She nudged her chin.
He spun around, folded next to her.
“Jackpot!” he cried. “Oh my god, Birdie Maxwell, I think I love you!” Birdie froze, stunned, taking it too literally, of course, while he crawled toward the loot and held up three bags of Cheetos triumphantly, with flushed cheeks and this goofy side-grin on his face. So she told herself to play along. To play it cool. Just hearing Elliot say it aloud, even if he only meant it because of the Cheetos, was enough for her that night. Birdie opened her palm, and he threw her a bag. Then Elliot slipped to his butt and leaned against the machine, and they ate all of it, the whole bounty, together.
Birdie was sure that she would love Elliot O’Brien forever.
And now he hadn’t even remembered. Hadn’t remembered those stupid stale Cheetos. How he’d loved her for them. Which meant that Birdie’s suspicion that he had written the letter was only lukewarm, not at all grounded in fact.Fact.That was Elliot’s territory anyway.
The doorbell rang again, and Mona lurched toward the foyer. Birdie seized her chance.
“It was you,” she whispered at Elliot across the table. “It wasyouall along, wasn’t it.” She hissed this like it wouldn’t in reality please her. It would under any other circumstances but these. Possibly under these too but she’d need time to gather herself. “This is all part of some weird journalistic mind-fuck or gotcha to, like, write the gossip story of the century.”
“What?”
“I don’t know what you’re getting out of this, but there must be something.” She breathed like she had ingested gasoline and lit a match. She wanted to burn him. She wanted him to burn him alive. And then if he begged her to rescue him, well, she’d consider it. “You easily could have sent that email when you got off the RV. When I was distracted. When I was talking to Mona.”
“What?” Elliot looked apoplectic. “What are you even talking about?” But his face was the color of a beet, and his skin looked clammy, like he was unprepared for an interrogation and hadn’t yet thought of an excuse.
Aha, Birdie thought.The student has become the master. Truth, fiction, facts, what did it matter?
“Confess,” she said, pulling out a chair and taking a seat. “I have nowhere to be until you do.” She’d wait all day—hell, all week—until he finally did.
31
ELLIOT
Elliot had neveronce had a panic attack in the field. Not when he was being shelled in Iraq, not when a senator cornered him at a urinal in the Capitol and threatened bodily harm, not when his single-engine plane dipped too low, too fast in Senegal. But sitting at his childhood kitchen table, with Birdie throwing accusations like that senator nearly threw punches, Elliot thought that his chest might actually combust. Right there. In his parents’ mundane kitchen, which hadn’t been updated since the early 2000s. He supposed that death really could catch you off guard.
Elliot tried to stammer out a denial. But he also knew that he resembled a boiled lobster, which likely meant that Birdie only suspected him more. He opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. He tried to catch his breath while thinking of something witty to say. It wasn’t totally outside the realm of possibility, he could see, that he could have sent one. Both. If they’d actually had anadultconversation about whether or not the electricity that pulsed through him at a hotly charged clip still pulsedthroughherat a hotly charged clip, well then, maybe they could get down to being honest. But they hadn’t, they weren’t, and they were both to blame for that. Elliot had a literal job to do. Keep it aboveboard. Be fucking platonic. That’s what Francesca had stipulated without knowing what she was asking for but asking for it all the same.
He tried not to think about this morning when she reached for him, which meant that was just about all he could think about—her with bed-head hair and lips that were full and pink. And her smell. His blood throbbed. He didn’t know if he could even come close to describing her smell other than to say that she smelled like Birdie Maxwell, like her skin emitted a pheromone designed just for him. He wanted to bury himself in the crook of her neck, right between her shoulder and the arch toward her ear, and live there forever.
