Queen of Broken Hearts (9 page)

“Sam is moping over me?”

“Don’t get your hopes up. He once moped for a week because Mountain Dew discontinued his favorite flavor. Sandwich?” Chad got up and headed to his apartment’s small kitchen. “I’ve got peanut butter, turkey, and lettuce.”

“Sounds… delicious.”

Birdie chewed her fingernail as she watched the light fade outside Chad’s window. She should leave for her flight. But if she did, how would Sam know how to find her? Birdie steadied herself with a deep breath. She could live without him. Mostly. Besides, she couldn’t really expect to get him back after what she’d just told him. She’d done what she’d set out to. She’d told the truth, and now it was over. She had to get to Brazil.

Birdie grabbed her purse. “I have to go.”

“Don’t mind me.” Chad leaned on the kitchen doorway, munching a piece of lettuce smeared with peanut butter.

“If Sam shows up…” Birdie paused.

“I’ll tell him you said hey.”

She nodded, shifting her weight as she watched the door. “And tell him I’m sorry. For… everything.”

The beauty of using a mailbox as a drop point is that no one cares if you leave your package unattended. The problem is that it’s a good bit harder to look subtle as you snatch said unattended mail. Birdie slid her dark sunglasses down her nose, assessing how best to achieve her postal heist. Her cell phone rattled her purse as it went off.
Sam
. Birdie yanked at the zipper, tossing aside the cheap plastic bit when it broke and clawing it the rest of the way open. The screen read,
Unknown.
A burner phone. Her mother. Birdie took in a shaky breath and answered the phone.

“Turn around,” her mother said. Birdie turned. Her mother stood in front of a stretch limo, cell phone in hand. “I’ve been waiting for hours.”

Birdie swallowed. “I thought you’d be in Brazil by now.”

“You didn’t really think I’d leave without you, did you?”

“Yes. I did.”

“I’m sorry.”

Her mother stood there, her heart in her eyes. “You’re my blue skies, baby. You know that, right?”

Birdie blinked tears out of her eyes. “I do now.”

She threw her arms around her perfect, flawed mother.

Birdie wiped tears from her cheeks as she climbed in the car. She noticed her phone was still in her hand and sent a quick message to Pak.
Have you ever thought that the best way out of a glass house is just to open the door?

At the airport, they settled down in the far corner of a gate. Being a movie star meant being incognito in public, even when the fake FBI weren’t really chasing after you. “I had to change the tickets,” Birdie’s mother whispered. “We’re going to Argentina as the Smiths now.”

“Real subtle,” Birdie whispered back. She chewed her thumbnail. Was it just her, or was the airport swarming with people with cameras today?

Her mother stood up. “I’m going to grab a smoothie. You want anything?”

“I’m good.”

Her mother tugged her sunglasses down over her face and headed off. Birdie settled deeper into her seat. Some mad part of her was still hoping that Sam would make a last-minute appearance or stop the plane or something. On second thought, that would be a disaster.

“Birdie Anders?” A man in a black coat slid into the seat beside her.

Birdie jumped, then silently cursed herself for it. She shouldn’t have reacted to the man saying her name.

“I knew it was you. The wig almost fooled me, but I was sure the dress was right. Listen, I have a proposition for you.”

Birdie stared straight ahead and curled her hand into a fist. Running would make a scene. She’d have to talk her way out of this.

“I want to offer you a reality show.”

Those were not the words she was expecting to hear.

“We’ll call it:
The Real Life of a Teenage Con Artist
. Or something. We’re still working on the title.”

Birdie’s heart pounded. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about fame and money. You want that, don’t you?”

Birdie tried to check over her shoulder for her mother without looking like she was checking.

“The network thinks the show will make buckets of money, what with that sob story of yours. I’m just lucky I found you before the other stations.”

“I don’t have a sob story, and I have no idea what charges you’re referring to. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” Birdie stood up stiffly and walked away.

“Wait!” The man whisper-called after her. “The idea has already tested well with teens between the ages of twelve and eighteen! Think of the children!”

Birdie’s pulse beat in time to her footsteps. It made no sense. What was going on here? Her phone rang. Birdie fumbled it out of her purse. Pak.

“Hello?”

“Are you near a television?” he demanded.

Birdie frowned. “I’m at the airport. What are you talking about?”

“Find a TV and check the news.”

“Don’t tell me you actually tried to rob a casino.” She covered the phone with her hand and smiled at a stewardess. “Can I get a remote for the TV please?”

The woman mutely pointed to the remote cabled to her desk. Birdie flipped the terminal television to the local news station. Her own face stared back at her.

“I don’t understand.”

“You’re famous, Birdie.”

Captions scrolled across the bottom of the screen.
School under investigation…

She flipped to CNN.
The lives of celebrity children revealed…

MSNBC.
Birdie Anders tells all!

“Oh my god,” Birdie breathed into the phone.

“You didn’t open a door. You smashed it down with a sledgehammer.”

Birdie pulled her baseball cap down lower. In this getup, she looked like a bank robber on the run, but it was the best she could do on short notice. And she had to do something. Her face was everywhere.

She stared intently at the menu of the airport restaurant, as if whether she got an overpriced burger or an overpriced hot dog was the most important decision in the world.

Someone slid into the seat opposite her and tugged on her menu.
Please don’t let it be another reporter,
she prayed.

The smell of pepperoni and grease assaulted her nose.

“You don’t want any of that gross airport food,” Sam said.

Birdie’s heart hit her throat. She dropped the menu.

“I brought you a doggie bag.” He pushed it across to her. It left a trail on the table.

“You’re here.” Birdie couldn’t stop staring at the easy smile that curved his lips, making all kinds of giddy lightness sing through her nerves.

“I thought about letting you leave, but then I realized I like my girls bat-shit crazy, and I thought, where am I going to find another one like Birdie-fucking-Anders? And it would be really nice if you said something right now so I could stop rambling like an idiot.”

Birdie made a sound in her throat but couldn’t manage words.

“Well, if I’m going to date a wanted criminal, we’re going to need some ground rules. First, we can’t hang out at my house. If the police show up on my doorstep, I’ll be grounded for life. And you can wear costumes when we go out on dates, but not—”

She cut him off with a kiss.

Birdie tilted her chin back, to better feel the sun on her face. She took in a deep breath of salty sea air, free of the stink of tourists. It helped to own your own beach in the Bahamas.

Her cell phone rang, interrupting her reverie. She squinted her sun-dazzled eyes at the screen before answering.

“Did you want mango or strawberry?” Sam’s voice asked.

“Strawberry. Aren’t perfect boyfriends supposed to have these things memorized?”

“Umm, thought I did. Oops.”

Birdie smiled as Sam slid into the chair beside hers and handed her a bright orange drink.

“Thought you liked mango,” he said.

“This might be a dumping offense.”

“I’ll have to think of a way to make it up to you, then.” He leaned over until his lips were hovering an inch away from hers.

Birdie’s heart fluttered. “I—”

“
We found it
!” Pak yelled from down the beach.

Birdie closed her eyes and flopped back in her chair. Sam sighed. “Why, exactly, did they have to come again? Don’t tell me you’re planning a tropical heist during your mother’s wedding.”

Birdie sipped her drink, putting on her best innocent expression. “What would make you think that?”

The pounding of feet running through the sand reached them. Pak, Annabelle, and Madison collapsed around them, Pak with a blueprint gripped eagerly in his hand. “You can’t see it from the outside, but there’s a weak point here.” He grabbed a stick and began drawing plans in the sand. “Madison?”

“I can manage that,” she said with more monotone than anyone deciding on how to set up high-level explosives ought to have.

“Do we have diplomatic immunity?” Sam wondered aloud.

“No,” the four of them answered him at once.

“We are so doomed.”

Birdie twined her fingers through his. “Relax. We’re professionals.”

“Not helping.”

“The Stone Throwers never get caught. Except for when we do.”

The End

And they lived in blue skies ever after.

Except for when they didn’t.

The book is over now. You can stop reading and go do cartwheels outside or something. Seriously.

If you leave a review, you can email me at [email protected] to tell me and receive an exclusive deleted scene,
Birdie Robs a Bank (Or Not)
! The review doesn’t even have to be positive to receive the scene! And the exclamation points are free!!!
 

Jennifer Recchio is a writer. Oh, hey, you just read her book! Isn’t that crazy? She doesn’t know what to put in a bio but thinks writing in third person makes it sound classy. She is probably wrong.

She may or may not reside in Southern Indiana where she may or may not have a dog. She definitely has an addiction to cheese. Don’t worry, she’s working on it.

You can find more of her ramblings at
jenniferalsoblogs.com
or at her website at
jenniferrecchio.com

She swears she’s working on the next book right now and will have it to you eventually someday maybe. Pinky swear.

First of all, thanks to you for reading this! You are made of awesome sauce and marshmallows and I most definitely would not eat you if I ever met you. Also, I will stop being creepy now.

Thanks to Joe for reading the awful first draft and saying, “Actually, this plot makes no sense.”

Thanks to Misty for reading the slightly more sense-making draft and saying, “Now let’s make this sound like it actually makes sense.”

Thanks to Stephanie for taking my confused ramblings about the book and turning it into a super sweet cover (it has sunglasses and EVERYTHING).
 

And last but not least, thanks to Mom and Dad for paying all the tuition bills and only bothering me a little bit about how I need to get a real job and move out of their house. (See? I’m out of the house! Real job pending.)