Free Queen of Broken Hearts by Jennifer Recchio Page A

wasn’t imposing in the slightest. It was a small, squarish building with two stories and, as far as I could tell, no AC. Signs posted on the door declared the mathletes’ meeting to be in the basement meeting room. As I headed down the stairwell, I had to admit that at least it was cooler down here.
    I threw open the door at the end of the staircase harder than I should have. What can I say? Love makes us do desperate things. There was that abrupt moment of silence, where you just know someone has stopped talking midstream and everyone in the room turns to look at you. Normally I love that feeling. At that point I wanted to melt into the floor.
    “Sorry,” I said with a small, stupid wave.
    Sam was sitting behind an old wooden table with the rest of his teammates, who I recognized from Olive Garden. I didn’t spare a glance for anyone else. Still, declaring my love in the middle of whatever kind of confused tournament this was seemed like a bad idea, so I took a seat in the back. Slowly, there was a shuffling of papers, and the game took back up.
    God, it was boring. The kind of boring that makes you envy squirrels. Some old guy would write something on a whiteboard, and all the mathletes would scramble to write things on the paper in front of them until one scrambled up and wrote on the whiteboard. I had no idea what was going on, but I made a point to cheer every time I thought Abernathy got a point or whatever it was called here. No one else seemed to be cheering, but I suspected half of them weren’t awake anyway.
    Finally, finally the game ended, and I jumped to my feet.

    In case you’re curious, I have no idea who won.

    Sam bolted out a back door. Fabulous. I ran after him like a boy-seeking missile. His teammates gathered around the door, blocking it. I shoved through the group, knocking aside a girl who may or may not have been named Melinda on my way to the door.
    “Sam!” I called as he hurried up a steep set of stairs that led to the parking lot. He ignored me. He ignored me.
    Like hell. No one ignored me. No one.
    By the time I made the parking lot, he was already in his car. “ Wait .” I threw myself in front of his car. My ankle gave out, and my side hit the pavement hard.
    Sam threw open the door of his car. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”
    “No.” I coughed. “I need to talk to you.”
    Sam glowered. I don’t think I’d ever seen him glower before. He wasn’t really tall enough to be intimidating, but it still made my stomach twist a little. For once, it wasn’t my neck I was watching out for. “What are you doing here, Birdie?”
    “You invited me. I wanted to support you. And there’s the talking part I need to do. To tell you the truth. Like you said. That one time. That thing about telling the truth.”
    My fall might have caused brain damage. I held out my hands, like, I don’t know, like somehow that would show him I was being sincere. I realized that I knew how to do a lot of things. Sabotage, scheme, lie, steal. But I had no idea how to actually be honest.
    “And you made your opinion on the matter perfectly clear. We’re done, Birdie. Get out of my way.”
    “No. I’m not letting you leave me again.” I pushed myself up to my knees. “I’m Birdie fucking Anders, and you do not get to leave me twice.”
    His friends wandered out to the parking lot and stood to the side like some sort of teenage hit squad. Maybe Melinda whispered something to Bad-Haircut-Guy. My face began to heat up. I’m not used to publicly making a fool of myself, and now I’d done it twice in one day. All for a boy who didn’t even want me. The Boy Who Didn’t Want Me watched me with his clear, too-good-for-me eyes. “Fine. First question: What’s your real name?”
    I froze. That question hadn’t even occurred to me. “Can we talk somewhere less public?” I said. Telling the truth was one thing, but telling it in front of five other people was another thing.
    “I don’t have