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‘Nashville?’

‘Brooke.’

She took another huge bite of pie – to give herself time, I was sure, to come up with an answer.

‘Nashville,’ she repeated determinedly. ‘Then Atlanta, then Orlando.’

‘Then?’ I prompted.

‘I told you,’ Brooke said, scratching off some of the brown sugar from the piecrust and licking it off her fingernail. ‘We can call Meredith and she’ll help us get jobs as princesses.’

‘You really think that, Brooke? Really?’

She sighed heavily and pushed her hands through her hair. ‘I have to believe it.’

‘I don’t think you do,’ I countered. ‘I think we need a better plan thanlet’s get jobs as princesses.’

‘That plan got us this far.’

I couldn’t argue with that – the Princess Plan had been a big enough dream when we left Seattle to propel us more than halfway across the country. But the closer we got to Orlando, the more outlandish it felt, even with the possibility of Meredith helping us. Everything seemed morerealsince Brooke had been kidnapped. It wasn’t that we were blind to the dangers of what we were doing up until now, but we couldn’t ignore them anymore. Even if Brooke was happy with the Princess Plan, I needed a Plan B. I wanted to know someone wasn’t going to come along and steal away this freedom we’d fought so hard for.

‘I looked it up on my phone the other night, Brooke, and we can’t afford more than, like, four nights in Orlando before we go broke. Do you know how much hotels cost there? It’s insane.’

‘So we’ll go lifting some more wallets.’ She shrugged. ‘It worked last time, it’ll work again.’

‘I know.’ I didn’t want to be mad at her, but she was sofrustrating. ‘I know, Brooke, but every time we do shit like that, we draw attention to ourselves.’

‘Look, I’ve been to Disney World before,’ she said. ‘Trust me, there are literally thousands and thousands of people walking around. And none of them are paying attention to anything. They’re all too busy looking up at whatever shiny, sparkly thing has caught their eye.’

‘So we start stealing from families?’ I asked hotly.

‘You didn’t want to steal from anyone a few days ago. You changed your tune on that quick enough.’

‘Are you trying to rile me up on purpose?’ I groaned, frustrated.

‘No.’ She closed the lid on the takeout box and put the leftover pie back in the fridge. Then she turned to me with regret written all over her face. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s okay,’ I replied softly. ‘I just want to know what happens next.’

‘We’ll figure it out,’ she promised.

‘I can’t go back,’ I whispered to her.

‘Will you tell me why?’

It was almost inevitable that I was going to tell her now. She’d told me what she was running from, and so our old deal was off. Before I could go there, though, I had to accept that when she finally knew, she might not be able to get over it. Opening up could potentially be thedeal-breaker that shattered what we had right now, and, selfishly, I wasn’t prepared to let her go. Not yet.

‘Yeah,’ I said, full of the inevitability of it. ‘But not now.’

She sighed, and I had to look away from her sad eyes, feeling her sense of betrayal like a knife in my gut.

‘Okay, Jessie. Okay.’

16

The Great Pretender– Dolly Parton

Later that afternoon, Brooke fell asleep while I was half reading, half watching the TV, and I tried to rearrange my thoughts about the past two days so they fell into some kind of logical order. It didn’t work. Any way I looked at it, Brooke should have been having an actual nervous breakdown right now, but apart from being tired, she seemed better.