Page 9 of Song Bird Hearts

He scrambles to do what I say, running around the front of the car. The moment he’s inside, he’s turning the key and immediately dropping it in drive before pulling out of the driveway. I look out the back window as the men funnel out of the house, looking after me, but they don’t pursue us.

I immediately reach for the phone in my pocket and pull it back out. It’s still livestreaming, still recording and posting. I realize suddenly this may be the only thing that keeps my alive in this instance, this dirt I have on them. I turn the camera to my face. The comments are rolling in rapidly, too fast to read, but I catch a few of them.

OMG, are you okay?

What’s going on?

That looks sketchy af. That guy just shot another guy.

Anyone call the cops?

Tell us you’re okay, Val!

“I’m alive,” I say, looking out the back window even though I can no longer see them. “I’m alive,” I repeat. I stare at the camera, not sure what to do, so I let instincts kick in. “To whom it may concern,” I rasp, “I am not suicidal. I don’t have plans to harm myself. If I die, know that it was not by accident. Know that I did not kill myself.” I dip my chin and take a deep, shaking breath. “If something happens to me. . .” My phone buzzes with a text message from an unknown number.

Valerie Decatur. It seems we made a mistake with our choice.

My eyes widen and I look wildly out the window, searching if we’re being followed but I see nothing. That doesn’t mean I’m safe. That doesn’t mean I’m safe at all.

“If something happens to me,” I repeat, staring into the camera. “Know that it was the 27 Foundation who killed me.” I don’t look away from the camera for long seconds, letting my words sink in.

And then I cut the livestream.

Chapter5

Valerie

Not even two minutes pass after I cut the livestream before my phone starts ringing. I look at the caller ID and hit ignore on the first two numbers I don’t recognize, but the third one I do. Hitting the green button, I answer it on speaker because it feels safer. If Perry can hear, maybe that’ll somehow keep me safer.

There are no pleasantries when I answer. No, “Hi, how are you?” or “Are you okay?” No. Kelly starts off just like Kelly always does.

“What the fuck?” she yells at me into the phone. “Where are you?”

“I’m not telling you that,” I reply, my face pinched at the immediate aggression. Yeah, this is a shitty situation, but Kelly is hardly the one in a hard place. I never particularly trusted Kelly before, but there’s no way to know if I can trust her now. Telling her where I am seems like a bad idea, and I’m not even a spy movie kind of girl.

“You’ve gone and pissed off a lot of the upper elite, Val. There are stories dropping left and right talking about theft?—”

“I didn’t steal a damn thing,” I growl.

“You’re literally going viral right now. I told you to livestream the party! Not go snooping in the house!”

Two minutes. It’s been two minutes since I ended the livestream. Apparently, the rumors about the 27 Foundation’s reach are true.

“You made me go there,” I accuse her. “This is as much your fault as mine!”

“I thought you had enough sense not to livestream some shit you know you shouldn’t,” she spits. “I know you’re just some girl from a ranch in Wyoming, but I thought you were smarter than that!”

Kelly’s voice is getting progressively higher pitched the more she talks. It’s starting to hurt my ears, but that doesn’t make it impossible to hear the heavy insult she just hurled at me.

“Fuck you,” I hiss. “You no-good, prissy bitch.”

My mama would be disappointed in me, but that’s okay. This bitch deserves it. I’m her fucking paycheck and she’s gonna talk to me like that? I think fucking not.

“You need to fix this,” Kelly says, completely ignoring my insult. “You need to fix it right now. Start another livestream and say it was all faked for exposure.”

“No! Why the hell would I do that?” I ask seriously, knowing the moment I make a video like that is the moment I die from a mysterious illness.

“These people aren’t to be messed with, Val. Do you or do you not want fame? Silence is the cost of fame,” she says, as if it’s the easiest thing in the world to witness some bad shit and move on from it.

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