“Hey,” Freya says, wiping her own tears. She puts her hand on his, and Nathaniel puts his on top of Freya’s, and Harun savors the weight of it like he would a heavy blanket on a cold night. “It’s not your problem. You don’t have to worry about it.”
But she’s wrong. She might not be his solution, but this is his problem.
“But James loves you. He’s your biggest fan.”
Freya smiles sadly. Nathaniel finishes chewing the rest of his second grilled cheese sandwich.
“Who’s James?” Nathaniel asks.
“He’s my . . .” Harun begins.
What Harun should say is that James is his ex-boyfriend. Because as of last week (Get the fuck out my life), that’s what he is. But Harun has never once claimed James as his boyfriend. He’s never told anyone about this boy he has been in love with for the past eighteen months. Even when he’d told his cousin, he hadn’t said the word boyfriend. He’d never said James’s name. And it doesn’t seem fair to say he’s his ex-boyfriend when he never even got to claim him.
“My boyfriend,” Harun says. “And he’s totally obsessed with you. But not in a creepy way.”
“Oh yeah?” Freya sounds amused.
“Yeah.” And it’s like he’s been uncorked, and out flow all the things he has never been able to tell anyone about James. About how James believes in the best in everyone, and how he hates the cold, and how he claims he can take any five ingredients and cook them into something delicious (a feat Harun has never actually seen performed, though he has tasted the evidence of it, the plastic containers full of stews and pastas James has cooked for him). And how when he was young, their apartment came with a shower curtain that was a map of the world, and how he used up all the hot water memorizing all the countries, even ones that no longer existed (like Yugoslavia), and how even though he’s never left the tri-state area, he has the most powerful wanderlust. How on the cold days, he and Harun pretend they’re traveling to the faraway places.
And he tells Freya about James’s devotion to her, careful to temper his fandom the way James himself once had. “There’s something you should know about me,” he’d told Harun, and Harun had steeled himself for some kind of deal breaker (I have a boyfriend, I am a space alien), but instead James had confessed that he had a kind of strange obsession with a singer. He told Harun how he had come across the Sisters K covering “I Will Survive” the very day his father kicked him out of the house, and felt as though Freya were singing directly to him. And he wrote to her. And she replied.
* * *
— — —
There have been thousands of comments. But Freya remembers that one. She remembers writing back to that boy. She remembers reading his note and thinking of the night she realized her father wasn’t coming back, thinking she wouldn’t survive. She had, and so would he.
She looks at Harun, at Nathaniel. Unlike her mother, or Hayden, she does not believe in anything resembling destiny. But at that moment, it’s hard not to believe that the three of them were meant to meet.
THE ORDER OF LOSS
PART VII
FREYA
Hayden hadn’t called us back for six months.
Mom tried to remain positive. Because she now read everything about him, she knew he was in the studio with Mélange and after that on tour with Lulia. “When he’s working with an artist, he’s completely immersed,” Mom declared. “When it’s your turn to be in the studio with him, you’ll be glad about that.”
“Not gonna happen,” Sabrina said with her usual certainty.
I nodded and pretended to agree. But though my sister was usually right, I could sense unfinished business. I kept hearing his question. Are you hungry enough? he’d asked me this question. I hadn’t answered. But at some point, whether it was to Hayden or someone else, I knew I’d have to.
We went back to doing what we’d been doing: weekly video drops of new songs, daily photo posts. Mom storyboarded things out weeks in advance. Our numbers continued to climb. If Mom’s optimism wavered, she didn’t let it show.
“He’ll call,” she said.
When, finally, his office did call, requesting a second meeting for the very next day, Mom was triumphant, as if Hayden had been on the verge of discarding us but she’d mentally dreamed us back into contention.
“He asked for much more this time,” she said, reading through the notes she’d taken. “He wants analytics across platforms. Accounting of all endorsement offers, licensing. Oh, and he wants to hear something new from you. An original song, not yet posted.”
“We don’t have anything ready,” Sabrina said. “We can’t just pull a brand-new song out of our asses.”
“What about ‘The Space Between’?” Mom asked. That was a song we’d been working on. Mom went back to her notes. “Let’s see. His assistant says he wants to hear something unique and . . .” Mom shuffled through her notes to get the words exactly right. “All his own.”
All his own. A warning right there.
“I guess we’ll have to do ‘The Space Between,’” Sabrina said, sounding defeated. “He might’ve given us more time.”
“Actually,” I began, “I have something else.”
“No you don’t,” Sabrina snapped. That was Sabrina through and through. If she didn’t see it, it didn’t exist.
Mom looked at me. When I didn’t say anything, she said, “If you’ve got something in the works, let’s hear it.”
“Yes,” Sabrina said scathingly. “Let’s hear it.”
“Actually, you already have,” I told Sabrina.
“What?”
“‘Little White Dress’? The one you called ‘a pathetic piece of sentimental crap.’” I pulled out my phone and opened the audio file.
Sabrina’s normally impassive face flashed with so many emotions at once: anger and disgust and hurt. “You recorded that? Without me?”
“Not the whole thing . . .” I stammered. “Just some vocal and percussion of the chorus and the bridge. Because I thought if you heard—”
She cut me off with a flick of her hand. “There’s nothing that will make me change my mind about that song.”
I was used to Sabrina’s strong opinions and her veto power, but something about her high-handedness pissed me off. And that was before she said: “Look. I’m the only one who’ll be honest with you. And the truth is, you’re a weak songwriter. Your stuff is so sentimental, so young. It makes you sound like an amateur.”
“I’m seventeen! And last time I checked, we were both amateurs.”
“Isn’t the idea for us to take it to the next level? Well, not with that song we won’t.”
“Why are you acting so—”
“Jealous?” she interrupted. She barked out a laugh. “Jealous of you?”
Controlling was what I was going to say. But jealous worked too.
“Let’s just take a beat.” Mom turned to Sabrina. “Can we at least hear it?” Even when it was my song, it was still the two of them. It would always be the two of them.
Sabrina slumped back without raising any more objections. She glared as if daring me to touch my finger to the play button.
I hit play.
All that I said I wanted
Was a little white, little white dress
All that I said I needed
Was a little white, little white dress—Oh,
Do you remember? We used to sing:
Eshururururu, eshururururu
Eshururururu, hushabye, hushabye, hushabye
There were two more verses, but with Sabrina glowering, I couldn’t bear to play them. I turned off the recording. “You get the idea,” I told Mom.
Mom looked astonished, as if she didn’t quite recognize the song or the person singing. “Well,” she said. “It’s certainly different.”
“It’s not arranged, but I w
as going for a more stripped-down sound,” I said. “Maybe just percussion and some piano.”
“It is unique,” Mom said, “with the Ethiopian melodies in there. I imagine Hayden hasn’t heard anything like that.”
She was warming to the song. I could tell. So could Sabrina. She put her foot down. “I’m not singing that.”
“Honey,” Mom said. “Let’s be professional about this.”
“Professional? How is airing Freya’s daddy issues in front of Hayden Booth professional?”
“What are you talking about?” I yelled.
“It’s been seven years,” she said, tapping her chest. “Get over it.”
“You get over it!” I shouted.
“Maybe I will. Maybe I’m tired of taking care of you.”
“That’s what you call it? Because I’d call it undermining me. Or back-drafting off me.”
When I got angry, I boiled. When Sabrina got mad, she froze. It was one of the millions of things that differentiated us. But at that moment, the weather changed. Sabrina blazed with a fury that set the whole room on fire, before it sucked in on itself and her face went blank, her voice went icy.
“If you sing that song,” she told me, “you sing it alone.”
* * *
— — —
We agreed to sing “The Space Between” and practiced all night without actually speaking. We were still not speaking when we drove down to Hayden’s offices the next day. But the minute the elevator doors opened, my anger evaporated and I was left with a weirdly homesick feeling. I wanted to take it all back. To sing as we had that night in bed or to clasp hands as we’d done last time we’d faced Hayden. But Sabrina stood with her arms rigid, her fists balled, her face statue-still.
Mom checked in with the assistant. Sabrina and I sat down.
“Sabrina,” I whispered. “About ‘Little White Dress’ . . .”
“Don’t!” she hissed. She swiveled around to me, her eyes hard little kernels, and opened her mouth to continue, but at that moment Hayden’s assistant called her name. She stood up. I stood too.
“He wants you separately this time,” the assistant said.
A feeling of dread came over me. It was like watching the girl in the horror movie descending the stairs into the basement alone. You wanted to yell, but even if you did, she never listened.
Sabrina went into the office, and I sat down next to Mom, my knees bobbing up, down, up, down. Mom put her hand on them, but it didn’t help. Through the door I heard Sabrina sing “The Space Between,” the song we were meant to sing together. After she finished, she stayed in a long time, the low tones of their murmured conversation impossible to decipher. Mom started to look nervous. “Wonder what they’re talking about?” she said, staring endlessly at her phone, as if Sabrina was going to mentally text her the news.
I told myself Hayden was giving her another lecture about fame. I told myself Hayden was asking her about our videos, or our brand strategy, or inquiring where she saw herself in ten years.
But I couldn’t shake the bad feeling that we’d walked into this building as the Sisters K but were going to leave as something else.
I heard Sabrina singing again. But not “The Space Between” or any of the other songs we’d written together. She was singing “Tschay Hailu.” The song my father sang to me. The first song we’d ever sung together.
And that’s when I knew. She’d betrayed me.
4
YOU MUST DO THINGS THE PROPER WAY
When they leave the diner, something’s different. None of them can say what. But Nathaniel knows he’s heard Freya’s song before, even though he’s never watched a YouTube music video in his life. And Freya remembers Harun’s boyfriend, even though she gets hundreds of thousands of comments. And Harun is here today, with Freya, even though she is Freya.
* * *
— — —
As they walk aimlessly, Nathaniel asks shy questions about what happened to Freya’s voice.
She has asked herself the same questions, but she still can’t explain the loss. She tells Nathaniel and Harun about the day before it all went sideways, how she’d sung hard, too hard, pushed herself past her boundaries, so when she came in the next morning, unable to sing, everyone thought it was strain. She was given the morning off and a massage courtesy of Hayden’s personal masseuse. But that afternoon it was even worse, and the next day worse yet. And she knew it wasn’t a strain—that, she would feel. This was an absence. This was the thing she’d always done, always known how to do, vacating her, like a soul leaving a body after death. “Don’t overthink it,” her mother advised her, but that assumed Freya had ever thought about how to sing in the first place. She’d sung her first note when she was one minute old. Singing was something she’d done as automatically as breathing. And suddenly she couldn’t sing. Some days, she could barely breathe.
“When did all this happen?” Harun asks.
Freya sighs. A million years ago. That’s what it seems like for how tired it makes her. “Three weeks ago.”
“Three weeks!” Harun exclaims. “That’s nothing. Can’t they wait for you?”
“They can, but they won’t,” Freya says. “After the doctor this morning, Hayden called me to his office. I’m pretty sure it was to let me go. Which is why I didn’t go. He can’t fire me if I’m not there.”
“But it’s only been three weeks,” Harun repeats. He seems very caught up on that. He doesn’t know that Hayden’s time is measured in gold, and three lost weeks is a bill none of them can pay.
“I’ve lost my slot,” Freya explains. “In two weeks he goes into the studio with Lulia.”
“Can’t you record after Julia?” Nathaniel says.
“Lulia,” Harun corrects.
“Lulia, then.”
“It doesn’t work like that.” Freya is tired of talking about this, tired of trying to divine how the mind of Hayden Booth works. What will please him. What will piss him off. What counts as loyalty and what as betrayal. She knows, in her bones, he’s going to dump her. Her mother doesn’t believe this. Why would someone spend two years investing in something only to toss it aside? It’s bad business. But Freya knows that in spite of his proclamation that art is personal and business is not, with Hayden, everything is business and everything is personal.
“It’s like he’s become legendary for his ability to launch artists,” she says to Harun and Nathaniel. “He has a formula, and it works. It’s always worked. It’s why he’s so picky about who he chooses to work with. They have to have very specific qualities.”
Like talent. And It factor. And hunger. That might be Hayden’s true superhuman strength: being able to smell who is hungry enough to do what it takes, to sacrifice things like privacy, autonomy . . . family.
But she doesn’t tell Harun and Nathaniel that. Instead, she tells them about the third meeting with Hayden, the first one after Sabrina had been cut loose, when it was just Freya and her mother. He’d laid out his entire plan. They’d need two years, he said. The Sisters K were known, but Freya was not. They needed to convert the Sisters K fans to Freya fans, and to bring many more new fans into the fold. They would build her profile across all platforms, select appearances where she’d garner a lot of coverage, get her used to performing in front of a crowd, increase her Q factor, grow her into a household name. Then they could drop the first single. After that, they would pull back a bit, build more mystery into it, more hunger. Only then would they go into the studio. When the album came out, Hayden predicted, its success, like Lulia’s and Mélange’s before her, would be inevitable.
Freya’s mom had been panting at all this, but Freya herself was uneasy. It seemed like a lot of dominoes had to fall just right. What if things didn’t work that way?
Hayden seemed bemused by her skepticism. And then he launched into one of his lectures. “You think people lik
e art, like music because of personal taste?” he’d said, scoffing at the idea of something so individual. “It’s nothing but positioning, love. You frame things a certain way. This is hot. This is edgy. This is the next big thing that you’ll want to know about first. You do that right and you barely have to do anything else. Your product doesn’t even have to be that good if you frame it right.” He shook his head, smiling, about how easy it all was. “People are moths, drawn to light. Our job is to make you the brightest light.”
“Maybe that’s what’s pissed him off,” Freya tells Nathaniel and Harun now. “Not so much that I’m having problems with my voice, but that I disrupted his march toward inevitability.” For a brief moment, this insight allows her to feel almost sympathetic toward Hayden. Star-making is the thing he’s always done as naturally as breathing, and Freya went and fucked it up. “In his eyes, it was a betrayal.”
“If anyone is betrayed in this scenario, it is you,” Harun says.
Freya knows full well that isn’t true, but she appreciates him for saying so.
“He shouldn’t get to fire you,” Harun continues, his voice clipped and urgent. “You need more time. He should give you more time. People need to be patient with other people. To understand that sometimes things don’t happen on a schedule, that certain things can’t be rushed. That when you pressure someone, mistakes occur.”
Harun speaks with such vehemence, as if this matters deeply to him. As if he’s insulted by Hayden’s behavior. Freya is touched, but that changes nothing.
Hayden swings his power like a sledgehammer. He can do what he wants; if you want to be in his universe—and they all do—you take it. On the rare occasions Freya’s mother ever dares to say anything negative about Hayden, she does it in a whisper, even if the two of them are alone in the apartment.
“You should go make your case,” Harun urges. “Tell him to give you more time. You need to do this.”