An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (An Absolutely Remarkable Thing #1)(81)

They babbled on about Tom’s honeymoon and their weirdo neighbors and did everything they could to make it feel like a normal parent-kid chat. You know what they didn’t do, though? They didn’t, not one single time, say, “What were you thinking?!” Not because they knew or because they understood—I really don’t think they did. They didn’t ask that because I sure as hell didn’t stab myself in the back, and when a radical extremist stabs someone in the back, the only person at fault is the radical extremist.

“But you got to hang out with the president, though!” my mom said, trying again to turn the conversation away from the part where her daughter almost died.

“Yeah, I mean, you also are going to get to hang out with the president,” I reminded her.

“But that’s not the same, she came to see you because of something you did!”

“More like something that was done to me.”

My dad continued Mom’s thought: “I think you know that’s not the whole story, hon. We’re very proud of you, April, for taking this opportunity to say kind and thoughtful things even when being kind and thoughtful isn’t easy right now.”

“It’s just the identity I built up, it’s not even really me.”

They both smiled at me like idiot puppies, and then my mom said, “April, you’re not building a brand, you’re building yourself.” Dad’s eyes were misty as he added, “It’s so easy to forget, with everything that’s happened this year, that you’re only twenty-three years old.”

“Ugghhh,” I said, because that was my line. They just both smiled like idiots.

A while later, Robin came in to introduce me to a stylist, Vi, who was going to make me look nice for my photo op. I am aware that I am an attractive person, but there was a time when I hated having power over people because of it. That’s one of the things I loved so much about Maya. Unlike anyone else I had ever dated, I think she had to get to know me before she started thinking I was hot. And that was really hot.

Ever since Carl, I had been doing more with my face, but mostly I was styling for legitimacy, making myself look older and more professional. I had become very intentional about the way I looked, and I did not just want to look beautiful; I wanted to look serious and important. Beautiful was good too, though, because if people like looking at you, they will end up listening to you almost by accident. This is fucked up, but it’s true. Like, it isn’t just a coincidence that Anderson Cooper can knock a hole in your heart with his steely blue eyes. I decided early on in this process that there wasn’t any reason to not play the advantages I had to play.

But as the stylist set up her little trifolding mirror and huge toolbox full of magnificently expensive beauty products, she asked me how I wanted to look, and I honestly couldn’t think of anything. I didn’t feel like that woman I’d seen on the news clips. And I couldn’t go elegant or glamorous—I was in a hospital gown. I was starting to feel intensely self-conscious because this was going to be my first appearance since the attack. My first anything, really. It was going to be everywhere and this was an extremely vulnerable position. Was I going to be in the bed? Was that what the president wanted? Was the goal to make me look weak? I think Robin saw my distress.

“April,” he said, “what do you want people to feel when they see you?”

“That the Defenders are creating a climate that encourages extremism and that the stuff I’ve been saying is the only thing that makes sense?”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I mean, that’s been the goal so far, right?”

“Um”—he turned to the stylist—“Vi, could you excuse us for a second?”

Her eyes got a little big, but then she said, “Yeah, sure,” and left the hospital room.

“April,” Robin continued seriously, “this is a whole new narrative. What do you think the main question people are going to be asking themselves is?”

“Why did the attacks happen? Why did someone want to kill me?”

“No, those are certainly on the list. But after this news comes out, the first thing the world will think when they look at you is why did Carl save you and not the hundreds of other people who died yesterday.”

“Oh.” I looked away from him. “Oh,” I said again, because I didn’t know what else to say.

“What is the obvious answer to that question?”

I felt too weak to believe my answer, but it was the only one I could come up with, “Because I’m important.”

“There are two reasons why you might be so important, and neither of them are good.”

I thought about it for a second. What would I think if I found out this mysterious force had taken its first-ever clear action and it was to kill to protect one girl in New York?

Either:

I was important to their plan, and their plan was to help humanity, in which case some people would start seeing me as a messiah. Or . . .



I was important to their plan, and their plan was to hurt humanity, in which case I was the worst kind of traitor that had ever existed.





He left it unsaid but continued. “You need very much to be neither of those things right now. You need to be what you really are, a hurt human being in the hospital.”