I Have Lost My Way(15)

“Okay,” she says, hoisting the backpack onto her shoulder. “Let’s go.”

“Really, you don’t have to,” Nathaniel says. “I’m meeting my dad later. It’s all good.”

“Stop saying that!” Harun is surprised and also abashed by the harshness of his tone. He has no reason to be angry with this boy, who may not be James but who was just walking through the park, minding his own business, when he was fallen on top of. It’s not his fault if James asked Harun to believe that even if it wasn’t all good, it might be, when Harun knows, has always known, it wasn’t, it couldn’t be.

It’s the hoping that makes it hurt.

Harun knows that.



* * *



— — —

Nathaniel knows that.



* * *



— — —

Freya knows it too.



* * *



— — —

    If she’s perfectly honest, Freya can admit that her intentions are not completely honorable either. Now that the fog has cleared and she realizes what she’s done—fallen off the bridge while staring at images of her happy sister, who said yes, onto some guy below—her concern is less for his well-being than her own.

She sees the situation through her mother’s eyes—“He could sue us”—and Hayden’s eyes—“the wrong kind of publicity”—and though she generally finds her mother in particular to be not just preemptively paranoid about people wanting to sue Freya, but aspirationally so (dream it, be it), Freya is properly assessing the situation.

She fell off a bridge, onto an innocent bystander. Some other guy watched the whole thing. He has a phone in his hand. For all she knows, he has the entire thing on video and is just waiting to email the photos to some gossip website or post them on Twitter. How many hits would that get? The one thing people love more than witnessing a success is watching a downfall.

The guy she fell on doesn’t seem to recognize her (he doesn’t seem to recognize himself), but the Lurker does. Back when Freya was getting big enough to start getting negative comments, she sometimes engaged with the haters. Hey, I’m only human, she might say. Or: That hurt. And it was crazy because sometimes they backed down. It’s been a while since she’s done that. Hayden has told her not to respond to the fans so directly anymore. Not even to look at what they’re saying about her. “That’s my job now,” he’s said.

Still, the best way to defang someone is to kill them with kindness. Which is why she corralled the Lurker into helping get the guy, Nathaniel, to urgent care.

(It’s prudence, is all. It has nothing to do with the way her stomach flipped when Nathaniel touched her face.)

By the time they reach the urgent care clinic, Freya’s feet are black and her mood even darker. She realizes she has just roped herself into something stupid, yoked herself to these two people who could do her harm. She should’ve called the publicist, but she’s not sure she’ll take her calls anymore.

“What seems to be the issue?” the receptionist at the urgent care asks.

“We were in the park,” the Lurker explains, “and she fell off a bridge onto him and knocked him out.”

She can picture how this would all play out in the court of social media.

On her phone. Navel-gazing. Typical!

Used to like her, but she got 2 full of herself.

Truth.

Such a bitch.

U no she thru her sister under a .

The receptionist, with the bored expression of someone who has heard this particular story a dozen times today alone, hands them a clipboard with a sheaf of paperwork. “Fill this out, and I’ll need the insurance card.”

Freya turns to Nathaniel, who has not said more than two words aside from emptily reassuring them that it was all good, and she wonders if he’s brain damaged.

He was a brilliant mathematician, they would say. On the verge of curing cancer. Until she fell on him.

Another life ruined.

Hate that bitch.

“Insurance card,” the receptionist repeats. “Otherwise, I need payment up front for the appointment.”

“Do you have an insurance card?” Freya asks him. But the question does not seem to register at all. “Can I see your wallet?”

He hands it to her, and she rifles through. There’s the driver’s license, a bit of cash, the boarding pass, some business card, and, tucked into the torn lining, a creased photo strip. She peers at the picture of what is almost certainly a much younger Nathaniel and an older man who previews what Nathaniel might look like in another ten years—maybe his father? She feels a tug from deep inside, as if there were an invisible cord looped around the area where her heart should be.

She reaches into her wallet and pulls out her own credit card. She can hear her mother, Hayden, the publicists tell her that she has just provided a paper trail of her guilt. But I was just trying to do the right thing, she tells her invisible judges.

What do you know about the right thing?

Freya’s plan had been to get him here to an urgent care clinic and be on her dreary way, but now, hearing the invisible critics corner her (You paid for him because you were responsible), she cannot get away so easily. Sighing heavily, she leads Nathaniel to the seats and hands him the forms. The Lurker is still there. Maybe she can get him to leave his phone lying around so she can delete whatever pictures he took before they wind up a headline in the Post: Diva Ditches KO’d Pedestrian.