I Have Lost My Way(32)

“Oh my god, it is you!” one of the girls is saying. “I told you so! I told you it was her,” she tells her friends.

“I know. But, like, what is Freya doing in our diner?”

“Can we get your autograph?” the third girl asks, brandishing a pen.

“Sure,” Freya says.

A piece of binder paper is produced. “Can you do one to Violet. One to McKenzie, capital M, capital K, and no a. And one to Gia. That’s me.”

“Her real name is Gina.”

“Shut up!” Gia/Gina turns to Freya. “Gia is my stage name.”

Freya nods.

“Is Freya a stage name?” Gia asks.

“Nope,” she says.

“You’re so lucky to have such a good name.”

Freya smiles a tight smile, hands the paper back.

“I’m going to get this framed,” Gia says.

“Put it somewhere safe,” McKenzie says. “It’s going to be worth money when she becomes huge.”

To this, Freya frowns.

“Not that I’ll sell your autograph,” McKenzie quickly corrects.

When the autographs are done, the girls ask for a selfie. Freya has to get out of the booth to arrange herself with them. Nathaniel takes the opportunity to sit down next to Harun.

“What’s happening?” he asks.

“They’re fans.”

“Fans of what?”

“Freya.”

Nathaniel is also a fan of Freya. He’s become quite a big fan in the past few hours, but he still doesn’t understand who these girls are.

“Have you not heard of Freya?” Harun asks.

Nathaniel shakes his head.

Harun shows Nathaniel a video on his phone. There, on the tiny screen, but somehow larger than life, is Freya.

“It’s an older song,” Harun says. “It’s James’s . . .” he stops. “It’s my favorite.”

Nathaniel glances at Harun’s phone, back at Freya, back at the girl on the screen.

“That’s her?” he asks Harun.

“I know. Of all the people to fall on you.”

But that’s not what he means. He doesn’t know how to reconcile this person on the screen with the person in the park who whispered his name, who knew things about him.

According to Harun, though, Freya is apparently some sort of singer, known, beloved. He only half hears this because he’s fixated on the person on the screen. How is she the same person he’s been with all afternoon? And why does this song sound familiar? Where would he have heard it?

As if the on-screen Freya has registered his disbelief, she stops playing piano and turns toward the camera. As she taps out a beat on the piano bench, singing without accompaniment, she once again becomes the Freya Nathaniel recognizes. In a warm, husky voice that sounds like the one that whispered into Nathaniel’s ear before, she sings:

If you can’t see

Turn to me.

I see well enough

For the both of us.

Everything around him goes quiet, and for a second, Nathaniel is back in the forest, blindfolded, and when he returns to the diner, he is certain that this song was written for him. Obviously, it wasn’t. He’s never met Freya before, and why would she, or anyone, write a song for him? But for that one fleeting second, he’s as sure of this as he is of anything in his life.

The girls, having procured their autographs and photographs, begin to depart, but after a brief whispered conference they are back.

“Okay, you can totally say no,” Gia says, “but we usually come here with our friend Sasha. Like, every day. It’s our spot. So normally Sasha would be with us today. But she’s sick, so she didn’t come to school.”

“And it’s her birthday,” Violet adds.

“That’s too bad,” Freya says, “to be sick on your birthday.”

“I know, right? She’s going to die when she hears what she missed.”

Freya nods, commiserating.

“Could you, like, record her a message?”

“Please!” McKenzie says.

“Sure.”

Gia aims the phone at Freya. “Hi, Sasha. Hope you feel better and have a happy birthday.”

The girls exchange a look. “Could you maybe sing for her?” Gia asks.

Nathaniel feels it, a lurch in his gut, before he looks up and sees that Freya, who has been good-natured and generous, suddenly looks pained.

“I don’t think so,” she is saying.

“Nothing major. Just sing ‘Happy Birthday.’”

Freya hesitates, the look on her face traveling from discomfort to despair, a route Nathaniel knows so well he could traverse it blindfolded.

“And we wouldn’t post it on social media or anything,” Violet promises.

“Umm, I really don’t think I should,” Freya says.

Nathaniel hears the song again. It’s already familiar, something he’s always known.



* * *



— — —

“Well, that was very rude,” Harun says after the girls leave. “You were so nice to them, and they just kept asking for more.”

He sounds like James, who would sometimes monitor how people were reacting to Freya as if he were her personal protector. Which, to his mind, he was. He’d discovered Freya singing “I Will Survive” the day his father kicked him out of the house, and he felt like she was singing to him. He’d posted something in the comments, not something he’d ever done before or since: Not sure I WILL survive. And Freya herself had replied: Yes, you will. You might not believe it, but I do. And from that moment on, James was all in.