I Have Lost My Way(36)

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 like 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.”

She looks to Nathaniel, who hasn’t commented on any of this. “What do you think?”

“What happens if he fires you?” Nathaniel asks.

Your numbers will drop. Your fans will forget you.

“I lose everything,” Freya says.