I Have Lost My Way(55)

There’s just emptiness.

Just us, buddy.

As it always was. As it always will be.



* * *



— — —

Freya returns to Harun’s house. Halima is sitting on the cement stoop next to the driveway.

“Did you find Nathaniel?” Halima asks.

Freya shakes her head. She didn’t find him. She didn’t warn him. She didn’t even give him back his fifty-dollar bill, and now he’s out there, alone and broke.

“Is Harun okay?” she asks.

“I don’t know.” Halima hangs her head. “I came downstairs, and he was gone. He’s not answering his phone.”

“Maybe he went to James’s?”

“I doubt it.”

As soon as Halima says this, certain things become clear to Freya. Harun has not spoken to James all day, in spite of the fact that she’s supposedly his favorite singer.

“I think they broke up,” Halima says. “I mean, I don’t know for sure. He never told me. But I suspected that he was gay, and I suspected he was with someone, and once, I followed him into the city and saw him meet up with a guy.”

“James?” Freya asks.

“I think so. But I never told him. Even when this whole marriage thing happened and I knew something had gone wrong.” She puts her face in her hands. “But I never told him I knew he was gay. I let him bear it alone.” She looks up at Freya, eyes so very solemn, so very much like her big brother’s. “I think I failed him.”

“I think I did too,” Freya says.

Halima wipes away a stray tear. “I’m not supposed to be driving at night, but I’m going to look for him. Maybe he went to the PATH station. It’s not that far. Will you come?”

“Or course,” Freya says.

They climb into the car and crawl down Sip Avenue. The stores are all shuttered. There’s hardly anyone out. It’s like the night has swallowed everyone, and all their secrets, up.

When they get to Journal Square, Halima sighs. “Maybe it’s better if I go home, in case he comes back.”

“Okay,” Freya says, not knowing where to go. “I guess I’ll get out here. Maybe I’ll bump into him on the train.” But she doubts it. Finding each other like they did was . . . she doesn’t know the word for it. Luck? Fate? Miracle? But she’s pretty certain whatever it’s called you only get so much of it in a lifetime, let alone a day.

“If he gets in touch with you . . .” Halima begins.

“He can’t,” Freya says. “We only met today. He doesn’t even have my phone number.”

“So give it to me,” Halima says. “I’ll text you his number and give him yours. And you call me if you hear from him, and I’ll do the same.”

“Okay.” Freya tells Halima her number. She opens the door to the car.

“If you see him, tell him . . .” Halima trails off, gesturing behind them, toward the quiet streets, toward home. “My parents need time. They thought he was going to Pakistan to marry a girl. They’re in shock. But they love him. They just need time.”

“Do you think so?” Freya asks. Did time heal everything? Or were some things broken beyond repair?

“I don’t know,” Halima admits. “But if they can get used to Leesa, they can get used to anything.”

Freya chuckles ruefully. “Fair point.”

Halima leans in to hug Freya. “I was looking forward to learning to cook with you,” she whispers into Freya’s ear. “I always wanted a sister.”

“Me too,” Freya says.





THE ORDER OF LOSS


PART X





FREYA



The first thing Hayden did after he took over was to quietly rename the Sisters K channel the Freya K channel, and a few months after that, to quietly drop the K. That was how easy it was to disappear my sister.

I continued to record songs and make videos, though now his team produced them. At first, they didn’t look or sound so different from the videos Sabrina and I had made. They dropped weekly, on Tuesdays, same as always.

But with every new addition, Hayden deleted a couple of the Sisters K videos. If it was gradual, Hayden said, the fans wouldn’t even notice. “Turn up the heat slowly,” he said, “and the frogs in the pot won’t know they’re boiling.” He looked at me. “Soon, no one will remember the Sisters K ever existed.”

By that point, I wondered if my sister remembered I existed. Sabrina had not said a word when Mom announced that I would work with Hayden alone. She hadn’t even looked that surprised, probably because Mom had consulted with her ahead of time.

She didn’t say a cross word to me. Didn’t accuse me of betraying her or selling her out. Didn’t yell at me or call me a bitch. If anything, she was more benignly pleasant to me than she’d ever been. But two months after we inked the deal with Hayden, she moved upstate to finish college and didn’t come home or speak to me after that.

Bit by bit, Hayden began to change the sound and look of my videos, nudging them—me—grittier by degrees, transforming what he dismissively called the “suburban cover artist” into someone edgier, more glamorous, more raw. “I’m not changing you,” he claimed. “I’m revealing you.”