I Have Lost My Way(56)

We had lived in White Plains, but after a year, we moved to Williamsburg, which was closer to his office and more in line with my brand. Hayden had a furnished sublet we could have for cheap. Mom gave up the apartment I’d grown up in, and the family we once were disappeared entirely.



* * *



— — —

Hayden stuck to his two-year plan with the precision of a German train. After a year had gone by, a year of building my brand, getting me out there and visible, turning me into a commodity, we dropped the first single and took down nearly all the previous work from SoundCloud. “Gotta get your fans used to paying for the milk,” Hayden said.

There were some fans who objected, who accused me of selling out. Some even asked what had happened to Sabrina. Has your sister died? they wrote. But these comments remained in the minority as I was discovered by more and more new fans who had never heard of Sabrina.

I was the talent, I was told, because I was the voice. But, really, Hayden was the voice. Hayden made the calls. My look, my hook, my sound. He dictated all of it. When it came time to record the album, he hired a team of songwriters to create what he said would be a moody, atmospheric, and—without a touch of irony—confessional album. He employed a director who would shoot several videos simultaneously, to solidify the brand. “People want to see inside the real you,” he said. “And we’ll show them that.”

He presented me a list of songs he’d chosen to record. Twelve of them were written by his team. But number thirteen was my song. It was “Little White Dress.”

“Sing me a song that proves it,” Hayden had commanded as soon as I’d closed the door behind me that fateful day in his office. Sabrina had just sung “Tschay Hailu,” and when she’d emerged from Hayden’s office, she wouldn’t look me in the eye, dispelling any doubts I’d had about what she’d done.

“Proves what?” I’d asked him.

“That you are the only one I want,” he’d said.

That was the first, last, and only time I’d sung him “Little White Dress.”

“‘Little White Dress’?” I asked Hayden two years later, looking at his list of songs. “How can I record that?”

“How can you not record that?”

He stared at me for one silent, squirmy moment. He didn’t know the history of the song, other than it was the one I’d sung for him, choking back tears, all the while thinking that if Sabrina was going to betray me, I was going to betray her back. Had Hayden seen the bloody dagger in my hand? Had he been the one who’d given it to me in the first place?

“It’ll need to be rewritten, of course,” Hayden said, taking back the list. “But I do love that song.”



* * *



— — —

By the time his team finished with it, the song was radically different. What had been just vocals and percussion was filled out with lush instrumentals. The lyrics had been rewritten so it sounded like an angry love song. The Amharic lyrics were gone. But the DNA of the song was still there. The melody was mine. And the story behind it—that was, for better or for worse, still mine.

We were three weeks into recording when it came up on the schedule. It started out as a normal enough day. I woke at eight, did some yoga, ate a light, nutritionist-approved breakfast, drank some herbal tea (no coffee on singing days because it was an irritant, though Hayden sometimes gave me a caffeine tablet to compensate). Did a baking-soda-and-water gargle. Self-consciously warmed up in the back of the car Hayden sent to bring us to the studio.

When we got to the studio that morning it was already crowded—more so than usual. In addition to Hayden, his assistants, and the engineers, there were a handful of label execs and some other people I didn’t know. Everyone was hunched around a monitor.

“Freya, look,” Mom said. “They’ve mocked up a few prototypes for the art.”

“Don’t get too attached,” Hayden warned. “They’re just ideas.”

I peered at the images. Body parts, black and white and sultry, the face half-showing. The name Freya in huge type. I didn’t recognize myself. I’d been Freya Kebede. The Sisters K. And now I was just Freya, a menagerie of well-lit body parts.

“Let’s get to work,” Hayden said.

Usually we did a take or two to warm up. Then we began recording. Sometimes, Hayden would stop in between takes to give a note: Go soft here, hit that note harder. But this time, he kept shaking his head.

“Nope,” he said over and over. “Not there yet. Not even close.”

This kept up all morning. When it was time to break for lunch, Hayden waved everyone out of the booth and came into the studio to talk to just me. He didn’t say anything for a while, just stared at me. I looked around for my mother, an assistant, anyone. But they’d left me alone with him.

“Freya,” he said. “Look at me.”

I made myself look at him.

“You’re not giving me what I want.”

“I’m doing what I’ve been doing,” I replied. “So I don’t know what you want.”

“I want you,” he said. “I want the real you.”

But who was that? The girl who’d been born singing? The girl who’d betrayed her sister? The girl who could be the next Lulia? The girl in pieces on the computer screen?