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.
* * *
— — —
Nathaniel knows what it means to lose everything. It really means losing yourself. It is the worst thing that can happen. He would do anything to keep this from happening to another person.
“What can I do?” he asks.
* * *
— — —
“What can we do?” Harun corrects. He doesn’t know what it means to lose everything, but he suspects he’s dangerously close to finding out.
* * *
— — —
Their enthusiasm—their righteous anger—is infectious. It makes Freya want to do something she has never been able to do: speak for herself.
Only that would mean facing Hayden alone. Bad things happen when she’s alone with him.
But maybe she doesn’t have to be alone.
“Will you guys come with me?” she asks in a small voice. “To confront him?”
She’s only just met them. They don’t know what she intends to do. She doesn’t know what she intends to do. She’s flying blind. They must see it.
But they don’t hesitate. “Yes,” they reply.
* * *
— — —
When they arrive at Hayden’s SoHo offices, Freya feels like puking.
“I feel like puking,” she says.
“Feel free to do it on my shoes,” Nathaniel offers.
This is funny, but she doesn’t laugh, because she really does feel like puking, and it’s better not to tempt fate.
They ride the elevator up to Hayden’s office. Freya’s knees begin to buckle as she realizes she’s about to face Hayden with no idea of what to say. During media training, she’d been taught to draw up three talking points before every interview, and no matter what the interviewer asked, to respond with her talking points. It was when people diverged that they ran into trouble, said things they couldn’t take back.
But here she is, in the elevator up to Hayden’s office, and she hasn’t even figured out what she should say. Which is an amateur move; you don’t take on Hayden Booth with no strategic planning, a lesson Freya should’ve learned.
She’s going to faint.
The elevator door opens. Freya has a sudden body memory of the first time she and Sabrina came here, how when the doors had opened, they’d reached for each other’s hand. She can still feel Sabrina’s grip—is certain that if she looks down, the half moons of her sister’s nails will be there.
She looks. They aren’t.
This was a dumb idea. There’s nothing she can do or say that will change anything. But then Nathaniel puts his hand on the small of her back and Harun makes an after-you gesture, holding the elevator door open, and she is whisked into Hayden’s lobby, and before she can change her mind, the elevator door closes behind her.
The lobby is full of enormous framed photos of Hayden, that crooked grin of his as he mugs for the camera with, well, everyone who matters in the world of pop music. Seeing them, Harun gasps. Which is precisely the point.
One of Hayden’s interchangeable assistants—intimidatingly beautiful, headset attached like a cyborg—looks up from the desk. “Freya,” the assistant says coolly. “We were expecting you earlier.”
“I wasn’t available earlier,” Freya says, attempting to recreate the Freya of the narrative, the one who’s tough as nails, as ruthless as the man who discovered her (just ask Sabrina). The Freya who is not intimidated by an assistant. “Is Hayden in?”
“He’s not available,” the assistant says.
“Is he here?”
“No.”
“Is he gone for the day?” It’s after five, but Hayden often stayed late at the office.
“No, but it’ll be a while.”
What else is new?
“We’ll wait,” Harun announces.
Freya wants to tell Harun they could be here for hours. Hayden enjoys making people wait almost as much as he hates waiting.
But Harun’s already sat down on the leather couch. Nathaniel has sat down next to him. They’ve left a square between them for her. Freya sits and stares at Hayden’s office door. Gunmetal gray with a bright, shiny knob. He could be in there. He could be punishing her or fucking with her or being Hayden. The first time, he’d made them wait two hours. The assistants had offered no explanation, no apology, not even water.
“Would you like some water?” the assistant asks, and Freya feels momentarily better that if nothing else, she is now (still) a person who is offered water upon arrival.
Only the stupid assistant isn’t even asking her. She’s asking Nathaniel.
“Sure,” Nathaniel says.
“Still or sparkling?”
The assistant is fawning, like Nathaniel is someone almost-famous, and Freya understands it’s because he’s good-looking enough to be someone famous, and those kinds of looks—in New York City, anyhow—are a self-fulfilling prophecy.
“Huh?” Nathaniel says.
“Bubbles or no bubbles?” the assistant says.
“Uhh, bubbles, I guess.”
“Two shakes,” the assistant replies without asking if Freya or Harun want water, let alone still or sparkling.
The creep of jealousy comes on strong and fast and surprising. Freya isn’t jealous because Nathaniel is offered water. She’s jealous because that bitch is flirting with him. And he belongs to her. She’s his emergency contact. And that’s when Freya realizes she no longer simply feels responsible for Nathaniel. She likes him. The fluttery feeling in her stomach cannot be fully attributed to the prospect of facing Hayden.
It’s been so long since she liked a guy, or allowed herself to. Not since Tai. They’d been set up a while ago, two up-and-comers whose combined star power could generate some heat. They played the couple, made a minor splash, got in a few of the tabloids, which was the plan, and she actually liked him, which wasn’t.
They’d slept together in a two-thousand-dollar-a-night hotel suite they’d been given for free in exchange for a post from an “it couple” about its new rooftop bar. The next morning she woke up to find him FaceTiming his boyfriend. The boyfriend waved at Freya. “Don’t worry,” Tai said. “We’re fluid and open.” When Freya had gotten upset, he’d been confused. “But we had fun, right? And this suite is sweet. Should we take a selfie on the balcony before we go?” She’d agreed. The shot was still reposted, fans still shipping Freya and Tai.
The assistant returns with a bottle of Pellegrino and one glass.
One glass. Seriously? Freya clears her throat.
“Oh, sorry. Did you want some water too?” the assistant asks.
Freya would prefer to take the contoured bottle and shove it up her—
“Yes,” Harun says. “No bubbles.”
“Same,” Freya says.
“Okay. Be right back.” She flashes a smile at Nathaniel. “Holler if you need anything else.”
Nathaniel seems flummoxed by the attention, and Freya sees he doesn’t even know he’s being flirted with. The city is full of people who overvalue their talent, their looks, their charisma. Someone like Nathaniel is a purple unicorn.
“I’m all good,” he tells the assistant.
Freya stares at the office door, closed, like it was that day. Betrayals rarely take place out in the open. She’s been in there so many times she can draw the landscape in her mind: his desk, marble, heavy, expensive, and cold. The framed records on the wall. The photos of him alongside a veritable who’s who of pop music: Lulia and Rufus Q, who are his protégés, and other famous artists and producers, him and Kanye and Kim, him and
Jay and Bey and Bono and Bowie and others whom he counted as friends, or, more to the point, could display as friends. The framed graffiti print. The computer covered in sticky notes, because—and Freya always found this a little hilarious—for all Hayden’s genius when it comes to manipulating social media, he’s a technophobe who doesn’t know how to use his computer.
On that computer is a file folder with her name on it. The first time she’d seen the file, she’d felt a wave of euphoria, the same way she had the first time their video had gone viral or their first YouTube video had passed a million views. A moment of relief. She had nearly reached the finish line, after which everything would be okay. She hadn’t known what was in the file, only that it was somehow proof.
She now knows what’s in the file: basically everything. Hayden has assistants cull every bit of press, every social media hit, every tagged post. Plus all her analytics, her contracts, her emails (or her mother’s), and the vestiges of her voice in all the recordings he has. As for the finish line, either she’s no closer or it keeps moving.
She jumps up, knowing suddenly and for the first time in a long time exactly what she wants to do. “Nathaniel,” she whispers, “I need you to flirt with the assistant.”
“What?”
“Flirt.”
“Me? How?”
“Bat your eyes. Be yourself. She already likes you. Just tell her we had to leave, and flirt so she forgets to ask any questions.” She turns to Harun. “Is your boyfriend really my biggest fan?”
She sees Harun hesitate, a fault line crack across his face, but just as quickly he rights himself. “Yes,” he says, tentatively at first. Then more forcefully: “He is.”
She’s in full-on diva mode, but for once it’s not an act. She knows exactly what she wants to do.
“Then he’d want you to do this. Come on.”
* * *
— — —
The assistant returns with two more waters. She looks around. “Where’d they go?” she asks Nathaniel.
Nathaniel freezes. Freya instructed him to flirt. He doesn’t know how to flirt. He once did. He must have. He remembers girls, girlfriends, but that was such a long time ago, before he’d turned feral. But he will flirt because Freya told him to, and if she told him to do a handstand and quack like a duck, he’d do that too.
“They left,” he tells the assistant, and for good measure, he bats his eyelashes. “But I’m still here.”
She smiles at him. Licks her lips. “So you are.”
Maybe he does know how to flirt.
* * *
— — —
Freya is going to delete herself from Hayden’s computer. It’s a symbolic move. She gets that. But it’s necessary just the same. Hayden will get it. She can’t lose a race she refuses to run. He can’t fire her if she quits.
She goes straight to the computer. She clicks on the mouse and the monitor lights up. There’s no lock to it because one time Hayden forgot the code and it took a whole twenty minutes to locate an assistant, and wasting twenty minutes of Hayden’s time is a sin.
His schedule is up on the screen. The block of weeks earlier in the month have her name on every day and most other appointments blocked out—her mother had been right about the devotion he gives to his artists, so long as they’re behaving—but the past two weeks have been updated, the holes she left in the schedule easily replaced. In two weeks, after his week on the private island, it’s Lulia’s name that blocks out the schedule. Freya is certain Lulia will take her entire six weeks. She will leave no holes.
First, Freya deletes herself from the calendar. She deletes the recording session. She deletes today’s doctor’s appointment. She deletes it all.
“What are you doing?” Harun asks.
“Nothing. Just let me know if the assistant is coming, and be quiet!” she whispers.
Freya closes the calendar. Hayden’s desktop picture is Lulia, of course. It’s almost like he knew Freya was coming and set-designed the office to mess with her head. On the desktop are several folders, each labeled with the name of the artists he works with: Lulia, Mélange, Rufus Q, and Freya.
She clicks open her folder. Inside is everything. Everything she gave Hayden. And everything he took.
* * *
— — —
“You look familiar. Are you a model?” the assistant asks Nathaniel. “An actor?”
“Umm, no?”
“You could be.”
“Uhh, thanks?” And because he’s meant to be flirting, he smiles what he thinks is maybe the coquettish grin of an actor or model.
“I could take some headshots for you if you like. It’s what I do, photography. This”—she gestures to her desk—“is temporary.”
“Most things are,” Nathaniel says.
She laughs at that. Nathaniel laughs too, though it wasn’t a joke.
“I love your eyes,” she says. “How’d they get like that?”
Nathaniel has never told anyone the story before, but for a moment he imagines what it would be like to explain what really happened—not just how he lost his eye, but why. What it’s been like to exist in that house on the edge of the forest with his father. The fellowship of two. He glances toward the office, where Harun and Freya are. He imagines telling them.
He looks back at the assistant. “Heterochromia,” he lies. “Genetic condition.”
* * *
— — —
“What are you doing?” Harun asks, peering over Freya’s shoulder at the monitor.
“I’m erasing myself before he can erase me.”
“You’re what?”
“I’m deleting all my files. Except for one.”
“Which one?”
He looks at the screen as Freya scrolls through hundreds of files: PDFs, JPEGs, videos.
“A master.”
“What’s a master?”
“The original recordings, before a song is mixed.”
“Why do you want them?”
“Not them. Just one.”
“Why?”
“Because it belongs to me.”
She keeps scrolling until she finds it. Little White Dress.ptx. Bingo.
“Do you know the best way to transfer a file and completely erase it?” she asks Harun.
“Yes, but isn’t that stealing?”
“Technically, it’s more like hacking.”
“If it’s yours, why can’t you just ask for it back?”
“It doesn’t work like that. Hayden owns the masters. He owns the copyrights. He owns everything.” This was the deal they’d signed. She remembers sitting in that big conference room: Freya, her mother, Hayden, the team of lawyers. They were the label’s lawyers. Hayden’s lawyers. “Shouldn’t we have a lawyer?” Freya had asked her mother. “We are your lawyers,” Hayden’s attorneys had told them. “We creative types have to stick together,” Hayden had said.
Freya glances at the print on the wall. Art is personal. Business is not. It wasn’t like he didn’t warn them.
The rest of the songs, he can have, use for whatever he wants, sell them for scrap, repurpose them for the next shiny girl. But not this song. This song is hers.
She opens her mail program and attempts to attach the file. Harun watches her, not saying a thing.
* * *
— — —
Harun is a coward. How many times does he have to say this? He’s the kind of coward who shatters hearts. The kind of coward who allows his family to participate in an enormous hoax. The kind of coward who does not casually break and enter the offices of powerful men like Hayden Booth.
He wants to help Freya in any way he can, but even that is for cowardly reasons. To get James back. That’s why he said yes to all this.
But stealing? Harun is a good boy. When Saif was rebelling, not going to mosqu
e, Harun still went. When Saif was making Ammi cry by marrying a white girl, Harun was doing his best not to make Ammi cry. Because he’s a good son.
But here he is, possibly participating in a crime. What if he gets arrested? What would people think? What would his parents say? Would they still love him?
* * *
— — —
The file is too big. It won’t let her email it. Freya knows you’re supposed to compress the file or something, but she doesn’t remember how.
Harun is just staring at her.
“Are you going to help me or not?” she asks.
* * *
— — —
Harun pictures Abu coming to the police station to fetch him, the felony arrest on his record. The shame in his father’s eyes.
Though if he got arrested, he wouldn’t be able to leave tomorrow. He’d have an excuse not to get on that plane.
As mentioned, a coward.
* * *
— — —
Freya is growing frustrated. She tries to attach the file to an email again. When it doesn’t work, she smacks the machine.
“Shit,” she says.
* * *
— — —
Harun watches Freya, knowing it won’t work; the file is too large, and anyway, there will be a copy in the sent folder, and even if she thinks to delete that, the digital footprint will remain on the server.
His insides are itchy with frustration and impatience, and seeing Freya’s expression, he understands that he’s feeling exactly as she is. He’s feeling it on behalf of her, as if for one moment he has stepped out of his own problems and into someone else’s, and frankly, it’s a relief. Particularly when this is a problem he can solve.
Freya tries once again to attach the enormous file. This time, Harun steps between her and the computer.
“You must do things the proper way,” he says, pulling out his keychain, which contains his house keys, his school ID fob, and the small flash drive he purchased expressly to store photographs, texts, and emails from James in a safe place. But he never did. He was too scared he’d be found out, so the drive remains empty.