by Gayle Forman
He inserts the drive into the port. The sound of laughter—Nathaniel’s laughter, intermingled with the assistant’s—flutes out from the lobby through the closed door.
“Sounds like he’s flirting well,” Harun says.
Freya frowns, and Harun feels bad. Now that he has stepped out of himself for five seconds, he realizes something has been crackling between those two all day. “Don’t worry,” Harun adds. “He likes you too.”
“You think?” Freya asks, and the yearning in her eyes is so familiar, he’s no longer sure if it’s her yearning or his pumping through his veins.
A phone rings: Hayden’s office extension, as well as the assistant’s desk. Freya glances at the caller ID.
“It’s Hayden’s cell,” she whispers.
“If the assistant doesn’t know we’re here, neither does he,” Harun says, suddenly full of smooth confidence.
“I wouldn’t count on that. Hayden sees everything,” she says.
“No one sees everything.” He pauses for a minute. “Except maybe God.”
“Hayden is God.” The line on the phone blinks. “Hurry.”
* * *
— — —
While the assistant is on the phone, Nathaniel hears her mention Freya. “Been and gone.” She looks at Nathaniel a little suspiciously, and he lets loose his brightest smile yet.
“No, she didn’t say what she wanted.” A pause. “She left without waiting. I don’t control her.” A defensive whine in her voice. “All right, all right. I’ll get her back.” She hangs up the phone and peers up at Nathaniel, not smiling anymore.
“Where did Freya go?” she asks him.
He may be a bad flirt, but he’s an expert liar. “Not sure.” He pulls out his phone. “Let me call her.” He excuses himself to the waiting area and calls the only number stored in his phone.
“Tell me something good,” his dad says.
“Hey, it’s me,” he says. He speaks to the void, as he’s done so often these past few weeks. Only it doesn’t feel like the ghost of his father he’s talking to. Because in his mind, he’s talking to Freya and Harun.
* * *
— — —
“How much longer?” Freya asks.
“Not long. Transferring the file.”
Freya watches the progress, itchy with suspense: 10 percent, 18 percent.
26 percent.
Her hearts starts to speed up.
43 percent.
“Hurry,” she says to the heedless computer.
The office phone line goes dark, then lights up again.
68 percent.
“Come on,” she urges.
“It’s a computer,” Harun says. “It can’t understand you.”
The computer ticks to 73 percent and just stops.
“What happened?” Freya asks. “Is it stuck?”
“It’s not stuck. It’s just processing,” Harun says.
“Make it process faster,” Freya cries, giving the computer a good whack.
“You must do things the proper way,” he says again.
The monitor ticks to 80 percent.
“I’m tired of the proper way,” she says.
93 and 100. Freya lunges for the flash drive.
He stops her and ejects the drive and replaces the cap and puts the drive back on his keychain. Freya drags the files to the trash.
“Not that way,” he says. Harun opens the file, and instead of dragging it to the trash, he deletes the contents and leaves the file name intact. He does a search for files with the same name and does the same with a version saved in the cloud. Freya sees the name of the file show up in the finder.
“I thought you deleted it,” Freya says.
“I did. This is a ghost file. I deleted the actual contents but left just the folder there.” Harun smiles. “To avoid suspicion.”
Freya is in a hurry, but she takes a few seconds to appraise Harun. “You’re kind of devious, aren’t you?”
Harun allows the smallest of smiles. “You have no idea.”
* * *
— — —
Nathaniel is still talking to Freya on the phone when she and Harun emerge from the office, laughing, victorious.
“What the . . . ?” the assistant asks.
“Oh, there you are,” Nathaniel says, hanging up his phone.
“What were you doing in there?” the assistant demands.
Freya doesn’t answer. She takes Nathaniel’s hand. “Gotta go,” she trills.
“Did you know they were in there?” the assistant asks Nathaniel. She turns to Freya. “Hayden’s not going to be happy about that.”
“Oh well,” Freya says, taking Harun’s hand and leading them all to the elevator bank.
“What should I tell Hayden?” the assistant asks.
Harun presses the elevator button. Just as the elevator yawns opens, Freya turns to the assistant. “Tell him that art is personal. Business is not.” And the door closes. The three of them descend, holding hands, each one of them experiencing something that only hours before seemed inconceivable: happiness.
5
HAPPINESS
They keep running until they’re several blocks from Hayden’s office, not because they think they’re being pursued but because even with a possible concussion and a cut-up heel, it feels ridiculously good to be sprinting down the street, holding hands, a chain of three, laughing as they send irritated pedestrians skittering out of their way like pigeons.
They cut right, through a park—if you can call a handful of benches and a baseball diamond a park—when Nathaniel suddenly skids to a halt, nose twitching like he smells the pickup softball game. The teams are warming up, he can tell. The pitcher lets loose a drop ball, and the batter pops a wide foul, the ball sailing in their direction. On instinct, Nathaniel’s left arm shoots up, his mind’s eye seeing the catch before it happens. The smack of the leather against his palm sounds like a kiss.
It’s only when he looks down that he realizes he caught a foul in someone else’s game. “Sorry,” he calls, staring at the ball in his hand in wonder, unable to believe he caught it. But he did. And the pitcher is waiting, so, sense memory taking over once again, he throws it with aim so perfect the pitcher only needs to lift his glove to complete the catch.
“Thanks,” the pitcher calls, jogging over to where the three of them stand. “You play?” he asks Nathaniel.
“Used to.”
“Cool, cool. See those guys over there?” He gestures with his chin to a group of players standing on the edge of the field. They’re older, dressed in impeccably crisp pinstripe jerseys, as opposed to the teams playing, twentysomethings wearing street clothes. “They’re from the Lawyers League. They’re vulturing us because we’re down a few and you’re not supposed to hold the field without a full roster, but we have a full roster, just a bunch of our guys are late.” He sticks out his right hand and taps his chest with his gloved hand. “I’m Finny, by the way.”
Nathaniel shakes and introduces himself, Freya, and Harun. “How many are you down?”
“Three on our side, all stuck on the same stalled subway. Fucking MTA.” Finny shakes his head. “We’re playing with a couple of guys down in the outfield, but they’re breathing down our necks.” He glances at Nathaniel, Harun, and Freya. “There are three of you. You want to step in until my players can get here?”
Nathaniel has not played ball, has not wanted to play ball, since that day, nearly four years ago, when his coach invited him for a game of catch. But today he wants to play.
“Yeah!” Nathaniel says emphatically.
“No!” Freya and Harun say equally emphatically.
Nathaniel doesn’t want to be pushy. But man, he wants in on the game. His hand is still tingling from that catch.
“And you shouldn’
t be playing either,” Harun adds. “The doctor said no excessive physical activity.”
“I feel fine,” Nathaniel says. “Better than I have in ages. And you both said the doctor was incompetent.”
“So you play,” Harun says.
“Not if you don’t.”
“I don’t play softball. I play cricket,” Harun says.
“What position?” Nathaniel asks.
“Wicket-keeper.”
“Not so different from catcher, right?” Nathaniel turns to Finny. “You need a catcher?”
“We’ll take what we can get. We play for beers, so the stakes are incredibly low. Also, you get beer whether you win or lose.”
“How do you know about cricket?” Harun asks Nathaniel. “Americans never know about cricket.”
“I watched a documentary about a team from Afghanistan.”
“You’ve seen Out of the Ashes?” Harun asks. “I loved that movie.”
Nathaniel nods. “And also the one about the West Indian team. My father went through a cricket obsession. Called it the only gentleman’s sport.”
* * *
— — —
Harun’s father has said the same thing. He often said that cricket taught the rules of civility. “Without that, society comes apart.”
Harun tried to teach James the rules once, on a particularly nasty February day, but James wasn’t having any part of it. Not even after Harun showed him photos of Shahid Afridi, not even after he showed him pictures of a young Imran Khan.
Harun does not want to play softball. But Nathaniel knows about cricket. He imagines Nathaniel’s father and his own having a conversation about this over tea.
“The problem is, I don’t actually know how to play beyond what I learned in elementary school,” Harun admits.
“No worries. We’ll plug you in as catcher,” Finny says. “Just catch the ball and throw it to me.”
Harun stands the chance of being humiliated, or laughed at, or making a total hash of it. But Nathaniel hasn’t asked for one thing this whole day. And it felt so good to do something for Freya before. Cowardice and selfishness get so very tiresome.
“Look, we really don’t care if you do anything,” Finny says. “We just need bodies on the field till our guys arrive.”
Harun turns to Freya. It’s all or nothing. He’s not sure when it became that. But it has.
* * *
— — —
“Oh no,” Freya says. “Don’t look at me. I don’t play sports. I play music.”
Played music.
“I’m not doing it if you don’t,” Nathaniel says.
“We’ll stick you in center field,” Finny tells Nathaniel. “You in right field,” he tells Freya. “He’ll cover for you.”
“But I don’t have a . . . what’s it called? Glove?”
“We’ve got gear.”
“But I’m left-handed,” Freya says, the softball version of a Hail Mary pass. “Don’t I need a different glove?”
“We’ve got left-handed gloves.”
Nathaniel, Harun, and Finny all look at Freya, a triple whammy of puppy-dog eyes. “That’s not fair,” Freya says, “to put that much pressure on me.” But she’s smiling.
“I did just commit a crime for you,” Harun says.
“And I flirted with that awful assistant for you,” Nathaniel says.
“And hey, I just met you, but you’d be doing me a solid,” Finny says.
“So the assistant was awful, was she?” Freya asks Nathaniel, utterly embarrassed by how much this snipe pleases her.
“Wasn’t her fault,” Nathaniel says. “She just wasn’t you.”
And that does it. Freya’s a goner. She’d go skydiving if he asked, and she’s terrified of heights. Moments later, she’s unrecognizable in someone’s battered lefty glove and someone else’s baseball cap. Standing in right field, she wonders: How did I get here? Only she’s not thinking about the ball field, specifically, but here with Harun and Nathaniel. Also the ball field. She’s never played softball in her life.
How did I get here? she asks herself again. But the answer doesn’t matter. What matters is that she did.
* * *
— — —
As Harun squats behind home plate, his phone buzzes with a text. The dinner in his honor is not due to start for a while yet, but Ammi always gets nervous if you’re not at least a half hour early.
He can picture his family sitting around the dining room table, the extra leaf added to make room for all of them and all the dishes Ammi has been preparing. Ammi will pace. She won’t stop until they’re all seated and eating. The longer his absence goes, the faster she will pace. She will check the clock over the mantel, she will wring her hands. “Fikar nahi karo,” Abu will tell her. “Don’t worry.” The trains are late, the traffic is heavy, children lose track of themselves. It will go on like this until too much time passes for these excuses to be believable, and even Abu’s face will begin to furrow with worry.
“We’re a full roster now,” Finny is telling the glaring lawyers in pinstripes. “So step the hell off. This field is ours until seven.”
Harun’s phone buzzes again. Finny lopes back to the pitcher’s mound. “You ready?” he calls to Harun.
“No.”
Finny grins. “Batter up.”
* * *
— — —
“You know I have no idea what I’m doing?” Freya tells Nathaniel from the safe recesses of the outfield.
“I got you covered,” Nathaniel says.
Freya knows he’s talking about baseball, but she feels warm all over. “I’m holding you to that.”
* * *
— — —
Nathaniel’s having a blast. He can’t remember the last time he’s had such fun. The smell of the grass, the soil, the particular sound a ball makes connecting with a bat. It brings something back to life.
It doesn’t even matter that they’re getting their asses handed to them; the opposing team has quite a go, filling up the bases, scoring a couple of runs before they can even manage a single out. When a burly woman steps up to the plate, Nathaniel sees the hit before it happens with the same inexplicable clarity he had earlier when he’d heard Freya’s song and known that it was, somehow, meant for him. So he knows the hit will be a fly, heading straight to right field, straight to Freya. Before the bat connects with the ball, he’s already moving toward Freya, who, when she sees the ball sailing toward her, crouches a bit and tentatively reaches her left, ungloved, hand to catch it. Nathaniel knows it’ll bruise the hell out of her if she catches it and smash her in the face if she doesn’t. He comes up behind her. “I got it,” he calls, and loops an arm around her shoulder, easily catching the ball and sending it to the third baseman in time to tag the runner.
“Nice one,” Finny calls.
“Yeah, nice one,” Freya says.
“Anytime,” Nathaniel replies.
A blast. A total blast.
How long since he’s swung a bat? Caught a pop fly? Had butterflies in his stomach because of a girl? When he came back to school with his eye patch, his teammates treated him politely but coolly. They didn’t make jokes around him anymore, didn’t invite him to hang out on Friday nights. He went to every practice, sat on the bench.
When he got fitted with his temporary prosthetic eye—which became permanent by default—his coach invited him to the field, just the two of them, for a game of catch. Nathaniel caught the first few tosses easily, but then the coach threw a few higher and to the left. Nathaniel reached up with his glove to where he thought the ball should be, but came back with an empty glove. This happened again, and again.
The doctors had warned that his depth perception would be off. That certain things, like descending stairs, would be difficult, and other things, like watching 3-D movies, wou
ld be impossible, but over time, his good eye would learn to compensate. He told the coach this. He promised to practice round the clock.
“I’m losing most of my strongest guys this year,” the coach said. “This might be our last shot at the championship for a while.” He looked at Nathaniel, not saying any more. He didn’t have to. Nathaniel realized what he was expected to do.
“It’s all good,” Nathaniel told his coach. He said the same thing to his teammates when he announced he was quitting. He tried not to take it personally when they all believed him so eagerly.
Now he steals glances at Freya the way he once stole bases. He’s skilled enough at this that she doesn’t notice, but when Finny yells, “Look alive, outfield!” just as a ground ball streaks past the second baseman, he realizes he hasn’t been paying attention to the game at all. The ball is skidding directly toward Freya, too late for Nathaniel to intercept.
But Freya scoops up the ball in her gloved hand this time. “I did it!” she cries, turning to Nathaniel. “Now what?”
“Throw it to me,” he calls, jogging toward her.
She does an underhand toss, which he easily catches. Then he pivots, throwing the ball past Finny, all the way to Harun. Two runners have crossed home, and the third is making a start for it and Finny is expecting Nathaniel to throw the ball back to him, but Nathaniel knows that today they all have a sort of magic on their side, so he beams the ball toward Harun, certain that he’ll make the catch, which, backlit by the setting sun, he does.
“Out!” yells the umpire.
“Did we do it?” Freya asks.
“We did it,” Nathaniel says.
Freya whoops and does a little victory dance. “Go, Harun!” She high-fives Nathaniel, and now his right hand tingles just as much as his left.
