Page 126 of Bad Words

And Selina. I’d gone to her apartment to apologize, desperate to know she still cared about me, and then, somehow, I’d yelled at her in my self-pity.

It wasn’t Selina’s fault that people hated me. It was my own. It was my writing they loathed, my choice to participate in that group chat and then, like a coward, to watch silently as they’d called Selina a harpy and a narcissist. Whereas Selina had immediately leaped to my defense online, knowing that Lola Xu’s 120,000 followers would go for her throat. The contrast sickened me.

At the end of that unending day, Arthur came into my room and found me scrolling through my phone.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be online so much right now.”

“You’re probably right,” I said, not looking away from my screen.

Arthur walked up with his hand outstretched.

“What?” I said.

“I think you should give that to me. And your laptop.”

“It’s three days before my book launch. I need to be in touch with people.”

“I’ll handle it. If they have questions, I can ask you. If your family or friends text, I’ll let you know, and we can figure something out.”

“Arthur”—I hunched lower in bed—“can you not do this?”

“Not do what? Look out for you?”

“You know what I mean.”

“No.” He reached his hand farther toward me. “I’m serious, Parker. You don’t need to be seeing this shit.”

“It’s still happening, even if I’m not reading it.”

“And, what, that makes it your responsibility?”

I wavered.

My phone dipped in my hand. Arthur swept it from my grasp. I watched him unplug my laptop and take it from my desk, and a feeling of powerlessness overwhelmed me. So much for the progress I thought I’d made.

“Arthur?” I said hoarsely.

“Yeah?”

“If I get any texts from … I mean, if…”

“I’ll tell you who tries to get in touch, all right? Get some rest.”

As he walked away, everything grew quiet and slow. I looked at my bookshelves, my favorite authors looking back at me, and the hammock in the fall of evening light.

I drew the bedcovers up over myself and thought of the hurt in Selina’s face, and the way that, for the first time since we’d met, her words to me had fragmented. I’d done that. I’d shoved away the only person to look at me and see every part of me, because, as it turned out, I couldn’t stand to be seen.

The strange quietness lasted right through Sunday. It hadn’t been this difficult in ten years to get out of bed, get dressed, and walk out the door, but when I did, I found I didn’t want to go home. I sat in the park chewing falafel, tasting nothing, watching dogs skitter by in their harnesses and small boots. The day was near freezing, but I’d layered up and didn’t mind the feeling of my face growing icy. I walked three miles around Brooklyn, four, five, then sat on a bench at a bus stop and watched the J train hurtle along the elevated tracks, then went in to thaw at a little ice cream shop, where the woman behind the counter smiled at me like I looked normal, called me sweetheart.

As I walked back to my apartment in the evening I saw silhouettes in our front window. My steps caught. I didn’t want to bump into Arthur’s friends. I barely wanted to see Arthur, as unfair as that was, considering everything he was doing for me.

Maybe I could sidle through with a quick nod, shut myself in my room. Steeling myself, I unlocked our door and slipped inside, only to find that it wasn’t Arthur’s friends who’d come to our apartment.

It was my family.