Page 132 of Bad Words

I wondered how Selina felt about the news. I tried to imagine what she would have said if we were speaking, but my imagination was an unacceptably poor substitute.

I’d dreamed of hitting the New York Times bestseller list since I was a teenager. I would have traded it for a lifetime of anonymity if, somehow, it meant I had her back.

Hunched over the dining table, I opened social media, steeling myself for the coolly unaffected, consummately professional posts that she would have made in the ten days since I’d seen her. But there was nothing. The last thing she’d said was, Hi Jenny, what do you mean?

Below, her defense of me remained undeleted on her profile, although hundreds of replies had accumulated beneath it, lambasting her. Of course, no matter how we’d fought, she wouldn’t go back on what she’d said. She’d stood between the world’s anger and me, trying—in a way no one ever had—to protect me.

A wave of feeling rolled through my body. It seemed impossible that I’d ever had her, this woman whose brilliance was matched only by her strength of character, and even more unbelievable that I’d allowed myself to lose her.

I knew now that I’d never get her back, but maybe I could move the needle the tiniest bit on how people saw her.

I opened up a new post. As I did, I felt a clear, cool anger, the kind of anger Selina had once described, the kind that demonstrates that you know you’re worth something. I didn’t want to talk about any of it, but for her, I would.

@ParkerNavarroWrites: I know I’m courting disaster by writing this—a response to the criticisms of High and Dry that have been discussed on this platform for the past week and a half—but if these admissions mean any less judgment aimed in the direction of Selina Chan, our generation’s most clear-minded, thoughtful, and devoted critic, about whom I was completely wrong in October and for months afterward, then the disaster will have been worth it.

When I was 22 years old, I planned my suicide. I was devoutly preoccupied with how the suicide would look. I didn’t want it to be one of those self-indulgent suicides. I doubt I need to say anything further about how this informs my character, Dave, and his attitude toward his mental health.

The passage about the elderly Chinese woman is cobbled together from experiences I’ve had with non-Asians. I find value in repurposing and exploring experiences I don’t understand, and I find hope in imagining that the people who said these things to me might someday experience a shift in worldview, the way that, as Selina said, Dave eventually does, later in the book.

I hit Post, then dropped my phone on my bed, put on my coat, and walked out into the neighborhood. Already clouds of potential responses were forming in my mind, the ways in which my post would be seen as inadequate or disingenuous. The responses wouldn’t come only from strangers. My siblings would text me soon, asking why I’d never told them. I’d made allusive comments to Elena in reassurance before, when she’d hit her own low points, but even she had never known how far things had gone when I was at school. I imagined she would call with no warning, multiple times; Christi would text hyperarticulate paragraphs; Justin would get angry and defensive in a way that revealed his worry. I pictured Kevin at a loss for words completely. I wondered if any of them would tell our parents, and what my friends from home would say, what they would think of me—but—enough. The truth was out.

As I skirted the park, the leafless maples, I turned my thoughts to Selina instead, and the world fell quiet. I wondered if she would even see what I’d written, if the post would mean anything to her. It couldn’t undo what I’d said when we’d fought. The wind through the bare branches seemed to murmur her name. The sun had begun to set, and I wandered westward, down Nassau, to a familiar intersection.

I thought of Selina on New Year’s Eve and drew a shaky breath, imagining I caught her perfume on the cold wind. Then I turned onto the quiet residential block and descended the narrow steps to the Book Bar.

The store was dim and near-empty, even shabbier by daylight. The bar at the back apparently made gestures at repurposing itself as a cafe during daytime. I ordered a decaf and used it to warm my hands, and I tried not to think of Selina’s smile when she’d seen this place, like she’d fallen in love.

I moved down the deserted fiction aisle, but as I approached the corner, my steps slowed. Maybe I didn’t want to see it, well-kept secret, that mark of the first time I’d looked at her and understood what she might mean to me.

I reached the corner, turned, and froze in place.

Selina was sitting a few paces away, curled in an antique armchair in the corner, reading by the light of a stained glass lamp.

She looked up and became perfectly still.

This corner of the store was warm. Her coat hung over the back of the chair, and she wore a soft gray T-shirt and jeans, and her hair fell over her shoulder. I could have stood there, transfixed by the sight of her, for hours.

“Parker,” she said quietly.

I opened my mouth and found I couldn’t speak.

“I’ll leave,” she said, closing her book.

My voice flooded back to me. “No. Please—it’s okay, stay.”

Selina rose to her feet anyway and gathered her coat over her arms, lifted her purse onto her shoulder. But she didn’t walk away.

“I saw your post,” she said.

“You did?”

She smoothed her hair back from her forehead and looked away. “It was kind.”

“It was the truth.”

Her fingers shifted on the strap of her purse, and it seemed like a preparatory motion, like she would disappear down the aisle, having, in one minute, wrecked my night, my week, my entire uncertain future.

“Wait,” I said, unable to stop myself.