“April, did I kill him?”

Suddenly I was back in the moment, looking down at the stained pile of clothing, oozing and seeping.

“No. No. The president told me, Andy, it wasn’t you.” And then something, for the first time, clicked in my brain.

“Andy, you were terrified.” He was shaking a bit, his head in his hands. Not crying, just quivering. I could picture him covered in the sticky goop that was Martin Bellacourt, standing in the middle of the street, a couple of yards away from Carl, looking absolutely alone.

Andy looked at me like I’d just put my own knife inside him. He whispered, “Jesus, April, of course I was terrified.” I realized that he’d thought it was an accusation, that I was questioning his bravery.

“No, I mean, just to go out there, you looked like you were gonna hurl. But when that guy dashed at me, you . . .” I started crying.

Not, like, polite tears running down my cheeks as I eloquently told Andy how touched and amazed I was that he had been the first and only person to actually rush to defend me. Ugly crying. Painful gasps and sobs. Wailing. Andy, the goof, the weedy little clown, had raised his prized camera rig over his head and torn a man’s head off his shoulders for me. Yeah, a structurally compromised man, but still.

I thought all those things, but instead of saying them, I made big, huge, horrible noises that doubled me over and pushed me into the fetal position, my back searing with pain, which made me cry out even more loudly. Andy stood to push back my hair and tell me it was going to be OK. The moment he touched me, I grabbed at him like I was drowning, I pulled him down into the hospital bed and covered his clean button-down shirt with my tears and snot.

“You fucking beautiful moron, that was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen. You saved me. You saved me. You saved me.” I knew it wasn’t technically true, but I think he understood what I meant. I think you do too.

* * *

—

The next morning everyone was in the hospital. My parents, Jennifer Putnam, Andy, Miranda, and Maya. For a very brief moment, Jessica the paramedic even popped in to say hi. And as much as they were all definitely there to see me, they were all there at the same time because the president was coming by to do her press thing. The president’s twenty-four-hour video moratorium meant that we had some free time to prepare and (dare I say it) relax in the few hours before she showed up.

I got to hang alone with just my parents for an hour or so, which was welcome. They were doing everything they could to hold it together and not show me how freaked-out they were (which they, of course, failed at). It didn’t really occur to me until then that I had been making decisions that would affect them so deeply.

They babbled on about Tom’s honeymoon and their weirdo neighbors and did everything they could to make it feel like a normal parent-kid chat. You know what they didn’t do, though? They didn’t, not one single time, say, “What were you thinking?!” Not because they knew or because they understood—I really don’t think they did. They didn’t ask that because I sure as hell didn’t stab myself in the back, and when a radical extremist stabs someone in the back, the only person at fault is the radical extremist.

“But you got to hang out with the president, though!” my mom said, trying again to turn the conversation away from the part where her daughter almost died.

“Yeah, I mean, you also are going to get to hang out with the president,” I reminded her.

“But that’s not the same, she came to see you because of something you did!”

“More like something that was done to me.”

My dad continued Mom’s thought: “I think you know that’s not the whole story, hon. We’re very proud of you, April, for taking this opportunity to say kind and thoughtful things even when being kind and thoughtful isn’t easy right now.”

“It’s just the identity I built up, it’s not even really me.”

They both smiled at me like idiot puppies, and then my mom said, “April, you’re not building a brand, you’re building yourself.” Dad’s eyes were misty as he added, “It’s so easy to forget, with everything that’s happened this year, that you’re only twenty-three years old.”

“Ugghhh,” I said, because that was my line. They just both smiled like idiots.

A while later, Robin came in to introduce me to a stylist, Vi, who was going to make me look nice for my photo op. I am aware that I am an attractive person, but there was a time when I hated having power over people because of it. That’s one of the things I loved so much about Maya. Unlike anyone else I had ever dated, I think she had to get to know me before she started thinking I was hot. And that was really hot.

Ever since Carl, I had been doing more with my face, but mostly I was styling for legitimacy, making myself look older and more professional. I had become very intentional about the way I looked, and I did not just want to look beautiful; I wanted to look serious and important. Beautiful was good too, though, because if people like looking at you, they will end up listening to you almost by accident. This is fucked up, but it’s true. Like, it isn’t just a coincidence that Anderson Cooper can knock a hole in your heart with his steely blue eyes. I decided early on in this process that there wasn’t any reason to not play the advantages I had to play.

But as the stylist set up her little trifolding mirror and huge toolbox full of magnificently expensive beauty products, she asked me how I wanted to look, and I honestly couldn’t think of anything. I didn’t feel like that woman I’d seen on the news clips. And I couldn’t go elegant or glamorous—I was in a hospital gown. I was starting to feel intensely self-conscious because this was going to be my first appearance since the attack. My first anything, really. It was going to be everywhere and this was an extremely vulnerable position. Was I going to be in the bed? Was that what the president wanted? Was the goal to make me look weak? I think Robin saw my distress.

“April,” he said, “what do you want people to feel when they see you?”

“That the Defenders are creating a climate that encourages extremism and that the stuff I’ve been saying is the only thing that makes sense?”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I mean, that’s been the goal so far, right?”

“Um”—he turned to the stylist—“Vi, could you excuse us for a second?”

Her eyes got a little big, but then she said, “Yeah, sure,” and left the hospital room.

“April,” Robin continued seriously, “this is a whole new narrative. What do you think the main question people are going to be asking themselves is?”

“Why did the attacks happen? Why did someone want to kill me?”

“No, those are certainly on the list. But after this news comes out, the first thing the world will think when they look at you is why did Carl save you and not the hundreds of other people who died yesterday.”

“Oh.” I looked away from him. “Oh,” I said again, because I didn’t know what else to say.

“What is the obvious answer to that question?”

I felt too weak to believe my answer, but it was the only one I could come up with, “Because I’m important.”

“There are two reasons why you might be so important, and neither of them are good.”

I thought about it for a second. What would I think if I found out this mysterious force had taken its first-ever clear action and it was to kill to protect one girl in New York?

Either:

           I was important to their plan, and their plan was to help humanity, in which case some people would start seeing me as a messiah. Or . . .

       I was important to their plan, and their plan was to hurt humanity, in which case I was the worst kind of traitor that had ever existed.

He left it unsaid but continued. “You need very much to be neither of those things right now. You need to be what you really are, a hurt human being in the hospital.”

“But, I don’t mean to be a dick about this, but is that going to put me in the strongest position?”

“It might or it might not, but it’s definitely the safer choice, and I think you owe it to a lot of people right now to make some less risky decisions.” He said this very confidently and without the castigation that he could easily have put there.

He let his words hang in the air as he walked to the door and opened it, apologizing to Vi the stylist as he let her back into the room.

“Just freshen me up a little bit,” I told her. “If you can make me look young, that might also be good. Basically, I’m feeling terrified and vulnerable and weak”—I turned to Robin—“and I think the right thing to do is be honest about that.”

Fifteen minutes later Putnam walked in. “She’ll be here in less than half an hour,” she said, obviously referring to the president. “And what the HELL was the stylist thinking?! Is she still here? You look like a fourteen-year-old orphan.”

“It’s all right, Jennifer,” I said.

“No, it’s fine, there’s plenty of time to fix it.”

“No,” I said, getting annoyed, “that’s not what I’m saying. This is what I asked for.”