Page 38 of Reckless Hearts

I make it just four steps before I stop.

The campus grounds around me are utterly silent and empty, the sky gray and the leaves turning orange and red as fall settles in. I glance back at the bench and the hiding place behind it.

Who are you.

Who are YOU, my author friend?

They say curiously killed the cat. Then again, they say all sorts of weird shit. So I shove that thought aside, take a seat back on the bench, and pull the diary back out. I pull a pen from my bag, bite the cap off, and open the diary to the last page with the last question.

I am you, in a way. An outcast. An outsider. Someone who doesn’t fit, like you, it would seem. I’m very sorry for prying into your personal thoughts. I found your diary by accident a little while ago, and I can’t stop reading it. It’s like you’re writing from inside my head.

Who are you?

I have my answer the next day.

I am Tyler. Tyler is me.

You’ve read my most private thoughts. I want to know yours. Fair is fair, right?

Tell me something about you that nobody else knows.

The fact that this person used the exact sameFight Clubline that I had in my head makes me grin. Also, they’re totally right. I don’t even know who they are, but I do have some seriously heavy, personal insight into their private thoughts and feelings.

And that’s how it all starts. I share a piece of myself. He reflects on it, and shares another piece of himself in turn.

We don’t arrange to meet. We don’t know the people behind the correspondence within the diary.

But finally, I have a friend here.

* * *

Present:

“So,how’s everyone doing in New York? Are there any updates on that horrible shooting—”

“Mom…”

She pauses mid-stream. “Oui?”

“You’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?”

I say it all the time, but it can’t be said enough: my mother is asuperhero. Originally from a poor family in the Paris suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis, Mom found work at sixteen with some faked papers as a housekeeper for an ultra-rich middle eastern businessman. Nasser kept a house in Paris that he used maybe five times a year, which made it anamazingjob, given that Adele was paid as full-time staff.

Then one day, Nasser came to his home in Paris, and my mother didn’t leave the house again for eleven months.

I don’t know all the details. I think only Aunt Celeste and my mother do. But I do know that Mom considers me her lucky break, because she conceived me early on. And once he learned that she was pregnant, Nasser never touched her again.

She spent the next nine of those eleven months locked in a basement suite of that huge Parisian mansion, reading and singing to me in her belly. And then when I was finally born, after all of that, I was torn away from her.

Well, sort of.

Nasser’s son, Amir, was in love with an Italian woman without the right connections or family ties. Then Nasser made a business deal with Jean Margaux, Celeste’s father, under the terms of which Celeste would marry Amir.

For the next few years, while Celeste and Amir jet-setted around the world living the Instagram billionaire lifestyle, I was portrayed astheirbaby girl for the paparazzi. It was easy: I had the same French and Iranian heritage from Adele and Nasser that I would have had if I really was Amir and Celeste’s kid. And they needed a baby to “sell” their fake marriage.

Luckily, Celeste made damn sure that my mother wasn’t cut out of the picture entirely. She convinced Amir to demand that his father allow them to bring Adele around the world with them as my “nanny” until we managed to break free of all of that, with the help of Adrian Cross.

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