Infinity Son(6)

“This isn’t fair,” I say.

“What’s going on?” Emil asks.

“I got screwed. Some other video has gone massively viral.”

I work too hard to keep being the runner-up. My motivation for top grades throughout high school was dreaming of the moment when I’d get to walk across that stage while everyone applauded me so I could deliver my valedictorian speech about what it feels like to be a kid from the Bronx who no one is expecting to take the world by storm. The only reason I didn’t flip out when the vice principal brought me into her office to congratulate me on becoming salutatorian was because I couldn’t risk losing that spotlight, even if it wasn’t as bright, to whoever was below me academically; sitting through one speech by someone I know I’m smarter than was bad enough.

Ma sits on Emil’s bed. “You hurt my heart, and you’re upset over people not watching your video?”

“I’m sorry, okay?” I can’t look away from Mina’s increasing views.

“Don’t take that tone with me, Brighton.”

“Ma, you don’t get how much money I could’ve brought in if my video took off.”

“No money makes me feel better knowing I could’ve lost the rest of my world because you’re pretending to be grown.”

She doesn’t look at me as much as she used to. Sometimes I think it hurts her so much since I really take after Dad, green eyes and all. Other times I’m sure it’s because she’s in denial that when I leave on Saturday afternoon to study film and reset my life, it’s only going to be her and Emil, who’s staying in the city to attend some third-best community college. No one can pay me enough to stay in this place where I watched Dad suffer for seven months, where I got my hopes up when alchemists called to accept him into a clinical trial to test him with hydra blood. The idea was, their blood contained their essence, so it would transfer all the properties that allow those serpents to heal themselves and regrow their multiple heads.

I was the only one home when my father choked to death on his blood.

I am grown.





Four


Ordinary


BRIGHTON

I cage myself in the room until I can trust myself not to go off on anyone. The door is locked, and I ignore Ma when she calls me out for breakfast. I’m starving, but I’m done eating toasted tortillas with refried beans and avocado without Dad. It’s an easy enough dish, one that Dad learned to prepare to better connect with Ma’s Puerto Rican side, and his were so crispy. I’m just not ready to pretend Ma’s are the same. I’m especially not ready to have family breakfast in the living room and talk about how this is our first birthday without him. It’s too much.

It’s better in here, anyway. Dad once said our bedroom is just a celestial shrine with beds. Years ago, when the Spell Walkers were more embraced by the public, they licensed their image to help bring in money, and I was lucky enough to get my hands on them before manufacturers stopped making them. By the window is a poster of Maribelle and her parents, Aurora and Lestor Lucero. Limited-edition Funko Pops of the original Spell Walkers—Bautista de León, Sera Córdova, the Luceros, Finola Simone-Chambers, and Konrad Chambers. The playing cards I used to bring to school before we graduated. Key chains with the Spell Walker sigil—a constellation of a being who is taking a step, with the brightest of stars lighting up their fists, feet, and heart. There’s nothing official for the new wave of Spell Walkers, but I do have these framed art prints of them hanging above my desk, one signed by Wesley Young as a perk for donating to a campaign to fund supplies for one of their hidden havens.

I’m the one who should be famous today. Not some twenty-one-year-old who’s probably going to write a memoir about this gap year when she traveled the country taste-testing food.

A few hours later, I drag myself out of bed and get everything ready for the meet-up. I threw down money on custom glow-in-the-dark gel bands for my Brightsiders, notepads with my logo to encourage everyone else to take interest in the celestials around them, and a few T-shirts. There’s this local YouTuber, Lore, who always sells out on their swag whenever they host meet-ups. I told Emil I would call the day a win if I make back at least sixty percent of my money this afternoon, but I’m counting on a stronger profit and will hype myself up hard later when I hit it.

I leave the room so Emil can come in and get dressed. He’s stretched across the couch and reading a graphic novel, and Ma has the news on, but her eyes are distant.

“We got to go soon,” I say.

“You done torturing yourself?” Emil asks.

I scratch my chin, then realize that’s what Dad always did with his beard whenever he was upset. I cut it out. I turn to the news.

“. . . we’re waiting on Senator Iron’s statement on the death of an unidentified specter in the middle of the night,” the Channel One anchorwoman says.

Emil turns away from his book. “She died?”

Viewer discretion is advised before the clip comes on. It’s not the woman from the block party, but instead a man standing on the edge of a roof. This specter also has white phoenix fire, but unlike the woman from last night, both his arms are blazing, and the flames stretch like massive wings—wings that are holding their own against the pummeling winds. The man looks hesitant, but he jumps anyway and takes flight, rising higher and higher until one arm snaps clean off his shoulder. He howls in agony and panic while plummeting like a bird shot out of the sky.