by Adam Silvera
“Bright, dude, let them go,” I say.
“Right, right.”
Four enforcers shout for everyone to freeze as they approach with wands. I don’t move a single muscle. It’s not uncommon for celestials to sign up to become enforcers, but the majority of people on the force don’t have powers of their own, so they’re trained to cast attacks at the first sign of danger. Too many celestials have been stunned and met untimely deaths because of hotheaded enforcers.
“Don’t move,” I tell Brighton.
I watch all the enforcers, wishing I was also geared up in their bronze helmets and sea-green power-proof vests. My breathing speeds up, and my legs tremble, and I’m terrified the enforcers will mistake my shaking for an ability I don’t have.
In the middle of the street, an enforcer trains her wand at the specter as another secures her with gauntlets and shackles to render her temporarily powerless.
Atlas’s back is turned to the enforcers, and he has a wordless exchange with Maribelle that makes me nervous. She takes a deep breath and nods, and her eyes burn like sailing comets while Atlas’s swirl like billions of stars caught in a black hole. Atlas rolls to the side while Maribelle levitates. A gust of wind knocks me and Brighton into a car as spellwork explodes around us, loud like firecrackers. I make sure Brighton is all good before checking out the action from underneath the car. Enforcers are swept off their feet, wands rolling away from them. Strong winds lift Atlas, and he grabs Maribelle out of the air. They fly over an apartment building and out of reach of the spells being shot their way.
“Emil, let’s go. Get up. Come on.” Brighton crouches as he runs in the opposite direction of the enforcers. Now that the Spell Walkers are gone, he finally wants to leave. Of course.
I was never the sort of kid who ran in the halls, talked during class, or crossed the street when it wasn’t my light, because I hate getting in trouble, but right now it’s as if I’m possessed by the bravest of ghosts as I pound the pavement, zigzagging away from the enforcers in case they take another shot at me. If it weren’t for Brighton bouncing, I would’ve hung tight, my face kissing concrete and arms outstretched in the hopes that the enforcers would realize I’m not dangerous. Being associated with the Spell Walkers after the Blackout is a gamble we can’t afford to take.
Couple blocks later, we hop on a bus that’s headed home. We take advantage of how empty the back is, stretching out. We’re drenched in sweat, and I desperately want a gallon of water to drink and pour over myself.
“You okay?” I ask, while massaging the elbow I landed on and trying to breathe past the sharp pain from my rib cage.
Brighton’s arms are scraped up from the fall, but he doesn’t seem bothered. “That was a rush! We got to meet the ultimate power couple!” He sounds like he’s bottled all the joy in the world, and I really wish I had some to drown out my panic. “Atlas even used his winds on us. I hope the camera caught that.” He stares at me. “Where’s my tripod?”
“Oh, I don’t know, I left it behind somewhere between the specter burning the street down and enforcers shooting at us. I can run back and get it.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Brighton says.
“That wasn’t a real offer.”
Brighton rewinds the footage. “The ad money I should be able to make off this video will pay for another one.”
“How can you think about your video right now? Enforcers shot at us, and Maribelle almost killed someone.”
“No one would’ve blamed her if she had. That specter was raising hell.”
I don’t know the specter’s name or anything about her life to argue that there’s a good bone in her body, but I still didn’t like seeing her on the ground with a wand aimed at her. Who knows if the enforcers will lock her up in the Bounds with everyone else who has powers or make her disappear completely.
I’m not about where this conversation is headed. This isn’t over something stupid, like Brighton wearing my shirt because he needs to rock something new for a video or me borrowing his bike without checking in.
My phone buzzes. It’s Prudencia texting to wish us a happy birthday; for the first time ever, we’ve missed celebrating our midnight minute. Eighteen is off to a rough start. Dad would’ve been disappointed. I’m so tight that Brighton’s not going to catch me throwing out a fist bump and acting like everything’s good.
“Why are you mad?” Brighton asks, taking his eyes off his camera. “Because I would’ve been fine with that specter dying? The Spell Walkers save more lives than they take, but if they have to kill, I trust they’re taking the right lives.”
I don’t want to engage—I’m one of those angry criers, and Brighton is straight pissing me off—but I can’t shut up. “We don’t get to decide which are the right lives to take.”
“Ever since the Blackout, the game isn’t what it used to be,” Brighton says. “I’m not going to get mad at good people killing bad people.”
Truly tempted to get off the bus and walk home alone. “It’s not a game.”
“You know what I mean. People die in wars, that’s inevitable.” Brighton leans forward and nudges my knee. “If we had powers, we could’ve helped them. The Reys of Light, right?”
He’s been calling us that since we were ten, right after we found out our last name, Rey, means king. You couldn’t stop us from fantasizing about how our name was probably some prophetic code that we’re destined for greatness—the heroic twins who are doubly strong and can communicate across the city without phones. We’re not special at all, but the name stuck, even though our brotherhood seems to be getting dimmer and dimmer by the day.
“Yeah, well, I thank the stars we don’t have powers,” I say. “Not trying to find blood on my hands.”
“Killing to save the world is different, bro.”
“Heroes shouldn’t have body counts.”
For once, he’s quiet.
We stare each other down like a game of chess that’s hit stalemate. Both kings live but no one wins.
Three
Dreamer
BRIGHTON
The world’s about to find out I’m the real deal.
I struck gold with this video, not even playing. It’s not the first time I’ve seen celestials perform miracles with their powers. One of the craziest was when this Suit fell onto the subway tracks as the train was approaching; kind of cliché, but it happened. Before I could be his hero, this little kid grabbed the man’s wrist and lifted him onto the platform as if the Suit were as light as the doll clutched in the boy’s other hand. Problem is, moments like that are too quick to catch on camera. That’s why the power brawl I’ve just finished uploading is going to make waves.
I play the video over and over. Right as the enforcers cast their spellwork for the millionth time, Emil shoots up from bed and tells me to turn it off already, but I just throw on headphones and crank up the volume. I really should get some sleep so I have energy for all the fans I’m meeting tomorrow, but I can’t help staying up and refreshing the video every minute to track views and read comments. Half an hour in, the stats are good, but this late-night crowd isn’t coming through the way I hoped they would. Still, I know my thirty thousand Brightsiders will do their thing and get this circulating by the time I wake up—it’s too irresistible.
I close my laptop and leave it on my desk, which is cluttered with my Nikon camera, candy wrappers, comics, and an ongoing list of videos I’m hoping to film once I get to Los Angeles. In bed and under the covers, I relax on my back because my shoulder is sore. I can’t wait to show off the bruise to my fans. This is a war wound I’m wearing with pride because not many people can say they’ve been thrown by Atlas’s winds.
The Crowned Dreamer needs to come through on our birthday and bless us. If our latent powers kick in, I know Emil will change his tune about living out our original fantasy of being the Reys of Light, the people’s champions. We grew up on books and movies where ordinary teens discover they’re special—chosen on
es, long-lost wizards, whatever. It rarely plays out that way in real life, but who knows.
Unlikely but not impossible are the best odds for any dreamer.
Our bedroom door slams against the wall so hard that my childhood drawing of the Spell Walkers falls. Ma is standing in our doorway, breathing in and out as she holds her chest; her heart must be attacking her again. I nearly trip over my covers to get to her.
We’re about to watch Ma die, so soon after losing Dad.
“Call 911!” I shout at Emil, who is frozen in bed.
Ma shakes her head. Her eyes are watering. “The block party was attacked, and I have to find out from the news? I thought I was coming into an empty bedroom. . . .”
Emil snaps out of it and comes to hug her. “We’re okay, Ma, sorry. We got in late, and I was in shock, I think.”
Hold up.
“The news? My video got picked up?”
“You filmed it?!” Ma shouts.
I grab my phone while Emil tells Ma how he tried getting me away from the action last night. Judging by all the notifications on my phone, I’m damn glad I stood my ground. I check YouTube, and my video is coming up on ninety thousand views, which is more than triple what I’ve ever received but it’s not skyrocketing the way I was expecting. It’s still early, and I’ve gotten a few thousand new subscribers too. Everyone’s thanking me in the comments for capturing this fight, and I smile when someone calls me a hero in my own right.
I wonder which stations and websites have circulated the video, so I hop on Twitter, where I get all my news. BuzzFeed tweeted out an article titled “Vlogger Films Explosive Battle with Spell Walkers.”
“BuzzFeed covered my video!”
I’ve done hundreds of quizzes on BuzzFeed, and now I’m featured. What is this life?
I open the article, and there are GIFs galore, but they’re capturing angles that my video doesn’t. I scroll back to the top of the article. They’ve linked to another YouTuber’s account, MinaTriesThis.
“No way.”
Her video has hit over one million views.
I press play: it looks like Mina was vlogging, trying out a celestial’s homemade moonbeam ice cream right as the first tent lit up in flames. So many people run past her, but she just had to go ahead and keep filming.
To steal my spotlight.
I keep tuning out Emil and Ma as I bounce around online. Screw BuzzFeed for highlighting Mina’s video instead of mine, but I must’ve gotten some love somewhere to reach my stats. The brawl has been covered by the New York Times, CNN, Time magazine, the Scope Source, and Huffington Post, but Mina’s video is embedded in all of them. It’s the top trending video on YouTube.
“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 unti
l one arm snaps clean off his shoulder. He howls in agony and panic while plummeting like a bird shot out of the sky.
The anchorwoman returns before the station can show the impact. “Medical officials arrived to the scene to find the specter near death, expecting a recovery, as his arm was growing back, but he died minutes later.”
“He regrew his arm?” Emil stares at the ceiling as if answers can be found there. “Song-rooks are the only phoenixes who can regenerate body parts like that, but it takes hours. And their fire is violet, not white.”
“Guess there’s another phoenix out there that can,” I say. I’m not up on phoenixes like Emil is, but he wasn’t exactly acing all his coursework on creatures either. “Not the first time blood alchemy failed someone.”
We’re quiet.
The alchemists who were working on Dad didn’t exactly promise a full recovery, but they sure were arrogant about how brilliant they were for developing a potion with the regenerative properties of a hydra’s blood and introducing it into the systems of sick people. I wonder how much more time we would’ve had with him if we’d let him waste away without their help.
The anchorwoman cuts to Senator Iron, and Ma groans as she raises the volume.
New York’s senior senator, Edward Iron, has a full head of dark hair, pale skin that’s gone a few rounds with Botox, thick glasses, and a suit that probably costs more than our rent. “Last night’s specter incidents, hours apart in our city, are disturbing signals of the crisis our country hasn’t escaped. If elected president, Congresswoman Sunstar will create more opportunities and freedom for her people, when we need stricter regulations to avoid the horrors many woke up to this morning. My opponents campaigned against me, claiming this was only a conflict with specters, not celestials, but the Blackout sadly proved me right about how dangerous the Spell Walkers are. . . .” Senator Iron closes his eyes, takes a moment, and nods. “We’re working around the clock to locate and apprehend the Spell Walkers.”