Typically, a broken bone had sidelined him for an afternoon at the most. Since Rosario was close to him, though, he couldn’t make his powers work. His pain, and his inability to make it go away, had started Ernest crying, too. Mal had been fine as soon as Rosario had stepped away, allowing his powers to kick back in.
It’d been the day that they’d learned that Rosario had a posterpower— albeit, the ability to suppress anyone else’s abilities, so long as she was close enough— and that Mal got the hiccups really bad when he cried too hard. They’d started calling their big tree the Malicious Pine after that.
Of course, Mal refused, even though the nickname had gotten so widespread over the years, students who didn’t even know how the Malicious Pine had earned its moniker called it that.
“Hello, Ernest.”
Ernest jumped. He’d been staring thoughtfully up at the dark craggy branches, not even realizing that he was looking straight at Mal until he’d shifted and spoke. Gosh, he’d gotten scary levels of sneaky.
“Hi,” Ernest said, fidgeting. “I got your note. What’s up?”
“I thought we might talk,” Mal said, nimbly making his way down from his perch. “We’ve done remarkably little of it since the beginning of the year, you realize.”
Of course he had realized. It’d eaten at him for months. Sometimes, he swore that Mal glared at him in strategy, but he never came up to him before or after class. Ernest didn’t want to smother him. He knew that clinginess was a bad habit of his, so he’d tried his hardest to give him space.
“Kinda been passing like ships in the night, huh?” Ernest said, forcing a weak chuckle.
“I suppose,” he said, a neither here-nor-there kind of answer that was typical Mal. “I’ve noticed that you’ve been keeping yourself engaged with new company.”
There were hints of an accusation in his voice. Ernest wasn’t sure what to make of it.
“June and Maks, you mean? Yeah, they’re great.”
“Mm. I understand Hovick’s appeal, as she lends a certain joie de vivre to setting people alight that the other pyrokinetics in our block lack, but I don’t see why you’ve aligned yourself with Petrov,” Mal said, frowning out at the dark forest shapes. He lifted his chin, sniffing. “He has little to offer you.”
Ernest recognized the stubborn angle of his clenched jaw, as sure a sign of an oncoming fight as a thundercloud was a sign of a storm brewing. He panicked, trying to figure out how he’d set him off. Why was Mal mad?
“He doesn’t need to offer anything or be useful to get the time of day from me. He’s my good friend. That’s all.”
His clenched jaw collapsed, flattening out into a miserable scowl.
“Am I, still?”
Oh, fudge. Between the tree climbing and his persnickety mood swings, Mal was much more catlike than avian. Like a cat, it was hard to tell when Mal’s feelings had been hurt, since he ran away and acted indifferent when he felt vulnerable.
“Oh, c’mon. You gotta know me better than that! I’m not trying to replace anyone, much less you. You’ll always be my friend.”
Mal gave him a sulky sideways look.
“I was beginning to wonder if you...if perhaps you and Rosario were avoiding me. I realize that my score— ”
Ernest kicked himself. He should have known better. It wasn’t space that he’d needed. Mal needed to feel welcomed home, and he was a whole six months late in realizing it.
Ernest wrapped an arm around his shoulders, squeezing him against his side. Mal struggled initially, but it didn’t last long. It never did.
“For all the reasons in the world I’d have to avoid someone, their score’s not one of ‘em,” he told him, warmly. “Hand to heart.”
Mal finally gave up on escape, going limp. He let Ernest hug him.
“I had expected as much from you, but I— I thought that I should be certain.”
“Still haven’t found a quicker newt-netter in all of Oregon,” Ernest assured him, patting his back. “You’ll always hold that record, buddy.”
“Oh, and what an auspicious title it is,” Mal said, sarcastically. “If the lingering odor of my foul score wasn’t keeping you at bay, why haven’t you been aggressively present?”
“Why haven’t I asked you to hang out, you mean?” Ernest asked, brightly. It dimmed quickly, though. “I dunno. You’d been gone a long time, and I know you’ve...you’ve seen a lot. I figured you’d probably...”
He didn’t even know how to finish the thought. It was nothing but insecurity, which was why it sounded so silly out loud. That just made him twice as embarrassed.
“I think highly of you, Ernest,” Mal said, low and serious. Everything in his voice said that he meant it, too. “I respect you. I don’t always agree with you, but I respect you. Given the...complicated nature of my record, I was unsure that you would want to be associated with me.”
“Wait! What don’t we agree on?”
Mal gave him a thorough sidelong look.
“I don’t think that it’s wise to get involved with your Beta.”
Ernest’s stomach lurched.
“I-involved?” He stammered with a high, dry squeak of a laugh. “I— June and me— I don’t— ”
“Ernest,” Mal sighed, shaking his head. “Please.”
Ernest’s ears burned. Nuts. If Mal knew, June had to have figured it out, too. She had to know. And she hadn’t said anything, which meant that she didn’t feel the same way about him. That was exactly what Ernest had been hoping to avoid. He didn’t want to put her in an awkward position. She was stuck with him, after all. He’d been determined not to let it show.
But June was so bold and bright and pretty, and when he was around her, he just felt— she was just so...
“Is it...is it really that obvious that I like her?” Ernest asked, taking off his glasses and rubbing his forehead. This was terrible. Just all kinds of terrible.
“Obvious enough that debating it with me would be a waste of my time,” Mal said, keeping his tone brisk. “You’re going to be paired for another two years. There is no changing that. Teenage romances aren’t known for their longevity. Should things sour, it might interfere with your overall third block performance. You are taking a risk.” Raising his voice, he glanced up at something past Ernest’s shoulder. “And that goes double for you, Rosario.”
Rosario had come up behind Ernest, so Mal had seen her before his ears had picked up that something larger than a fox was coming their way. She was a lot like Mal in terms of sneakiness, since Aunt Roxy had started her training and boxing as soon as she could make a fist.
Rosario tossed her braid over her shoulder, rolling her eyes.
“I’m sure I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” she said with a tight-lipped smile. “Yes, I’ve got a boyfriend, but no, I’m not stupid enough to date my partner.” To Ernest, she added, “Sin ofender.”
Ernest had learned more from his childhood friends than he’d realized at the time. The Galán-Grant household was fully bilingual, switching between Spanish and English interchangeably— sometimes, right in the middle of a sentence. Auntie Amira had been born in Beirut, so Mal picked up and passed on a whole mess of languages through her.
Ernest had soaked it all up, and he hadn’t even realized it until recently. He’d taken a midterm language aptitude test, and it’d turned out that he’d placed into Advanced Spanish, as well as Intermediate-level French and Arabic. His chest had gotten tight through the exam, because those languages were people in his head.
It was a strange thing, getting homesick for people and times instead of places.
“No offense taken,” Ernest told her with a warm smile.
“Don’t get me wrong. My abuelito is a good guy, but he has been through hell. I don’t think he could handle dating anyone right now. Not when he’s still dating his homework June of 1945.”
Oh, wow. Ernest pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
“So the rumors we
re true? He jumped through time?”
“Honestly? It was less jumping and more pushing. But— ”
“I was not aware that you were attached to someone,” Mal interrupted, crossing his arms over his chest. “I had hoped that our previous friendship would have entitled me to that kind of knowledge, but I suppose that things change.”
Rosario spun on her heel, waving a threatening finger at Mal.
“Oh, no-no-no! I’m not putting up with one of your interrogations. I get enough of the third degree from Mom.” She huffed an annoyed breath, her bangs flopping. “Do you know how hard it is to sneak out on her watch?”
“Consider it a test of your escape skills,” Mal said coolly, giving her I-mean-business finger a bored look.
“How ‘bout you consider my fist in your— ”
“Guys,” Ernest said, bracing himself to step between them, but Rosario shot him a fierce warning glare.
“No. No, you don’t get to ‘guys’ me.” To Mal, she said: “I’ve got a bone or two to pick with you, ese.”
“Now is really not the time to— ”
“You don’t get to drop off the face of the earth for years and then act like it was no big deal! Do you have any idea how worried we were? It took me weeks to convince ‘Nesto to leave his house, he was so messed up after you disappeared!”
“Roz,” Ernest half-begged, embarrassed. His reaction to the loss of the Rook and Little Bird wasn’t one of his prouder moments. The way people had been talking about it, it’d sounded like they’d both died. He’d gotten the wrong idea.
“It was never my choice,” Mal said, quietly.
“What happened to you?” She pressed, shoving Mal’s shoulder. It wasn’t hard enough to be the precursor to a fight. Their rough housing had always been very specific. “Where’d you and your dad go?”
“That’s just it.” Mal didn’t push her back. He just sort of wilted, chin tucked. “Nothing happened to me. That’s what’s funny, out of all of this.”
“What?”
“You deserve the truth, I suppose. Father and I stayed in Portland, living under false identities. We didn’t do anything.” He sighed. “We merely lived.”
Ermest was dumbfounded. All that time spent wondering, cooking up progressively more terrible scenarios in his head, and the Underwoods hadn’t ever left town?
“Seriously?”
“Yes. We stopped patrolling. He owned an apartment building in Portland— one of his many established cover identities— and he acted as the superintendent. He continued to privately train me in hand-to-hand combat, but it was without application.”
“Why?” Rosario asked, not even bothering to hide the suspicion in her voice.
“To give me a taste of what it would be like to live a normal life.” Mal laughed hollowly. “He taught me inane, boring skills. How to mail a letter. How to ride public transit in a large city. How to shop for groceries. How to fix a kitchen sink. So-called life skills that we are not taught here.”
They were all quiet for a few moments after that. Ernest tried to imagine what a normal life would look like. It was hard. He didn’t even know what subjects normal kids learned in school.
“What was it like?” Ernest asked, trying not to sound wistful. The grass was always greener. He knew that, but he still wondered what it smelled like.
“It was very quiet.”
Rosario rubbed her temples. “Okay, so your dad wasn’t really the big bad Rook. Why don’t you tell people?”
“Who would believe that the Rook gave up the glory of the fight in some addled attempt to prove that we are capable of a life outside of the war against crime? No one,” Mal answered, heat creeping into his voice. Heat, and resentment. “And the few existent believers would not care. In life, he didn’t seek out public approval. I must assume that death would not alter his convictions.”
Ernest thought about some of the downright awful things that people had said about the Underwoods. They’d been stock fodder for late night talk shows for years. Mr. Underwood had never fussed about it, but it didn’t make sense.
“But if you two hung up your capes, then...then why’d he...why’d they...”
Mal didn’t look up.
“I had hoped that we would have outgrown these childish games of twenty questions by now,” Mal said, as final as a door swinging shut.
He was done answering questions. He’d opened up a lot, to be fair. For Mal, at least.
“By which I mean, we are no longer posterchildren. We are team leaders, accountable to our own partners, but I see no reason for us to become rivals,” Mal finished. It sounded rehearsed. Yeah, he’d opened up as much as he was prepared to for one night. He was back on script.
“I never thought of either of you like that!” Ernest interjected, scalded at the mere thought.
“Of course you didn’t see us as your rivals. You lack the, ah. The competitive bones.”
Ernest never said anything when Mal missed the mark, but it made him smile inwardly whenever he slipped up with English sayings. It didn’t happen very often, but idioms were slippery. It made him smile because it reminded him that not even Mal was perfect.
“I just feel like if winning something means more to someone else than it does to me, why not give it to ‘em? Everyone deserves to win sometimes.”
Rosario laughed.
“I look forward to the day ultra conservative news providers will take soundbites like that one grossly out of context in an attempt to prove that you have a secret socialist agenda. ‘Show us the Commander’s birth certificate!’” Rosario said, mimicking a male announcer’s deep voice. “You know, that kind of thing.”
Ernest’s heart slammed against his ribs. That wasn’t something to joke about.
“Why?”
“Because then we will know that you have truly become an American hero. You lack a certain amount of legitimacy until a pundit has accused you of being the cancer killing our great nation.” Mal’s smirk turned sharp-edged. “More of my father’s questionable words of wisdom.”
“Man, I wish I’d had the chance to get to know your old man,” Rosario said. “I think I would have liked him.”
The way Mal’s head dipped said that he wished the same thing.
“Are you satisfied?”
“You’re not off the hook, ese. That’s all I’m sayin’.”
He summed up what he thought about that with a loud and very purposeful throat-clearing.
“Nonetheless. I called you both here tonight to discuss the Night Games. There are, as you know, so-called ‘free’ points that will be awarded to the top three teams.”
Mal stood and turned away from them, his hands clasped loosely behind his back.
“Allow me to be frank. My score has put me at a severe disadvantage. If Zipporah and I are to graduate into the capstone class, it is imperative that we pick up as many of those extra points as possible.” Mal’s shoulders rose, rolled, and sagged with a sigh. “And to that end, we may require your help.”
“Well, I’ll be,” Rosario said, her grin pulling cheshire-wide. “Is Maillardet’s little prince lowering himself to admitting that he needs a friendly helping hand?”
“I see that you are every bit as blunt as I remember,” Mal muttered crossly. “You forget, Rosario— I am anathema, now. To associate with me is to absorb my reputation. And I— I had hoped to spare you from that.”
Ernest hadn’t thought that it’d be possible to feel worse about his misunderstanding with Mal, but now he did. Nobody deserved to feel that unwanted. Suddenly, his blow up when his mom had subbed in strategy made a lot more sense.
“You just say the word,” Ernest said, firmly. Reaching out, he squeezed Mal’s shoulder.
“Name one time when we didn’t back you up, growing up,” Rosario dared Mal. “Just one.”
“I cannot. Not off the top of my head.”
She smiled placidly. “There’s your answer.”
Ernest would have sworn that he s
aw a weight leave Mal’s shoulders. He felt it, too.
“Good. We will discuss this more at a later date. Zipporah is waiting for me to train her, and she does not tolerate waiting well. Will a Monday-Wednesday-Friday night schedule work for you? I believe we would all benefit from a regiment of practice drills.”
Well, maybe he’d get used to breaking the curfew if he started doing it on such a regular basis, Ernest rationalized. June was good at talking him out of feeling guilty.
“Yeah. I’ll let you know in advance if Mom and Mama need me and Jack to babysit Her Tyrannical Majesty, Liberty Galán-Grant,” Rosario agreed, leaning back to look fondly up at the spiny silhouette of the Malicious Pine. “I hate to admit it, but I might have actually missed training with Your Sour Lordship, Prince Malek.”
Mal flinched at the use of his full name. He’d been Malek right up until he’d met his father. After that, he’d been Mal, and only Mal, because Mal was a better name for a public hero. Ernest had privately worried, because if there were such a thing as inappropriate public hero names, he’d be in trouble. West would’ve been a great name for a hero, but he was stuck with Ernest.
“If it works for you two, it works for me. I’m glad you’re back.” Reaching over, Ernest patted Mal’s back. After a slow inhale and exhale, he felt him relax. “We’ll get you to the finish line. Just you wait and see.”
“Yes,” Mal said, sounding hopeful, but unconvinced. “We shall see.”
°
“So remember, your actions are your own. Unless you’re under mind control, of course. That is when you must pray that you’ve adequately studied your legal defenses,” the Queen said, closing her notebook just as the end-of-class bell rang.
June was of two minds when it came to psychology with Professor bint Balqis. It was one of her favorite— and most challenging— classes, but she couldn’t decide what she thought about the Queen herself.
Her initial impression of her had been Classy Smart Muslim Lady, and while all of that still held true, she had found that there was more to the Queen than that. The Queen was like a lioness in a hijab, and as much as that ferocious, Alpha-alpha-female-ness frustrated June, she couldn’t help but be seriously impressed by her accomplishments.
The Posterchildren: Origins Page 23