Chapter Nine Malcolm Davenport #2
The truck rolls out of the alley. I look back at the brick walls and fairy lights we are leaving behind.
My imagination makes them all flicker with visions—projections—of Emma.
She’s not beat up and crying anymore. Her beautiful face is framed by hair that looks like an ocean at midnight.
She looks like she did the night I met her, silky brown skin, that red dress fitting her curves just right.
I see the fire in her eyes when she threw a ball of stardust at me.
Emma flawlessly walks on walls, with steam curling by her heels in the glow of the fairy lights.
She waves to me, laughing as we turn out of the alley.
Ma-a-an. The Tether is a no-win situation.
I don’t want to hurt someone so beautiful and strong, so protective of her family …
but I sure as hell don’t want to die either.
Jayla brushes my arm as she buckles her seat belt.
I wince.
“Oh, shit,” she says, pushing her glasses farther up on her nose before she examines my injury with wide eyes.
Charles changes lanes. The streetlights blur in the corner of my vision, making trails of light that shift and bend into cats floating on the wind, and I wonder if anything I see is real.
Is magic alive in this place? My family has spelled it so that the magic of our enemies won’t work here and we can practice for the Tether undetected in this area.
Is that spell affecting my vision now? Or is whatever poison Mama conjured in that drink—the one she thought would protect me—making me hallucinate?
Either way, I gotta get better. I’m supposed to see Emma soon.
“Let’s get Malcolm home and heal him up,” Charles says.
“Dang, Malcolm,” Jayla mutters, gazing at my arm again. “Sorry … I didn’t mean to—”
“You meant it,” I reply. “That’s why you insisted on being the one I train with, why you skipped dinner and didn’t feed the lion. You know how cranky she gets when she’s hungry.”
“Nah. I wasn’t hungry. And you know the lion just takes over sometimes,” Jayla says.
“She protects me. But I chose to train you because I know you best, twin. I know how to push you, make you better. And I need you to be on point. You gotta stay focused so you can come out on top. But … where’s your head at, Malcolm? ”
I shrug.
We drive. The streetlights on the highway stretch, their twinkling twisting tails reminding me of the wild strands of Emma’s hair flying behind her as she ran out of my life. Right after she’d run into it at the concert.
“I ain’t trying to live without seeing your stupid face across the dinner table,” Jayla says.
“You won’t.” I groan.
I’m wedged in the middle of the bench seat, Jayla at the passenger-side window. She digs into the glove box, moves aside a bunch of papers, and takes out some bandages. She starts wrapping my arm.
Charles changes lanes again. Cars roll by us. “You good, bruh?” he asks.
I nod. My arm burns.
Jayla gives me that look she always gives when she’s trying to lift my spirits. “Why did the Black time traveler go to therapy?” she asks. “To get ‘past’ family issues!”
I force a smile. The tails on the lights fade away, and my vision is normal again, but the pain gets worse.
Jayla pouts as I slump in my seat, gripping my sore arm.
Every bump in the road is misery. My sister tries to rub my arm to comfort me, but I shift away.
It hurts like hell. I half want to tell Jayla about the drink Ma made me but decide against it.
My sister would nag for hours and accuse me of being crazy for ingesting one of Ma’s spelled concoctions.
But since Alex died, Ma has been so frail.
And now she’s so anxious for me, I’d just wanted to ease her worries. Let her think she was helping.
“You better get serious about training, Malcolm,” Jayla says. She frowns at my wound, but her eyes look wide and worried. “The Tether ain’t no joke.”
“Neither is what you did to the hood of my truck,” Charles says.
“You got fur, claw marks, and drool all over it, Jayla. Hell, you lost control of the lion inside you, and she could have killed Malcolm if I hadn’t distracted her.
Everyone doesn’t heal as fast as you do.
Worry about controlling your power and paying for repairs instead of worrying about Malcolm. ”
I watch Charles’s irritated reflection in the window. As he merges behind a yellow car, he turns on the windshield wipers to clear away fur and spit. “Malcolm’ll be fine,” he says. “God protects babies and fools.”
I’d fuss at Charles about that “fool” comment if my arm didn’t feel so bad.
I’ll need his magic to help heal it. I gotta meet Emma in two days.
And I sure can’t do it like this. I rest my head back and close my tired eyes.
We hit another bump, and I groan, praying for that drink Mama gave me to wear off.
Jayla gently nudges me awake. We’re parked on the street in front of the house.
Her voice is soft but urgent: “You okay, twin?” Her warm brown eyes are brimming with guilt and worry when they meet mine.
She forces a shaky smile. “What’s a sorry time traveler’s favorite song?
” Before I can answer, she blurts, “‘If I Could Turn Back Time’ by Cher. I should play it on repeat till your arm feels better…”
Seeing Jayla’s sadness and hearing the corny joke she picked up somewhere, I force a smirk. “Now we’re even. You’ve avenged the Barbie doll I beheaded when I was five.”
She gazes at a mat by her feet instead of laughing. “Sorry again, Rock.”
She slides out of the truck and helps me do the same, my movements slow and stiff. I grunt as my arm throbs. Pain echoes with each step as we walk toward the house, the gravel crunching beneath our feet.
Charles looms closer as soon as we step inside. “Malcolm, this is worse than I thought,” he says, staring at my wound with a healer’s concern.
The bandages on my arm are stained reddish brown.
His brows form an upside-down V as he tugs the ponytail of his dreads. “I have to—”
“I know,” I reply. He’ll have to use his magic to heal it. I can count on big bro for two things: nagging and ripping me to shreds when he complains to Big-Mama, making it seem like I’m all brawn and emotion and no brains; and stitching me back together when I’m falling apart.
Charles is an asshole. He’s always been jealous of the fact that I’m the family’s protector now.
That I’m Mama’s favorite. But he’s my brother.
I know he’ll get me better so I can get to Emma in two days.
Then, I’ll see if we can find an escape hatch from this Tether nonsense.
When I do that, Charles and everybody else will have to see that I am more than just heart and muscle. I’m not the rockhead they joke about.
“Children, come here,” Ma’s voice chimes from down the hall, breaking the tension.
We head into the living room. Bluebirds flutter around her, leaving trails of sparkling sapphire light.
My mother’s face glows with joy, her smile bright and buttery, but my attention is snagged by the turquoise-blue shimmer of a waterfall in the far corner of the room.
Golden rocks glitter under the crashing waves, and at the bottom, water pools into a shallow pond, where magical fish swim.
Their scales shift from black to red and green, shimmering with a metallic sheen.
What. The. Hell. Is. This?
Tranquil blues and golden hues explode all over the room, spilling onto the walls and ceiling. Mama’s light brown face is lit by golden beams of sunlight conjured above us. She grins proudly. “I redecorated. Don’t you love it?”
I glance up. Fluffy clouds roll by the beaming sun on the ceiling. “It looks real good, Ma,” I say, shaking my head. Why can’t I have a normal living room? A normal life?
She claps her hands with glee. “It’s peaceful. I knew you’d love it. Did my drink help?”
It almost helped me get mauled during battle training. “Yeah, Ma. Thanks.”
She laughs again, the sound light and sweet as a bird singing. “I can protect you,” she says, her tone hopeful. “I won’t fail you like I did Alex.” At the mention of his name, the joy in her face is cast in shadow. A few clouds block the conjured sunlight, and the room darkens.
I lean in and kiss her cheek, and like that, the room brightens again, golden light spilling from the ceiling.
She puts a palm on my face, her eyes soft and full of love. “My son-shine,” she says.
The ache in my arm pulls me back to reality.
I need to get it fixed before the pain kills me, but Charles just stares, his mouth hanging open as real sapphire flames crackle in the firepit.
The walls have become a breathing canvas, a golden African savannah alive with holographic zebras and giraffes grazing on emerald grass.
Their movements cast rippling shadows that dance across the room.
I need to be home more to keep an eye on Ma.
If I’d been with her tonight, she might not have done all this.
It’s beautiful, but I don’t understand it.
The more tense things get at home and the closer the Tether gets, the more Ma conjures madness.
Maybe it gives her some sense of control.
Anyway, I gotta support her, be here to protect the family.
But my mind is stuck on Emma. Working to stop the Tether and prevent more blood from being spilled is worth the risk of more rooms with breathing canvases.
The pain in my arm distracts me from the safe, beautiful world Ma made.
“Malcolm, what happened?” Big-Mama’s voice booms as she enters the room with Pop-Pop. Her nose is slender, her skin beautifully dark, her cheekbones high and proud next to tinsel-gray coils that starkly contrast the dark linen suit Pop-Pop wears. She touches my arm.
Ma seems confused. She’s been so busy watching the bluebirds fluttering around the room that she didn’t notice the blood seeping through my bandage.
“Well?” Big-Mama asks.