Red City (New Alchemists #1)

Sam

They’re talking in low voices.

“Will Taylor’s gotten an attribution?” one of them asks.

The other man nods as he picks up a fork. “Constantine,” he replies.

“Ah,” says the first man. “An elementalist, then?”

“A very good one. Word is that Diamond’s taking him with her when she goes to Oxford to negotiate a new deal.”

“Her son seems young for that.”

The other man toys idly with his fork. “He’s talented enough that they’re making an exception.”

“Should we be concerned?”

“You don’t think we have enough good talent in Lumines?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

The man turns his wrist slightly.

Sam blinks. She could have sworn he was holding a fork in his hand, but it is a spoon now.

As he uses it to stir a glittering white powder into his coffee, Sam tries to convince herself that the spoon had always been a spoon.

If she were a duller child, perhaps she would have done so successfully.

But her mind is as bright as quicksilver, her memory so flawless that she can memorize a book just by skimming the pages.

So as much as she tries to believe otherwise, she knows what she saw. The spoon had been a fork.

When her mother returns with their orders, they change topics mid-sentence, complimenting the look of their food and the cheap silver earrings her mother wears.

But her mother smiles in the way she does when customers yell at her—strained and meek, her eyes down.

She murmurs, “Thank you,” to them. Only when she steps away again do they continue their original conversation.

Sam, innocent and wholly ignored, listens on, too young to understand why a man’s praise would scare her mother.

“Does Reed know Will’s going?”

“Not yet.”

“You should tell him. Better he hears it from us than the winged lion.”

The second man grimaces. “And why do I have to do it?”

The first man shrugs. “You’re good at it.”

“Bullshit. I deserve a promotion.”

“Patience. Alchemy is the science of changing something into something more desirable, isn’t it? So transform yourself. Make yourself better. The rest will follow.”

The other scowls at the advice. And as Sam puzzles over their exchange, they move smoothly on to complaining about the traffic.

Late in the afternoon, her mother comes into the restaurant closet to find Sam gluing broken fortune cookies to the floor out of boredom, a dreamy smile on her face, still marveling over the apparent magic she had witnessed, the small beauty of forks transforming seamlessly into spoons.

If Sam were older, she would have noticed the way her mother’s lips were pulled thin and red, the fragile skin chapped from a day so busy she hadn’t drunk a single drop of water.

She’d have seen the slight tremor in her mother’s arms from hoisting giant platters for the business lunch parties that had filled the restaurant earlier that day, would have spotted the burns on her mother’s wrist from being scalded by buffet trays.

But at this age, Sam only knows to look for the light in her mother’s eyes, whether they are bright and well rested or weighed down with the exhaustion of half-moon shadows.

She knows her mother’s hair is an indication of how much time she’s had during the day to maintain it—whether it is still slicked neatly back in a long braid, or whether it looks like it does in this moment: loosened and messy, black locks hanging limply on either side of her face, frizz haloed under artificial light like the back of a startled cat.

So Sam sees the exhaustion, but not the temper, and her young heart blooms, happy that her mother is here and they can finally go home.

Her mother scowls, first at her, then at the mess on the floor in the closet that belongs to her boss. Her hand clutches a plastic bag of leftovers, old rice and garlic chicken that hasn’t sold for two days.

Sam finally notices her mother’s temper, but it’s too late now. “Clean this up,” she says while yanking Sam to her feet so hard that her shoulder pops. Sam yelps. “Before he sees.”

But the boss does see. And ten minutes later, her mother is standing before Hayes with Sam hiding behind her legs, biting back tears and nursing a throbbing shoulder, while he tells her mother how lucky she is that he allows her fucking mongrel to stay there during her shifts.

As he cuts her paycheck by forty dollars for the sticky patches that the glue leaves on the closet floor.

After they come home, Sam’s mother sends her to stand in the corner for an hour as punishment, while she heads into the kitchen to stir-fry the leftover rice with garlic and eggs, to dice up the chicken and wrap it into wontons with cabbage and scallions. Sam’s stomach growls, anticipating dinner.

At last, her mother finishes cooking and calls her over to the dinner table. They eat in silence. Sam’s shoulder is still sore. She switches hands to hold her chopsticks and worries over the right thing to say to improve her mother’s mood.

Finally, she murmurs in a timid voice, “I’m sorry, Mama.”

Her mother doesn’t look up. “Do you know why he was angry?”

“Because I made a mess,” she replies.

“Because he was scared.”

“Why was he scared?” she asks.

“Because when customers eat there, they expect to see it clean.”

Sam hangs her head and feels the tears welling again in her eyes. She thinks of the two well-dressed men and their comped meal, recalls the pained shape of her mother’s smile.

“Do you know why I was angry?” her mother asks now.

Sam stares at the wall behind her mother’s head, afraid to answer incorrectly, committing this conversation to memory so she won’t make the same mistakes again.

Shame weighs down her breath. She is every child who has ever desperately ached to please their parents, but can never succeed.

Her mother always works so hard, and yet Sam always manages to make her life more difficult.

“Because you could have lost your job,” Sam finally guesses.

“Because you were eavesdropping on those two customers,” her mother says. “I don’t like you listening in on people.”

Sam says nothing, but she notices the urgency beneath the sternness. Something about those men bothered her mother, although she doesn’t have the guts to ask what it is.

Her mother stares at her. Then she adds softly, “I’m sorry I pulled your arm today.”

And this time Sam sees all the signs of her mother’s remorse—the relaxing of her knotted brows, the lowering of her eyelids, the forward slouch of her shoulders that pulls the bones of her clavicle into sharp relief.

When Sam is older, she will understand that her mother didn’t mean to hurt her on this day, but it doesn’t really matter, because she did it anyway.

“Mind your own business,” her mother says, “and stay out of others’. Your grades are the only thing I want you to worry about.”

“Yes, Mama,” Sam replies.

“College will be here before you know it. So keep your head down and work hard. Reach for the stars, okay?”

They are the first English phrases her mother ever learned: work hard, reach for the stars, the words of a mother who wants her daughter to be able to escape the life she had, the advice of someone who has seen darker times and is trying to follow the light out.

It is the only thing that matters. School, degree, job, money, freedom.

There is always, always hope, if you work hard.

Reach for the stars!

Sam has always thought it a curious phrase. It doesn’t say you can have them. Only that you can try.

“Promise me,” her mother says now.

Sam nods. Her mother takes her hand, presses it to her lips, and tells her to eat a second helping of rice.

That night, Sam lies in bed and stares at the crack on the ceiling. She thinks again about her mother’s reaction to the two men in the restaurant, fantasizes over how the fork had become a spoon. Maybe her mother had seen it happen too. Was that why she’d seemed frightened?

Alchemy is the science of changing something into something more desirable.

But what does that even mean? What is alchemy?

What is more desirable? Sam struggles to understand the concept, because she has never imagined more for her life, has never thought to want anything different.

Still, the phrase sticks with her, the words gradually bending her mind, as words tend to do.

She recalls the regret in her mother’s eyes, how exhausted she always looks at the restaurant.

Perhaps it would be more desirable, Sam supposes, if her mother didn’t have to work so hard.

If they had more money, so that they could paint over the star-shaped crack in the ceiling.

Maybe new curtains would be better than old bedsheets stitched with hand-sewn flowers.

Maybe they could use a bigger apartment, without bars on their door.

And then she starts thinking that maybe it would be more desirable to have a better stuffed animal than Rabbit, and to have nicer toys than her plastic horses, and to read books that are new and aren’t missing their covers, and to wear clothes that aren’t made by her mother from old fabrics.

Maybe it would be nice if she could be noticed more, if she could look as rich and elegant and important as those men in the restaurant.

Maybe she could be a better child, one that her mother deserves.

More desirable. For the first time in her life, Sam wonders if there can be alternatives, if there is something better out there than what she currently has, if there can be a greater version of herself than what she currently is.

For the first time in her life, she feels a curious pang for something she can’t quite describe.

A growing tide of want, a yearning for something bigger, grander.

A win. Making it. The ambition for more.

Everything can be more beautiful. And because it has the potential to be more beautiful later, everything suddenly feels less beautiful now.