Temper

by Nicky Drayden

  “We were hoping to get access to the Sanctuary,” I say. “We need to see Gueye Okahim.”

  “Sure,” Munashe says, trying her best not to laugh. “You and everyone else.”

  My face falls.

  “Oh . . . you’re serious. Well, there’s an eighteen-month waiting list.”

  Eighteen months? We don’t even have eighteen hours. “Well, will he make an exception? It’s sort of urgent.” I bite my tongue so I won’t seem completely desperate. I can’t risk going into details, not with the way the entire office is watching us. I’m not even sure I want Munashe to know the whole truth.

  “Well,” Munashe says, fingers rubbing absentmindedly at her chunky kola nut necklace. “I guess you could try to catch him after services next Tiodoti. The only other option would be to get him to take you into his confidence for a possible apprenticeship.” Munashe avoids playing favorites, but I can’t help but notice that she looks directly at Kasim when she says this.

  “We’re not that desperate. We’ve just got questions,” he says in a half yawn, not understanding how serious things have gotten. “Religious questions.”

  “Well, if you’ve got questions about faith, I know how you can get answers. All you need is a library badge.” They’re simple words, but when Munashe says them, it’s like she’s wielding a sword. Maybe all we were lacking was diligence the first time. Lacking proper motivation. I smack my lips again, the receptionist delivering a cool cup of water into my hand at just the right time. “Anything you could possibly need, you’ll find there.”

  “Anything?” I ask. I take a sip.

  “Anything,” she says with confidence.

  Kasim raises a brow to me. I grimace. If this is our only option, we’ll have to make it work. “Okay. We’ll try the library.”

  Munashe snaps her fingers, and the eavesdropping receptionist drops the paperwork ey’d been pretending to be shuffling, and rushes to the back of the office to dig through drawers. Ey brings back two forms attached to clipboards.

  We fill the forms out and sign them and pass them back to Munashe. She looks down at mine. “Auben, your writing is beautiful. I wish I had script like that.”

  Half a life spent practicing at signature forgeries has turned it into an art form. “I’ve got an interest in calligraphy, I guess.” I shrug.

  Munashe passes the clipboards back to the receptionist, and ey disappears into a room at the back of the office. “So is there anything else I can get you besides library badges?”

  “Our accommodations are a bit lacking,” I say. Might as well shoot for the stars while I’ve got the chance. “We were hoping that we could get a room on the main floor. The cold was nearly the death of us in that basement.”

  “I am so sorry, Auben,” Munashe says, directly to me. She doesn’t consult Kasim for confirmation. “Housing is always a challenge at the beginning of the quarter, but I’ll double-check to see if something more suitable hasn’t become available.” She touches my arm, down near my elbow. She startles as she feels the keloid scar beneath my sleeve. “Auben!” she says. “How are you two tempered?”

  “Six and one,” I mutter, fully ashamed of the part of me I used to be so proud of. In my old life, my bad boy persona got me what I wanted, who I wanted, when I wanted. People loved me for my vices. People hated me for them. But here, they make me worse than hated. They make me invisible.

  I expect Munashe to fawn over Kasim like everyone else, but she doesn’t. Instead she asks me with an inquisitive brow, “Can I see them? Administration doesn’t send many six-and-ones my way.”

  I roll up my sleeve to my shoulder. She traces a finger along each of my vices. Beyond being inappropriate, her reaction throws me completely off. Greater twins are usually repulsed, lesser ones impressed. But Munashe is neither of these. She seems impartial. She observes and takes note without judgment. “You know,” I say. “I’ve shown you mine. It’s only fair that you show me yours.”

  “Auben!” Kasim nudges me.

  “Sorry,” I say. I’ve said that line so many times, it’s impossible for me not to.

  “It’s fine,” Munashe says. “And you’re right. It’s only fair.” She rolls her sleeve up. Her arm is completely bare. No vices. Six-and-one is rare enough. There’s no way she’s a seven-and-none. That’s impossible. No one is viceless, except Grace. And no one escapes Discernment and goes on to tell about it. That leaves only one other option. “You’re a loner?”

  “Auben!” Kasim says, a harder nudge this time.

  “I was born a singleton, yes,” Munashe says, not taking offense.

  “Sorry. That’s what I meant.” No wonder she was a pariah in the office. It has been many decades since singletons were drowned at birth, and though there has been progress toward equality, the prejudice against them is still very real. I can’t deny having bullied a few over the years. Not that they didn’t usually deserve it. Loners were all rough edges, unpredictable, emotions all over the place, and popular only as villains in storybooks. They were exhausting to be around, and usually ended up in whackhouses well before their eighteenth birthdays. It’s been years since I’ve seen one in school. I catch myself staring.

  “It’s okay,” Munashe says. “I know it’s odd. The stuff you’re going through, trying to fit in—I know what it’s like when you’re different. It’s tough. That’s why I don’t hide it from my students. It’s also why I ask to advise our more nontraditional students. Seriously, you two, you can come to me with anything. I’ll help however I can.”

  My mind churns over what it must be like to be an only. She could go anywhere she wanted, whenever she wanted without having to consult another person. She wasn’t tied down, no bickering, no jealousy, no vying for parental attention. She didn’t have to worry about snapping off. In a way, she had absolute freedom, and yet when I think of life without Kasim, I feel a crippling of my legs. Our whole world had once been the confines of Mother’s womb, and during the first stretch of our lives, his face is all that I knew and loved. Our worlds have grown wider, and we have drifted apart, but what was forged in our hearts has not changed, will not change. He is mine, and I am his. It deeply pains me that Munashe will never experience this.

  “I appreciate your offer,” I say to her. “And I’m sorry you have to live this way.” Kasim and I are shoulder to shoulder again. I glance at him, the sorrow heavy on his brow as well, but he has the grace not to make himself look like a complete comfy bumpkin.

  “No reason to be sorry. It’s just the way I am. I don’t know any differently.”

  And that is exactly why I am sorry for her.

  On our way to Sylla class, we take a shortcut through the statuary garden, or the quad as we’ve found it’s commonly called. The place makes the hairs on my neck rise, but if we went around, we’d lose a whole ten minutes and be late for Sylla again, and I’d really like to avoid any unnecessary drama on our second day of school. The morning sun has taken the chill out of the air, and finally it’s warm enough for students to go around in short cikis. They laze among the grotesque stained-glass statuaries, books splayed, fingers running through the soft carpet of grass. Eyes gaze at the slow waterfall of clouds rolling over the top of Grace Mountain. Laughter drifts around us as welshing balls are tossed, risqué jokes are whispered, flirtatious fingers are slapped away. All the while, these mythological glass creatures loom, watching hungrily with chimeral fangs and talons and scaled wings on edge.

  “Heads up!” calls a boy.

  Kasim stops me short, and a pair of brass welshing balls shoot past us and thud against the ground.

  “Sorry, sal,” the boy says as he hobbles past us to retrieve them with the most wicked limp, but slows and backs up, carefully approaching us like we’re feral dogs. “You,” he says, pointing to Kasim. “You’re that new kid, right? The defting prodigy? The one Gueye Okahim has gone rabid for?”

  “Um, I guess?” Kasim says, giving the boy his patented humble-as-shit-pie smile. “Kasim,” he
says, extending his hand. The boy eagerly takes it in both of his, and just about shakes Kasim’s arm loose from his shoulder.

  “Phila,” the boy says, all teeth and gums. “Phila Kumalo. Third year. Co-vice president of the Gabadamosi Welshing Club. Do you play?”

  “No, never had the chance,” Kasim says.

  “Never? Not even once? Man, you’ve missed out. Athleticism, strategy, precision.” Phila attempts a couple of stiff-legged welshing moves.

  “It’s not exactly an accessible sport where I grew up.”

  Phila’s eyes go wide and he nods knowingly, almost embarrassed. “Full of snobs, you’re saying. Yeah, yeah. I get that. But the club isn’t pretentious. We’re really laid back. You should try it at least.”

  “I’m Auben, by the way,” I say, extending my hand.

  Phila lifts his chin at me. “Yeah, hey, sal. Good to meet ya.” His eyes whip back to Kasim. “We practice three times a week, two games a week—one home and one away, and we usually do a tournament per quarter. There are fees for those, and the uniforms and equipment can be pricey, but we’ve got wealthy old donors out the dungpipe. We have a yearly exhibition for alums. Let them relive their glory days on the course, and the djang rolls—”

  “Phila!” calls a guy across the quad, neck to knees in pads and a mask over his face. “Any day now!”

  “Hold your oryx, bait breath. I’m talking to that new kid from the comfy.”

  “The one that made a deft tower ten suites high?” Bait Breath calls. “The one that called Gueye Okahim a false prophet, and then had Gueye begging him to be his apprentice?”

  “Of course. How many other new kids from the comfy do you know of?”

  I grit my teeth. “We’re actually on our way to class, so if you’ll excuse us.” I push past Phila, surprised I didn’t glide through him like the apparition I seem to be.

  “Yeah, we’ve really got to get going. It was nice to meet you,” Kasim says.

  “You’ll come check out one of our games, right? There’s one tomorrow evening at seven. Welshing course B.”

  “Sorry. That’s just not my thing,” Kasim says with a shrug. “But good luck. Hope you win.”

  “Yeah, yeah. It’s not really my thing either. Just doing it because it looks good on the transcript, you know.” Phila runs over to the balls, noticeably less stiff and gimpy. He tosses the balls back to Bait Breath, and they land wide right. “You can move your feet, you know!” he yells at his buddy, then smiles at Kasim. “See ya around, then.” He trots off, a couple of tender skip-steps before easing into a flawless gait.

  I glare at Kasim. “You healed him, didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t mean to,” he says with a shrug. “It slipped out of me, like I had no control. By the time I realized what I was doing, it was too late to stop it. It was a minor sprain anyway. Would have healed itself in a couple days.”

  No control. I know all too well what that’s like. Fourteen more hours until midnight.

  In Sylla class, I become a sponge, absorbing every symbol, every inflection I can. Nearly half of the books in the library were written in Sylla, so that means there’s a fifty-fifty chance that the book we need will be, too. I drill Kasim on vowels, on consonants. Pages flip as I cram a week’s worth of vocabulary into each of our five-minute partnered exercises. Halfway through class, Kasim clenches his temples.

  “Headache?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” he says through gritted teeth.

  “The voices?” I say, whispering this time.

  “Your voice. Does that count?” Kasim manages a half smile. “You’re pushing me too hard. Everything is going in one ear and out the other. What’s the rush, anyway?”

  The classroom goes silent, and suddenly Jomealah Aguda is upon us. I expect him to fawn over Kasim like everyone else is, but instead his ruler snaps Kasim’s knuckles. “Nagi gei Sylla biko, Jomealah Mtuze!” he says. “You may be getting an A in Elementary Defting, but you aren’t guaranteed one in here.” He speaks so dismissively to Kasim, like it’s been raining defting prodigies for the past two weeks. “Sylla, class. Sylla is now your mother tongue.” Jomealah Aguda slaps his ruler on Kasim’s desk. Kasim flushes so hard, his ears go red. Wouldn’t faze me, but Kasim, I don’t think he’s ever been reprimanded like that. The other students snap to attention, and a tidal wave of perfectly enunciated foreign words fills the air.

  I bite back my grin. I hate Jomealah Aguda for embarrassing Kasim, but it’s good to know there are a few people on campus who aren’t swooning over him for yesterday’s antics. I push Kasim harder, making him rattle off irregular verb conjugations, one after another.

  What’s the rush? Icy Blue says with a satisfied yawn. His sleep was deep, but short.

  “Again,” I demand of Kasim, in Sylla. “Faster.”

  As we file out of Sylla class, I give Kasim absolute proximity. I rub his back, hang my arm over his shoulder, but nothing soothes his nerves. He walks in a trance, book satchel clenched to his chest. He doesn’t acknowledge the world until cute little Sesay comes scampering around us and gives Kasim a big hug, her head barely coming up to his chest.

  “You looked like you needed that,” Sesay says. “And if it makes you feel any better, Jomealah Aguda made me cry my first day. He made me feel like a complete idiot, and my mother was a Nri Scholar with a concentration in Sylla, and she’s spoken it to me since the day I was born.” She purses her lips, looks at Kasim like she’s sizing him up, then pulls an enormous leather-bound binder from her satchel and flips through hundreds of pages until her finger lands on a sheet crammed with diagrams, a map, an impressively detailed family tree, and the tiniest, neatest handwriting I’ve ever seen. “So I dug into his life story. He’s seven-eighths Rashtrakutan. Only his great-grandmother was born here, and she was stolen off by Rashtra traders. She was their plaything. Birthed twin sons on board their ship and died a few months later from the pains of the proximity break. The kids were dropped off on a Rashtra port, and raised there. ‘Jomealah Aguda’ didn’t even step foot onto Mzansi soil until ten years ago. Aguda isn’t even his real last name. It’s Khan.”

  She proudly pushes the binder into our faces, her finger tapping at a newspaper clipping taped next to a copy of our teacher’s birth certificate. She slams the binder shut, and the tension eases off Kasim’s face.

  “So he’s a fraud?” I say. “I knew it.”

  “Not a fraud. Just an impassioned guy. Very intelligent. You just need to know how to handle him.” Sesay nods back at her patiently waiting crew, her finger twirling the thin gold chain around her neck like she’s a smitten kitten. “Anyway, a few of us are about to grab lunch. Would you like to join us?”

  All of a sudden, Kasim looks a whole lot less pathetic—which is a bit pathetic in its own right. He loosens his grip on his satchel and swings it over his shoulder. Then he looks at me, brows raised. My brow drops. Our eyes connect, and in the silent language of twins, I tell him we don’t have time to waste. We need to get to the library. This is important. This is life or death.

  Kasim nods, transmission received. “Sure, I’d love to join you,” he says to Sesay.

  My mouth gapes.

  What?

  Sesay turns to me. “You’re welcome, too, Auben,” she says, but for all the grace running through her veins, she cannot hide the fear in her eyes that I will accept. I do not. I make up an excuse about needing to get to the library, which is of course not actually an excuse, but a necessity.

  “I’ll meet you there after lunch,” Kasim says. “I promise I’ll give you my full attention. I just need a little mental break right now.”

  A mental break. That’s exactly what I need, too—a break from the demon in my mind. I shake my head in disbelief as I watch them walk off toward the cafeteria in their tight little group, Kasim two heads taller than the others, hunching over and laughing at their jokes. He looks back at me, nods almost imperceptibly with what looks like absolute joy upon his face. I cannot blame him. I
don’t care how many virtues you have, being wanted feels damned good.

  Unfortunately, I’m feeling the exact opposite.

  A hand lays itself upon my shoulder. “Twinemies, am I right?” It’s Daki, Sesay’s twin. Same cute face, but fuller and wiser. Nearly as bad at defting as I am. “Can’t live with them, can’t live without them.”

  Twinemies. I’ve heard the term, but never thought it would apply to Kasim and me. I push the possibility from my mind. “Kasim and I aren’t like that,” I say. “He’s just hanging out with some new friends.”

  “That’s how it starts. A lunch date here and there. Then come the excuses to why he forgot to show up to that thing you were supposed to do together. Then come the offhand comments that make you feel less than. Then the bickering. Then the avoidance. Don’t feel bad. It’s the natural progress of things. Especially for twins like us.” Daki raises her sleeve to reveal all six of her vice scars.

  I gawk. I cannot keep my fingers from touching them without asking, even after a lifetime of giving people the hairy eyeball for doing the same to me. They are smooth to the touch, and give easily when I press upon them. They shimmer in the sun, like fish scales. Finally, I meet another person in this wicked world with six vices. I let loose a long sigh. She’s just like me.

  She is nothing like you, Icy Blue growls. She is not destined for greatness.

  “You’re welcome to come have lunch with us.” Daki juts her chin in the direction of three other students, their faces familiar from class. I wince at how they’re all clumped together like the fermented sludge at the bottom of a can of tinibru . . . the stuff nobody wants to drink.

  Icy Blue is right. Six vices or no, she is not like me, and is far from being worthy of my friendship. I don’t know what it means to agree with Icy Blue, but it can’t possibly be a good thing. “Thanks, but no thanks,” I say, not bothering to mask the revulsion in my words. Seeing the hurt upon Daki’s face gives me an odd pleasure. I feel Icy Blue’s grin upon my lips as I walk off.