by T R Tells
I knew that he knew I was not only talking about school, but Veronica too.
The look in his eyes was cast downward, and his brows were furrowed together in annoyance.
“She’s been relentless, sending me texts, or contacting me through social media until I blocked her… But when she showed up in front of my house, my mother went off on her, and forbade her to come near me—‘or else’.”
My eyes widened, imagining Mrs. Drake angrily speaking Afrikaans to Veronica. It put a smile on my face to know that she wouldn’t have her way.
“... So, your mom knows?”
Alessander shrugged. “She believes that Veronica is pregnant, just not with my baby. So for now, Veronica’s ceased her stalking.”
I sighed.
“At least that’s something, I guess.”
“Hey—” Alessander reached over the bed to take my hands in his. “Enough with the negative stuff. That’s how those Umbra things can take over, right? I’ve got a surprise to tell you.”
I raised my brow and smiled. “Really? What is it?”
He squeezed my hands, looking a little nervous before he spoke, “You remember back at the Paper Doll?”
I slowly nodded, my stomach tightening. I didn’t like to remember the days when he’d forgotten that I existed.
“Well… A talent scout had actually been watching the video of me on Instagram. I hadn’t expected it, Hira, but the CEO of Soul Records—Prodi-Jay—contacted me and wants to sponsor me. He was the one that founded and made S.T.A.R. a hit back in the day.”
My jaw dropped, and my heart leaped in my chest. Finally there was good news happening and, maybe, by association I might meet my favorite band.
“Are you serious? Alessander, that’s great, I mean, it’s more than great—it’s amazing!” I exclaimed, wrapping my arms around his neck.
He pulled me off the bed and into his lap. I let out a giggle as he securely wrapped his arms around me.
“I honestly didn’t know what I wanted to do, but this feels right, Hira. It might not have been at the start, but it’s something that I can control.”
I could see the twinkle in his eyes when he spoke. Besides him playing football through High School, he had always talked about making music a part of his career. Except for releasing a few tracks on Sound Cloud, this was the biggest opportunity that he had received.
And I was happy to see a smile on his face. He’d been through enough with Veronica and finding out what I could do—He needed a break.
But so do you, you know.
“... When you get out of here, why don’t we celebrate?” Alessander asked, letting his arms loosen around my waist. “I know things have been looking bleak, with everything that happened with Mahogany, and—”
I shook my head and touched his cheek so he could look at me.
“No, you’re right. We should celebrate. I’m torn up about Mahogany just as much as you are, but we deserve some kind of break at least a little bit, and then we can get back to bullshit later.”
He smirked and let out a sighed laugh.
“Yeah, well, explain that to Trey.”
I frowned.
“What’s going on with Trey?”
***
After Alessander left, I figured that I was physically (and mentally) strong enough to see Mahogany. I’d been holding off seeing her because of the guilt building inside of me, but thinking over what my mother had said made me feel a little less anxious.
Thankfully, my mom had brought my slippers so I wouldn’t have to walk barefoot along the hospital floors (you never know what you could catch) and some shorts (so my hospital gown wouldn’t show the world my business). I left the room and walked down the narrow hallway to the receptionist's desk, where there was a black woman with her hair in a bun typing away at the computer.
I cleared my throat.
The woman’s thin eyebrows rose when I approached, and she said, “What can I do for you, hon?”
“Um, I’m looking for Mahogany King.”
The woman’s clawed nails fiercely tapped away at the keyboard. The clicking of the keys stopped, and she pointed to the left, eyes still on the screen.
“She’s on the third floor, room 309.”
I thanked her with a smile and headed for the elevator.
The inside of the four-by-four walls of the steel elevator was making me claustrophobic as I contemplated what I would say to Mahogany. She wouldn’t be able to respond if she was in critical condition. If it was anything like Alessander’s accident, there was a chance she would still be able to hear me.
Maybe she’d find it in her heart to forgive, and despite what happened, Moa never liked seeing people upset or blaming themselves.
I took a deep breath as the elevator dinged and opened.
I was a foot in the doorway of Mahogany’s room when I realized that she wasn’t alone.
Trey was sitting on a chair by her bedside, holding her hand. The hospital rooms all looked the same, but seeing Mahogany lying there with a respirator attached to her, the only thing keeping her alive, made the room dreary and bleak. My heart was pounding in my chest, and I quietly held my breath. What I heard from Alessander was that Trey had not been alright since Mahogany’s accident. He had visited her every single day, before and after school. One day when Alessander had gone down there to visit her, Trey had actually snapped at him for being too loud. Alessander had never seen the depraved and angry emotion of his friends, and did what he felt like he had to.
He told Trey everything.
“I’m sorry, Hira, but you should have seen him… He might have gotten a bit handsy and forceful, but I couldn’t get angry at him. How could I? Not too long ago, I had been in the same predicament, and I wouldn’t want to be left in the dark like that. I hope you aren’t mad at me, Ira.”
I hadn’t been mad at him. I was angry at myself for not saying something to my friend first, and I had a feeling that Trey would know that I had a hand in something.
“... Are you just going to stand there?” Trey said without looking over at me. His shoulders were tense, and even though I couldn’t see his face, judging by his disheveled hair and wrinkled clothing, I could tell he wasn’t doing so well.
“Trey, I… ”
The words were caught in my throat when he turned in his chair to look at me. His eyes were bloodshot.
“How long were you going to keep this secret about what you could do?”
I swallowed the lump in my throat and licked my lips. There was no point in telling him that ‘I was going to’ because if I was, he would have been known.
“... I’m sorry that it wasn’t me who told you, but there was never a… right time.”
Even those words sounded stupid coming from my mouth.
Trey scoffed. The chair's legs screeched along the floor when he stood. The jolt and pounding sensation slammed into me as I backed up against the wall, gripping my chest. It wasn’t Trey who scared me, despite his furrowed brows and his teeth gritting together, but it was the massive cloud of apathy that was hovering over his head.
He stopped at arm’s length from me, and I had to take slow even breaths as the pressure from his aura enclosed around my lungs.
“There was always a perfect time. You told Alessander, didn’t you? And it never occurred to either of you to tell your friends,” he gestured his arm out and pointed at Mahogany, “what the fuck was going on? If you had all these powers, we would’ve been able to save Mahogany months ago!”
I flinched. Trey had never once shouted at me, and seeing the angered look in his eyes was something I wasn’t used to.
I struggled to speak as the pressure wasn’t helping my disposition, “That isn’t how it works, Trey. I have to be able to sense and see something first. Everyone has an Apathetic Cloud over their heads, that’s something out of my control.”
Trey smirked, but the cold look on his face was something that I hadn’t thought he would be able to possess.
> “So, in other words, you can only come at the last minute? Do you know how useless you sound right now?” the tone of his voice rose slightly, and even though his eyes were narrowed, they were wild. “You always want to talk about ‘if you could save people’ and ‘the injustice of society,’ but you can’t even save your best friend when you know the shit she goes through?”
A burst of laughter erupted from Trey’s lungs, and the cloud above his head enlarged. Instead of the usual purple and blue, it was starting to turn a stormy gray. I wanted nothing more than to run out of the room, but I was sure if I did, he would catch me first. Trey had never been a physical or violent person. Knowing Apathy was festering in him, I wasn’t sure of his motives.
“...You’re just a damn hypocrite,” Trey continued. The laughter died, and his face grew serious again. “Is this what your daddy would have wanted?”
The minute he spoke about my dad, the pressure that had been building receded, and I leaned off the wall and gripped my hands into tight fists. My body was heated with anger at the blatant disrespect.
“Don’t you dare say my father’s name like that again, Trey.”
Trey rolled his eyes and waved me off as if he didn’t care. The tension and boiling anger never entirely left, I could still sense the pressure around me. He walked back over to Mahogany’s bedside with his back facing me as he pushed the hair out of her pale face.
“...Her parents are going to pull the plug, you know,” he finally said after a long moment of tense, stretched out silence.
My hands unclenched, and the tightness in my chest slowly unraveled as the shock of his reveal dawned on me.
“W-What? They aren’t even going to wait to see if she can pull out of this?” I exclaimed. I’d always thought Arthur and Regina King were despicable people who didn’t deserve to have children. Still, they were blatantly willing to give up on her like she was nothing.
Trey shook his head, and the stormy cloud above his head began to pulse.
“...Even if you did manage to save people, this...world,” he spat out as if the word was poison on his lips. “Is full of injustice, with evil people who do evil things for sheer enjoyment, there’s no point in saving it.”
He partially looked at me, and the shadowed look in his blue eyes was something I hadn’t seen before.
“You want to be a hero, Hira? Well, let me tell you that there’s no point in being one. The negativity that you see daily will keep happening. Even if there is good, evil will always be right behind, and they won’t care about doing it the right way. If it was up to me, I would kill those who weren’t worthy. I could actually save people like Mahogany. There are people out there, right now, that are burdened and humiliated by society. Those same people are forced to be something that they aren’t. They tell you that if you want to make it anywhere, you have to be at the top and push others off the tower first, no matter what it does to them.”
The pulsating gray cloud was thicker and more prominent again, there were even hints of red aura. I couldn’t let my friend go down this path and let the anger consume him. He might have been right, but succumbing to their lowest forms wasn’t going to help anyone.
I took a couple steps forward but made sure to keep a distance between us.
“Trey, you need to calm down. If you let your anger get the best of you, then your mind won’t be your own. We can work this out together. You can’t harbor resentments like this. You’re right, but we can’t charge into the situation blind.”
“Bullshit, Hira. I’m tired of waiting on the sidelines, hoping for some kind of miracle.” He let go of Mahogany’s hand and walked around the chair, approaching me. I took a step backward and curled my hands into fists just in case. “...If there can’t be real justice for those who get persecuted, or punishment for those who get away with terrible shit...”
He closed the space between us, leaving only an inch apart as he leaned into me so I could see the dead look in his eyes.
“...Then let it all burn.”
Those words struck me like a chord. There was a dead tone in his voice, almost as if something else had replaced him altogether.
In my stunned state, he shouldered past me with a hard shove. I was in a daze as I watched him leave the room with the Apathy Current lingering behind him.
“Trey, Trey!” I shouted after him, almost tripping over my feet.
But when I reached the doorway, he was already getting on the elevator, ignoring my pleas.
My heart squeezed in my chest and gripped onto the doorframe. That hadn’t been Trey right there; I had never seen that raw anger inside of him.
The beeping from Mahogany’s machine brought me out of my daze, and I turned to look at her unmoving body. My eyes welled with tears seeing her hooked up to the machine keeping her alive.
The burdening guilt that had been harboring inside of me started to bubble again.
“...I’m sorry Moa...I’m sorry that I wasn’t there for you.”
With nothing else to say, I left too.
Chapter Twenty-Two
It was Tuesday when I was finally being released. Mom and Omari—who had AJ—had come to pick me up. I was more than happy to be free from the miserable hospital, where the only thing I could do was ‘get better’ and think about the hatred in Trey’s eyes. I didn’t tell Alessander precisely what happened (he would be furious), but I asked him to keep an eye on him.
I would try and prevent an Umbra Shade from taking over his mind. I couldn’t live with myself if both Mahogany and Trey were taken over.
“Oh, sweetie, how are you feeling?” my mom asked when a nurse wheeled me outside. She thanked the nurse with a wave of her hand and helped me stand.
“I’m fine, Mom. I just want to get out of here, that’s all.” I didn’t tell her that I’d visited Mahogany, and thankfully she didn’t ask.
“You know,” Omari said, getting out of the passenger’s seat, “I was telling Mom that you were fine. You look practically healed. Did you stay extra days to get out of school?”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re lucky Mom’s here, otherwise, you know what—” I lifted my hand, indicating that I’d give him the middle finger.
He laughed and opened the door for me to be greeted by AJ.
“Hee-ya!” he exclaimed happily with his arms in the air. I climbed in the back seat and kissed his forehead. I noticed that his hair was braided.
“So someone finally did your hair, huh, sweet boy?”
My mom got in the driver and said, “That someone would be me. Now is everyone buckled in?”
Omari and I both chimed in with a ‘yeah,’ and Mom pulled away from the curb.
“Oh, Mom, do you think I can go over to Helene’s house? We still have a project to do.” I didn’t trust telling Helene everything about Alina over the phone. I had to tell her in person.
My mother looked at me from the rearview. She had a worried look on her face, and I knew that would mean no.
“Perhaps you can tomorrow, Hira. You were just discharged. I think you should rest for the day.”
I nodded. I didn’t want to worry my mom more than she was already. I could imagine all the things that were going through her mind, and I hated that this was happening.
“Okay, Mom,” I said.
I played with AJ through the majority of the car ride.
***
Before we parked the car in the driveway, I could already see Nikki standing on our lawn. Omari groaned from the front seat and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “What could she want now?” he muttered, getting out of the car after Mom pulled in. He walked in front of the car and headed straight toward Nikki.
“Hira, get AJ,” my mom told me and turned off the engine. She got out of the driver’s side, too.
I frowned. I couldn’t be sure why Nikki would be here, she never picked AJ up on her own volition.
“Come on, AJ, time to go inside the house,” I told him and unhooked his car seat. He had an expressionless l
ook on his face as if he could sense the tension. “Don’t worry; everything is going to be okay.”
I had AJ on my hip, and as I walked up the driveway, I heard the last parts of Nikki’s speech, mostly because she was yelling it at the top of her lungs. Her movements were uncoordinated as she swayed from side to side.
“—You can’t just keep my son like that, Omari!”
“Nikki, you need to calm down. Do you really think it would be safe to have AJ around you when you’re like this?” my brother said in a soothing voice. He was keeping his distance, but I could tell by his hardened jaw and tense shoulders that he was trying not to lose his cool.
“How the hell am I ‘being’, Omari? You have my son!”
AJ started to shuffle in my arms. His brows were furrowed, and a small whine left his lips. I rocked him up and down, hoping it would calm him.
“We have scheduled visits, and since when do you ever want to have him? You’re always quick to drop him here.”
Nikki’s face turned beet red, and her eyes widened. Her manicured nails were in a tight fist, and she took a step toward Omari, ready to swing.
“Nikki,” my mother warned, stopping her from striking my brother. “You don’t want to take unnecessary actions, or else you might not see AJ again. I know you don’t want that.”
Nikki glared at my mother. There was ferocity on her face, but sadness in her eyes.
“Look, I just want my son, alright? He’s my kid, and he needs to be with his mother, period.”
She looked over to where I held AJ on the porch. The moment our eyes locked, a heavy pressure settled on my chest, and a small swirling cloud began to surface above her head.
Damnit, Nikki, not you too.
Nikki started walking toward me, but Omari blocked her path with his hands in air, careful to not touch her. She glared daggers in his direction. “Nikki, you know I have no problem with you spending time with our son, but if you’re going to do that, you need to be sober. If you’re really going to start changing and being in AJ’s life, you’ll need to stop hanging around those guys. I’ve seen them, and I won’t let them be around my son.”
