The Posterchildren: Origins Page 5

  Mal laid on his side and stared at the window until stripes of peachy daylight filtered in through the blinds. He got up, deciding to take his shower before anyone else was in the communal boys’ bathroom. His mother was expecting him to share breakfast with her, and no excuse was a good enough excuse for tardiness when it came to the Queen.

  °

  Morning came early to Foundation. The nightly precipitation left a clinging film of dew, a mistiness in the air that didn’t burn off until late morning, so Mal pulled on a hooded sweatshirt before he left for his mother’s house. She lived between the Galán-Grant household and the Wrights’ home, though it was closer to the former than the latter. The Galán-Grants were their next-door neighbors on the edge of the campus grounds, but from his mother’s front porch, Mal could only just barely pick out the glint of sunlight reflecting off the second-story windows of the Wrights’ house. John and Ernest lived back in a small clearing off the main path, well past the point where the groomed campus grounds devolved into the forest underbrush.

  Mal stood on the porch for a few moments, trying to decide what he was feeling. He should be happy, he told himself, since he was home. But he knew that if he were happy to be there, he would have walked in without hesitation. Instead, he was standing on the front porch of his own home, wondering if he should knock before entering.

  Navigating his mother’s rules of etiquette was difficult while clear-headed and well rested, and Mal was neither. He massaged his forehead, then scrubbed at his eyes with the heels of both hands. It didn’t banish the fog of his over-exhaustion. All it did was make him that much more aware of the migraine swelling between his temples and the dry grittiness of his eyes. He breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth. In through his nose, out through his mouth. He found his inner peace and kept it in a strangle hold.

  Three practiced breathing cycles later, Mal turned the doorknob and stepped inside. Very little had changed in his absence, he was relieved to note. The house smelled like he remembered it, warm and right. There were new pictures in some of the picture frames and new books in some of the shelves, but his world was otherwise untouched. He could hear his mother in the kitchen, singing. It lessened the pressure in his chest.

  “I’m here!” Mal called, untying his shoelaces. He toed off his boots, leaving them in a pile at the front door.

  “I was beginning to wonder if you were planning to eat out on the veranda,” his mother called back with a laugh. “You were lingering.”

  Mal’s lips twisted in a wry grin. It was a polite way of reminding him that nothing got past her. To say that she was watchful was something of an understatement. There’s not a single ant in the Queen’s kingdom that she ain’t keeping tabs on, as the Commander was so fond of saying.

  “New security cameras, Mother?” Mal guessed, following the sound of her voice into the kitchen.

  The sitting room and kitchen were eastward-facing, so the air was saturated with rich morning light and the scent of olive oil. His mother stood with her back to him, as unchanged as her home. She was dressed for the day, her hair already covered with a purple hijab. There were two coffee cups in the kitchen sink, only one of them smudged with a crimson lipstick kiss, so her modesty wasn’t meant for him. It was early in the day, but she’d already been entertaining company.

  There were new fine creases gathered around the corners of her mouth, worry lines like etchings on bronze. They might have been new, or it may have been that Mal was seeing her in a new light now that he was beginning to understand the weight of his mother’s responsibilities. It was impossible to tell if she had always been so thin, or if the gauntness in her high cheekbones was new, too. He couldn’t differentiate between what hadn’t been there before and what he’d been too young to see.

  “Ultimately unnecessary, but your uncle has been fretting,” the Queen said, cracking a speckled egg on the edge of a bowl. She expertly separated the shells with one hand, then cracked another. “Updating the equipment was worth putting his mind at ease.”

  “What has Uncle John worried?” Mal asked, holding his hand out. She gave him the bowl and a whisk, letting Mal beat the eggs while she tended to the details of the rest of their meal. It was funny how easily they’d fallen back into their old routine.

  “What doesn’t worry that man? I’ve tried to tell him that he needs to be mindful of his blood pressure now that he’s no longer in his twenties, but that gave him another thing to worry needlessly about,” she said as she gestured with her spatula, her other hand planted firmly on her hip. “According to Kirrily, he’s not capable of suffering a heart attack, but I haven’t had any luck convincing him of the fact. I treasure John Wright’s friendship, but his paranoia is equal only to his stubbornness.”

  “That wasn’t an answer.”

  “You’re absolutely right,” his mother agreed, moving the pan to heat. She took the eggs from Mal, scraping them out of the bowl. “It wasn’t an answer. If you think that you will get anything out of me without so much as a hug hello, you severely underestimate my ability to withhold information, my handsome son.”

  Mal hugged her with a put-upon sigh. She wasn’t liberal with her tokens of physical affection, but they were never halfhearted. She hugged him tightly enough that the spicy clove and vanilla of her perfume clung to his sweatshirt. He’d still be able to smell the notes of sweet musk when he pulled it off over his head at the end of the day.

  “Go and sit down,” she said, kissing his temple before letting him go. “I’ll be finished up in here momentarily. Then we will talk, you and I.”

  The house was more windows than walls, so the airy sitting room was flooded with morning sunlight. His mother’s taste in interior decoration emphasized simplicity and function, so there was only a single low table and a bookshelf in the room.

  And on that table sat a rectangular mahogany box. Mal got comfortable, sitting crosslegged on one of the cushions, and dragged the box closer to him. He ran his fingertips over the satiny-smooth wood of the lid before opening it. The boxwood and ebony pieces of his mother’s favorite chess set were nestled inside the casket, as silken and cool to the touch as he remembered.

  Without looking, Mal picked up one of the pieces and rolled it in his palm. It’d been years, but the way that the gaps of the battlement’s crenels caught on his calluses still felt familiar. He could identify the black pieces from the white pieces with his eyes closed, and sometimes he could do it without cheating. Mal brushed his thumb across the base of the piece, following the rounded line of the letter that’d been carved into it.

  C. When he’d been too young to know better, he’d assumed that the C stood for castle. His mother had gently corrected his misnomer, explaining that the piece did not represent the entire castle. Originally, it had been rukh - the Persian war chariot, bristling with spears and armor. Westward progress through translations of translations had garbled its name into meaning a variety of things— tower, longboat, castle— but it had never affected its strength. Unlike the knight, it was one of the heaviest pieces on the board. In terms of strength, the rook was second only to the queen.

  “There won’t be enough time for us to play this morning, unfortunately,” his mother said, startling him. She was standing in the doorway connecting the sitting room with the kitchen, carrying a tray full of dishes. She was smiling faintly, but he couldn’t help but feel like she’d caught him doing something he shouldn’t have.

  “My game may have improved since the last time I challenged you, but I know better than to think I have any hope of victory,” Mal said, putting the black rook back into the box. He closed the lid tightly and pushed it away.

  Mother sat, arranging the breakfast dishes between them. The familiar scents of olive oil and mint woke his stomach up and started it growling. Cold boxed cereal had been a poor replacement for his mother’s breakfasts. In Portland, breakfast had meant eating sugary, milk-soaked cardboard out of a bowl while doing something else. In Foundat
ion, breakfast meant scrambled eggs, black tea, harissa, and wedges of la veche qui rit spread on the warm, crusty bread that his mother baked herself. Ever the multitasker, his father had treated eating like a waste of time. He’d watched the news, worked on his laptop, or read the paper during meals. Even when they’d eaten at the same table, they hadn’t shared meals. They had only shared space.

  “Coffee or tea?”

  “You didn’t make coffee,” Mal pointed out, eyeing the spread.

  “The tea is better for you. Though it seems that you could benefit from some caffeine.” The last traces of his mother’s smile smoothed away. “You look terrible, Malek. Have you slept?”

  “Yes, Mother,” Mal replied automatically, not looking at her as he spooned scrambled eggs onto his plate.

  “Would you like to try that answer again?” She asked, her tone clipped. He looked up, then instantly regretted making eye contact with her. The corners of her mouth had tightened up. There was no fooling the Queen.

  He fidgeted. He wasn’t sure how his mother knew when he was lying, what tells tipped her off, but she always caught him. He could lie to anyone but her— he’d tested the hypothesis thoroughly. It was next to impossible for anyone to lie to her. Many people cited that as why she intimidated them.

  The Queen’s intimidating air wasn’t the imagined byproduct of her being a beautiful woman, nor was it due to a history of doling out punishment. She was strict but reasonable, intimidating people because they couldn’t keep anything from her. Mal wasn’t alone in that. There was something about the Queen’s calm, dark stare that made a person feel like she could open them up, cracking their skulls and ribs with just one look and then effortlessly parsing truth from lies in the space of a breath.

  She could see everything they were, the truth in their marrow, but she kept most of who she was protected and covered. It was the fear of a figurative one-way glass. The fact that said glass was held by an intelligent muhajaba with brown skin made some people even more uncomfortable. As much as it nettled him to be on the receiving end of his mother’s uncanny sharpness, Mal respected it. It was an enviable ability, formidable and elegant in its execution. He hoped to master it himself someday.

  “I...I couldn’t,” Mal admitted. He tore a chunk off the loaf of bread and stuffed it in his mouth, hoping that it’d discourage further questions.

  “Is it the new room, perhaps?”

  The third block posters’ rooms were claustrophobic cells, but most of them considered it a privilege. It was almost laughable to call it a room, since there was barely enough space to walk around his narrow single mattress, but it was private. Before the third block, they shared bunks in cabins. He’d missed out on that, thankfully, but only because his mother was a teacher. He had a feeling that she’d expected him to move back into his old room, but Mal knew that living in the dorms was the wisest choice available to him.

  “The dormitory is fine. I want to stay there. It’s essential that I begin mending my image. No one will agree to be on my capstone team if they continue to see me as...” There were a number of ways to finish that thought— as a failure being coddled by his mother practically hovered behind his clenched teeth— but he settled on the least offensive option. “...inaccessible.”

  The fine crease that etched her forehead said that that his mother didn’t believe him, but she didn’t contest it.

  “I know that this transition hasn’t been easy for you,” she said, somehow brisk and gentle all at once. “Unfortunately, you don’t have the luxury of missing class. If you don’t sleep properly, it will negatively affect your performance.”

  Mal chewed, swallowed, and tore off a larger hunk of bread.

  “I know,” he mumbled around his mouthful.

  “Your father wouldn’t have wanted that.” She poured him a cup of tea, adding, “And no one wants to see you chew, habibi. That isn’t attractive.”

  “I know.” He smeared another slice with harissa, nibbling at it. The spicy paste prevented him from choking it down as quickly as the plain bread, but chasing the spread to the very edges of the crust with the flat of the knife kept his hands busy. He didn’t like thinking about what his mother believed his father would have wanted for him, because it was obvious that his father hadn’t cared. If he had wanted him to do well at the Academy, he would have done for him what he had done for Marshal.

  His mother poured herself a cup of tea, sighing.

  “You miss him.”

  He didn’t know how to respond to that, so he chewed quietly and thoroughly. The moment he didn’t have his mouth full, he started gulping his still-scalding tea. It hadn’t been posed as a question, but he didn’t want to agree with it aloud. Not wholesale.

  “I do, too,” Mother answered for him, her gaze hooded by her long lashes. The steam wafting off her tea curled over the side of her face and hijab. She held the cup close, both hands wrapped around it. “Terribly.”

  Privacy was important to her. To the best of Mal’s knowledge, the funeral had been her only public appearance since the Rook’s death, and even then she hadn’t made a statement. She’d been composed, keeping her misery carefully pent up until the trip back to Foundation. Without an audience of strangers to pass judgment on how she chose to mourn, she’d prayed and cried. Mal hadn’t been able to help her any more than he’d been able to escape her. He’d been stuck in the car with his mother’s tears.

  The next day, half of the articles had condemned the Queen for having dry eyes at her husband’s funeral. Half had applauded her for it. Out of all of the journalists, only Vinessa Cruz had used her first name and called her the Rook’s widow. As usual, she was the only one who treated his mother like a human being.

  “He’s gone,” Mal said, quietly.

  “Time does not heal all, but it allows some of your wounds to scab over. In time, you will learn how to best shoulder the weight of what you lost.” Her eyes settled on the box full of chess pieces. She looked down and away, tracing the rim of her teacup with her fingertip. “Some days, everything that you see will stir your memories of him. But there will also be lighter days, days where nothing will remind you of him at all. When the weight returns, you’ll either accept it with a sense of guilt, punishing yourself for abandoning his memory, or you’ll embrace it again as you would have embraced him after an absence.”

  “Not that you speak from experience. You remember everything,” Mal pointed out. It’d just dawned on him, then. Her lips trembled in confirmation, but her response was even and calm.

  “My physiology prevents the erosion of my mnemonic recall. You’re correct.”

  Her posthuman abilities came with a necessary side effect: hyperthymesia. Simply put, his mother could not forget things. She didn’t shed memories over time. Mal had inherited that from her, but not to the same extent. His memory was photographic, allowing him to recall a vast majority of his experiences with nominal effort. The Queen took that concept a leap forward. Her recall was perfect and effortless. Memories rested on the surface of her mind, her recollections of decade-old experiences as easily plucked up as the freshest memories laid the day before. It had never occurred to Mal that such a useful ability could double back as a bladed edge. The realization was jarring.

  “When you want to talk, I’m here,” his mother said, folding her hand over his. “Your Uncle John is, too. This isn’t our first time mourning your father.”

  Again, Mal scrounged for words. None came.

  His wristwatch chirped. Foreseeing a likely emotional checkmate over breakfast, Mal had set his alarm to go off five minutes early. He’d known that his mother wanted to talk, and he’d also known that he was too tired and too frustrated to do anything of the sort, so he’d set the watch to give him both a valid excuse and an escape. Mal drained the rest of his tea in a few quick gulps, gritty leaf residue and all.

  “I don’t want to be late for my first class,” he said, hastily slipping his hand out from under hers and getting up. “It’s Int
roduction to Constitutional Law.”

  His mother’s dark eyes flicked to the quartz clock on the mantle. She arched an eyebrow at him, clearly unimpressed. Even when his lies were so close to the truth they are almost true themselves, his mother saw through them. She always knew, and whether or not she allowed him to get away with telling her low to medium-grade lies had everything to do with how merciful she happened to be feeling.

  “Go, then. It’d be disrespectful to be late on the first day.”

  “I know.”

  Mother spread harissa on another slice of bread and handed it to him. Mal ate most of it in one too-big bite, unable to complain when she leaned down and kissed him.

  “I hope that Roxanne has a few scraps of knowledge left to offer you,” she teased, patting his cheek. “Since you ‘know’ so much, my brilliant son.”

  “We can hope,” Mal said, successfully dodging a second kiss by squirming away. Before he could escape, she took his wrist and squeezed it gently.

  “It’s good to have you home again. Mashallah.”

  The word home prickled at his skin. She was right - returning to Foundation should have felt like coming home. He’d been born at Maillardet’s and had lived there for the first eleven years of his life, so rationality said that he should have felt relieved to be back among familiar sights and faces. It should have been a return to normalcy, but if Mal had to hang a name on the feeling bunched up in his throat, it would have been dread. The mess that he’d buried in Portland had followed him back to the school.

  It might not have been an accurate judgment of his abilities, but the seventeen points he’d earned were his and his alone. It didn’t matter whose fault it was; it was a failing grade, his failing grade, and all of his teachers and peers knew. He was a sixty-seven, and that made his achievements in the first block look like a joke. A fluke, even. Despite what people assumed, earning a perfect score had been hard work. Now, it felt like all of that work had been discarded to the wind.