An Arcane Inheritance by Kamilah Cole - 3

“Sometimes, you make me so sad,” said Taiwo Daniels from her throne on the bed.

Her entire single was like a palace: one bed with sheets the rich blue of the Jamaican ocean; posters that advertised ’90s anime like Cowboy Bebop and Ghost in the Shell , as well as the poetry of Wole Soyinka; a desk that doubled as a bookshelf featuring the works of Murasaki Shikibu, Chinua Achebe, Grant Morrison, and Agatha Christie; and framed family photos, the largest of which showed Tai beaming with an arm thrown around her sister, Kehinde, the two of them wedged between the more reserved Daniels parents. As the resident assistant of the sixth floor of Moneta Hall, Tai got a single room and a stipend. In exchange, she said, her residents gave her headaches.

Ellory, one such resident, glanced up from her textbook and blinked until Supreme Court cases stopped floating in front of her eyes. “Hm?”

She was stretched out on the plush geometric rug that added another pop of personality to the room. Her constitutional law textbook was open in front of her, the page bookmarked by her quiz. A big red 98 was circled in the top right, a matching slash by the one question she’d gotten wrong.

“You got a ninety-eight,” Tai pointed out. “Why are you acting like you got an eighteen?”

“Hudson got a perfect score.”

“So? You’re not in high school anymore. You’re not competing for valedictorian.”

“I know that. This is personal.”

Like Hudson Graves, Tai Daniels was a senior. Unlike Hudson Graves, Tai Daniels wasn’t an asshole. They had met during Ellory’s first night on campus, when Tai had called a floor meeting to introduce herself to all the residents. Ellory, quite frankly, thought Tai was the most beautiful woman she had ever seen. Tai wore a braided mohawk that met in a thick black-and-purple pony that fell to her mid-back, a gold septum piercing, and a cropped crochet tank top through which her gold bra peeked through. Reading from a speech written on papers she’d smoothed out on her slate-gray cargo pants, she told them the Moneta Hall rules, her hours, how best to contact her, and what would happen if they were caught drinking or smoking in the freshman dorms.

Two days later, Ellory worked up the courage to knock on Tai’s door only to find Cody Flores lounging beneath her sheets, playing a handheld game, completely undressed and completely unconcerned about it. Tai shifted to block Cody from view, and Ellory stammered something about orientation, but before she could run back to her room and die from embarrassment, Tai invited her to go out to lunch with them. By the end of a meal at Lucky’s, a café off campus, Tai and Cody had become Ellory’s friends. Tai was a business major from an upper-class family, Cody was an art history major whose parents worked for the FBI, and both of them agreed that Ellory needed to make two awesome friends her own age .

In many ways, that awkward moment had been a blessing. Thanks to her instant attraction to Tai, Ellory was able to get something better than a girlfriend: a best friend.

But it had been only four weeks. There were things Tai still didn’t understand, and Ellory’s rivalry with Hudson Graves was one of the biggest. Tai’s Nigerian American parents ran their own pharma company, which she was poised to take over, so, in her opinion, anything that happened in these four years didn’t matter as long as she didn’t get arrested. I like to live my life with the confidence of a mediocre white man , she often joked. But I’m not a complete fucking idiot.

Meanwhile, Ellory still struggled to explain her wildly different upbringing, where her future was not guaranteed and part of her was relieved when her parents’ calls from Jamaica had slowed down because she didn’t want to be a disappointment. Their precious baby, sent abroad for a better life, excelling only up until America put a snowballing price tag on excellence. She struggled to explain how low Hudson Graves had made her feel in only a few sharp words, how he saw her and dismissed her like her struggles, her hard work, and her existence didn’t matter. How it was about Hudson Graves, but it wasn’t about Hudson Graves, not really—it was about how there were a million men like Hudson Graves everywhere, who took one look at her skin or her gender or her address or her accent, still present in the way she pronounced certain words she’d only ever read, and assumed she was nothing. That she was lazy or angry or sassy or emotional or a problem .

And Hudson Graves might have had light-skin privilege, but he was just as Black as she was, so his contempt hurt in a different way. Like missing a step on a familiar staircase at night, that brief moment of shocked betrayal that something you’d thought would be there had rejected you instead.

She refused to lose against someone like that. Her desire to beat him was like an addiction, and instead of detoxing when they didn’t have class together, she would do this: Study. Obsess. Prep for the next round.

Tai looked like she wanted to say something else, but there was a knock on the door. A student Ellory faintly recognized from one of the rooms at the end of the hall—maybe the one with the Halloween decorations up even though it was mid-September—stood on Tai’s welcome mat, mumbling about smelling weed through the vents. Tai stepped outside to continue the conversation, leaving Ellory alone with her textbook and resentment. The crimson 98 continued to mock her, but she rolled onto her back to stare at the ceiling instead. There was a crack near the light bulb that kind of looked like a centipede—at least, she hoped it was a crack. If it moved, she would run.

Bzzt. Bzzt.

Ellory found her phone; AUNTIE flashed across the screen along with a picture of Carol posing with a head of lettuce as if it were a crystal ball. “Waa gwaan?”

“Mi deh yah,” Carol responded brightly. She always got a kick out of Ellory reaching for the little patois she could still speak without sounding like she was from foreign . “How’s school?”

“How’s your heart?”

It was an unspoken fact that half the reason they were so often strapped for cash was because of Carol’s frequent trips to the hospital. The congenital heart defect she’d been born with had evolved into hypertension and cardiovascular disease, and though her aunt hadn’t had a stroke in months, Ellory had read far too many articles about heart disease being the biggest killer of Black women in America to truly rest easily. She would work four jobs without complaint if it meant they had enough money for Carol to get the care she needed when she needed it, without having to wonder if this stroke was “bad enough” to risk the deductible.

“Mi gud, mi gud,” said Carol before switching back to English. “You worry too much, Lor. Tell me about school.”

“Not until you tell me about your heart.”

Carol sighed as though Ellory were the one being childish. “I’m taking the pills. I’m eating healthy. I’m doing my little yoga. I’m as well as you left me, okay? Now can I hear about school?”

Ellory watched the centipede crack for signs of movement and caught her aunt up on the week since her last phone call: The endless assignments and the pop quiz. The sleepless nights and the breathing boil that was Hudson Graves. The friends she’d spent time with and the walks she’d taken. She and Carol didn’t have a Gilmore Girls –like closeness that had them swapping secrets over coffee, but the more she spilled her problems into the phone, the lighter she felt.

Maybe that was why she made the mistake of bringing up the Warren Communiqué .

“Do you even have time for something like that?” Aunt Carol’s voice took on an edge that made apologies rise in Ellory’s throat. “You’re struggling in your classes. The newspaper would take away from the time you should spend studying.”

“I know.” Ellory forced herself to laugh. “It was just a silly idea—”

“And since when are you even interested in journalism? You never want to watch TMZ with me.”

Ellory thought of the decorations in her bedroom, colorful posters of Lois Lane and Iris West, black-and-white photos of Ida B. Wells and Marvel Cooke. She thought of her high school promise to herself that if she loaded up on AP classes, she could turn her participation in Newspaper Club from a hobby into something more legitimate at community college. She thought of the battered Moleskine notebook in which she’d practiced her bylines and signature: Ellory Morgan. Ellory J. Morgan. EJ Morgan.

“You’re right. I don’t have the time.”

“Good girl. You’ve been given such a huge opportunity at Warren, and I’d hate to see you waste it. Reporters don’t make money. Lawyers do. Imagine being the first lawyer in the family!”

Ellory once again found it hard to swallow. What had she been thinking? The average salary for a reporter was nowhere near the lowest average salary for a lawyer. She couldn’t very well leave Aunt Carol—who had fed her and housed her, spoiling Ellory whenever she could—to pay for her own medical bills. A free ride to college, and Ellory fantasized about wasting it on that ? On a stupid childhood dream with no money or job security?

It was selfish. It was too selfish, when her parents and aunt had given up so much for her.

“Have you heard from Mom and Dad?” she managed to say around the lump in her throat. “Did they call or…?”

“Not since you left,” Carol said. “I’ll probably call them this weekend. Desmond has been late on the payments.”

Ellory hated when Aunt Carol called them payments , like Ellory was a job worth however much money her parents were able to wire every month. But all she said was “Well, let me know. In the meantime, I should probably get back to studying. I didn’t score as high as I wanted to on that quiz, and…”

“Say no more, my little academic. I’ll call you next week.”

“Mi gone den.”

“Likkle more.”

The phone screen went black. Ellory shoved it into her bag and then rolled back onto her stomach. A circle of liquid distorted one of the sentences in her textbook. She touched her face. At some point, she’d started to cry.

“Sorry about that,” Tai said, reentering the room and knocking the door closed with her hip. “You won’t believe the—Lor? Is everything okay?”

Ellory swiped at her damp cheeks. They felt hot under her fingers. She didn’t usually cry in front of other people. “I’m good. I’m fine. Maybe a little stressed.”

Her throat still felt as congested as Midtown traffic. Worse, she felt that chill again, that odd sense of familiarity but with a melancholic twist. This wasn’t the instinctive knowledge that would clear her a path through the campus; this was a wound that had scabbed over until she’d picked at it again—though she was certain she’d never brought up her journalistic aspirations with her aunt before. Not that she could remember anyway. It must have been more of a symbolic wound, the knowledge every immigrant kid had that there were only about four career paths that would make their parents and guardians proud. Journalism would never be one of them.

Ellory sniffled and then jumped when a tissue appeared before her.

Tai, kneeling on the other side of her textbook, wiggled the tissue. “Take it. And then go back to your room and get dressed up. We are going out.”

“Oh, I’m not really in the mood to—”

“Did I ask you?” Tai wiggled the tissue again. “You’re so stressed out that you’re crying, Lor. That’s not good. There’s a party tonight. I wasn’t going to go because—well. Look, I think you need to socialize. To have fun. To take a break . You’re not going to learn anything this way.”

Ellory took the tissue. Her con. law textbook suddenly looked as if it had been written in Russian. A headache was building behind her eyes, the same one she always got when she cried, the same one that would eventually crest into a migraine if she didn’t take something for it now. Tai was right. Yet the thought of seeing anyone else tonight made Ellory want to scream.

“Come on,” said Tai, closing the textbook. “You need this. If I’m wrong, we can leave, whether it’s been five hours or five minutes.”

“You promise?”

“I promise .”

“Is Cody going?”

“I can text them if you want.”

Tai was less likely to abandon Ellory if her partner wasn’t there to distract her. Ellory shook her head. “Just you and me, please. I’ll change. I’ll go. But if I’m not feeling it, you’re bringing me right back here.”

Tai brandished her pinky, and, laughing, Ellory hooked hers around it. She packed up her things and headed back to her room, where Stasie and several of her freshman friends were bundled like sardines on her bed, watching a reality show. The only light was from the laptop screen and the silvery moon stretching through the hole in the blackout curtains. None of them looked Ellory’s way, which was good, because she was pretty sure her eyes were bloodshot and her cheeks were sallow. It would take a lot of makeup and maybe a late-night coffee to get her in the partying spirit.

Then again, she hadn’t been to any parties since classes had started. Her nights off were spent studying, and casual invitations had dried up after orientation week had ended with core groups and friendship circles clearly delineated. Maybe Tai was right. Maybe this was exactly what Ellory needed. And if it wasn’t, then at least she had a guaranteed ride home and could probably sneak some snacks out in her purse.