I play the video over and over. Right as the enforcers cast their spellwork for the millionth time, Emil shoots up from bed and tells me to turn it off already, but I just throw on headphones and crank up the volume. I really should get some sleep so I have energy for all the fans I’m meeting tomorrow, but I can’t help staying up and refreshing the video every minute to track views and read comments. Half an hour in, the stats are good, but this late-night crowd isn’t coming through the way I hoped they would. Still, I know my thirty thousand Brightsiders will do their thing and get this circulating by the time I wake up—it’s too irresistible.

I close my laptop and leave it on my desk, which is cluttered with my Nikon camera, candy wrappers, comics, and an ongoing list of videos I’m hoping to film once I get to Los Angeles. In bed and under the covers, I relax on my back because my shoulder is sore. I can’t wait to show off the bruise to my fans. This is a war wound I’m wearing with pride because not many people can say they’ve been thrown by Atlas’s winds.

The Crowned Dreamer needs to come through on our birthday and bless us. If our latent powers kick in, I know Emil will change his tune about living out our original fantasy of being the Reys of Light, the people’s champions. We grew up on books and movies where ordinary teens discover they’re special—chosen ones, long-lost wizards, whatever. It rarely plays out that way in real life, but who knows.

Unlikely but not impossible are the best odds for any dreamer.

Our bedroom door slams against the wall so hard that my childhood drawing of the Spell Walkers falls. Ma is standing in our doorway, breathing in and out as she holds her chest; her heart must be attacking her again. I nearly trip over my covers to get to her.

We’re about to watch Ma die, so soon after losing Dad.

“Call 911!” I shout at Emil, who is frozen in bed.

Ma shakes her head. Her eyes are watering. “The block party was attacked, and I have to find out from the news? I thought I was coming into an empty bedroom. . . .”

Emil snaps out of it and comes to hug her. “We’re okay, Ma, sorry. We got in late, and I was in shock, I think.”

Hold up.

“The news? My video got picked up?”

“You filmed it?!” Ma shouts.

I grab my phone while Emil tells Ma how he tried getting me away from the action last night. Judging by all the notifications on my phone, I’m damn glad I stood my ground. I check YouTube, and my video is coming up on ninety thousand views, which is more than triple what I’ve ever received but it’s not skyrocketing the way I was expecting. It’s still early, and I’ve gotten a few thousand new subscribers too. Everyone’s thanking me in the comments for capturing this fight, and I smile when someone calls me a hero in my own right.

I wonder which stations and websites have circulated the video, so I hop on Twitter, where I get all my news. BuzzFeed tweeted out an article titled “Vlogger Films Explosive Battle with Spell Walkers.”

“BuzzFeed covered my video!”

I’ve done hundreds of quizzes on BuzzFeed, and now I’m featured. What is this life?

I open the article, and there are GIFs galore, but they’re capturing angles that my video doesn’t. I scroll back to the top of the article. They’ve linked to another YouTuber’s account, MinaTriesThis.

“No way.”

Her video has hit over one million views.

I press play: it looks like Mina was vlogging, trying out a celestial’s homemade moonbeam ice cream right as the first tent lit up in flames. So many people run past her, but she just had to go ahead and keep filming.

To steal my spotlight.

I keep tuning out Emil and Ma as I bounce around online. Screw BuzzFeed for highlighting Mina’s video instead of mine, but I must’ve gotten some love somewhere to reach my stats. The brawl has been covered by the New York Times, CNN, Time magazine, the Scope Source, and Huffington Post, but Mina’s video is embedded in all of them. It’s the top trending video on YouTube.

“This isn’t fair,” I say.

“What’s going on?” Emil asks.

“I got screwed. Some other video has gone massively viral.”

I work too hard to keep being the runner-up. My motivation for top grades throughout high school was dreaming of the moment when I’d get to walk across that stage while everyone applauded me so I could deliver my valedictorian speech about what it feels like to be a kid from the Bronx who no one is expecting to take the world by storm. The only reason I didn’t flip out when the vice principal brought me into her office to congratulate me on becoming salutatorian was because I couldn’t risk losing that spotlight, even if it wasn’t as bright, to whoever was below me academically; sitting through one speech by someone I know I’m smarter than was bad enough.

Ma sits on Emil’s bed. “You hurt my heart, and you’re upset over people not watching your video?”

“I’m sorry, okay?” I can’t look away from Mina’s increasing views.

“Don’t take that tone with me, Brighton.”

“Ma, you don’t get how much money I could’ve brought in if my video took off.”

“No money makes me feel better knowing I could’ve lost the rest of my world because you’re pretending to be grown.”

She doesn’t look at me as much as she used to. Sometimes I think it hurts her so much since I really take after Dad, green eyes and all. Other times I’m sure it’s because she’s in denial that when I leave on Saturday afternoon to study film and reset my life, it’s only going to be her and Emil, who’s staying in the city to attend some third-best community college. No one can pay me enough to stay in this place where I watched Dad suffer for seven months, where I got my hopes up when alchemists called to accept him into a clinical trial to test him with hydra blood. The idea was, their blood contained their essence, so it would transfer all the properties that allow those serpents to heal themselves and regrow their multiple heads.

I was the only one home when my father choked to death on his blood.

I am grown.

Four

Ordinary

BRIGHTON

I cage myself in the room until I can trust myself not to go off on anyone. The door is locked, and I ignore Ma when she calls me out for breakfast. I’m starving, but I’m done eating toasted tortillas with refried beans and avocado without Dad. It’s an easy enough dish, one that Dad learned to prepare to better connect with Ma’s Puerto Rican side, and his were so crispy. I’m just not ready to pretend Ma’s are the same. I’m especially not ready to have family breakfast in the living room and talk about how this is our first birthday without him. It’s too much.

It’s better in here, anyway. Dad once said our bedroom is just a celestial shrine with beds. Years ago, when the Spell Walkers were more embraced by the public, they licensed their image to help bring in money, and I was lucky enough to get my hands on them before manufacturers stopped making them. By the window is a poster of Maribelle and her parents, Aurora and Lestor Lucero. Limited-edition Funko Pops of the original Spell Walkers—Bautista de León, Sera Córdova, the Luceros, Finola Simone-Chambers, and Konrad Chambers. The playing cards I used to bring to school before we graduated. Key chains with the Spell Walker sigil—a constellation of a being who is taking a step, with the brightest of stars lighting up their fists, feet, and heart. There’s nothing official for the new wave of Spell Walkers, but I do have these framed art prints of them hanging above my desk, one signed by Wesley Young as a perk for donating to a campaign to fund supplies for one of their hidden havens.