Infinity Son by Adam Silvera (some good books to read .TXT) 📕

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