Malcolm spotted Rose as she slipped back into the safety of his room and breathed a sigh of relief.
“Speaking of which…” he said. “We should probably get going.”
“Hold on, let me get a look at your bedroom, first,” said Tapestry.
Malcolm cleared his throat.
“Tapestry,” he said. “Are you hitting on me?”
She looked mock offended, and punched him gently in the shoulder.
“You are such a brat,” she said. “Never mind. It’s probably disgusting, anyway.”
She turned to leave his apartment. Malcolm glanced back at the door of his room one last time and then followed her.
Tapestry had parked the BMW on the street outside, but she didn’t head for it. Malcolm fell into step beside her, raising a curious eyebrow.
“No car today?” he asked.
“We’re not going far,” said Tapestry. “We just need a calm place where we can sit and talk.”
She led him into the park across the street from Malcolm’s apartment. It was the same park that had collected a half dozen overdoses in the past year, and regularly had to be raked by someone from the city for discarded needles.
This is her idea of a calm place?
“There’s one aspect to being a champion that we didn’t get a chance to explain to you yesterday,” said Tapestry.
“Really?”
“It’s nothing intentional, we just didn’t have time to get to it immediately,” she said. “There are more pressing concerns to be addressed when giving an orientation to someone who has just discovered their gift.”
Tapestry led him toward the pond that filled the center of the park, sitting down on one of the benches around its edge. Malcolm sat down next to her, waiting for her to continue.
She didn’t, at least not immediately. Instead, Tapestry reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out a surprisingly large bag of bread crumbs. There was a small family of ducks swimming in the pond, and she began to toss crumbs to them, leading them over to the edge of the water.
“Nice,” said Malcolm. “Fun way to spend a morning.”
She smiled at him.
“An old, guilty pleasure of mine,” she said. “Anyway, what we need to spend to day discovering is what your focus activity is.”
Focus activity. Rose mentioned something about that, too.
“A focus activity,” Tapestry went on, “is a basic element of being gifted. Your powers are not magic. You have to recharge yourself, in a sense, after using them extensively.”
Malcolm frowned.
“I haven’t done anything like that so far,” he said. “And I still feel like I can use mine.”
“Rest and sleep work to recharge your powers as well,” said Tapestry. “But only up to a certain point. To reach peak efficiency, you need to find and partake in your focus activity.”
One of the ducklings walked right over to Tapestry’s foot, staring up at her with wide eyes. She smiled and dropped a small crumb on its beak, which it scrambled to scarf down.
“So how do we go about this?” asked Malcolm. “I can’t even guess at what my focus activity would be.”
“Simple,” she said. “Remember what you were doing at the time when you got your powers. It’s usually related to whatever you were in the middle of in an obvious way.”
“Let me guess…” said Malcolm. “Your focus activity is feeding the ducks.”
“Baking, actually,” said Tapestry. “Walk me through the moment you discovered your gift, Malcolm.”
“Okay…” He thought back to the previous day, running over the sequence of events. “I was in class, answering the teacher’s question. Oh god, I hope it doesn’t turn out to be going to school, or studying.”
Malcolm hadn’t given much thought to what was going to happen with his college classes, now that he was a champion. He supposed he’d have to call and withdraw from them within the next few days, but if he needed to sit in a classroom to recharge his powers, he might not have the option to drop out.
“Stay focused, Malcolm,” said Tapestry. “What else? There must have been something more than just that.”
“Wait…” Malcolm considered for a moment. “I was listening to music.”
Tapestry gave him a funny look.
“You were listening to music,” she said. “Like, at the end of class?”
“While the teacher was lecturing,” he said. “If you knew what her voice sounded like, you’d understand.”
Tapestry blinked several times in quick succession, her mouth quirking down into a frown. Malcolm grinned at her intensity.
“Hey, I was still one of the better students,” he said. “But… do you think that might be it?”
Tapestry gave a shrug.
“Usually it’s a certain kind, or genre, of music,” she said. “No other champions with music as their focus activity can just listen to any song and recharge.”
“90s alt rock,” confirmed Malcolm. “Here, I have some on my phone.”
He pulled it out and queued up a song. It started playing through his phone’s speaker, and he watched the ducks turn their attention toward the new disturbance.
“Can you feel anything?” asked Tapestry.
Malcolm nodded slowly. It was an odd sensation, almost like being on a drug. His body tingled, and the sense of nostalgia he usually got from listening to the music, his brother Danny’s favorite music, was massively amplified.
“Good,” said Tapestry. “Then that’s it, then. You can turn it off.”
“Okay.” He grinned at her. “Not a fan of Soundgarden?”
Tapestry snorted.
“The music I like comes from another generation,” she said. “It’s fine, though. I don’t mind this. We just have to keep moving with your training.”
She tossed the rest of the bread crumbs to the appreciative ducks, creating a minor feeding frenzy, and wiped her hands on her jeans. Malcolm stood up alongside her, enjoying the morning.
A police car sped down the street alongside the park, lights flashing and sirens whirring. Tapestry frowned at it, and then pulled her phone out of her pocket and scanned the screen.
“School shooting,” she said. “Training will have to wait.”
CHAPTER 13
Malcolm held onto the inside handle of the BMW’s passenger door for dear life. Tapestry sped down the street, apparently having anointed herself with the same driving privileges as the police.
“Isn’t this something that the police would usually handle?” asked Malcolm. “Or maybe SWAT? Along with a charismatic, empathetic negotiator?”
“They asked for our help specifically,” said Tapestry. “And besides, it’s at Holy Cross High.”
Malcolm shrugged.
“I went to West Vanderbrook High,” he said. “Not to sound callous, but the name doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“It does to me,” said Tapestry. “Someone I care about goes to school there.”
She pulled into the school’s parking lot, driving the BMW up to the drop off lane. The police had already set up their perimeter. They seemed to recognize Tapestry on sight, which Malcolm found a little odd, given how low her profile as a champion otherwise was.
“Captain,” she said, nodding to the policeman in charge. “I’m going to head in. This is Wind Runner, my new apprentice.”
Apprentice? Seriously?
“He’s on the second floor in the east wing,” said the police chief. “We’ve pulled all of our people out and evacuated most of the students, but everyone in a classroom connected to that hallway is trapped.”
“We’ll take care of it,” said Tapestry. “Just keep your men out of the way.”
Malcolm was impressed by her confidence. She started running toward the school’s entrance, crouching and moving fast. Malcolm followed her example, slipping through one of the doors behind her.
The inside of the school was empty. Light streamed in through the windows behind them, giving the rows of unattended lockers a Sunday morning ambience. Tapestry slowed her pace forward, taking swift, silent steps as she headed for the staircase.