Page 90 of Ashes of Gold
“What is it?” Julius asks. “You staring. My fade on the side fucked up or something?” He slicks a hand over the side of his hair.
“You so dumb, shut up.” I pull him along. “I was just zoned out.”
“What’s on your mind?”
“No one.”
“I saidwhat….” He purses his lips and my cheeks burn.
“It’s no one. I mean, nothing. Can we just focus, please? We’re trying to find—”
“A dirt wall.” Julius peers around. “No shortage of dirt walls down here.”
“A veryspecificdirt wall, thank you very much. We need to concentrate.”
“You ever hear that saying about a needle in a haystack?” Julius asks Bri.
“I haven’t, but that’s—” She snorts laughing. “That’s exactly it.”
“Y’all got jokes. This was the best plan I could come up with. Y’all have any better ideas, I’m all ears.”
“I’m fucking with you, fam.” Jue nudges my shoulder. “But you good foreal?”
“I am.” I meet his eyes and they burn into me in that way only Julius’s stare can.
“You lying, but I’ma let you have that.”
Thank you.
“Okay, so we might have found our needle,” Bri says, swirling her gadget at a part of the wall that’s chiseled and cracked. She rumbles through her bag and pulls out a disc. “Wait for it.” Her tongue pokes her cheek. The disc suctions to the wall and she taps a blinking light on top. The motor on the device hums, specks of dirt flying in every direction.
BEEP!
“This wall is eighty-three point six percent less dense than the walls around us. There’s a room behind here.”
I’d hoped to find the door. But I can break through this wall if I need to. “We have to be sure if I’m busting through it Kool-Aid man–style.”
“What is koo lay?”
“Bri,” Julius starts. “So, you’ve never had a Kool-Cup either? Yo, we have so much to catch you up on.”
Julius gets along with everyone, I swear. He the type of dude to just strike up conversation with a random person in Walmart and sit there talking for thirty minutes. I don’t know if that’s a Texan thing or a hood thing. But when I’m trying to get stuff done, it’s annoying.
“Jue, focus. Bri, are we sure?”
“There’s definitely a room of some kind here.” She drags the device along the wall and walks until she’s small in the distance. “And it stops around here,” her voice echoes, rippling down the tunnel. “So it’s a big room. What else could it be?”
I guess there’s only one way to tell. “Back up.” I pool my magicthrough me and my arms gleam, my hands heating up. I snatch the energy creeping through me and shove.
“Feey’l,” I say. A ripple of light slams into the wall and it cracks, dust particles raining overhead.
“Okay… again.” I square my shoulders and thrust. “Feey’l.”
The crack stretches, zigzagging to the floor. Bri’s eyes comb the ceiling. “Uh, Rue… be careful. I don’t know how much more it can take.”
I lift my hands, hoping this doesn’t bring the place down on top of us.
“Hold up.” Julius whips out a blade from beneath his pant leg and taps the center of the crack. He hammers the back of it with his fist, and bits of wall crumble. “That’s it. Nice and easy. I used to help my uncle with house renovations on the weekends for some side cash.”
