The first thing I did after deciding not to waste my second life was ask for a notebook.
In my mind, the scene was supposed to remain simple. I would ask for an ordinary notebook, Mom would give me one, and I could start recording what I remembered before time turned my already imperfect knowledge into a heap of contradictory details. I should have known her better. Laurie Harrowing was incapable of responding soberly to any request even remotely related to drawing.
She came home that evening with three notebooks under her arm, two boxes of colored pencils, markers, a transparent ruler, and a sheet of stickers depicting smiling animals. She set everything down on the coffee table with the satisfied expression of a woman who had just equipped an entire workshop rather than answered the request of a six-year-old child. The living room bore her mark everywhere: rolls of fabric leaned against one wall, an unfinished dress waited on a mannequin near the window, and sketches covered the small table set beside her sewing machine. The apartment was never truly tidy, but it was not dirty either. It lived. Threads, pins, scraps of paper, and cups of tea simply seemed to migrate from one surface to another in time with her projects.
"What do you want to draw?" she asked, sitting down beside me.
I chose the least flashy notebook. Its cover showed a green dinosaur holding a red balloon, which did not exactly match my idea of discretion, but the other two were covered in glitter.
"Cities."
"Entire cities?"
Her face lit up as if I had just revealed a calling as an urban planner she had suspected since my birth.
"With streets and buildings," I clarified.
"Then you need a ruler. Wait, I just bought you one."
She placed the object in front of me with almost comical solemnity, then returned to her machine. I waited until the purr of the motor resumed before settling on the floor, my back against the couch, in a spot from which she could still watch me without making out what I was writing.
On the first page, I drew three columns as straight as my still-clumsy fingers allowed.
CONFIRMED
PROBABLE
DO NOT PANIC
The third category had no methodological use, but it seemed indispensable to me.
I wrote Gotham City, Metropolis, Wayne Enterprises, Queen Industries, and S.T.A.R. Labs in the first column. My letters trembled and several strayed beyond the lines. I knew perfectly well how to write, but knowing a movement did not mean the muscles of a child's hand could execute it precisely. After a few words, my fingers were already beginning to hurt.
In the second column, I added Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash, Lex Luthor, and several names whose existence depended too heavily on continuity for me to consider them certain. I stayed for a long time in front of Darkseid, the pencil motionless above the paper, before placing him in the third column. That was probably the best possible use of that category.
My memories of the DC universe were not as precise as I would have liked. I knew the broad strokes. Bruce Wayne would become Batman. Clark Kent would become Superman. Diana came from Themyscira. Someone would receive a green ring, though I was not certain whether the first Green Lantern of this version would be Hal Jordan, John Stewart, or someone else. The details, however, formed an almost unusable mess. I had read comics without following every series, watched films, cartoons, and television adaptations that contradicted one another. In one version, a character died. In another, he had never been born. Certain cities had been destroyed, rebuilt, replaced, then erased by a cosmic crisis whose full consequences even the readers no longer seemed to understand.
I knew enough to be afraid.
Not enough to build a real plan.
The most worrying thing was that some memories were already losing their clarity. The essential events of my old life remained perfectly accessible. I could still see the bank lobby, feel the weight of the gun in my hand, and recall Claire's face above me. On the other hand, certain secondary names escaped me. Plots I had read during my teenage years blurred together. Sometimes I remembered a scene without knowing whether it came from a comic, a film, or a series.
I had to write before time erased more.
I noted Krypton, Themyscira, Atlantis, Apokolips, the League of Assassins, Amanda Waller, and Cadmus. That last name mostly came with a very clear conviction: avoid Cadmus. I remembered clones, experiments, and government laboratories where the words national security generally served to justify catastrophic decisions. Nothing that could improve the life of a reincarnated child.
Under the columns, I wrote my first rules.
The first was obvious.
Tell no one this world was fiction in my old life.
The sentence would have seemed absurd to any other child. For me, it summed up a very real danger. If I told the truth, people would think I was sick. A psychologist might conclude that I had invented another identity to explain trauma or a sense of disconnection. Mom and Dad would worry. Doctors would ask questions I could not answer.
And if someone actually believed me, the situation might become worse.
The second rule took more effort.
Do not seek out the heroes.
I knew where Bruce Wayne lived. I knew the name of his butler and part of what his future held for him. Part of me wanted to take a train to Gotham, show up at the manor, and warn him. It was a stupid idea. Bruce was nine years old. His parents had just died. He did not need an unknown child telling him about a future war against a murderous clown who might not even exist yet. Alfred would probably have me escorted home before notifying social services.
I also did not know the exact timeline. Trying to prevent one event could cause another. Warning Bruce about the Joker could lead him to search for an imaginary enemy for years, or draw the attention of people far more dangerous than me. My knowledge was too fragmentary for me to turn other people's lives into an experiment.
I underlined the rule twice.
The third was simpler.
Learn to survive without depending on heroes.
I had no powers. I had performed a few tests, within the limits of what a six-year-old child could attempt without ending up in the hospital. I could not fly, move objects with my mind, or produce heat with my eyes. No screen appeared in front of me. No mystical animal had chosen me. I was not even particularly strong for my age.
I was normal.
In my old world, that would have been reassuring. In this one, it felt like a deadly vulnerability.
I noted the fields in which I could improve: physical condition, first aid, observation, law, investigation, psychology, and finances. That last category might have seemed strange for a child, but Batman would never have been Batman without the Wayne fortune. A poor man with the same obsession would mostly have ended up ruined, injured, or arrested for illegal possession of weapons.
The sound of the machine stopped.
Mom stood up and approached me. I closed the notebook a little too quickly to look natural. She froze, put her hands on her hips, and looked at the dinosaur cover.
"A secret project?"
"Yes."
"Does it involve drawing on the walls?"
"No."
"Cutting my fabrics without permission?"
"No."
"Taking apart an appliance that still works?"
I shook my head.
She adopted a falsely serious expression.
"In that case, I suppose I can respect your secret. But if the dinosaur starts asking me for money, you let me know."
She kissed my forehead and went back to work.
I waited several more minutes before sliding the notebook under my bed. It was a mediocre hiding place, probably the first place an adult would have inspected. Yet no one seemed to imagine that a six-year-old boy might be hiding notes there devoted to alien invasions, clandestine organizations, and the possible end of the world.
Sometimes, age was the best camouflage.
Elementary school quickly confirmed that it was very difficult to have the memories of an adult and pretend to be discovering the alphabet.
My classroom was on the first floor of a red-brick building constructed several decades earlier. The radiators knocked every morning before producing excessive heat, the windows closed badly, and the desks bore the initials of several generations of children. Colorful drawings covered the walls: animals, seasons, numbers, and capital letters cut from cardboard.
Our teacher, Mrs. Alvarez, wore a different animal-shaped brooch every day. She had short black hair, a calm voice, and that particular ability to spot a lie without ever raising her tone.
I underestimated her for exactly two weeks.
One morning, she asked us to read a story about a dog who refused to share his bone. I had finished the text before she had finished explaining the exercise, but I slid my finger under the sentences while deliberately slowing down. I had been using that method since the start of the school year so I would not seem abnormally advanced.
Mrs. Alvarez approached and placed another book on my desk. The cover showed the planets of the solar system.
"Try this one instead, Malcolm."
I looked up, trying to seem confused.
"Why?"
"Because you've already read the other one."
I lowered my eyes to the story about the dog.
"No."
"You turned the pages at the right speed, but your eyes were always several lines below your finger."
She seemed neither worried nor angry. Only attentive, which was almost more unsettling.
I slowly took the book about the planets.
"Can I really read it?"
"You can try. You won't be punished if you can't, and you won't be punished if you can."
The sentence was probably meant to reassure me. Mostly, it confirmed that she had understood I was hiding.
At the end of the day, she asked to speak with Mom. I remained seated on a small chair near her desk while they talked. The late-afternoon sun came through the windows and cast orange rectangles across the floor. The other students had left, which made every sound louder: papers being put away, the creak of chairs, and distant voices in the hallway.
"Malcolm reads far above the expected level," Mrs. Alvarez explained. "He understands the texts and can answer complex questions. It isn't only memorization."
Mom brought a hand to her chest.
"I knew it."
The pride in her voice made me smile and, at the same time, made me feel as if I were lying to her.
"He is trying to hide it, however."
Mom turned toward me. Her smile gave way to a gentler worry.
"Why would you do that, sweetheart? Are you afraid the others will make fun of you?"
I stared at Mrs. Alvarez's owl-shaped brooch. Telling the truth was impossible. I could not explain that I was afraid of attracting the attention of government organizations known for turning unusual children into test subjects.
"I want to stay with my class," I replied.
This time, it was not an excuse.
I did not want to skip several years, find myself surrounded by older students, and constantly have to justify my knowledge. Above all, I did not want to sacrifice my new childhood under the pretext that Frank had already learned to read.
Mrs. Alvarez crouched in front of me.
"No one is going to force you to leave your classmates. But you must not pretend not to understand simply so others feel comfortable. You can learn faster and still need them."
I did not answer immediately. Until then, I had viewed my life as a mission: learn, train, observe, and prepare. The other children had no particular place in that program. They seemed noisy, unpredictable, and concerned with problems I had already outgrown. One claimed his father knew Michael Jordan. Another regularly ate the glue meant for crafts.
Mrs. Alvarez was right about one thing, however.
I did not want to be alone.
A few days later, she placed me beside Nathan Cole.
Nathan wore glasses that were too large, almost always had messy hair, and contained more information about dinosaurs than any reasonable child should have been able to retain. He turned toward me before I even put my notebook on the desk.
"Did you know velociraptors probably had feathers?"
"No."
"And they were much smaller than in the movies. Movies lie."
He pronounced that last sentence as if Hollywood had betrayed his family.
"Okay."
"You don't care?"
His frankness surprised me.
"A little," I admitted.
Nathan shrugged.
"I don't care about planets either."
That was the beginning of our friendship.
We did not have the same interests, and he could speak without breathing whenever a subject fascinated him, but he never asked me why I read more difficult books. He simply accepted that I knew certain things, just as I accepted that he could identify several dinosaur species from the shape of a jaw.
Through him, I gradually rediscovered what it meant to be a child. We built a fortress out of cardboard boxes at the back of the classroom, ran across the yard with no goal other than reaching the fence first, and spent an entire hour determining whether a tyrannosaur could have opened a door. During a lesson on the solar system, one student pronounced Uranus with an unfortunate intonation and half the class burst out laughing. At first, I tried to remain serious, convinced that the man I had been would have rolled his eyes at such a stupid joke.
Nathan leaned toward me.
"That planet really needs a better communications department."
I laughed until my stomach hurt.
It was one of the first times I understood that Malcolm was not merely a younger version of Frank. Frank's memories existed within me, but they did not decide everything. Malcolm was six years old, loved drawing with his mother, and found Uranus hilarious.
The two lives could exist together.
At eight years old, I asked Mom to sign me up for gymnastics. She was bent over the large table in her workshop, a measuring tape around her neck, busy cutting a piece of white fabric according to a pattern held in place by pins. The light from the window made the fibers hanging in the air look like tiny sparks.
She stopped mid-motion.
"Gymnastics?"
"Yes."
"You want to do flips?"
"Not right away."
She set down her scissors and examined me from head to toe. I was thin, fairly flexible for my age, and covered in small marks caused by my regular encounters with furniture.
"Why gymnastics? You've never mentioned it to me before."
I could not explain to her that acrobats seemed to possess a higher life expectancy than ordinary police officers in the DC universe. Dick Grayson was probably the best proof of that.
"I want to learn to move better. To keep my balance and fall without hurting myself."
Mom tilted her head.
"You can also say you think it looks fun."
"I think it looks fun."
She watched me long enough to understand that I had adapted my answer.
"You really are a strange little boy."
She did not sound worried. Her voice was tender, almost proud.
"But I prefer a child who wants to learn how to fall properly to a child convinced he will never fall. I'll look into it."
The gymnasium occupied part of a municipal sports center whose walls smelled of chalk, rubber, and cleaning product. The ceilings were high, voices echoed, and the floor was covered with blue mats. In my imagination, gymnastics was supposed to be elegant. I would learn to control my body, roll under obstacles, and move like the heroes I had seen on screen.
Reality began with fifteen minutes of stretching.
Then a coach named Linda asked me to touch my toes without bending my knees. I discovered I possessed muscles capable of expressing particularly firm opposition.
I was not bad. I was simply not a prodigy. Some children folded as if their bones were optional. I had the awareness of an adult and the flexibility of a slightly damp piece of furniture. I fell often, bumped my elbows and knees, then hit my nose during a badly controlled roll.
I kept going anyway.
Progress had something reassuring about it. It depended neither on an unknown timeline nor on cosmic destiny. When I repeated a movement, my body improved. When I strengthened my arms, I held on a few seconds longer. Effort produced an understandable result.
Dad approved of the idea, though he quickly decided gymnastics lacked discipline.
"There are rules," I protested during dinner at his place.
His apartment resembled him. The books were lined up by size, the furniture was dark, and no object seemed to have been placed without prior authorization.
"I didn't say there were no rules," he replied. "I said a group of children running on beams did not constitute complete training."
"It's much harder than running."
"I don't doubt it."
He carefully cut his chicken.
"You could try karate."
I had difficulty hiding my enthusiasm.
Mom accused him of wanting to turn me into a miniature soldier when she found out. Dad explained that martial arts taught control and discipline. They argued for nearly ten minutes before realizing I already agreed with both of them.
I started karate at nine.
The dojo occupied the back of a small commercial building. The floor was covered with tatami mats, the walls almost bare, and the air filled with the smell of fabric, sweat, and disinfectant. Our teacher, Mr. Tanaka, was a thin man with graying hair whose voice never needed to rise to obtain silence.
The first weeks were even less spectacular than gymnastics. We repeated stances, footwork, and basic strikes. Mr. Tanaka constantly corrected my feet, the angle of my shoulders, and the height of my hands.
"Speed comes after form," he repeated.
In a film, that sentence would have triggered a musical montage showing dazzling progress. In reality, it announced twenty additional minutes devoted to the same movement.
Yet I liked that training. I was not becoming invincible. I was becoming more stable, more attentive, and slightly less vulnerable than before. At ten, after two years of gymnastics and one year of karate, I was more flexible than most children my age, better at controlling a fall, and lucid enough to know that a determined adult could still overpower me without difficulty.
That last piece of knowledge was as important as the techniques.
A few lessons did not turn a child into a hero. They only gave him one more chance to avoid the worst decision.
My first real fight took place behind the school gymnasium.
The sky was gray, the ground still damp after a morning rain, and the brick walls retained the cold smell of water. Most of the students had already joined their buses or their parents. I had forgotten a book in class and chosen the passage behind the building to reach the side exit.
I heard Nathan before I saw him.
"I told you I don't have any money."
His voice trembled.
I slowed down and rounded the wall. Nathan stood near the large metal trash cans, his bag held tight against his chest. Two older boys blocked his way.
The first was named Kevin Morris. He was eleven, almost a head taller than me, and had that satisfied expression of children used to seeing others step back. His friend stood slightly behind him, more interested in the spectacle than the money.
"You have money to eat," Kevin said. "So you can pay me back."
"I didn't borrow anything from you."
Kevin placed a hand on his shoulder and shoved him against the wall.
The smart decision was to find an adult. I knew that immediately. A supervisor's office was less than a minute away. I could shout, attract attention, or leave without being seen.
A minute could seem very long, however, when a friend was pinned against a wall.
"Kevin."
He turned around. His face first showed surprise, then annoyance.
"What do you want?"
"Leave him alone."
I tried to keep my voice steady, but my heart was already beating too fast. I did not feel brave. I was afraid, just not enough to leave.
Kevin looked behind me to check whether I was accompanied.
"Or what? You're going to call your mom?"
"Or I'm going to get a supervisor, and Nathan will tell him you're trying to take his money."
His friend shifted slightly, less enthusiastic now that the situation risked having consequences. Kevin, on the other hand, came closer.
"You think he'll believe you?"
"Maybe he'll believe two students against you."
I hoped Nathan would speak. I was not sure.
Kevin shoved me with both hands. I stepped back and felt my shoes slide on the damp ground.
"Go away, Malcolm."
"No."
The word came out too quickly.
He tried to shove me a second time. I deflected his arms and moved to the side as Mr. Tanaka had taught us. Kevin lost his balance, caught himself almost immediately, and straightened, more humiliated than hurt.
His fist flew.
I saw it coming. The movement was wide, announced by his shoulder, and relatively slow.
That did not mean I avoided it perfectly.
His knuckles grazed my cheek. Hot pain spread beneath my eye. I ducked, grabbed his wrist, placed my foot behind his ankle, and pushed with all my weight.
Kevin fell heavily onto his back.
For one second, the silence was total. Nathan stared at me with his mouth open. The other boy stepped back. I felt a pride as immediate as it was shameful.
I had done it.
Then Kevin got back up and punched me in the stomach.
The air left my lungs. I dropped to one knee, unable to breathe. All my preparation, my training, and my thoughts about controlling a confrontation vanished beneath a brutal and very simple pain.
Kevin raised his foot.
Nathan threw his bag at his face.
Books and a plastic box struck Kevin's chin. He stumbled back, swearing. A supervisor appeared at the same moment, drawn by the noise.
What followed was much less heroic.
We ended up in the principal's office, in front of a poster claiming that every conflict could be resolved through communication. My cheek was red, my stomach hurt, and I felt as if I were breathing with a weight on my chest. Kevin claimed I had attacked him for no reason. His friend confirmed it. Nathan told what had really happened, but his hesitant voice impressed the principal less than Kevin's confidence.
Mom arrived first. She entered with her coat still open and visible fear in her eyes. Before asking a single question, she knelt in front of me and took my face between her hands.
"Where does it hurt? Look at me. Did he hit you in the head? Are you breathing normally?"
"I'm fine, Mom."
"Don't say that just so I'll stop worrying."
Her voice trembled slightly. That fear made me feel more ashamed than any possible punishment.
"My stomach hurts, but I'm breathing. My cheek stings a little."
She gently ran her thumb under the mark.
"Did someone hit you?"
"Yes."
"Did you hit him too?"
"Not really."
The principal cleared his throat.
"Malcolm made the other student fall."
Mom slowly turned her head toward me.
"You threw him to the ground?"
"He mostly fell because of his balance."
She closed her eyes, torn between the urge to scold me and a pride she certainly did not want to encourage.
Dad arrived about twenty minutes later, still in a suit. He greeted the principal, sat beside Mom, and listened to the whole story without interrupting. His face remained calm, but I knew his way of restraining himself well enough to notice the tension in his jaw.
When the principal finished, Dad placed his hands on his knees.
"I would like to understand precisely what my son is being accused of. Is he being disciplined because he defended another student, or because he used force when another solution existed?"
The principal hesitated.
"Both, in a way."
"Those are not the same behaviors, and they should not be treated as if they have the same value."
"He should have gone to find an adult."
"On that point, we agree."
I turned my eyes toward him, surprised.
In the car, he remained silent for several streets. Mom had left with Nathan and his mother to make sure he was all right. A fine rain had started again, and the windshield wipers set the rhythm of our journey.
Dad finally spoke.
"Why did you intervene?"
"Kevin was trying to steal from Nathan."
"I'm not asking what was happening. I'm asking why you chose that way of intervening."
I clenched my hands on my knees.
"He was going to hit him."
"Did you know that or did you think it?"
"I knew it."
He gave me a brief look.
"No. You deduced it from his behavior. Maybe you were right, but a strong conviction remains different from a fact."
The distinction annoyed me because it was accurate.
"I wasn't going to leave Nathan alone."
"I am not asking you to abandon him. You could have shouted, attracted a supervisor, or told him to leave while keeping your distance."
"I wanted to stop him myself."
The words came out lower than I would have liked.
Dad remained silent.
"That is what worries me."
"But I helped Nathan."
"Yes, and I am proud that you refused to abandon him."
I looked up.
"I am proud of your courage," he continued. "But you have been training for some time, and part of you wanted to know whether it worked. Tell me I'm wrong."
I did not answer.
He sighed, without anger.
"Doing what is right is not always enough. The way matters. Consequences matter. If Kevin had fallen on his head and been seriously injured, your intention would not have erased the result. If his friend had had a knife, you could have died."
The memory of the bank rose brutally.
I had acted because Claire was threatened. I had always considered that decision the only morally acceptable one. And yet part of Frank had perhaps also wanted to be the hero he had never managed to become.
I did not regret helping Nathan.
I regretted not thinking more.
The next day, I opened my secret notebook and added two sentences under my rules.
Never confuse courage with haste.
Then, after a long hesitation:
Learn to win without having to fight.
The second rule would prove much more difficult to apply.
The dinosaur notebook gradually became a collection of notes, newspaper clippings, and sheets added with tape. When Mom bought our first family computer, I was twelve. The machine occupied a large part of the small desk set up in a corner of the living room. Its monitor was enormous, its casing beige, and its central unit produced a constant hum. To access the Internet, we had to use the telephone line. The modem then emitted a series of whistles and crackles that gave the impression a robot was being slowly tortured in our apartment.
Mom appeared in the doorway the first time she heard the noise.
"What did you do to it?"
"Nothing. It's connecting."
"Does it really have to suffer that much for it?"
"Apparently."
She watched the computer with suspicion.
"We sent men to the Moon, but no one was able to invent a less awful sound?"
Despite its slowness, the Internet transformed my research. I could consult articles and archives without asking an adult to accompany me to the library. Search engines ranked results badly, pages took forever to load, and many sites seemed to have been designed by people passionate about blinking text.
Still, I found information. Wayne Enterprises remained one of the most powerful groups in the country. Queen Industries appeared regularly in the business pages. S.T.A.R. Labs published statements on energy, medicine, robotics, and experimental physics, each written with the reassuring tone of a future catastrophe.
LexCorp still did not exist.
I found several Luthors: a dentist, a professor, and a fraudster from New Jersey. No young genius at the head of an industrial empire.
Ted Kord yielded nothing useful. If he existed, he was still too young and too unknown to leave a public trace.
Bruce Wayne, however, was impossible to avoid. His name appeared in economic, society, or legal articles. Journalists speculated about his fortune, his education, and the way Wayne Enterprises should be managed until he came of age. Some photographs showed him at galas, stiff in a suit far too formal for him.
I never tried to contact him.
The rule held.
I also searched for traces of my old life. That was much more difficult. The bank did not exist in the form I remembered. The address of my old apartment corresponded to an office building renovated before my birth. I searched for Mr. Patel, Paul, and several residents of my old neighborhood without finding any usable match.
Claire was almost impossible to find without her last name.
My first parents, however, could have been. I knew their full names. All I would have had to do was type them into a search bar.
I never did.
For several nights, I sat in front of the screen with my fingers on the keyboard. Finding nothing would have confirmed that my family belonged to another universe. Finding people with the same names would have been worse. I would not have known whether they were truly them or only strangers sharing their faces and part of their story.
I eventually accepted that my first life had left no trace here.
The pain did not disappear, but it changed. It was no longer an open wound occupying every thought. It was more like a deep scar, sensitive when touched and always present even on happy days.
What now concerned me was the growing distance between Frank and me.
Frank was not an autonomous presence. I did not hear his voice and saw no silhouette in my blind spots. I simply possessed his memories and could accurately imagine the reactions he would have had. Yet my tastes, my opinions, and my emotions were gradually drifting away from his.
Frank liked black coffee. I still thought coffee tasted like burnt dirt.
Frank had never had the patience to draw. I could spend hours beside Mom working on a face or a silhouette.
Frank had felt an almost sacred respect for uniforms. I was beginning to understand that a uniform could inspire as much mistrust as respect.
That difference became obvious one Saturday afternoon.
Nathan and I had gone into a department store to buy a gift for his mother. The place was vast, brightly lit, and filled with soft music that vanished beneath conversations and announcements. We were twelve, had enough money to pay, and had no intention of stealing anything.
The security guard began following us near the video game aisle.
At first, I thought it was a coincidence. I knew that job. Guards circulated, observed customers, and sometimes changed aisles for no visible reason.
He followed us to the next aisle.
Then the next.
Nathan moved closer to me.
"He's watching us."
"I know."
I kept walking without turning around. In the dark reflection of a switched-off screen, I saw the guard stop a few meters behind us. He was a white man in his forties, his stomach slightly straining under his shirt. His gaze rarely left my hands or the pockets of my jacket.
A group of white boys our age passed behind him, laughing, one of them handling a game taken from a shelf. The guard barely spared them a glance before turning back toward me.
Nathan wore glasses, an oversized sweatshirt, and light-colored pants. I was a Black boy, taller than him, wearing a dark jacket. We were making exactly the same gestures.
Yet we were not being seen in the same way.
The guard was not following me because I had done something. He was waiting for me to do something.
I kept my hands visible and avoided touching products unnecessarily. My body tensed despite me, which risked making me look even more suspicious in his eyes.
Nathan noticed my change in attitude.
"We can go somewhere else."
I looked at the guard in the reflection. Frank would probably have wanted to turn around and demand an explanation, convinced that a reasonable colleague would recognize his mistake.
But I was not Frank.
"We buy the gift and leave."
At the register, the guard remained near the exit. The cashier took our money, placed the item in a bag, and handed us the receipt with an absent smile. The security guard did not stop us, search us, or address us.
So he had not done anything precise enough for me to easily accuse him.
That was almost what made me angriest.
Once outside, Nathan remained silent for several seconds, the bag clutched in his hands.
"He thought we were going to steal."
I watched the cars move across the parking lot.
"He mostly thought I was going to steal."
Nathan opened his mouth, then closed it again. It was not his fault he did not know what to say. Eventually, he tightened his lips.
"That's disgusting."
"Yes."
That evening, I told Dad about the scene. He was in his kitchen, a cup of coffee set near him. When he understood, his expression barely changed, but his hand closed more firmly around the handle.
"Did he accuse you of anything?"
"No."
"Did he ask you to open your bags or pockets?"
"No."
"Did he speak to you?"
"No."
My anger returned.
"So we can't do anything."
Dad slowly set down his cup.
"The store will say he was watching all customers. The guard will explain that he was observing a sensitive area or following his instinct. Without a more explicit act, it will be difficult to establish."
"But he wasn't following the others."
"I know."
His voice was calm. His eyes were not.
"Should I have asked him why he was watching me?"
"Not necessarily. In that context, leaving the store without incident was probably the safest solution."
"So I say nothing and accept it?"
"I did not say accept it."
"That's what it means, though."
Dad inhaled before leaning against the counter.
"Malcolm, there is a difference between letting someone define your worth and choosing the moment when you can actually hold them accountable. You were a child facing an adult in uniform. A confrontation could have led to a false accusation, a search, or the involvement of the police."
"And if he does it again tomorrow with someone else?"
"He probably will."
The bluntness of the answer cut me off.
"Then what's the point of saying nothing?"
"Getting home safe."
He came closer and placed a hand on my shoulder.
"I am not asking you to find that fair. I am asking you to understand the world you live in. Some people will consider you suspicious before you have spoken, solely because of your skin, your age, your clothes, or the neighborhood you come from. Your anger is legitimate. But if you let every injustice decide for you how you must act, other people will still control your choices."
I lowered my eyes.
Frank had never lived through a scene like that. He had been a white man. He walked through stores without thinking about the meaning his body could take in other people's eyes.
I was Malcolm. Black. Son of Laurie Harrowing and Terrence Beaumont. My experiences would never be exactly Frank's, even if I possessed his memories.
That day, this truth stopped being theoretical.
I was not a dead man simply starting the same life again in a new body.
I had become someone else.
In middle school, my reputation depended on whom you asked. Teachers found me serious, polite, and sometimes too stubborn. The other students more readily used words like smart, weird, or uptight. Nathan mostly said I was the only human being capable of listening to him talk about fossils for twenty minutes without faking a medical emergency.
I joined the debate club at Dad's insistence. Meetings took place after class in a cold room, around tables arranged in a circle. There, I learned to build an argument, anticipate objections, and, above all, understand that being right was useless if no one could follow my reasoning. I also joined the school newspaper. The smell of ink, the sound of keyboards, and the chaos of drafts sometimes reminded me of Mom's workshop, though the teenagers responsible for layout were far less organized.
I continued gymnastics and karate. At fourteen, I was in good physical condition. I knew how to fall, keep my balance, and strike properly. I could run for a long time and climb certain obstacles without panicking. I was not an elite fighter. Against an armed adult, I would have retained the effectiveness of a particularly determined chair.
My interest in investigation became public because of Mr. Webb's wallet.
Mr. Webb taught history with a monotony that made it seem as though wars, revolutions, and presidential assassinations had all taken place in an administrative office. One lunchtime, his wallet disappeared from his bag. It contained around a hundred dollars, several cards, and keys.
The student immediately accused was Jamal Price.
Jamal had already stolen candy two years earlier, had argued with Mr. Webb that very morning, and had been in the hallway during part of lunch break. The administration quickly considered the case almost solved.
Jamal denied it.
Few people believed him.
I did not really know him. We shared two classes, a few acquaintances, and a common aversion to group projects. He spoke loudly, had a mocking smile, and considered every rule the beginning of a negotiation. He spent more time in the school's technical workshop than in the library and could take apart a socket or repair a lamp more easily than he could write an essay.
But the timeline did not fit.
Mr. Webb's bag was behind his desk. To take the wallet, Jamal had to enter the room. Yet he had spent a large part of lunch arguing with a supervisor in the cafeteria, in front of several witnesses. He might have had a few minutes left, which made the theft possible.
The problem was Mr. Webb's claim that he had seen the wallet in his bag just before the next class.
He said he had checked his bag.
Not the wallet.
I approached him after class. The room was almost empty, lit by gray light. He was putting papers into his briefcase with impatient gestures.
"Are you sure the wallet was in your bag after lunch?"
He raised his head.
"Yes, Malcolm. I already explained that."
"Did you see it?"
"I opened my bag."
"But did you see the wallet?"
His face closed off.
"Why are you asking all these questions?"
"Because Jamal says he didn't take it."
"People lie."
"Yes."
"And you believe he's telling the truth?"
I thought before answering.
"Mostly, I think we don't know yet."
He did not like that answer. The assistant principal liked it more when I explained the problem to her. She agreed to have the hallway recordings checked.
Jamal had never entered the room.
Another student, Samantha Reed, had taken the wallet in order to retrieve a key Mr. Webb kept inside it. She wanted to enter a storage room where her confiscated phone had been locked away. She had then panicked and hidden the wallet in another room.
The case was not spectacular. Jamal was cleared, Samantha suspended, and Mr. Webb did not thank me.
Jamal found me near the lockers the next day.
"Why did you believe me?"
He was trying to appear relaxed, but the answer visibly mattered to him.
"I didn't believe you."
His face hardened.
"Nice."
"I didn't believe Mr. Webb either."
He looked at me in surprise.
"So you don't believe anyone?"
"I prefer to check."
He stayed silent, then smiled.
"You're really weird, Beaumont."
"So I'm told."
Our friendship was built from there. Jamal did not replace Nathan and did not immediately become inseparable from us. At first, he joined a few lunches, then outings, before becoming one of the rare people capable of contradicting me without my turning the conversation into a formal debate. Nathan brought an almost inexhaustible curiosity. Jamal, meanwhile, had his feet on the ground. He knew how to fix what was broken, quickly spotted social lies, and refused to be impressed by diplomas or titles.
Dad heard about the wallet story from the assistant principal. He tried to hide his pride, but his smile betrayed him.
"You acted well."
"I didn't discover anything complicated."
"You asked a question the adults present had not asked."
"Which one?"
"Does the most convenient version actually match the facts? Many people first choose the person who seems guilty to them, then arrange the evidence around that conclusion. You did the opposite."
From that day on, some students began consulting me about problems I was absolutely not qualified to solve: missing objects, anonymous messages, rumors, and arguments. One girl even asked me to determine whether her boyfriend was cheating on her.
I refused.
There were limits to my commitment to the truth.
At fifteen, I finally knew what I wanted to become.
I announced it to Dad one Sunday evening. He was preparing dinner by following a recipe with the intensity of a prosecutor presenting a capital case. The vegetables were lined up on the board, the meat weighed, and each utensil occupied a precise position.
"I want to become a detective."
He stopped in the middle of a movement.
"A police detective?"
"Yes."
"Not a lawyer."
"No."
He slowly set down his knife.
"You could very well become a lawyer. Your grades are excellent, you argue properly, and you already understand procedure better than some students."
"I know."
"You could work in criminal law."
"I know that too."
He wiped his hands and turned fully toward me.
"But you don't want to."
It was not really a question.
"No."
A brief disappointment crossed his face. It disappeared quickly, but I saw it.
"Does this come from your old fascination with uniforms?"
I stiffened.
"What fascination?"
"At four, you drew security guards. At six, you asked for books about the police. At eight, you wanted to understand how an investigation worked."
He picked up his knife again.
"I am a prosecutor, Malcolm. I do occasionally observe my own son."
I smiled despite myself.
"It's not the uniform."
"Then explain it to me."
I watched the steam rise from the pot. The full truth was impossible. I could not tell him about the bank, Claire, or Frank's conviction that he should have become a police officer.
"I want to be there before the case gets to you. I want to understand what really happened, speak to witnesses, examine the scene, and find what others missed. In court, you work with the evidence people bring you. I want to be part of discovering it."
Dad's expression gradually changed. His disappointment did not completely disappear, but it gave way to more serious attention.
"You understand the real job does not look like television shows?"
"Yes."
"You will spend more time writing reports than chasing criminals."
"I know."
"You will see difficult things. Victims, families, and sometimes children."
The memory of the bank rose up.
"I know."
Dad remained silent.
"No. I don't think you know that completely yet."
"Probably not."
That answer seemed to suit him better.
"But it's what I want."
He nodded slowly.
"I am disappointed."
His honesty surprised me.
"But I am not going to stop you. You will have to study seriously, understand the law, and learn to write an impeccable report. You will also have to accept that the institution will not always match the idea you have of it."
I thought of the department store.
"I already understand that."
"You understand it intellectually. Accepting it when you are part of it will be different."
The conversation with Mom took another direction. She remained seated across from me in her workshop, a pencil stuck in her hair and a piece of fabric resting on her knees.
"Detective," she repeated. "So you're going to wear dull suits and awful shoes."
"Probably."
"We will have to work on that."
"I thought you would talk about the danger."
"I was getting to it."
Her smile gradually disappeared. She set down the fabric and took my hand.
"Are you truly certain this is what you want? Not what you think you have to do to prove something to your father, to me, or to yourself?"
The question touched me more deeply than expected.
"I'm certain."
"You have nothing to prove, Malcolm."
"I know."
"You often say I know when you want to end a conversation."
I lowered my eyes. She knew me too well.
"I want to help people. I want to understand why some people are accused too quickly and why others never are. I want to be useful before it's too late."
The last sentence came out almost despite me.
Mom watched me carefully.
"Before it's too late for whom?"
I thought of Claire, Nathan, Jamal, and the man Frank had wanted to become.
"For someone who needs people to arrive in time."
She remained silent, then kissed my temple.
"Then choose this life because you want it. Not because you spend all your time trying to fix something you cannot even name."
She might have been thinking of the divorce or the way I had always wanted to protect others.
I was thinking of a bank that did not exist in this world.
"I choose it," I replied.
This time, it was true.
At sixteen, Dad found me a summer job at the prosecutor's office. He insisted that he had not secured me any special treatment. I therefore spent two months filing documents, making photocopies, and bringing coffee to people who all knew my last name. Nepotism evidently had several degrees of subtlety.
The offices occupied several floors of a large gray building downtown. The hallways smelled of paper, coffee, and air conditioning. Employees constantly moved around with files under their arms. Phones rang, printers ran without interruption, and almost everyone seemed late.
The work was often boring.
It was also essential.
I discovered that investigations rarely rested on a spectacular revelation. They depended on hours of verification, unanswered calls, poorly filed photographs, imprecise witnesses, and reports where every line could become important several months later. I saw a strong case collapse because a police officer had badly documented a seizure. I saw a probably guilty man walk free after the main witness changed his version. I also saw a suspect cleared thanks to a gas station receipt no investigator had checked for several weeks.
Justice was not a perfect machine. It was more like an old building whose foundations held because some people kept repairing the cracks.
An investigator named Harris agreed to speak to me during his breaks. He had a gray mustache, wrinkled shirts, and a reputation for never throwing away a piece of paper before a case was definitively closed. We were sitting one day in a break room, facing a machine that regularly swallowed coins.
"Your father says you want to become a detective," he began, opening his sandwich.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I like understanding things."
He shook his head.
"Bad reason."
"Why?"
"Because most of the time, you will never understand everything. You will find out who did what. Sometimes, you'll know why. But you will rarely get a perfect answer that neatly closes every door."
"Then what's the right reason?"
Harris chewed slowly before answering.
"Being able to keep going even when you don't like the answer. Even when you don't find everything. Even when the person you arrest looks more like you than you would have wanted."
It was not inspiring.
That was probably why I believed him.
He taught me to read a report without drowning in details, to build a timeline, and to separate facts from hypotheses. He showed me how a poorly worded question could influence a witness and how an early certainty could contaminate an entire investigation.
One afternoon, he placed a file in front of me.
"Never enter a room intending to be right."
"Why?"
"Because your brain will always find something to make you feel as if you are. Enter to understand what happened, even if it destroys your first theory."
I wrote the sentence that very evening in the dinosaur notebook. Its cover had almost disappeared beneath layers of tape. The pages devoted to heroes and cosmic threats now shared space with notes on procedure, testimony, and investigative mistakes.
I was no longer writing only to survive the DC universe.
I was building the person I wanted to become in the present world.
The difference mattered.
At seventeen, my life almost had the appearance of normality. I took advanced classes without trying to hide my intelligence. I had understood that hiding every skill sometimes attracted more attention than simply working well. I participated in the debate club, the school newspaper, and the gymnastics team. I still practiced karate three evenings a week and ran when my schedule allowed.
I was neither a billionaire genius nor a prodigious fighter. I was a disciplined teenager, in good physical shape, and far too organized.
I also had friends.
Nathan was still there. His obsession with dinosaurs had turned into a real interest in paleontology. He took every available science class and had joined a program for high school students at the American Museum of Natural History. He mostly performed simple tasks there, but he spoke of every visit to the storage rooms as if he had personally discovered a new species. He planned to study geology before specializing, though the prospect of spending several years at university worried him more than he admitted.
Jamal was far less interested in long studies. He got decent grades when he made the effort, but preferred technical classes and worked some weekends with an electrician his family knew. He was already talking about a union apprenticeship program after high school. Dad thought he should keep more options open. Jamal thought people with offices had far too high an opinion of offices.
We went to the movies, played video games, and sometimes spent entire evenings doing nothing useful. That last activity had required real learning. For a long time, every hour not devoted to training or study felt wasted to me. Nathan and Jamal had gradually taught me that an evening could matter even if it produced no measurable skill.
I even had a girlfriend for four months. Her name was Melissa, she played piano, and she had a laugh that always began with a very short breath. She broke up with me after an argument in a café near the high school.
"You don't talk with me, Malcolm," she said, her hands clasped around her cup. "You interrogate me."
"I ask questions to understand what you mean."
"No. You look for the flaw in every sentence. You want everything to be coherent, even when I'm simply angry or sad."
I immediately felt defensive.
"I can't respond properly if you don't explain what's wrong."
"I'm not always asking you to respond properly. Sometimes I just want you to listen to me without turning my feelings into a problem to solve."
I remained silent. Her gaze softened slightly.
"You're kind, Malcolm. Really. But sometimes you act as if every conversation is going to end up in a report."
She was right.
Later, I asked Nathan and Jamal for their opinion. They confirmed it with far too much enthusiasm.
I worked on that flaw. Not by stopping myself from asking questions, but by learning to say what I felt before trying to analyze other people's emotions. It may have become one of the most important improvements of my adolescence. Not my grades, my training, or the knowledge accumulated.
I was learning to live with people rather than study them.
Frank had built a large part of his identity around a goal he had never reached. He wanted to become a police officer, wear a real uniform, and prove he was useful. I too wanted to become a detective, but that ambition was no longer my whole life. I drew with Mom, endured Dad's meticulously organized dinners, and could lose a competition without considering my entire existence a failure. I could spend time with my friends without feeling guilty for accomplishing nothing.
I loved my family.
I loved Nathan and Jamal.
I loved the person Malcolm was becoming.
That made the world more frightening.
At first, I wanted to survive because I refused to die a second time without having accomplished anything. At seventeen, I wanted to survive because I now had a great deal to lose.
The heroes still had not appeared publicly. There were rumors, of course, but none deserved to go in my confirmed column. Bruce Wayne was twenty. The newspapers talked about his studies, his irregular appearances at society events, and his future at the head of Wayne Enterprises. Some portrayed him as an irresponsible heir. Others already saw him as a future captain of industry.
I believed none of those versions.
I knew what he would probably become in the end.
I only did not know when his true journey would begin.
My university acceptance letter arrived in the spring of 2006. Mom found it in the mailbox and climbed the stairs shouting my name before she had even closed the door.
I came out of my room and found her in the middle of the hallway, her coat still on her shoulders, waving the envelope with an enormous smile.
"You got in!"
"You opened it?"
She froze.
"No."
"Then how do you know?"
"Rejection envelopes are smaller."
"That's a myth."
"I am your mother. I recognize a good envelope."
I took the letter. My fingers trembled slightly when I opened it. I had been accepted into the criminal justice program I had chosen, with a partial scholarship. Mom read the first lines over my shoulder and let out a cry before hugging me.
Dad arrived less than an hour later. He had left his office early, an event rare enough to deserve inclusion in the family archives. I reread the letter in the living room while he stood near the window, his arms crossed.
"Congratulations," he said.
His voice remained firm, but his eyes shone.
"Thank you."
"You will still be able to pursue law studies afterward."
Mom gave him a look.
"He has been accepted for less than two hours."
"I am simply reminding him that he has several options."
"And he knows them."
Dad removed his glasses and briefly rubbed his eyes.
"I know he knows them."
He turned toward me. His control cracked just enough for his voice to change.
"I am proud of you, Malcolm."
The sentence was simple.
It touched me more than all his advice combined.
We ordered food and opened a bottle of champagne I was not allowed to touch. Nathan and Jamal joined us later. Nathan wanted to examine the complete course program. Jamal asked how many years it would take before I started earning a decent living, then claimed his apprenticeship would probably allow him to buy a car before me. Mom took enough photographs to document the evening from every possible angle.
For several hours, I thought neither of Batman, nor Superman, nor any future catastrophe.
I was simply a high school student accepted into university.
The son of Laurie Harrowing and Terrence Beaumont.
The friend of Nathan Cole and Jamal Price.
Malcolm.
Later that night, when the apartment became quiet again, I returned to my room. The walls still carried some drawings from my childhood, along with photographs, gymnastics medals, and books accumulated over the years. I knelt beside the bed and pulled out my old notebook.
The hiding place had not changed in eleven years.
The fact that no one had discovered it seriously called into question my entire family's powers of observation.
I opened the first page. The clumsy handwriting of my six-year-old self still filled the three columns.
Confirmed.
Probable.
Do not panic.
I took a pen and added a new sentence beneath the old rules.
Have a life worth protecting.
I stared at it for a long time.
At seventeen, I had no powers, no fortune, and no access to extraordinary technology. I personally knew no heroes and had no idea when the story I feared would truly begin. But I was no longer the little boy frozen in the middle of a crosswalk, convinced that death could take back his second chance before he had even begun to live.
I had learned.
I had trained.
I had grown.
That would never be enough to protect me from everything the DC universe could produce. Nothing could. Even Superman died sometimes. The goal, then, was not to become invulnerable. It was to be as ready as possible when danger arrived, without sacrificing present existence to fear of the future.
I closed the notebook and put it back under my bed. In a few months, I would leave high school. In a few years, I could join the police and become the investigator I had chosen to be.
Bruce Wayne was not Batman yet.
The world still seemed normal.
I still had time.
At least, that was what I believed.