Chereads / Rise of a Prodigy / Chapter 57 - Midnight in Manhattan

Chapter 57 - Midnight in Manhattan

The city wore midnight like a velvet cloak, studded with the diamonds of possibility. From Mother's fire escape, where I'd spent countless nights in both timelines, New York seemed to pulse with the rhythm of my track – still playing from distant windows, car stereos, bodega doorways. The future was already different; I could feel it in the air like static before a storm.

I held Sarah Reed's business card in my hands, turning it over and over, watching the embossed letters catch the streetlight. In my first life, she'd given me her card in 2019, after everything had already gone wrong. Now, the weight of her promised protection sat in my back pocket – thirty pages of legal framework for a future she couldn't possibly understand but somehow sensed was coming.

Mother's voice drifted through the window behind me: "Mijo, your old teacher Mr. Henderson just called. Says he heard your song at the barbershop. Says it reminded him of Miles Davis meeting the future."

I smiled, remembering how in my first life, Henderson hadn't heard my music until 2012, at my first major label release party. The timelines were bleeding together now, past and future swirling like cream in coffee, creating patterns I could barely track.

My phone lit up with a text from Rico: "Jay-Z's people called. They want a meeting tomorrow."

Seven years early. The butterfly effects were getting stronger. I pulled out my notebook, its pages heavy with the weight of two histories:

*Midnight finds me counting stars and chances

Each light above a path I might have known

Time shifts like shadows in their midnight dances

As future seeds in present soil are sown*

*[Bridge]*

*Standing on the edge of what could be

Memories of tomorrow haunting me

But every changed note and shifted beat

Makes the music somehow more complete*

The track played again from somewhere down the block, and I caught a group of girls singing along to the hook – words I'd written in another lifetime, now finding new life in younger voices. Above them, the moon hung like a platinum record in the sky, witness to all the versions of this night I'd lived and was yet to live.

Mother stepped out onto the fire escape, two cups of café con leche in her hands. The same scene had played out in my first life, but then I'd been worried about radio play and mixtape sales. Now, with Sarah Reed's contract signed and Rico fielding calls from labels we wouldn't have dreamed of approaching before, the weight of change sat differently on my shoulders.

"I heard you talking to Rico about Beyoncé earlier," Mother said quietly, and my heart skipped a beat. In my original timeline, I'd never mentioned Beyoncé to her until after we'd met. "You speak about her like you know her."

The coffee cup trembled slightly in my hands. "Not yet," I said carefully. "But I will."

She studied me in the darkness, her eyes reflecting the city lights. "You're different, Marcus. Not just since yesterday, but since weeks ago. Like you woke up one morning carrying more than just dreams."

I thought about telling her then – about the years I'd lived, the success I'd tasted, the mistakes I'd made, the love I'd found and was trying to find again. About how I'd gone to sleep one night in 2024 and woken up back in my teenage bed, carrying the future in my head like a symphony waiting to be rewritten.

Instead, I said, "Sometimes dreams are memories we haven't made yet."

She nodded, as if this made perfect sense. Perhaps in some way it did. "Your father used to say something similar. That music doesn't just come from what we've lived, but from what we're going to live."

Below us, a car passed playing my track, the bass line rattling windows. The sound waves rippled through the night, changing trajectories I'd once known by heart. Somewhere across the city, in a penthouse I remembered from magazine spreads and private moments yet to come, Beyoncé might be listening to those same beats, feeling the first tremors of a destiny I was carefully reconstructing.

"The future's coming fast, Ma," I said, watching the city lights flicker like timelined possibilities. "Faster than before."

She laughed softly. "Before what?"

"Before everything," I whispered, as tomorrow's wind carried yesterday's dreams into a future I was still learning to reshape.

The night stretched out before us, dark and glittering with promise. In my pocket, Sarah Reed's contract waited like a key to doors that didn't exist yet. On my phone, Rico's message blinked with the weight of meetings that had once taken years to earn. And in my head, the music played on – a symphony of what had been and what could be, each note a step closer to a future I remembered but was choosing to reimagine.

Mother squeezed my hand, her touch anchoring me between timelines. "Whatever's coming, mijo, we'll face it together. Again. For the first time."

If she only knew how right she was.