“Your job is to make sure the muse knows where you’re going to be every day from nine ‘til noon or seven ‘til three. If he does know, I assure you that sooner or later he’ll start showing up, chomping his cigar and making his magic.” Stephen King

I lol’d in class when I saw this quote, not because it was funny, but because I couldn’t imagine Kai with a cigar, or chomping on anything, he or rather they (considering he’s part of some collective spirit or hive mind, I still don’t understand which) has been with me since my sports career started and ended at eleven and for the last six years we’ve been together.

He’s told me, “pick a time, the place only matters so much, and make sure there is no rush. What follows isn’t magic it’s just you and me in conversation seeking clarity.”

I think Kai said this to me over a thousand times, even though we don’t have the “normal” Jinn to human connection.

Normal, I can hear my mom would snapping at me “there is no such thing” if she heard me say that, she’s not wrong, but all I’ve ever wanted was just that, but for most of my life normal has been six inches out of reach, even on my tippy toes.

The son of two only children who never learned to share, now forced to learn by a judge. Just brown enough and tall enough to get picked in gym the first few days of school, whose best friend is invisible to everyone but him and can only hang if we talk about him.

Ed’s Note: The Secret History of Genius is a new novel by Jamal Bilal. It’s being written and published in real time, page by page. Subscribe to the blog to receive new pages via email or follow along here.