by April Henry
And now it seemed like he wanted to spend even more time with her. To do that, she would be happy to read him anything, up to and including one of those old telephone books like her grandma had. But this? When she had made the decision to loan Ajay the book, the most she had hoped for was being able to discuss it with him later.
When the bell rang, Bridget realized she hadn’t heard a thing Mr. Manning had said. She was just lucky he hadn’t asked her anything.
As they got up, Derrick called from the back of the room. “Hey, Bridget. Wait up. I want to ask you something.”
She and Ajay exchanged a glance. Then he said something she didn’t quite catch and made for the door.
Had he said he was going to wait for her? Or maybe that he wasn’t? Whatever he’d said, he was already disappearing into the roar and bustle of the hall. Today was Halloween, and there was a certain energy in the air. A few of the girls were even wearing costumes, walking the fine line between sexy and too sexy for school.
Bridget was so wrapped up in thinking about Ajay that Derrick’s voice made her start.
He loomed over her, thin and slightly stooped, like a parenthesis. The height was new and still awkward. “Hey, Bridget. I just wanted to say I love those books, too. Swords and Shadows. They’re epic.”
This was no secret. Who could forget Costume Day in fifth grade, almost exactly six years ago? Certainly not their classmates. It was held the day before or after Halloween so that the school district couldn’t be accused of celebrating a pagan holiday. Derrick had come dressed as Rowan, complete with a red cloak and flowery speech. But that was before the TV show, before most middle schoolers had any kind of familiarity with the world of Swords and Shadows. Bridget had been the only one who hadn’t thought Derrick was a pint-sized Prince Charming. Even then, it wasn’t the outfit or the language that had branded Derrick as an übernerd. It was the complete seriousness he’d brought to the role. He had been all too solemn, like someone cast as Jesus Christ in a Passion play, who felt it was blasphemy to act un-Christlike, even off stage. Any teasing had made him flush and then get angry.
So of course the other kids had teased him unmercifully.
Even now, as Wyatt walked by, he fake-coughed the word “Nerds!”
“Yes,” Bridget said, ignoring Wyatt and wishing she could ignore Derrick. “The books are amazing.” Was Ajay waiting for her?
“Have you been to one of Haldon’s readings? Do you ever wonder what he’s like in real life?”
Even though Bridget was only half-listening, she had the strangest feeling that Derrick was suppressing some strong emotion. For a second, she focused on him. While nobody looked good under fluorescent lights, Derrick had the kind of skin that cruel kids sometimes called pizza face. But now a smile was playing about his lips.
Oh no. She got it. Derrick must like her. Like her the way she liked Ajay. Oh no. No, no, no.
“I more just think about the books,” she said truthfully. “Not the author.” As she spoke, she realized how little she really knew about Bob. Then again, all he ever wanted to communicate about was the world of the books. She snuck another glance toward the hall. She was relieved to spot Ajay, but that relief was short-lived when she saw that a senior girl sporting cat ears, a fur tail, and a tight black sweater was talking to him.
Derrick made an impatient noise. “Don’t you ever wish that you could read that last book, like, right now?”
“B—Haldon will write it when he writes it.” Bridget was so distracted that she almost forgot her connection with Bob was a secret.
Derrick smiled at her again, but this time it was more of a smirk. “I’m hoping someone will help him realize how important that is to his fans.”
Bridget looked at Derrick now, really looked. Was there any chance that he knew who she was? Had he read that one fan publication she’d let interview her? But it was nearly a zine, one step up from being photocopied at Kinko’s. Besides, she’d only used her first name.
Then Ajay motioned to her from the hall, and every other thought vanished. “I’m sorry,” she said to Derrick, no longer really seeing him, “but I need to get to lunch.”
DERRICK
The Dark Side
Derrick didn’t let himself chuckle until Bridget was out in the hall. She clearly had no idea, none, of what was happening to Bob. She hadn’t been concerned at all. Her face had been as placid as a pail of milk.
He had figured out who Bridget really was in late September. His mom had repeated an offhand comment Bob once made about his researcher, and that had been enough to start Derrick digging.
He’d initially pictured the researcher as a female version of Bob: an overweight woman in her sixties. It was a shock when he realized she was really the quiet redhead in his physics class. While he had never spoken to her before today, the last few months he had watched her from the back of the room. Sometimes he daydreamed about how she would make an excellent Cascadian elf. It was so easy to imagine her clad in a short green dress, laced tightly at the bodice and worn with black tights, black leather greaves, and over-the-knee black boots, with the tips of fake ears just poking out through her hair.
And now he had dared to walk right up to the line. To dance on the knife’s edge. Yet it was clear she was none the wiser. In the past, Derrick had pulled off a few similar tricks in Cascadia, convinced others he was friend instead of foe or vice versa, but this was a new level of sophistication.
Now he watched Bridget go off with that Ajay. When he’d seen Bridget slip King of Swords to Ajay, jealousy had pinched him. Wasting a book on someone like Ajay. At least he wasn’t a sports guy, but even though he got good grades, he definitely wasn’t a book guy. He more liked to talk about something boring. So boring Derrick couldn’t remember it at first. Cooking, that was it. Another activity, like LARPing, that mostly interested adults, yet no one made fun of Ajay for it.
Derrick told himself he didn’t care. And in a few hours he would be reading something even Bridget hadn’t.
As soon as school let out, Derrick drove out to the cabin, driving a little too fast even once he got on the barely plowed roads. Once he unlocked the door, he made a beeline for Bob’s room. The old man let out a surprised huh as Derrick made straight for the stack of paper. He turned it over to read the first page.
In front of me squats the typewriter. The empty page stares at me, unblinking. I need a shower.
Derrick looked up. “What is this crap?”
Bob pushed the OFF button and the treadmill slowed to a stop. Now the room was silent except for the sound of his breathing. He looked sweaty. And he smelled.
And this was the guy Derrick used to venerate?
“You can’t expect me to just start pounding out a story,” Bob said. “I’m trying to write my way to it.”
Anger bloomed hot in Derrick’s chest. “I’ve given you everything you said you needed to write. And I warned you about the consequences. But instead of writing, you’re typing your stupid, ordinary, boring thoughts no one cares about.”
“I gave you guys the money. Just let me go.”
“Not until Eyes of the Forest is done.”
Bob made a scoffing noise. “All this so you can read some book?”
Derrick gritted his teeth. Why had the muse chosen such an imperfect vessel? Bob didn’t even respect his own creation. “First of all, it’s not just some book,” he said with every ounce of patience he could muster. “And second of all, don’t you get it? It’s not just about me being able to read it. You had your plan. We had ours. In some ways, they’re the exact same plan.”
The old man tilted his head. “What do you mean?”
“You want to finish your book. We want the same thing. And then we’ll sell it.”
“My publisher already paid for half of it.” Bob brightened. “But if you let me go, I’ll give you the other half.”
“No.” Derrick tapped his chest. “We’re going to sell it. Ourselves.”
“But that
’s what my publisher does. I don’t think they’ll look too kindly on anyone trying to make an end run around them.”
“Not in bookstores. On the dark web.”
Bob went silent. It was a good feeling, making him shut up. He closed his eyes, exhaled through his nose, opened them again. “You’re not serious.”
“There are a lot of people who would give anything to read Eyes of the Forest. Pay almost anything.”
“Once I finish, the series is over. I’m not sure my readers really want that.”
Derrick heard the hidden truth. “You mean you don’t want that. But your readers? They want answers. One of the most popular threads on Reddit is just people speculating about the ending.”
“And there are countless blogs and parody Twitter accounts and articles. Some scholarly. So?”
“So a lot of those people would be willing to take a quick trip to the dark side if it meant they didn’t have to wait any longer.”
“They wouldn’t do that.” Bob sounded like he was trying to convince himself.
Derrick couldn’t help smiling. “You don’t think so? They’re so desperate, so invested in you as the maker of Swords and Shadows, that they’re even willing to buy anything you’ve touched.”
“What do you mean?” Bob rubbed his stubbly cheeks with one hand.
“They just want to be close to you. And if they can’t read the book, maybe the next best thing would be to sleep in your sheets. Wear your old socks.”
The old man’s mouth fell open. “You’re going to sell my personal belongings?”
Pride spread a smile over Derrick’s face. “We already have. For the past three months.”
“My old socks?” Bob made a face. “What’s to stop you from just saying they’re mine?”
“I created a certificate of authenticity, complete with an official-looking seal. Plus each piece comes with a picture of you using the item in question.”
“Wait—you said my sheets. Joanne’s been taking pictures of me sleeping?” Stepping off the treadmill desk, he sat heavily on the bed.
Derrick shrugged. “It’s not hard. She said you sleep a lot.”
“Is that where my favorite argyle socks went? And that little statue of a gryphon that used to be on my desk?”
Derrick let his silence answer.
“No wonder I couldn’t find my Blazers cap the other day. I was like, I know I put it down here. Where can a hat go?”
Derrick smiled. “It sold for north of six thousand.”
Bob’s mouth fell open. “Six thousand dollars for a hat?”
“You know what would really go for a lot?” Derrick reached out to finger the scarf. “This is iconic. It’s how everyone recognizes you.”
Bob jerked away. He had paled, but also set his jaw. “The only way you’re taking it off me is if I’m dead.”
Derrick shrugged. “Okay, so not the scarf.” In his head, he put an asterisk after the sentence, and then the word yet. “As for the book, we’re going to sell it chapter by chapter. At a hundred bucks a pop.”
“For a single chapter?” Bob scoffed. “That’s more than three times what the entire book will cost when it comes out. Why would anyone pay that?”
“Because no one believes the whole book’s ever going to appear. It’s years overdue. They’ll figure it’s better to get some chapters now, even if they’re expensive, than to get zero chapters forever.”
“But that’s a lot of money for a few pages.”
“You don’t understand. There are hundreds of people just like me out there. Thousands.”
Bob cocked his head. “Once you sell a chapter to someone, how will you stop them from turning around and selling it to someone else?”
“We’ll sell it as a PDF and disable the copy-paste and print features.”
“You really think that will work?” Bob snorted. “My publisher has a whole team devoted to book piracy. There’s no way to stop someone from screenshotting it page-by-page. Run the screenshots through an optical character reader, and they’ll have it back again, more or less. I’ve seen some crazy mistakes creep in that way, but all the pirates say sharing is caring.”
“We’ll get the biggest fans before anyone else. They don’t even want to wait another day. Not if they can read it now.”
AJAY
A Bridge Too Far
“You outdid yourself, Ajay,” his grandmother said, taking a bite of halwa. The dessert’s orange color was set off perfectly by the topping of bright green chopped pistachios.
“Everything was delicious,” his grandfather agreed.
Ajay had spent weeks preparing for tonight’s Diwali celebration. At school nearly everyone else had been preoccupied with thoughts of Halloween, which this year coincided with Diwali, or the Festival of Light. In many ways, Halloween, with its emphasis on death, was antithetical to the spirit of Diwali. (When he was little, his parents had always tried to find a balance, decorating with jack-o’-lanterns instead of ghosts and ghouls and steering him away from all-black costumes.) While the stories of Diwali varied depending on what part of India you were from, all had a common thread—marking the victory of good over evil, light over dark. It was one of the biggest holidays on the Hindu calendar, as important as Christmas to Christians.
Diwali meant feasting. New clothes. Decorating the house with strings of twinkling lights and painted diya—clay lamps. Like every year, his mom had created a rangoli at the end of the driveway, filling the design of an oil lamp surrounded with flower petals with bright red, green, purple, and pink sand. After dinner, they would go outside and light sparklers.
To celebrate the occasion, most of Ajay’s extended family was here. His older sister, Aprita, home from medical school. His three living grandparents. Papa’s brother and his wife and two little girls. Later they would FaceTime with Mama’s sister’s family in Seattle.
On the buffet table, the white platters that had been overflowing with sweet and savory foods were now nearly empty. For the past few weeks, Ajay had spent every free moment cooking. Some days the kitchen had been filled with the delicate scents of milk and rose essence blending together, and others it had carried the savory smell of freshly ground spices. He had made a traditional meal of lentils, veggies, samosas, and roti. But the mithai, the sweets, were the best part of the meal, and it was those he had labored over the most. In addition to the halwa, he had made kheer (a rice pudding), gulab jamun (like donut holes in a sweet syrup), and sweet shankarpali (bite-sized deep-fried sugar cookies).
Even though Ajay was 100 percent Indian-American, his background was a bit of a hodgepodge. All four of his grandparents had come from different parts of India, which meant they all spoke different local languages. His other grandmother, who had died last year, hadn’t spoken Hindi at all.
“Aprita, there is a boy we think you should meet,” his grandmother said now.
His parents stiffened and exchanged a glance as Grandmother fumbled with her phone. She finally pulled up a man’s photo and reached across the table. His sister took it gingerly and then, after a glance, gave it back.
“Don’t go by the picture photo,” Grandmother said quickly. “He is a very nice boy. Good family. I’m just saying you should meet him, that’s all.”
Aprita kept her eyes on her lap. “I’m too busy with my studies.”
Grandmother was not deterred. “And soon you’ll be a resident. Your mother followed the same path and managed to find time to meet your father.” They had been engaged a month after that first meeting. “You’re not getting any younger. And this boy would be perfect for you.”
“Look, Mama,” Ajay’s father finally said. “America will always be the world’s melting pot. It’s why you and Papa came here in the seventies. It’s why we decided to raise our family to honor the traditions of India as well as to embrace American customs. The children were born here, and their future is here. They’re more American than not.”
His father’s father spoke up. “They ar
e also Indian. America won’t let them forget that. So why should we turn our back on that truth?”
Breaking the uncomfortable silence that followed, his mother got up and began to clear the dishes.
* * *
Later, there was a knock on Ajay’s door.
“Come in,” he said.
It was his sister. Aprita perched on the edge of his bed, smoothing her new red and gold sari. He had complimented her on it earlier.
“Tonight was your night, wasn’t it?” Her voice was tinged with bitterness.
“What do you mean?” Although he had an idea.
“‘Oh, Ajay is such a marvelous cook!’ You don’t even see how lucky you are. How free. If you hadn’t had me paving the way, your life would be so much different. I had to fight for things you take for granted. And then of course you’re the boy and can get away with more.”
If anything, Ajay should have been the one filled with resentment for how his parents and especially his grandparents insisted on holding Aprita up as an example. He said, “I don’t think I have it easy. If I come home with a ninety-five percent, it’s not ‘You did a good job,’ but ‘Why did you miss five points?’ They’re always talking about how much better your grades were and how you were valedictorian and a finalist in the 3M Young Scientist Challenge in eighth grade.”
She made a scoffing noise. “And do you think that was easy? They’ve been guiding me down this path since I was a baby. Their plan was always for me to be a doctor. You know they even put Mom’s old stethoscope in my crib.”
“Do you not want to be one?” Ajay asked, suddenly concerned. He put his hand on her wrist.
“Luckily, I do. I just wish I could have made my own choices. You’re a boy, but they let you cook and think it’s adorable, even though our grandmothers were expected to be responsible for everything in the kitchen.” She sighed. “When I was in high school, all I was allowed were my studies and my chores.” She pronounced it ishtudies, the way their grandparents would. “Everything else was irrelevant. I wanted to learn how to play the guitar, but of course they insisted on it being the violin. You have so much more freedom than I ever did.”