Afterworlds

by Scott Westerfeld

  “Seriously,” Darcy had to agree.

  * * *

  As Nisha opened the apartment door, she extended a hand toward the living room windows with a proprietorial air. Darcy was pleased to see her parents’ dumbstruck expressions.

  “My agent lives in the sky,” she murmured, too softly to cost herself another dollar.

  Her father had Darcy’s suitcase in hand, and her mother was carrying something else—a garment bag.

  Darcy took a step forward, blocking her way. “Wait. What’s that?”

  “I thought you might need something other than T-shirts.” The words came out in a rush, over-rehearsed.

  Darcy groaned, but her mother kept talking.

  “Really, Darcy. I should never have told you that story about coming from India with nothing to wear. It wasn’t by choice. We simply didn’t have money for proper clothes. And the first thing I bought here was a cocktail dress.” Annika Patel smoothed the garment bag. “I thought you would want one just like it.”

  “You thought I would want a cocktail dress from 1979?”

  Nisha laughed aloud at this, and even Dad cracked a smile.

  “Hush, girl.” Her mother unzipped the bag and held up the dress on its hanger. It was classic, short, and black. It was kind of perfect.

  Darcy stared, admitting nothing.

  “What do you think?” Her mother’s eyes were alight.

  “Well . . . I do have this sort of party tonight.”

  CHAPTER 6

  THE PARAMEDICS WRAPPED ME IN shiny silver mylar, like the weightless blankets my dad used to bring on camping trips. They knelt to shelter me from the wind, and one gave me a hot thermos to hold.

  But I couldn’t stop shivering. The cold had crawled too far inside.

  My lips were cracked, my muscles brittle. I couldn’t feel my feet at all. When I tried to speak, all that came out was a dry rasp. My eyes watered with the sting of tear gas.

  How long had I been lying dead in that sidewalk morgue?

  One of the paramedics was shouting into a radio on her shoulder, another wrapping a blood pressure cuff around my arm. As it began to inflate, I thought the pressure would shatter me into splinters. I was made of ice.

  An ambulance came to a skidding halt beside us. The rear doors opened, and a gurney hit the pavement, bouncing on dirty white rubber wheels.

  “Can you lie flat?” someone asked.

  I was in a fetal position, curled around the thermos. My muscles refused to thaw.

  “Forty over forty?” shouted the paramedic taking my blood pressure. She shook her head, starting to inflate the cuff again. “Prep an adrenaline injection.”

  I tried to say no. The heat inside me was building, my body coming back to life.

  On a three count, the paramedics hoisted me onto the gurney. The world spun for a moment, and then I was inside the ambulance. It was crowded and swaying as we sped out of the airport. A needle glimmered among the blinding lights, as long as an ice pick.

  “In her heart,” someone said.

  They peeled the mylar blankets off me. Hands grabbed my wrists, prying my arms open. I tried to roll into a ball again to protect myself. My body was full of heat now, life flooding back. My lips still burned where Yamaraj had kissed me, and I didn’t need their spike in my chest.

  But the medics were stronger, and forced me flat. Someone unzipped my hoodie, and scissors pulsed cold along my belly, slicing open my T-shirt. A fist raised up over my bare chest, clutching the long needle like a knife.

  “Wait!” A plastic-gloved hand slapped down over my heart. “She’s at ninety!”

  “Up from forty?”

  “Don’t touch me,” I managed to say.

  The three paramedics in the ambulance were silent for a moment. I heard the sigh of the blood pressure cuff deflating, and felt my pulse flowing back into my arm.

  “Ninety over sixty,” the woman said. “Can you understand me?”

  I nodded, and tried to speak again. She leaned closer to listen.

  “What time is it?” I managed.

  She pulled away, frowning, but glanced at her watch. “Just after two a.m.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and closed my eyes.

  Two hours since the attack had started. I’d been in the afterworld for only, what, twenty minutes? The rest of that time I must have been lying outside in that makeshift morgue, my body freezing.

  More than all I’d seen and heard, it was coming back to life that made me believe in the afterworld. I could feel that I’d been somewhere else. The scent of a faraway place lay on my skin. I could see Yamaraj perfectly in my mind, and his taste lingered on my lips.

  On the way to the hospital, one of the paramedics kept saying he was sorry, over and over. A strange calm had wrapped itself around me, but the paramedic sounded like a man in shock.

  “What are you sorry for?” I finally croaked. My mouth was so dry.

  “I’m the one who called you.”

  I just stared at him.

  “I couldn’t find a pulse. Your head wound didn’t look bad, but you had no respiration, no pupil response. You were so cold!” His voice grew ragged. “You looked too young for cardiac arrest, but I thought maybe you’d passed out on your back and the tear gas had made you vomit and . . .”

  I finally understood. He was the one who had proclaimed me dead.

  “Where did you find me?”

  He blinked. “In the airport, with the other bodies. Everyone thought you were dead.”

  “It’s okay,” I told him softly. “I think you were right.”

  He stared at me, terror in his eyes. Maybe he thought I was going to sue him, or that someone would revoke his license over this.

  Or maybe he believed me.

  * * *

  At the hospital there were beds lined up, a squad of doctors and interns waiting for the flood of wounded. But, as everyone soon realized, there was only one survivor. Just me, out of all those people.

  By the time they rolled me into an examining room, I could sit up. My blood pressure and body temperature were normal, my pulse steady, and the blue tinge of hypothermia had faded from my skin.

  Shudders kept rolling through me, but after the doctor put six stitches in my forehead, he declared that I didn’t need anything but fluids. He was most confused by how little the tear gas had affected me. Nothing but an inflammation on one cheek, where that single tear had somehow burned my skin.

  The paramedic who’d pronounced me dead brought a cup of hot water and lemon to me. Then there was a call that casualties were coming in, and for a few minutes I was left alone. It was a car accident, I think, nothing to do with the airport, but the staff was keyed up by the news blaring from a radio. People in scrubs hurried past my door.

  I blew on my hot water, blinking at the antiseptic whiteness of everything. It was so noisy back here in reality, buzzing and chaotic. The paper cover on the bed crinkled. A black plastic widget clipped to my fingertip transmitted my vitals to a small screen, where they pulsed in colored lights.

  Exhaustion was creeping over me, but I was too wired to sleep. Besides, on this narrow bed with its slippery paper cover, I’d probably roll off onto the floor.

  I wondered if anyone had called my mother and told her I was alive. They hadn’t even asked my full name yet.

  My hand went to my pocket. But my phone was gone. Of course, I’d dropped it. I sighed and zipped my hoodie closed over my sliced T-shirt. At least no one had put me in a hospital robe. Maybe they would just let me leave.

  I had no ride, of course, or much cash, and my luggage was back on the plane. . . . My mind spun away from everything that had happened back at the airport, and focused on how annoying it was to have no phone.

  “Fucking terrorists,” I said softly.

  “You shouldn’t say that word.”

  I looked up. There was a young boy in the doorway, maybe ten years old. He wore a red plastic raincoat, glossy and wet.

  “Sorry,” I
said.

  “It’s okay.” He took my apology as permission to step into the room. “I’m not supposed to tell grown-ups what not to say. Even if they use bad words. Are you a grown-up?”

  “Only sort of. But compared to you, yeah.”

  “Okay.” He nodded once. “I’m Tom.”

  “I’m Lizzie.” My head felt heavy again. Terrorists, the afterworld, doctors, and now this little kid. No one wanted to let me sleep.

  His raincoat was dripping water on the floor.

  “Is it raining?”

  “No. But it was.”

  “Right,” I said. But it hadn’t been, and it was freezing out, too cold for anything but snow. Tom’s bare legs showed beneath the hem of his raincoat.

  “When was it raining?” I asked.

  “When the car hit me,” Tom said.

  I felt a sliver of the cold that Yamaraj’s kiss had forced out of me, like a cool finger sliding down the middle of my back. The hospital seemed to go still outside my room, as if the sound had been sucked up by something thirsty for noise and clatter and life.

  I closed my eyes, but opened them again instantly. Tom was still there, looking at me funny.

  “Are you okay, Lizzie?”

  “I don’t know. I died tonight, I think.”

  “Don’t worry. It only hurts at first.” He frowned at me. “But you look shiny, like the nice lady who comes.”

  “The nice lady?”

  “The one who’s not dead. She’s my friend.”

  “Oh.” My own voice was distant in my ears, as if I’d already fallen asleep and this was someone else’s conversation leaking into my dreams.

  “She comes every week to talk to me.” Tom reached into his pocket and pulled out something soggy. “Want some gum?”

  “No thanks.” I could hear my heart beating a little faster, thanks to the machines by my bed.

  I was shiny, like Yamaraj. And this woman who visited ghosts.

  “Listen, Tom. Tonight was really weird. I’m kind of tired.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m going to go now. But get well soon!”

  “Thanks. You too . . . I guess.”

  Tom turned and walked back out into the hall, turning to wave at me.

  “Bye, Lizzie.”

  “Bye, Tom.” I let my eyes close again, counting out ten long breaths until the beep that was tracking my heartbeat steadied a little.

  When I looked again, he was gone, and the bustle of the hospital had returned. People in blue and green scrubs went past the doorway, no one looking in on me.

  I pulled the black plastic clip from my finger, slipped from the bed, and took a few steps to the door. I sank to my knees to place a palm flat on the spot where Tom had stood.

  The hospital floor was cool and gleaming, but completely dry.

  “Oh dear. What are we up to in here?” came a voice from the hall.

  I looked up. It was one of the nurses who’d brought me to the room. He knelt and took my wrist gently, feeling for my pulse.

  “Did you get dizzy?”

  “No,” I said. “I was just checking something.”

  “Down here on the floor?” His big hands took my shoulders. “What say we get you back to bed?”

  I stood up on my own, and he gave me an encouraging smile.

  “I just thought it was wet there, and someone would slip.”

  He looked at the floor. “Looks okay to me. Why don’t you lie down, sweetie?”

  “Of course.” I lay back obediently, but his hand stayed on my elbow.

  “I’m going to get Dr. Gavaskar now. Are you going to stay here in bed?”

  “I don’t think anyone called my mom,” I said. “She must have heard on the news. She must be freaking out!”

  “I think the airline and TSA are contacting relatives. But how old are you?”

  “Seventeen.”

  His eyes widened a little. “I’ll get you a phone. Just sit tight.”

  “Thank you.”

  He disappeared into the corridor, and I was left alone with the beeping of my heartbeat again. I decided that there was no need to tell him—or anyone—about Tom. My resolve to stay quiet on the subject of ghosts and afterworlds remained firm that night, through conversations with Dr. Gavaskar, a relentlessly nice woman from the airline, and two field agents from the FBI.

  My mother arrived four hours later, and I didn’t have to say anything to her at all. She just held me while I cried.

  CHAPTER 7

  MAX, MOXIE UNDERBRIDGE’S ASSISTANT, CAME to collect Darcy for YA Drinks Night at exactly six that evening.

  Darcy had been ready since five, which wasn’t like her. But the little black dress demanded makeup, which she’d never worn often enough to get any good at. Usually after her first attempt, Darcy had to start over completely. But today’s ventures at the mirror had gone perfectly, leaving her fidgeting for a solid hour, afraid to touch her own face.

  It would have been easier to wear jeans and her fancy black silk T-shirt, with no makeup, like she’d planned. When Max arrived, he was in chinos and a Thundercats pullover.

  “Am I too dressed up?” Darcy asked as they rode the elevator down.

  “You look great!” Max eyed her up and down. “But Drinks Night isn’t what you’d call a party. It’s just a thing Oscar does every month.”

  “And I’m really invited?”

  “Anyone with a published YA novel is.”

  “Oh,” Darcy said, wondering if Afterworlds really counted as published. It wouldn’t come out until late next September, almost two years after she’d finished it. Didn’t “published” mean your book was actually in stores? Or did it just mean you’d sold it to a publisher? What if you’d signed a contract but hadn’t written a word?

  The elevator doors opened, and a moment later they were outside, Max leading the way. The sky had turned a watery blue overhead. The sun was low and the streets in shadow. The heat of late afternoon was cooking up a thickish smell from the sidewalks, as if the city had worked hard all day and needed a shower.

  Darcy tried to memorize the storefronts passing by, so she’d know the way home. An organic coffee place, a small theater, a bicycle repair shop.

  “Are you online yet?” Max asked.

  “Um, I have this Tumblr. But I don’t update it enough. I don’t know what to say, really.”

  He laughed. “I meant, did you get online at Moxie’s?”

  “Oh, sorry. Not yet.”

  “It’s You_Suck_at_Writing.”

  Something twisted inside Darcy. “Pardon me?”

  “Moxie’s wifi network is You_Suck_at_Writing, with underscores. The password’s ‘DearGenius,’ no space. You found the note on her desk, right?”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Darcy took a few slow breaths while the echoes of alarm faded. She’d seen a handwritten page pinned beneath a flickering white blobject on Moxie’s desk, but Darcy hadn’t even cracked open her laptop yet. After the family’s tearful farewells, she’d sat in Moxie’s bedroom, staring into the fabulous closet and arguing with Sodapop about whether birds could talk or not.

  Living here in New York felt somehow fragile, breakable if Darcy moved too quickly. She wanted to wait until more realness had settled over her before daring to email her friends with photos of the apartment. Putting on the little black dress and daring Drinks Night seemed positively foolhardy, but she’d promised Moxie that she would go.

  She felt a strange moment of jealousy for her friends Carla and Sagan back home, who had the whole summer to read novels and relax beside Carla’s pool before heading off to college. Darcy had an apartment to find, a city to learn, and rewrites to finish in the next few months.

  Without looking up from his phone, Max stepped over the stripped frame of a bicycle chained to a NO PARKING sign. “Did you get your ed letter yet?”

  “Nan said it’s coming this week,” Darcy said, feeling new jitters. The editorial letter would be the official list of everything wrong with Afterworl
ds. It seemed perverse for her editor to go into detail, when Darcy herself had spent the last six months wallowing in the novel’s shortcomings. But at least she had an excuse to procrastinate before the rewrites.

  “And one last thing she wants me to ask . . .” Max was still reading from his phone, an email from Moxie, apparently. “How’s Untitled Patel going?”

  That was the contractual term for the sequel to Afterworlds. But said out loud, the words sounded wrong, like one of Nisha’s verbal tics.

  “Um.” A tiny dog tied to the stanchions around a sidewalk café skittered and yipped as Darcy went past. “I’m still outlining, I guess?”

  “Still outlining,” Max repeated in a neutral tone, typing with one thumb as they walked.

  Darcy wondered why she’d just lied. Afterworlds had simply poured from her fingers, and she had no intention of outlining Untitled Patel. Darcy was fairly certain she didn’t know how to outline.

  It was possible she didn’t know how to write novels either, and that last November’s efforts had been some sort of statistical fluke. If a hundred thousand novels were written all at once, surely one would be good purely by accident, like passages of Shakespeare typed by a monkey. But that lucky primate would never write another sonnet, even if someone gave it a publishing contract.

  Why was Moxie asking about Untitled Patel already? The first draft wasn’t due for a whole year. Did agents yell at you when you were late? Or were they more like the teachers at Darcy and Nisha’s school, quietly but deeply disappointed when you fell short of your full potential?

  Max came to a halt, at last looking up from his phone. “And here we are.”

  Candy Ruthless looked like a quaint Irish pub, with its odd name painted in a kelly-green Celtic font on the picture windows. There were loading docks to either side and the faint smell of a fish market in the air. Over the ten-minute walk the neighborhood had changed from refined old edifices to working warehouses. Darcy had no idea of how to get home.

  Max paused, his hand on the pub door. “How old are you again?”

  “I’ve been to bars before.”

  Max only shrugged at this vaguery. Darcy was a published author, after all, and had a reasonably convincing Pennsylvania driver’s license saying she was twenty-three if it came to that. Even so, she found herself grateful to her mother for the little black dress. In the mirror, it had made Darcy look positively adult, and fit perfectly.