Afterworlds

by Scott Westerfeld

  “So you’re suggesting,” Imogen said carefully, “that the finale of my impulse-control-disorder-based dark fantasy trilogy should be about a character whose farts are magic?”

  “Well, her farts wouldn’t have to be inherently magic. But couldn’t one control magical forces by farting? It’s an act of willpower, after all. And it requires a certain purity of spirit.”

  “I hate you,” Imogen said.

  Kiralee turned to Darcy. “What’s a better name: Fiona the Flatumancer or Freddie the Flatumancer?”

  Darcy, trying not to laugh, was unable to reply.

  “I think they’re both equally good,” said Imogen. “In that neither is good.”

  “But wait,” Darcy managed. “What do you do with flatumancy? I mean, besides the obvious?”

  “Well, I haven’t worked out the entire magic system yet.” Kiralee waved her drink vaguely. “But the spells will all have evocative names: the Cushion Creeper, the Air Biscuit, the Brown Zephyr, and of course the dreaded Secretary of the Interior!”

  Even Imogen was laughing now. “Sounds like those spells all do pretty much the same thing.”

  “Only because I haven’t mentioned the Flaming Flabbergaster!”

  “You plagiarizing cow!” Imogen cried. “The Flaming Flabbergaster is clearly pyromancy!”

  “Pyro-flatumancy, yes,” Kiralee said, maintaining an air of absolute dignity. “But let’s not be pedantic.”

  “No, let’s not,” Darcy said, and the three of them clinked and drank.

  * * *

  The night went on like this, a mix of serious talk, utter bullshit, self-promotion, and slumber-party giddiness. It seemed to last all night, and yet it was still before ten when Darcy looked around and realized that YA Drinks Night was ending. The bar had grown crowded, but now it overflowed with random nonwriters who had wandered in. She recognized only a handful of faces.

  Her new friends began to congregate in a last cluster.

  “Anyone fancy sharing a cab to Brooklyn?” Kiralee asked.

  Someone did, a writer of gothic gay romances who lived in Mississippi and was staying with friends. Darcy’s quartet of sister debs was organizing dinner at a pizza place nearby, but she felt too dizzy from her four beers (or was it five?) to go anywhere but home.

  “Do you know the way back to Moxie’s?” Imogen asked her.

  Darcy found herself short on bluster, and told the truth. “No idea. But it’s across from Astor Place. A cabdriver will know where that is, right?”

  “That’s only ten minutes from here. I’ll walk you.”

  “Sorry to be clueless.” Darcy had reached the stage of drunkenness when apologies and promises were frequent. But Imogen only smiled.

  They said long, gushing good-byes to everyone and walked out into the night.

  The warehouses seemed to have grown larger since sunset, and the streets felt empty and dramatic, like a film set through which they had been permitted to wander after hours. The air was cool against Darcy’s skin, which felt fevered from hours of writerly blather.

  Imogen pointed. “Ghost building.”

  Darcy looked up and saw the discoloration on a high expanse of brick before her, a silhouette of a building torn down decades ago. The angle of the roofline was visible, and the jutting shape of a chimney. Above was a ghost billboard—a faded ad for a car repair shop, ancient enough that the phone number had letters at the start.

  “My protag can see ghosts,” Darcy said.

  “Of course. He’s a death god.”

  “Not him. The other one—Lizzie.”

  “Seriously?” Imogen asked.

  “Seriously what?”

  “Your protag’s name is Lizzie . . . and yours is Darcy?” Imogen began to laugh. “Jane Austen much?”

  Darcy came to a halt. “Oh, fuck.”

  “You didn’t realize?”

  “I didn’t mean to. Seriously! It’s my mom who’s the Austen fan!”

  Still laughing, Imogen pulled her forward again. “No one’s going to notice. Well, except everyone who reads Jane Austen, which is everyone who reads.”

  They headed toward Astor Place again, Darcy still in tow.

  Was it too late to change Lizzie’s name? A search-and-replace could effect the switch in seconds, a silent shifting of zeroes and ones. Only a few friends and editors would ever know. But for Darcy it would be like reading a different book, as if some shape-shifter had taken the place of her protagonist. An impostor who might look and act like Lizzie, but whose resemblance only made the impersonation more uncanny.

  “I can’t change it. It wouldn’t be real.”

  “You could use a pen name,” Imogen said. “Change your name instead of hers.”

  Darcy thought of Annie Barber and the unlucky alphabetic placement of “Patel.” “Do people really do that?”

  “More than you’d think,” Imogen said, squeezing her hand. “But worry about it tomorrow.”

  Darcy nodded. She had lots of things to worry about tomorrow. Finding an apartment, opening a bank account, and figuring out how to live alone in New York City.

  As they walked, she began to read the passing street signs—she needed to learn the city. But it was good to have Imogen beside her.

  “How did you meet Kiralee?” Darcy asked.

  “She blurbed Pyromancer, right after Paradox bought it. And when I wrote to thank her, she invited me to lunch. We’ve been friends for a year now, I guess, since I moved here from college.”

  Darcy frowned. Imogen might be a debutante, but she was at least five years older, with college and a whole year in New York behind her. And she’d already written two books, not just one lucky fluke typed in November.

  “When does Pyromancer come out?”

  “This September.” Imogen breathed out through her teeth. “Finally.”

  “You’re lucky. Mine’s not out till next fall.”

  “Being an author sucks, doesn’t it? It’s like telling a joke and nobody laughs for two years.”

  Darcy nodded. Nisha had sent her a text today from the car ride home . . .

  Only 462 days till publication!

  Darcy suspected that she would get tired of that joke before Nisha did.

  They walked without talking for a while, Imogen silently pointing out the shadows of vanished buildings. Darcy began to wonder if things other than people might have ghosts—not just cats and dogs, but motorcycles, typewriters, and school yards. Or even the careers of novelists who’d peaked too early, or had never peaked at all . . .

  Darcy was still holding Imogen’s hand, and she squeezed it a little tighter. She looked up—the sky was too swollen with the glow of the city to leave any room for stars.

  CHAPTER 10

  IN THE END WE DID a little sightseeing, and the trip home to San Diego took that whole day and most of the third.

  Mom let me take the wheel every now and then, but only after a long talk about how post-traumatic stress can affect driving skills. Because that’s what people need after traumas, apparently—lots of long conversations about the effects of trauma.

  To make things worse, my mother used the trip home to indulge her own road-trip phobias. She commented on the gothic weirdness of the roadside diners we passed, how they looked like they had dead bodies in the freezers out back. And anytime a car stayed within sight for more than a few miles, she thought we were being followed. Driving with Mom was about as fun as it sounds.

  Of course, she’d always been a nervous mother. When I was little, I was only allowed to play in our backyard, never at other kids’ houses. She got me a phone when I was only ten, which was cool at first, till I found out it was basically a tracking device. And now four terrorists had confirmed all her fears. I wondered if she would ever stop worrying about me now.

  But when we crossed the California border just past Yuma, her mood brightened, and she made me play a stupid highway game of spotting palm trees (five points), hybrid cars (ten points), and roof-racked surfboard
s (twenty!). I quickly got bored of this and shut my eyes in protest, falling asleep until the crunch of tires over driveway gravel told me that we were home at last.

  Rubbing sleep from my eyes, I got out and came around to the trunk, ready to unload luggage. But of course there wasn’t any. Mom had packed in a hurry, and I only had my hospital gift shop bags full of dirties.

  “I’m so tired. We can return this car tomorrow.” Mom pulled her overnight case from the backseat and shut the door. “You mind following me over to the rental place in the morning, early?”

  “Early’s no problem.” I’d been waking up at six a.m. every day. Maybe I was still on New York time, or maybe sleep didn’t stand much chance against a terrorist attack and a three-day road trip.

  Inside the front door there was an awkward moment of parting, my mother gathering me into a long hug.

  “Thanks for coming to get me,” I said.

  “I always will.” She stepped back, still holding my shoulders. “I’m so glad you’re home.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  We stood there another moment, then wordlessly retreated to the luxury of separate bedrooms.

  I dropped the plastic bags on my bed and opened my computer, but when a progress bar showed hundreds of emails downloading, I shut it again.

  My face had been on TV, hadn’t it? In a sad, awful way I was famous now.

  Sitting on my bed, I tried to imagine recounting the attack to all my friends. Would telling the story become something automatic and detached from me, like the time I’d broken my arm in fifth grade?

  That was a depressing thought. What had happened in Dallas was about a thousand times more horrible than falling from a tire swing, and also more private. I’d gone to another world, and had brought back pieces of it inside me. That wasn’t going to fade, even if Yamaraj said that would be safer. But at the same time, it wasn’t something I wanted to share aloud so many times that I’d memorized it rather than truly remembering.

  I stood and went to my closet, wondering what to wear now that I was a soul guide, a psychopomp, a reaper. Presumably black was appropriate. I didn’t have many black clothes, except for a few things I’d just bought in New York. But my suitcase wasn’t here yet.

  The main thing was to avoid hospital gift store T-shirts with love bears on them. I pulled off the one I was wearing and stuffed it in the trash can by my bed. Then I took a long post-road-trip shower. The water at home was hotter than at any of the motels we’d stayed at, and seemed to thaw the cool place inside me a little. But the cold never went completely away, even the afternoon before in Tucson when I’d stood in the sun on hot black asphalt, willing myself warm. The only time the cold had really gone away was in the desert with Yamaraj.

  I wondered if he’d known what his touch would do to me, make my heart shudder so hard that I was thrown back into reality. Or was it something he’d be embarrassed about the next time we saw each other?

  There were so many things I wanted to ask him, about the black oil, the underworld, and if he cared whether people had been good or bad in life. But most of all, I wanted to know how Yamaraj had become one of us. What awful thing had happened to send him over to the afterworld that first time?

  His face was so serene and flawless, not like someone who’d been through a reality-shattering trauma. Of course, as I stared into the bathroom mirror, I expected my own face to be different, to show what I’d gone through. But the only changes were the scars on my cheek and forehead, as if I’d only fallen off a bike.

  I was back in my bedroom drying myself when a noise came from behind the door.

  “Yeah, Mom?” I wrapped the towel around me.

  The door didn’t swing open. It didn’t move at all. But it slipped somehow ajar for a moment, like a piece of the world gone missing, and I could see through it into the hallway behind. A little girl stepped through the gap. She wore red corduroys with a brown plaid shirt tucked tightly in, and two fat braids of blond hair hung across her shoulders.

  I took a step back. “Um, hello?”

  She looked timid and uncertain for a moment, but then she placed her hands on her hips and lifted her chin. “I know this is going to be a little weird at first, Lizzie. But the thing is, I’ve been in this house just as long as you have.”

  * * *

  Her name was Mindy Petrovic, and she was a friend of my mother’s from way back.

  “We grew up across the street from each other,” Mindy began. We were both sitting on my bed, me still in my damp towel. “Your mother had a dog called Marty who ran all over the neighborhood, and he used to chase me on my bike. I made friends with Marty first, then with Anna.” Mindy’s eyes got a faraway look for a moment. “And I went to the vet with Anna when he died, which was only about a week before I did.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I’d never heard of Marty or Mindy before, but I vaguely remembered pictures of a collie in my mom’s old photo albums.

  “That’s when Mom was how old?”

  “Eleven, like me.” She smiled. “I’m only two months older than Anna, but she was always in the grade below me. She got born with bad timing.”

  “But she grew up in Palo Alto.”

  “Duh,” said Mindy. “Me too.”

  I frowned. “That’s hundreds of miles away. And you’re . . . here.”

  “Ghosts can walk, you know. And we have other ways to get around.” She looked down at where her fingers were picking at the bedspread, an old quilt my grandmother had made. “But yeah, it’s kind of dorky. Like that Disney movie where the pets get stranded on vacation and have to get home. Ghosts are really loyal, like dogs. Except dogs can’t see us, only cats.”

  I shook my head. Mindy kept skipping around, as if she’d never told her story out loud before.

  “After I died, my parents started to hate each other. There was a lot of yelling, and it was all my fault, so I moved across the street to Anna’s. Her room was always my favorite place. Especially her closet. I would hide in there with her for fun.”

  “And you’ve been following her around for . . .” I did the math. “Thirty-five years?”

  “I don’t know exactly.” Mindy looked up from playing with the bedspread. “But I feel more real when I’m around her. Like I’m not fading. It helps to be with people who remember you, and who still think about you.”

  “Okay,” I said, wondering why Mom had never mentioned her. I was also curious about how Mindy had died, but it seemed rude to ask.

  “Then you got born!” Mindy said happily. “When you got to be my age, I used to pretend we were best friends.”

  My reaction must have shown on my face.

  “Sorry to be creepy,” she said, staring down at the bedspread again. “I never lived in your closet, only hers.”

  “Right. And that’s not at all creepy.” I was way too claustrophobic to have ever hidden in a closet when I was little.

  Mindy shrugged. “It’s just, I don’t have any friends like me.”

  “You mean dead people?”

  “Yeah. Ghosts are scary. And mostly kind of weird.”

  She paused for a moment, like someone who’s just said they hate their new haircut and you’re supposed to disagree. And it was true that Mindy didn’t scare me. Somehow it wasn’t creepy sitting here and talking to her. She’d been around my whole life, so I’d gotten used to her without realizing it.

  But all I said was, “It must suck, being dead.”

  “I guess. But now that you can see me, we can be real friends, right?” She looked up with a timid smile.

  I didn’t know how to answer that. Maybe my mom had been close to Mindy, but it’s not like I was looking for an eleven-year-old invisible best friend.

  Then I realized something. “When you walked in here you knew I’d be able to see you.”

  “Of course.” Mindy’s stare softened, as if she were looking through me. “When you came in, you had that shiny look, like pomps have. That’s why I hid at first, because I
thought you were one of them.” She smiled. “But then I realized that it was just you, Lizzie, and that you’d never do anything bad to me.”

  “Okay. But why are you afraid of . . . pomps?”

  “They come looking for ghosts sometimes,” Mindy said. “They take them away. But I always hide.”

  “Do they take them someplace bad?”

  “I think so.” Mindy stared down at the pattern of the quilt again. “I met a boy once, who’d gone down to the underworld. But he ran away because he didn’t like it. He said it was better to stay up here and fade away.”

  My skin was crawling with questions now. I’d assumed that Yamaraj was telling the truth, that he and Yami were taking all those people to safety. But what did I really know? All I had to go on was his pretty face.

  “What happened to you, Lizzie?” Mindy said, reaching out to run her hand down my naked arm. Though I could hardly feel her touch, goose pimples sprang up beneath her fingertips. “How’d you get so shiny?”

  I pulled the towel tighter. The cloth was still damp, though my skin had dried. I didn’t feel like telling Mindy about the airport—I wasn’t ready to tell anybody about that yet—and I didn’t want to mention Yamaraj either. She might tell me not to trust him, and he was the only thing I had to hang on to.

  “I should get dressed.” When I stood up and went to my dresser, Mindy didn’t look away. “Um, do you mind?”

  She only laughed. “Lizzie! I’ve seen you naked, like, a zillion times. Since you were a little baby!”

  “Yeah, that’s awesome. But it’s kind of different now that I can see you.”

  “Pfft,” she said, but turned around.

  I dressed quickly, in a T-shirt and cargo pants that were both dark gray, the closest thing I had to black. If my trip to the afterworld had changed me, I could at least look the part.

  Was this what my life would be like from now on? Having ghosts watch my every move? I hadn’t seen any on the trip home, at least not that I’d recognized. But Mindy looked pretty normal except for wearing out-of-date clothes and walking through solid doors. Maybe I’d passed hundreds of wandering spirits and hadn’t even noticed.