Afterworlds

by Scott Westerfeld

  As I stood there, some cold, impassive part of my mind worked it out. It was easier to tease apart my father’s motivations than to think about what the note had just told me.

  “He wanted to spoil me.”

  Jamie looked at the car. “You mean, to be nice?”

  “Not that kind of spoil. This was a spoiler.” I was breathing hard now. “He wanted to show that he found out Mom was sick before me. To make the point that he knew and I didn’t.”

  Suddenly my legs were too weak to hold me, and I sat down right there on the driveway. It wasn’t like falling, just a slow collapse into a heap. I wrapped my arms around my knees, and my eyes closed.

  A second later, Jamie was right next to me.

  “It’s okay, Lizzie.”

  “It’s not.”

  Her hand smoothed my hair. “You don’t even know what kind of diagnosis. It could be, like, for a root canal or something.”

  I didn’t even bother to argue with that. People don’t use the word ‘diagnosis’ for root canals. Nor does anyone buy a car for you when your mother requires dentistry.

  Instead I said, “What if it’s me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The attack in Dallas, whatever disease my mom has.”

  I opened my eyes and looked at her pleadingly. She didn’t answer.

  “What if it’s all because of me?” I asked. “I’m not a valkyrie at all. I’m a fucking grim reaper.”

  “You’re talking crazy, Lizzie.” Jamie’s voice was calm but stern. “You didn’t cause what happened in Dallas. That was those guys from Colorado. And whatever your mother has, it’s because of a bacteria or something. Not you.”

  I shook my head. Jamie didn’t know what was inside me, the cold place that resonated with the darkness of the afterworld. She didn’t know that I could see ghosts, could cross over to the flipside, and could see the dead histories of things dancing in front of me. She hadn’t seen the little girls, the way they looked at me, wanted me.

  She didn’t know that I was part of death now.

  “It’s inside me, Jamie.”

  She pried one of my hands loose from my knees and held it. “What is?”

  “Since Dallas. There’s something different about me.”

  “Of course there is. But nothing that can make your mom sick. We should call her and find out what this is all about.”

  “Maybe it’s always been with me.” I squeezed Jamie’s hand. “I grew up with Mindy. She’s been here since before I was born.”

  “Wait. Who the hell is Mindy?”

  Suddenly I had to explain it all. “My mother’s best friend, when she was little. She was murdered. It changed my mother’s life.”

  Jamie was just staring at me. I could hear that I was barely making sense, but somehow I couldn’t stop talking. I’d hidden so much from her, from everyone, and I had to say it aloud now.

  “I think it changed me too. I grew up with the ghost of that little girl.”

  Jamie stared at me a long time. “Are you serious? That really happened to Anna?”

  “When she was eleven years old, her best friend disappeared on a trip with her parents. But they found Mindy buried in her own backyard. That’s why my mom’s always afraid for me.”

  Jamie dropped my hand. “You mean, like on that field trip last year, when she texted you every five minutes?”

  I nodded.

  “Crap,” Jamie said. “I made so much fun of you about that.”

  “Mindy’s always been here, since before I was born. That’s why I’m changing so fast.” Even if half the stuff coming out of my mouth sounded crazy to Jamie, it was helping me to say it out loud. I was a natural psychopomp, just like Yama had said.

  Jamie squeezed my hand harder. “You know there’s no such thing as ghosts, Lizzie. But why didn’t you ever tell me about this little girl?”

  “I didn’t find out until after Dallas. Mom hid it from me.” I looked down at the crumpled note, now on the ground. “Just like she hid being sick.”

  “Lizzie. We should call your mother.”

  “Sure.” I put my hand on the bumper of the new car, pushed myself back to standing. I knew what I had to do now. “But not while she’s at work. I bet she hasn’t told them either. We can’t just drop this on her.”

  “But it got dropped on you!”

  “That’s not her fault.”

  Jamie didn’t look like she agreed, but said, “Okay. But I’m staying with you till she gets back.”

  “You don’t have to.” I took a deep breath, forcing myself to smile at her. “I mean, I kind of need to be alone. Please.”

  She stared at me, and I stared back. The cold place inside me was growing, keeping me calm.

  “Are you really okay?” she finally said.

  I nodded and gave her a hug.

  Eventually Jamie was convinced, and I watched her drive away, smiling and waving at her. Then I walked to the front door and opened it. There on the floor was another blue envelope. I knelt and picked it up. Metal clinked inside.

  “Lizzie?”

  It was Mindy, peeking out of the hallway that led to my mother’s bedroom.

  “Everything’s okay,” I said.

  “You look funny.”

  I nodded. No doubt I did look funny, like someone ready to calmly tear the world to pieces. The blue envelope ripped in half like tissue paper, the car keys dropping into my hand.

  “I have to go away tonight. But I’ll be back tomorrow, I promise.”

  “Okay,” Mindy said hesitantly. “Where are you going?”

  “To fix things,” I said.

  * * *

  The new car had a fancy GPS system, which blinked to life when I started the engine. But instead of simply taking me to Hillier Lane in Palo Alto, the car wanted to dither and delay, to regale me with operating instructions and helpful hints and endless safety tips, as if it wanted to get to know me.

  It had picked the wrong day for that. Two minutes in I switched it off and asked my phone for directions.

  The cold place inside me had made me logical, somehow, and I had realized something. In some way—deep in his brain, in his heart, in his spirit—my father saw me the same way that Mr. Hamlyn saw ghosts. The same way the two of them saw everyone, as pieces in a game. Our emotions were just threads to weave amusing patterns with.

  I couldn’t fix my father, or what he’d done to my mother over eighteen years of marriage. And I couldn’t fix Mr. Hamlyn either.

  But I could fix the bad man.

  * * *

  It was almost three in the morning when I found Hillier Lane.

  It shouldn’t have taken eleven hours to get there, but I’d begun my journey at the start of rush hour, on a route that led me through the treacly heart of Los Angeles. It was also possible that I made a few wrong turns.

  My phone’s battery had started to fade two hours into the trip, so I’d switched it off and followed I-5, and then highway signs the rest of the way to Palo Alto. In the end I’d done something even more old-fashioned, asking a gas station attendant for help. It hardly mattered how long the trip took. I was a valkyrie. I didn’t need sleep.

  It was strange, seeing the bad man’s house in the colors of the overworld. The bungalow wasn’t gray, it turned out, but painted a sunny saffron orange, like runny egg yolks. But it wasn’t a cheery sight. My valkyrie eyes were like a cat’s—half on the flipside—and I could still see the dead girls paired with their gnarled little trees.

  As I got out of my shiny new car, they turned to face me. But they didn’t make me nervous anymore. I walked straight into them, and knelt next to one of the trees.

  “I’m going to fix this,” I announced, and began to dig.

  My hands clawed at the neat circle of wood chips around its base, tossing them aside. The little ghosts looked on, curious and silent, as I worked. My hands reached loose dirt, then packed soil full of stones and bugs. I wondered if there were any neighbors watching as well
, wondering what the hell I was doing. I wasn’t so sure myself. I only knew that I was driven by a burning need to find the truth buried beneath those trees.

  But then my fingers were grappling with the tangled roots of the tree, thick and gnarled and unbreakable. I swore, and looked up at the ghost looking down at me. It was the one in overalls with sparkly barrettes in her hair.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. My hands were covered with dirt, and they ached from digging. “He’s not getting away with it.”

  I rose and steadied myself, my eyes fixed on the bad man’s front door. I willed myself across to the flipside as I climbed the porch steps. A moment later I was inside.

  His bedroom was as tidy as ever, and the bad man was sound asleep beneath thick blankets. It was cold up here in northern California. I hadn’t even noticed.

  I stared down at him, for the first time unsure of what to do next.

  Maybe I’d expected my anger alone to be enough. As if I could unwind the bad man with a glance. But reality was slowly seeping into my body. My muscles were cramped from driving all those hours, from digging with bare hands. My head pounded from grinding my teeth, and part of me wanted to turn my phone back on and call my mom. She would be worried senseless by now.

  Instead I stared down at the bad man, listening to him breathe.

  I couldn’t just leave him sleeping peacefully. He’d done so much damage, and every moment he lived did more. It was the bad man’s memories that kept Mindy’s last hours alive.

  I slipped my bottom lip between my teeth and bit down hard. The pain threw me back into the real world, and color rushed into the room. Like the outside of the house, the bedroom was full of color now—the curtains turned yellow, the walls a light russet, the blankets were patterned in dark greens. Even in darkness, the room seemed joyful.

  I remembered the shovel under the bed. Maybe I could still find my evidence.

  I knelt to peer into the shadows, and my eyes found the shimmer of metal. My reaching hand grasped the handle and pulled the shovel slowly out. Its blade slid, a giant fingernail against the wooden floor.

  I stood up again, the weapon in my hands.

  The bad man hadn’t moved, but I couldn’t hear his snoring anymore.

  Was he lying conscious beneath his blanket, wondering at the sounds that had awoken him? Or had he only come halfway out of sleep, stirring a little before he slipped back into dreams?

  I waited to find out, watching him.

  Then I noticed the eyes staring back at me through the bottom of the bedroom windows. The curtains hung a bit too short, maybe so the bad man could peek out at his trees, his trophies. Lined up across this sliver of glass were five pairs of eyes, all of them peering at me, wondering what I was going to do next.

  A shudder went through me, the realization that I wasn’t here just for Mindy. It was so these little girls could fade at last, unremembered. With those eyes on me, I didn’t have a choice anymore. Digging up their bones wasn’t enough.

  The sharp sound of a breath went through the room.

  It was the bad man, peeking out from beneath the covers. Not at me, but through the gap under the curtains. He was staring out at his precious trees.

  And he had seen the hole.

  In the moonlight, it would be easy to spot that black opening, crude and dug by hand, as if something had scrabbled its way out from the cold ground.

  “I’m here for you,” I hissed.

  He spun around, tangling himself in his bedclothes, staring at me with wide eyes, like a little kid seeing a monster in his room.

  Fair enough. I was a valkyrie, after all.

  “Why?” I asked him.

  He stared up at me, shook his head a little, as if he didn’t understand. Or maybe he didn’t believe in me.

  “Why do things to other people? We aren’t your toys.”

  He didn’t answer. The cold place was in my voice now. It didn’t sound like me.

  “We aren’t here to be played with, or kidnapped, or shot at in airports because you have some fucking death wish!”

  The bad man turned away from me. A pale hand emerged from beneath the blankets, reaching for the pill bottles next to his bed.

  I raised the shovel at last, and brought its blade down flat on the bedside table. Wood and plastic shattered with a beautiful crack, and pills shot in all directions, skittering into the shadows like insects in a sudden light.

  The bad man’s pale hand hung there in midair, trembling, searching for the pill bottles, as if he still couldn’t believe that any of this was happening. Then from his lips came a sound, a series of short little gasps.

  I climbed up onto his bed, straddling the bad man, trapping him under the blankets. With both hands on the shovel, I pressed it down hard against his chest. The gasps grew sharper, until his whole body shook, shock waves traveling beneath me.

  Through the bottom of the window, the little girls’ eyes gleamed.

  I could feel what was happening to the bad man. I could sense it in the air, the smell of rust and blood.

  After a few minutes, his shaking and shuddering passed.

  “Mr. Hamlyn, I need you,” I said.

  CHAPTER 33

  “YOU HAVE FAILED TO TEXT me enough,” Nisha said sternly. “The purpose of this call is to inquire why.”

  “I text you every day!” Darcy put in earbuds and tucked her phone into her pocket. She’d been hanging up laundry to dry when Nisha called, an activity that made the big room look unwriterly. But bringing home wet laundry saved quarters, and at least now she had a distraction.

  “You text with budgetary concerns, Patel, but not with all the gossip.”

  Darcy laughed. “What? So you can spill the beans to Mom?”

  “I do not spill the beans, Patel. I manage them, selecting only the choicest for the parental palette. I am the mistress of beans.”

  “You are the mistress of bullshit,” Darcy said.

  “Only when I need to be. Now spill.”

  Darcy sighed, hanging one of Imogen’s T-shirts over a chair. Her little sister wasn’t going to stop until she got gossip. And really, Darcy should have told Nisha about Imogen ages ago. “Okay. But this information is for verbal discussion only. No texting.”

  “I’m aware of the security issues.”

  Darcy lowered her voice, though her parents were a hundred miles away. “I’m with someone.”

  “I knew that,” Nisha said.

  “You did not!”

  “You hooked up, like, five months ago.”

  Darcy only glared at a set of her own soggy pajamas.

  “Let us review the evidence,” Nisha said. “One: you haven’t mentioned anyone. I mean, you live all alone for the first time ever, and you encounter no cuties? No one crushworthy in all of New York City? That’s weird, Patel, even for you.”

  “Um, I guess.”

  “Two: you never come back and visit. Which means you aren’t missing my shining wit, the only thing better than which is . . . ?”

  “True love?” Darcy ventured.

  “Precisely. And three: when I asked Carla if you liked anyone, she said, ‘No comment.’ ”

  “You asked Carla? Isn’t that kind of cheating?”

  “It’s not cheating if you already know the answer. So I ask myself, why the secrecy? Why are we almost whispering?”

  Darcy sighed. “You must have theories.”

  “Two of them. This person is older than you, right? Old enough to squick the elder Patels.”

  “Wrong! Well, maybe a little bit. But she’s only— Oh, fuck!”

  Nisha’s laughter poured down the line. “She? So both my theories are correct. Is there a German word for always being right?”

  “I think it’s obnoxobratten.”

  “This was so easy. You complete me, Patel.”

  Darcy lowered her voice again. “You haven’t shared these theories, have you?”

  “No, but you know they won’t care, right? Or has Imogen not com
e out?”

  “She’s totally out, but . . .” Darcy groaned. “Stop doing that!”

  “Can a shark stop swimming?”

  “Yes, when it is killed. How did you know?”

  “Pfft. Figuring out who was the easy part, since you never shut up about her. So was that tour thing with her real? Not just . . .” Nisha made a suggestive noise.

  “It was publisher approved!” Darcy cried, then realized that her parents would be wondering the same thing, once they found out. “Shit. I was going to tell you guys at Thanksgiving. But it never came up.”

  “Um, I think you have to bring it up, Patel. You think Mom’s just going to ask if you’re gay?”

  “I was going to, but Lalana was in Hawaii, and she kind of wanted to be there too.”

  “Wait. Aunt Lalana knows? You told her first?” A stormy silence filled the line, and Darcy realized that she’d made a terrible mistake.

  “It’s just, when she cosigned my lease, she made me promise to tell her everything!”

  “This is a serious betrayal, Patel. There will be consequences.”

  “Sorry.” Darcy lowered her voice still further. “But there’s something I wanted to talk to you about, something Lalana doesn’t know. It has to do with Imogen’s name.”

  “Her name?” Nisha said with a snort. “No one in the family cares that she’s not Gujarati. Well, except Grandma P., and she’ll probably be more worried about the not-having-a-penis thing.”

  “No, not that. The thing is, she wasn’t born Imogen Gray. It’s a pen name, and she never tells anyone her real one.”

  “That’s weird. Why not?”

  “Because of stuff she wrote when she was in college. She doesn’t want her readers finding it online. I guess she didn’t want me finding it either.”

  “So you don’t know your girlfriend’s actual name?”

  “No, she told me. But I haven’t looked online yet. Just in case it’s . . . weird.”

  “Aren’t you scared she’s a murderer or something?”

  “Um, I think they would have arrested her. She uses her real name to fly and stuff. Also, she didn’t have to tell me any of this.”

  “So why did she?” Nisha’s voice dropped to a whisper again. “Her fake name is Gray! What if that secretly means Graybeard!”