Afterworlds

by Scott Westerfeld

  The book splayed out before her was real. Kiralee standing there waiting for a signature was real. The rumble of the crowds and the smell of freshly printed and bound paper was real. Darcy Patel was a published author now.

  “Well, this is a bit awkward,” Kiralee said a moment later.

  “Ignore her,” Oscar said gently. “Take your time.”

  And Darcy suddenly knew what to write.

  Thanks for all the nightmares of red mud.

  She signed it with a flourish, and then moved on to Oscar’s.

  Writing is a lonely business, except for Drinks!

  The two of them were very kind about what she’d written and, still kinder, they stuck around until the line built up again, attracting strays from the other aisles and a handful of Kiralee’s followers. Soon Darcy was signing again, careful never to rush, pausing to talk to everyone, at least until more people waited behind them. The line ebbed and flowed, until, quite suddenly, the hour was done and Rhea was packing things away.

  “Great job,” she said. “Only a box and half left!”

  Darcy was stunned. It hadn’t felt anything like seventy people, but her right hand was marvelously sore.

  “Oops, two more. You sign, I’ll pack.” Rhea dropped a pair of books on the table and began to kick-slide the leftover box away behind the curtain.

  Darcy looked up. It was Carla and Sagan.

  “Where did you guys come from?”

  “From our dorms, where we live,” Sagan said. “We decided to road trip down this morning.”

  “Road trip!” Carla yelled. She was hugging a dozen books to her chest already.

  “How did you get in?”

  “Imogen weaseled us day passes from Paradox,” Sagan said. “Like, in case you needed friendly faces at your signing.”

  “Sorry we’re late,” Carla said. “But the free is strong in this place!”

  “Wait. Imogen got you in?” Darcy blinked. She hadn’t checked the schedule, but of course Imogen would be here somewhere. It was strange, how on busy days Darcy could go for hours without noticing the missing pieces of her heart. But when memories did come, they hit all at once.

  “Why the sad face?” Carla asked.

  “She didn’t come to my signing.”

  “No shit, Sherlock.” Carla fumbled a book out of her hoard. Its cover was filled by a black cat, the eyes shining a familiar flame-red. “She’s busy down on aisle 2. That’s why we’re late.”

  “Seriously?”

  “We went to tell her thanks,” Sagan said. “And she had this huge line! It took us forever to get over here.”

  Darcy pulled the advanced copy of Kleptomancer from Carla’s hands. She’d read the first draft almost a year ago, but had never seen the cover. “I forgot these would be here. Did I ever tell you how I—”

  “Named that book?” Carla and Sagan said in unison, then burst into giggles.

  “You guys suck.”

  “Oh, really?” Carla snatched the copy of Kleptomancer back. “Is that why we haven’t heard from you lately.”

  “I was madly writing. I got a whole draft done!”

  “In a month?” Sagan said. “That’s, like, old-school Darcy behavior.”

  “So what are your plans now?” Carla asked.

  “Hang out with you guys, obviously. After the Paradox party.”

  “Not tonight,” Carla said. “Now as in . . . the future. Are you going to Oberlin? Staying here forever?”

  “Yeah,” Sagan said. “You never told us what you did with that lease renewal.”

  “Oh,” Darcy said softly. “I kind of forgot about it.”

  “So you get kicked out on July 1?”

  “I guess so.” Over the last month, Darcy hadn’t focused on her apartment situation, or the future in general. The first draft of Untitled Patel had consumed her mind and soul, along with certain household details like laundry, cleaning, and paperwork.

  “Smooth,” Carla said with a laugh. “I’m glad that living on your own has made you so mature.”

  Darcy sighed. She’d tried hard to grow up a little in her time alone in apartment 4E. But maybe she was doomed to be forever adulthood-challenged.

  She opened one of the books on the table. “How about, ‘From your loving high school best friend. Thanks for all the maturity advice’?”

  “Sucks!” Carla and Sagan said in concert.

  “You guys have to stop doing that. Talking together is creepy-twins.”

  “I have an idea,” Carla said. “How about you write—”

  “No! I have expertise in this now. This is my job.” Darcy stewed in silence for a moment, then lifted up her pen.

  Without you guys, all that reading wouldn’t have been half as fun.

  She wrote the same in Sagan’s copy.

  “Time to saddle up,” Rhea said from behind her. “The next author’s waiting, and the party’s in half an hour.”

  “Sorry!” Darcy leaped up from the seat. It belonged to someone else now.

  “By the way, can we stay with you tonight?” Carla asked.

  “Duh. See you later,” Darcy said, and handed over her keys.

  * * *

  The Paradox party was only a half-hour walk away, but it was a hot day, and the broad expanse of Ninth Avenue offered no shade at all. Darcy was sweating in her little black dress by the time she and Rhea arrived at the bar.

  “Guinness, right?” Rhea asked as she headed away.

  “Yes, please!” Darcy called after her. It was mercifully cool and dark here, but she was in serious need of a drink. The restaurant was crowded with Paradox authors and editors and people from marketing, publicity, and sales. All of them were important to her future, and most she’d only met for the first time today. Luckily, they still had their name tags on.

  But she lingered at the edge of the crowd, not yet ready for more small talk after her hour at the signing table. Darcy found herself glancing at the restaurant doors, wondering if Imogen was coming. She wouldn’t spurn her own publisher just to avoid an ex, would she?

  “Darcy! How did your signing go?” said Moxie Underbridge, sweeping from across the room.

  Darcy winced a little. Since sending off her first draft of Untitled Patel, she’d begun to wonder if it wasn’t a bit too first-drafty, a lot too chaotic. Moxie hadn’t responded to it yet, which seemed like a bad sign.

  “Pretty good, I guess. Maybe sixty people?”

  “Seventy-three!” Rhea corrected as she sailed by, depositing a cold Guinness in Darcy’s hand, not waiting for thanks.

  “Not bad for your first signing,” Moxie said.

  “Better than I expected. Weird too. People have actually read me now, which was kind of scary. They had opinions.”

  Moxie laughed at this. “Opinions mean they want a sequel. Which is in lovely shape, by the way. Just finished the draft last night.”

  “It’s okay?” Darcy took a steadying drink. “I was thinking you might find it a bit . . . shaky.”

  “Shaky?” Moxie shook her head. “It’s so much better than the first draft of Afterworlds. You’ve grown a lot.”

  “Are you kidding? It doesn’t feel that way.”

  “You probably don’t even remember how Afterworlds started. Those two chapters at the beginning, in the silly underworld palace, and that maudlin last scene on Yamaraj’s deathbed? Nan was worried you’d never get the ending right.”

  Darcy blinked. “You never told me that.”

  “Well, it’s not my job to frighten you, darling. Debutantes need careful handling.”

  “But if Nan was worried, why did Paradox give me so much money?”

  Moxie shrugged. “Because they knew it might be a huge book. And Sales loved that first chapter.”

  “That’s all they liked?”

  “Of course not. But it showed great promise, so Paradox committed. And now it’s paying off! You’ve got great buzz, and it’ll only get bigger after today.” Moxie patted Darcy’s shoulder, but then sig
hed. “Of course, we probably wouldn’t get that much money these days. It was a different era.”

  “Um, it was only a year ago.”

  “That long? Good heavens.” Moxie fanned herself and took a long swig of her martini. “It feels as though you’ve been with us forever, Darcy.”

  Darcy smiled. On good writing days it did feel that way, as though she’d been born in New York City, or had somehow risen up through its sun-baked asphalt, a fully formed novelist. But most of the time, she still felt like a kid.

  “Hey, you.” The familiar voice went fizzing through Darcy, and she turned.

  It was Imogen, of course. She was dressed up for her signing, in a crisp white shirt, her fingers strewn with sparkling rings. A black jacket was slung over one arm from the heat of the walk here, and she had a sweating beer in her other hand.

  There was always a part of Darcy’s brain that expected to run into Imogen—on the streets of Chinatown, in the subway, at some restaurant they’d both loved. So over the last two and a half months, she’d crafted a hundred artful versions of what to say next.

  But what she said was, “Hi.”

  This greeting seemed to please Imogen. “Good signing?”

  “It was great. Yours?”

  “Pretty decent.”

  “Decent? Carla and Sagan said your line was huge.” Darcy laughed, because she could tell by Imogen’s embarrassed expression that it was true.

  “Weird, huh? Just some random photograph, and everything changes.”

  “It wouldn’t have changed anything if your book wasn’t great,” Darcy said, then cringed inside at the earnest tremor in her voice. She took a drink, pulled herself straighter. “Thanks for getting my friends in. I didn’t even know we could do that.”

  Imogen’s smile returned. “Writerly superpowers, tiny but potent.”

  Neither said anything for a moment, but the chatter of the crowd didn’t rush in to fill the silence. An invisible barrier seemed to hover in place, shielding the two of them from interruption. Moxie had simply disappeared.

  “I loved your ending,” Imogen said at last.

  A rushing sigh escaped Darcy, as if she had been holding her breath for a long time. “Really?”

  “Yeah. You totally brought the darkness.”

  “I was feeling dark that week. Kind of gritty and real.”

  A laugh bubbled up out of Imogen. “And brave, too, with Kiralee Taylor herself telling you to write a happy ending. I’m proud of you.”

  Darcy’s eyes opened and closed, a deliberate blink to test if this were the real world—it was. In fact, this bubble of conversation with Imogen was the only world. None of Moxie’s praise for the first draft of Untitled Patel mattered, nor did the kind words she’d heard at her signing. Not next to this.

  “I’m glad you liked it.”

  “It was suitably brutal.”

  Darcy laughed. Kiralee had actually used those words in her blurb, and she hadn’t let Marketing edit them out. “Speaking of brutal, I just finished the first draft of Untitled Patel. Did it in a month!”

  “That’s great, Darcy.” Their glasses met with a sharp, bright sound. “I got worried when you weren’t writing. You aren’t designed for not writing.”

  “Yeah, I kind of suck at it. I won’t make that mistake again.”

  They held each other’s gaze, and again Darcy was only half aware that there were other people in the room.

  “So Untitled Patel still doesn’t have a title?” Imogen finally said. “Don’t I owe you one of those?”

  “I stole your scene. I think we’re even.”

  Imogen still smiled, but she looked away. “I’m sorry I had to leave.”

  “But you had to.” Darcy wanted to keep going, to explain that she understood everything now, even if she hated every minute of being apart. That she could need Imogen with every scrap of her being and still give her room for her secrets, or the space to stay away. But that was too much too soon, and wanting too hard had been Darcy’s problem from the start.

  So she said, “How’s Phobomancer going?”

  Imogen breathed a little sigh of relief. “Really well. I’m almost done.”

  “Tell me it still starts in the trunk of a car.”

  “Of course. My agent loves that part now! He says it’s finally got some actual fear in it.”

  Darcy felt herself shiver. “I knew you’d nail it, sooner or later.”

  “It was easy once I figured out what I was afraid of.”

  “You’re not afraid of anything, Gen.”

  Imogen didn’t answer this at first, and Darcy felt earnest again, like someone flailing their way through their very first relationship. This was not the moment to be young and foolish.

  But then Imogen took a step closer, her voice almost fading into the hubbub of the party. “Turns out, I was afraid you wouldn’t wait. That you’d give up on me.”

  “Never,” Darcy said at once. “I trust you, Gen.”

  “I didn’t mean to make it some kind of test. I just wanted to get my book right before dealing with us. But it was selfish, staying away this long.”

  Darcy had only heard a single word of this. “You said was.”

  “What?”

  “You used the past tense, Imogen. It was selfish to stay away. Does that mean you’re not anymore?”

  Imogen nodded, took her hand.

  “Oh,” Darcy said, her heart unbroken in her chest.

  There was so much more to fix—her apartment situation, her muddle of a first draft, her disaster of a budget, her absence of a college career. And there was, as Nisha had pointed out in a text that morning, the small matter of maintaining her sanity for the hundred and seventeen days until Afterworlds came out. And the possibility that people had better things to spend their money on than a debut novel by an unknown teenager.

  It was also possible that she and Imogen hadn’t changed that much in the last two and a half months. In real life, transformations were reluctant, piecemeal, and slow.

  Imogen still needed her secrets. Darcy still needed everything.

  “I’m running out of money,” she said.

  “I’m suddenly in demand,” Imogen said.

  “I won’t have an apartment in two months,” she said.

  “We can write together anywhere,” Imogen said.

  “I might go to college. Somewhere cheap.”

  “That might be a good thing. I’ll visit.”

  Darcy nodded. Maybe the trick was not to panic. In life, as in the bewildering business of writing stories and flinging them out into the world, you had to focus on the page in front of you.

  “I’m sorry I dropped the ball,” she said.

  “The ball bounces.”

  “You don’t think happy endings are stupid anymore?”

  “Your question is irrelevant,” Imogen said. “This isn’t the end.”

  CHAPTER 42

  A WEEK LATER I FOUND myself in a hospital again. Not in a field tent in the snow, but a bright and shiny chemotherapy ward in Los Angeles.

  My mother wasn’t getting chemo—not yet, anyway. She was hooked up to a blood bag, which was filling her with extra red blood cells. She had to do this once a week until her tests looked better, merely the beginning of a long process with many more treatments and tests and machines.

  After the nurse had set everything up, he left us alone and we were quiet for a while. Mostly I was trying not to look at where the tube went into my mother’s arm. The doctors had put a piece of plastic in her, called a port, which let them slip an IV in without making a fresh hole. I didn’t mind needles, but the thought of Mom needing a permanent valve in her skin gave me the creeps.

  She claimed she liked it, because it made her feel like a cyborg.

  “Does it hurt?” I asked.

  “Not really. The most annoying thing is, I can’t eat red meat for a while.”

  “That’s weird.”

  “With all this red blood getting pumped in, I have
to watch out for something called ‘iron overload.’ ” My mother laughed. “Sounds kind of heavy metal.”

  “Which is so you,” I said, doing a quick search on vegetarian recipes on my phone. “Okay. How about I make a cauliflower frittata tonight?”

  “Seriously? We don’t have to be vegetarians. Just no red meat.”

  I scrolled some more. “Maybe some kale stew?”

  “Are you trying to kill me? Kale has more iron than beef! Parsley is also deadly.”

  “Wow. ‘Parsley is also deadly.’ I bet no one’s ever said that before.” To test my theory, I typed the phrase into my phone. The top result was something called the Parsley Massacre, in which twenty thousand people had been killed. Everything was about death if you looked closely enough.

  I put away my phone.

  Another patient was brought into the chemo ward. He was much older than my mother, and shuffled past with a young nurse on his arm. His hair was wispy, his skin stretched tight over the bones of his face.

  Walking behind him was a young girl. Her flowery dress looked old-fashioned, and no shadows played in its folds. She seemed not to notice me and my psychopomp shine. She kept her head down, smiling a little, like a child at a somber ceremony trying not to giggle.

  My mother and I watched in silence as the nurse hooked the old man up. When she was done, he put in headphones and lay back with his eyes closed. His hands twitched in time to the music in his ears. The ghost girl watched, tapping her feet as if she could hear the music too.

  I took a steadying breath. “I’ve deferred college for a year.”

  My mother stared at me, the muscles of her arm gone tight. For a moment, I thought the IV was going to pop out of her skin.

  “You can’t do that, Lizzie.”

  “It’s done.” My voice stayed firm. “The call has been made.”

  “Call them back! Tell them you’ve changed your mind.”

  “That would be a lie. And I can’t back out now, anyway. They already gave someone else my spot.”

  My mother groaned. “Lizzie, you don’t have to do this. I can lie here with a tube in my arm without your help.”

  “You don’t want me here?”

  “I want you in college!”

  “For now,” I said, readying my mental list of arguments. I’d been preparing myself for this conversation since my first college acceptance letter had arrived. “But once you start chemo, you’ll need someone to drive you up here. And to help you remember which pills to take.”