Afterworlds

  “It’s quiet, mostly. Only the memories of the living stir the dead, and most of the dead have been forgotten. We do what we can.”

  “We?”

  “There are many of us, living people who’ve found the underworld. We each have our own people. We learn their names, so they don’t fade away.”

  I nodded, remembering what Mindy had said, that my mother’s memories kept her from disappearing. “But millions of people must die every year. How can you remember them all?”

  “We don’t. Most wander lost until they’re forgotten. Some are taken by people like that man you met, and used. The lucky ones find us.” Yamaraj stood a little straighter. “My people are only a few thousand, but I know all of them.”

  “A few thousand, out of millions? That’s kind of depressing.”

  “Death can be that way.” For a moment, he looked older.

  “So I’ve noticed,” I sighed. “Is there anything you can teach me that’s not depressing?”

  Yamaraj thought a moment, then a smile played on his face again. “How about this: The river isn’t just a boundary. It’s also a way to travel.”

  He held out a hand, and I stared at it for a moment.

  “Are we going somewhere?”

  “Name a place you’d like to go.”

  “Seriously?” My eyes blinked a few times. “Like, the Eiffel Tower? The Great Pyramids?”

  “That depends. You need a connection to the place you’re going. Memories of having been there, some kind of bond. But yes, the River Vaitarna connects the entire world.”

  I stared at him, wondering what places I had a real connection to. I’d lived in the same house all my life. There were my elementary and high schools, of course, but the idea of going to another empty school building gave me the creeps. I couldn’t exactly show up at my friend Jamie’s house, or my father’s apartment in New York.

  But there was always the rest of New York City. I’d always had a soft spot for the Chrysler Building, since I was little and read a book about how the Empire State had cheated to become the tallest in the world. I’d made my father take me during my visit. But did that count as a bond?

  I wanted to learn how to do this. If I could travel anywhere, being a psychopomp might be worth having ghosts in my life.

  With the thought of Mindy, I suddenly knew where I wanted to go.

  “What about a family connection, like the house my mother grew up in? She’s never taken me there, but I’ve seen pictures.”

  Yamaraj frowned. “Out of the whole world, that’s where you want to go?”

  I hesitated a moment. I didn’t want to lie to Yamaraj, but finding Mindy’s bad man didn’t sound like the sort of expedition he would be happy about. “It’s part of my family history. Something happened to my mother there when she was little. Can we go there?”

  “If the place is important to you, then yes.”

  “So teach me how.”

  “Of course. But one more warning.”

  I sighed. “What now?”

  “If you feel something behind you, don’t turn around.”

  “Um, okay.” I remembered the cold, wet thing that had brushed against me just before Yamaraj had arrived. “What’s going to be behind me?”

  One crooked eyebrow lifted. “I thought you didn’t want to learn any more depressing things.”

  “I guess not. So what do I do?”

  Yamaraj reached out to take my hands, but I pulled away, afraid his touch would jolt me back into the real world.

  “It’s okay,” he said gently. “This is the river.”

  “Which means what?”

  “You’re in too deep for panic to matter.”

  I stared into his eyes. “I don’t panic. I think we established that in Dallas.”

  “What would you call it then?” Yamaraj was almost smiling.

  I didn’t tell him that his touch was electric. That it was sparks and heat and fire. That his one kiss in the airport had lingered on my lips for the last ten days.

  What I said was, “Jitters.”

  “Sorry.” He pressed his hands together, bowing a little in apology. Then he held them out for me to take.

  I reached out for him, and as our fingers brushed, a trickle of current spilled across my skin. It made my heart flutter and jump, but there was no sudden burst of color in the sky, no pulse of the overworld breaking through.

  This wasn’t my bedroom. This was the River Vaitarna, the boundary between life and death. And Yamaraj’s hands were warm and real.

  “I’m ready to go,” I said.

  The reluctant smile finally spread across his face. “Hold on tight.”

  CHAPTER 17

  THE PARTY HAD GROWN. THE big room was more crowded and also more alive, or perhaps the buzzing of Darcy’s lips just made it seem that way.

  In the weeks they’d known each other, Darcy had never thought about kissing Imogen. Attraction wasn’t something that burned inside her, not like the forest-fire crushes that Carla went through every few months. Darcy could still list the guys she’d thought were hot in high school, but none had ever made her heart beat sideways. And at the beginning of senior year when Sagan had asked her quite seriously if she preferred girls, Darcy hadn’t been able to answer him.

  But now she was certain—about Imogen at least, if not about girls and boys in general—and it was a relief and a revelation. She felt as though she’d leaped across a thousand pointless crushes and landed someplace real.

  She also felt, now that Imogen had taught her the term, like she was more full of juice than ever. Darcy wanted to sweep the bowls of chips and guacamole from her desk and start on Untitled Patel right now, with Imogen at her side.

  But a few steps into the room, Kiralee descended on them and swept Imogen away. There was the tiniest rip in Darcy’s heart as her hand parted from Imogen’s, but she didn’t follow them off to the corner where Oscar was holding court. She had to find her friends.

  Darcy scanned the crowd, recognizing more arrivals from YA Drinks, a pair of publicists she remembered from a meeting at Paradox, and then—

  “Sister deb!” It was Annie Barber, with three more sister debs in tow.

  “Oh. Hi, guys.”

  “Twenty-fourteen!” Annie said, and they all put up a hand.

  “Right!” Darcy high-fived them all. “Listen, I’m looking for—”

  “This is such a rock-star apartment!” Annie cried. “And in Manhattan.”

  “You are, like, our official idol now,” said Ashley, whose book was a dystopian on Mars, Darcy remembered.

  She found it hard to answer. Her lips were buzzing, her body still thrumming from the kiss with Imogen. She felt like a rock star, a little, but mostly she was dizzy.

  “So we have a confession,” Annie said. “We all have bets on how old you are.”

  “It’s not really a—”

  “No spoilers!” Annie interrupted. “We want to wait for the reveal, like everyone else. I’ve got seventeen.”

  “I’ve got nineteen,” Ashley said. “I know, that’s probably way too old.”

  “I can neither confirm nor deny,” Darcy said. She’d finally spotted Carla and Sagan alone by the guacamole, looking wide-eyed and terrified. “And I kind of have to deal with something. Besides, a single word might reveal too much.”

  “Of course,” Annie said, and the sister debs parted for her.

  “Guys!” Darcy called to Sagan and Carla as she threaded her way across the room.

  “There you are!” Carla gathered her into a hug, and they spun once in a circle.

  “Sorry. I was up on the roof. There was . . . a situation.” Darcy touched her own lips, and for a moment her first real kiss seemed imaginary.

  “I’m just glad we made it.” Carla’s eyes swept across the room. “Look at your glamorous apartment, city girl!”

  Sagan nodded at this, a corn chip in his hand. “Illustrious party is illustrious.”

  “Seriously illustrious.”
Carla’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I mean, is that Kiralee Taylor over there?”

  “Yep.”

  “She didn’t even have to look,” Sagan said to Carla. “You’d think someone would check on a claim like that, Kiralee Taylor being in their living room. But no, she just assumed it to be true.”

  “Because Darcy is, like, famous now,” Carla said. “And there are frequently famous people in her living room.”

  Darcy rolled her eyes. “Come on, guys. I’ll introduce you.”

  “Introduce us?” Sagan asked, sputtering on his corn chip. “But I didn’t bring my copy of Bunyip.”

  “This isn’t a signing, Sagan,” said Carla. “It’s, like, Darcy’s living room, somehow full of famous authors.”

  “It’s just my housewarming party,” Darcy said, though suddenly none of it seemed believable to her either. She turned to confirm her own existence in the wall of mirrors.

  “But what if I go all fanboy?” Sagan said. “Because Bunyip.”

  Darcy smiled. “You should fanboy her about Dirawong instead. Kiralee’s pretty much over Bunyip, because everyone loves it so much, and because . . .”

  She left the rest unspoken, but reminded herself to ask Sagan later about using Hindu gods for purposes of YA hotness.

  “Right,” Carla said. “Like John Christopher was totally bored of Tripods.”

  Sagan nodded. “Ravel hated Boléro by the end.”

  “Jimi Hendrix and ‘Purple Haze,’ ” Darcy said, then waved her hand. “This game is already stupid. Come on over, guys. She’s awesome.”

  Darcy took a step toward Kiralee, but her friends didn’t move.

  “What?”

  “I think we need a second,” Carla said, her gaze drifting along the floor. “We haven’t even unpacked yet.”

  Darcy saw the rolled sleeping bags shoved beneath the desk, along with two small suitcases. “Right. Sorry. You just got here, and I’m dragging you around my party. Hostess failure.”

  “We should have arrived before your party started,” Sagan said. “The Amtrak timetable incident may have been my fault.”

  “Finally you admit this!” Carla said.

  Darcy knelt to pick up the sleeping bags. “I’ll put these in your room.”

  “We’ll stay here,” Sagan said. “Your party is nervous-making, but I don’t want to miss anything.”

  “No problem.” Darcy extended the handles of the suitcases and wedged a sleeping bag under each arm. She managed to wheel her way through the throng without knocking anyone over, and soon was alone in the guest bedroom.

  “Crap, still no pillows,” she muttered, letting the sleeping bags fall to the floor. She rolled the suitcases into a corner, wondering how illustrious Carla and Sagan would think she was when they saw their room.

  The makeshift bookshelf was looking particularly lopsided this evening. Darcy knelt to adjust the cinder blocks, but instead found herself reaching for the familiar green-and-gold spine of Bunyip. There on the back cover was Kiralee, much younger and perhaps a little photoshopped, and not nearly as distinguished as she looked now. Worse, she had two fingertips pressed thoughtfully against her forehead, like the poster for a mind-reading act.

  The door closed behind her, and Darcy turned.

  It was Imogen, beer in hand.

  “Hey,” Darcy said, the word sounding loud in her ears. The closed door muffled the party to a rumble, and suddenly she could hear her own breathing. “What’s up?”

  “I missed you.”

  Darcy rose to her feet, her lips buzzing again. “Me too. Is that weird?”

  “The absence of old friends one can endure with aplomb,” Imogen said. “But even momentary separation after a first kiss is unbearable.”

  Darcy frowned. “Is that a quote?”

  “Oscar Wilde, adapted.” Imogen smiled at Bunyip in Darcy’s hands. “I hear that’s a good book.”

  “My friends say it’s awesome.”

  Imogen knelt beside the bookshelf, sliding her finger across the spines. “That’s the only book of Kiralee’s you own? She’ll hate that.”

  “I’ve got all of them!” Darcy exclaimed. “And extra reading copies for my first editions. This is, like, one percent of my library. Dad was driving up some stuff, so my little sister picked these out to send along.”

  Imogen turned to look up at Darcy, her eyes narrowing. “Your dad drove them up?”

  “They were in my room . . . at home.” Darcy knelt beside Imogen, not quite meeting her eye. “So there was this thing I was going to tell you before the party started. But you were late. And I was going to tell you up on the roof, but then we were kissing, and I forgot to.”

  Imogen barely nodded, waiting. Darcy took a steadying breath, her mind flashing through all the previous, much better moments she might have chosen to reveal her age. But as she’d felt more comfortable here, more real as a writer and a New Yorker, the urgency to confess had faded.

  But now that they’d kissed . . .

  “We went to high school together, Carla and Sagan and me.”

  “You told me,” Imogen said. “But you didn’t say when.”

  “No.” Darcy’s voice dropped. “We just graduated.”

  “As in, a month ago?”

  “Pretty much.”

  Imogen nodded slowly. “And that explains why you’ve never . . .”

  “I guess. Though many people kiss in high school, I’ve heard.” Darcy found herself talking in Sagan’s flat cadence. “I’m sorry, Gen.”

  “For what?”

  “For not saying that I’d just got out of high school! For failing to mention that I’m a teenager!”

  Imogen inspected her own fingernails. “I guess it didn’t come up.”

  “I think it did, a couple of times,” Darcy said. “You asked me what I’d majored in once, and I changed the subject.”

  “Yeah, I sort of noticed. So you’re, what, eighteen?”

  Darcy nodded.

  “Well, that’s just fucking ridiculous.” Imogen stood up.

  Darcy stayed kneeling by the bookshelf, her face burning. She couldn’t make herself look up, and so stared at the back cover of Bunyip. A young Kiralee Taylor gazed back at her with an expression of profound contemplation.

  “I mean, seriously,” Imogen said. “You wrote a book that good at eighteen? That’s just . . . galling!”

  “I was seventeen when I finished it,” Darcy said softly.

  “Fuck! I was writing Sparkle Pony fan fiction when I was seventeen!” Imogen sank to her haunches again, sighing. “Actually, I still do. Just not full-time. So you’re blowing off college to write, like that’s no big deal?”

  “It is for my parents,” Darcy said. “They’re shitting themselves.”

  “That’s funny. My dad still thinks my English degree was a waste of money.”

  “You’re mad at me, right?”

  “I’m amazed by you, actually.” Imogen turned to face Darcy. “Blowing your whole advance to live here. That’s pretty crazy. And brave, I guess.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. But you might want to use that bravery more.”

  Darcy shook her head. “For what?”

  “For trusting me, which means telling me about stuff.” Imogen reached out to cup Darcy’s chin with her fingers. Then she kissed her. It was less fierce than the first two times, softer and slower, but not in a way that left any doubt.

  When their lips pulled apart, Darcy asked, “So you’re not mad?”

  “I’m five years older than you. Maybe I’m a little . . . hesitant.”

  “Hesitant? You just kissed me again!”

  Imogen shrugged. “Yeah, I kind of suck at hesitating. But maybe we should go slow.”

  “Slow is okay, I guess. But you can ask me whatever you want, right now. Any question, no matter how embarrassing. I promise to tell you the truth!”

  Imogen considered this a moment. “Okay. Do you really like me, or are you just excited because y
ou’ve never kissed anyone before?”

  “I really like you!” Darcy cried. “You make my hair stand up when you talk about writing.”

  Imogen raised an eyebrow.

  “And also when you kiss me,” Darcy added.

  “Okay, good answer. Is there anything you need to ask me back? Just so we’re all clear.”

  Darcy shook her head, but then found a question on the tip of her tongue, even if it wasn’t exactly relevant to the conversation. “Do you know if Kiralee’s read it?”

  Imogen looked at the book in Darcy’s hand. “Probably, seeing as how she wrote it.”

  Darcy shoved Bunyip back into its spot on the shelf. “I meant my book. As you know.”

  “Oh, that.” Imogen was smirking now. “Not yet. Kiralee wanted me to read it first. You know, in case it sucked.”

  “Seriously? You were checking me out for her?”

  “Sure. Don’t you ever do that for your friends?”

  Darcy frowned. Among the Reading Zealots, Darcy had been a relentless first adopter of books and movies and manga series. She was on the ARC list at her library, was immune to online spoilers, and had even sat through the notoriously crappy first season of Danger Blonde so she could explain the story to Carla, who was skipping straight to season two.

  But this was different somehow. “You guys suck.”

  Imogen laughed. “Do we suck a little less if I just told Kiralee that you have the juice, and she should read your novel?”

  “Pretty much.” As she stood, Darcy felt dizzy with relief. Hiding her age had been stupid, but she’d been forgiven. No more pointless mistakes like that, she decided. “I promise to trust you, Gen, with everything.”

  “Good.” Imogen opened the door. “Then I guess you should introduce me to your friends.”

  * * *

  Sagan and Carla were rooted to the same spot, Sagan eating his way through the guacamole while Carla took surreptitious photos of the party with her phone.

  “Your stuff ’s in the guest bedroom,” Darcy said. “And I brought you a nonthreatening author to meet.”

  “As in, not famous.” Imogen offered a hand.

  As they introduced themselves, Darcy couldn’t help but notice how young Carla and Sagan seemed beside Imogen—they were all fumbles and tics where she was graceful and assured. And Darcy knew that she shared her friends’ foibles. How had she tricked everyone in New York into thinking she was an adult?