Afterworlds

“What’s happening?”

  Yamaraj looked past me. “A war, perhaps?”

  I frowned. This boy wasn’t from around here. “Um, this isn’t a war. It’s some kind of terrorist attack. But what I meant was . . . I’m not dead, am I?”

  His eyes met mine. “You’re alive, Lizzie. Just hurt and scared.”

  “But those other people, they shot them all.”

  He nodded. “You’re the only one left. I’m sorry.”

  I pulled away from him, stumbling a few steps back and sinking into one of the plastic chairs.

  “Were you traveling with someone?” he asked softly.

  I shook my head, thinking how my best friend Jamie had almost come to New York with me. She might have been lying there with the rest. . . .

  Yamaraj settled on the arm of the chair next to mine, pressing the torn piece of shirt against my forehead again. My sanity was clinging to the simple fact that someone was taking care of me.

  My hand clasped his.

  “Do you remember what happened?” he asked softly. “How you crossed over?”

  “We tried to run away.” My voice faltered, and it took a few slow breaths to continue. “But the gate was locked, and one of those men was coming toward us, shooting everyone. I called 911, and the woman on the phone said I should play dead.”

  “Ah. You played too well.”

  I closed my eyes and opened them again—same airport, same plastic chairs and blank televisions. But everything looked wrong, like when a hotel elevator opens on a new floor, and the carpet and furniture and potted plants are the same, but different.

  “This isn’t really the airport, is it?”

  “Not quite. This is where the dead walk—beneath the surface of things. You thought your way here.”

  I remembered lying there playing dead, that feeling of falling through the floor. “A man walked through me and your sister. Because we’re . . . ghosts.”

  “Yami is. She died a long time ago.” Yamaraj lowered the cloth and peered at my forehead. “But you and I are something else.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’re . . .” He stared at me a moment, an expression of longing on his face, and I was transfixed again at how beautiful he was. But then he shook his head. “You should forget this ever happened.”

  I didn’t answer, looking down at my hands, at the familiar whorls on my palms and fingertips. My skin had the same shine as Yamaraj’s, but it was still me. I felt the way my tongue slid along my teeth, and swallowed the taste of my own mouth. Everything was perfect in detail, even the way my feet felt in my sneakers.

  I looked up into his brown eyes. “But this is real.”

  “Some part of you knows that, for now. But once you’re safe in your own home, you can put it out of your mind, like a dream.” He said it softly, with a kind of knowing sadness, but to me it sounded like a challenge.

  “Are you saying I’ll be too afraid to believe this happened?”

  Yamaraj shook his head. “It’s not about courage, Lizzie. It’s about the world making sense. You may not even remember the attack, much less me and Yami.”

  “You think I’ll forget this?”

  “I hope so.”

  Part of me wanted to agree with this beautiful boy, to let everything I’d seen fall into some dark hole of memory. But for a moment my mind went back to when my father left home. My mother lied to me for the first few months, saying he was just working in New York, that he was coming back soon. And when she finally told me the truth, I was angrier at myself than at my parents, because I should have figured it out on my own.

  Hiding from the truth was worse than being lied to.

  “I’m not very good at fooling myself,” I said.

  “Believing won’t be easy either.”

  Something like a laugh pushed its way out of me. “You think things are going to be easy? After this?”

  The look of longing crossed his face again, but then he shook his head. “I hope you’re wrong, Lizzie. Believing isn’t just hard, it’s dangerous. Doing what you’ve done, crossing over, can change you in ways you don’t want.”

  “What does that even—” I began, but Yamaraj was staring past me, beyond the metal gate. I turned, and saw something that made the inky cold rise up in me again.

  Walking through the mist were dozens of people—eighty-seven, as the news kept repeating later—their faces gray, their clothing torn by bullets. They shuffled together in a mass, crowding around Yami, as if they all wanted to be close to her. They didn’t touch one another, except for one little girl holding both her parents’ hands. She was staring at me, her expression clearly wondering, Why does that girl get to stay?

  Yami knelt and touched the tile floor, and a darkness began to spread out from her, as if some slow black liquid were bubbling out of her hand. The dead people looked down at their feet. And then they began to sink. . . .

  A bitter taste rose in my mouth. “This isn’t fair.”

  “Close your eyes,” Yamaraj said.

  My heartbeat pounded in my wounded head, and the world started to shift around me, normal colors shimmering through soft gray. The mass of ghosts flickered for a moment, transparent, and through them I could see the flash of gunfire. The hideous roar grew sharper in my ears.

  Yamaraj grasped my hand. “Stay with me here. Just a little longer.”

  I shut my eyes, but only for a moment, willing my heartbeat slower. When I looked again, the gray world had steadied, and I could see the crowd of ghosts perfectly, Yami at its center.

  “Where’s she taking them?”

  “Somewhere safe.” He squeezed my hand again. “We’re here to guide the dead. It’s okay.”

  “It’s not okay!” I pulled my hand from his, my voice breaking. A single teardrop squeezed from my left eye. “Those men with guns . . . they had no right.”

  Suddenly the thick glass between me and my panic was gone, shattered by anger. I could smell blood and gun smoke, and an acid scent that made the back of my throat tickle. The real colors of the airport were bleeding into the grays around us.

  “Something’s happening,” I tried to say, but my throat closed on the words. The air itself had begun to burn my eyes and skin. As my grasp on the afterworld failed, the gas was leaking through to me. I could feel my cheek burning where the single tear had squeezed out.

  Yamaraj stood up. “I have to take you back.”

  He took my hands in his, which suddenly weren’t warm and living anymore. I felt a coldness rushing into me. I realized that he wasn’t taking me back to the real world, but to the dark place I’d passed through while playing dead.

  “Wait,” I tried to say.

  “It isn’t safe here, Lizzie.”

  I tried to protest, but my lungs stilled once more. My eyelids fluttered closed, and I felt myself falling away, spiraling back down toward the silence.

  I’m dead again. I’m dead.

  I had a vague sense of Yamaraj lifting me from the airport chair and carrying me back the way we’d come. I could see and hear nothing, but felt him watching over me.

  Finally, a long time later, he whispered in my ear.

  “Believing is dangerous, Lizzie. But if you need me, call me. I’ll be there.”

  His lips pressed against mine, and a wave of heat flooded into me. Not only warmth, but energy, a force that stirred every muscle in my body. The cold inside me turned sharp and buzzing. Electricity coursed through my nerves and across my skin.

  The heat built, pushing against my heart and lungs, the power of it coiling around me and squeezing tight. My eyes sprang open, but there was only darkness rushing past me, and then something sharp and jagged burst from my lungs . . .

  I was breathing, coughing and sputtering, spasming on cold hard ground. There were spinning lights in all directions—the metal flash of badges, the dull glint of body armor.

  I was lying on the sidewalk outside the airport. Fluttering yellow tape marked off the sidewalk around me, a
corral of motionless bodies under white plastic sheets. Red and blue lights pulsed from every vehicle, sending shadows swinging, as if the bodies were twitching beneath their covers.

  There was so much color in the world, everything bright and alive. The crackle and hiss of radios electrified the air.

  I became aware of people suddenly gaping at me—two paramedics, a police officer with a hand on his holstered gun and terror in his eyes. A plastic sheet was wrapped tight around me, its edges fluttering in the freezing wind, and I wanted to yell at them to set me free. But it was all I could do to keep breathing, to keep that fire that Yamaraj had relit inside me burning.

  I was alive.

  CHAPTER 5

  MOXIE UNDERBRIDGE LIVED IN A tall and curvaceous tower on the south side of Astor Place. The neighborhood was full of weathered colonnades and arched windows, but Moxie’s building was shiny-new and wrapped in sinuous reflective glass. The mirrored checkerboard of its windows divided the sky overhead into a pack of blue-and-white playing cards.

  “This looks fancy,” Nisha said to Darcy.

  “It should be fancy,” said their mother. “If that woman is putting my daughter here.”

  “Moxie isn’t putting me here. She’s letting me borrow it.” Darcy muttered this softly enough that a passing taxi swept her words away. In two weeks she would be moving into her own apartment, which would no way be this fancy—or secure. Best not to start her mother thinking about that.

  The lobby was even more impressive, with an arched marble ceiling and a chandelier with electric bulbs that flickered like tiny gas lamps. Before Darcy could open her mouth, the uniformed doorman said, “You must be Miss Patel.”

  Moxie had told the building management Darcy was coming, of course, and how many young Indian girls strolled into this building every day? But it was still intimidatingly efficient.

  “Yes, she is,” her mother said when Darcy was too slow answering.

  The doorman nodded. “I understand you already have the keys, Miss Patel?”

  Darcy nodded back at him, her fingers dipping into the outside pocket of her laptop case. The arrival of Moxie’s keys a week ago had reignited the whole college deferment battle with her parents, and Darcy had hidden them beneath her mattress, half fearing that her mother would steal them.

  “You two go ahead.” Annika Patel flicked a hand at the elevators. “I’ll wait here. Who knows how long it’ll take your father to find a parking spot!”

  Darcy blinked. Were they actually being allowed to go up alone?

  Nisha grabbed her hand and pulled her forward.

  * * *

  At Darcy’s first hesitation with the keys, Nisha snatched them away and made short work of Moxie’s two dead bolt locks. She strode through the door, kicking off her shoes with a victorious smirk. Darcy followed, slightly miffed that her little sister had crossed the threshold first.

  The foyer spilled down a few steps into the living room, where sunlight filtered through a curtain that snaked along the floor-to-ceiling windows. Nisha took hold of one end and slid the curtain along its runners, the nineteenth-story view spilling open in her wake.

  “Be careful with . . .” Darcy swallowed the rest of her warning. This would be her apartment for two whole weeks, but Nisha was driving back to Philly with their parents in a couple of hours. It was only fair to let her enjoy it. It was strange to think that tonight, her little sister wouldn’t be a few footsteps or a shout away.

  As the serpentine expanse of glass drew open, the city seemed to wrap around them: rooftop gardens with stunted trees in pots, water towers like chunky flying saucers, the spires of distant skyscrapers.

  Nisha stared wide-eyed at the view. “Holy crapstick. Your agent must be loaded.”

  “My agent is kick-ass,” Darcy said softly, slipping off her shoes and setting her laptop case on the couch.

  “That’s number eleven!” Nisha didn’t turn from the view. “You owe me a dollar, Patel.”

  Darcy smiled. “Money well spent.”

  “Why the hell does your agent go on vacation? It’s so awesome here.”

  “It’s probably nice on the French Riviera too.” Darcy was fairly certain of that, but Nisha’s point stood. How could Moxie stand to leave this view behind?

  “The French Riviera,” Nisha said slowly, as if all three words were new to her. “Agents make more than authors, don’t they?”

  “Um, I think that depends.”

  “Well, she gets fifteen percent of your money, right?”

  “Yes,” Darcy sighed. She’d already had this discussion with Dad, who’d offered to negotiate the contract himself for a mere 2 percent of the advance. He was good at missing the point that way.

  “And how many clients does she have?”

  “Maybe thirty?” While writing her query letter, Darcy had dutifully googled them all. “Thirty-five?”

  “Damn!” Nisha turned from the window, triumphant. “Fifteen percent is a seventh of a hundred percent, and a seventh of thirty-five is five. So Moxie makes about five times as much as her average author.”

  “I guess.” Darcy was pretty sure that Nisha was missing something too. “But I think most writers make, like, zero dollars most years. Not that you should tell the parentals that.”

  “My lips are sealed.” Nisha smiled. “But forget writing. When I grow up I’m going to be an agent.”

  A squawk came from another room, and Nisha jumped up onto the big living room couch. “What the hell!”

  “Relax,” Darcy said, remembering the email from Max, Moxie’s personal assistant. “That’s Sodapop. He’s a parrot.”

  “Your agent has a parrot?”

  The squawk had come from an open door, which led into a room crowded with a huge bed, a duo of oak valets heaped with clothes, and a covered birdcage the size of a gas station pump.

  Max usually fed Sodapop while Moxie was away, but it would be Darcy’s job for the next two weeks. She approached the cage, and heard a feathery shuffling from inside.

  She reached up and pulled the cover off. A brilliant blue bird with streaks of yellow and red in its tail gave her a cockeyed stare.

  “Hello?” Darcy said.

  “Want a cracker?” Nisha said from the doorway.

  “Let’s try to avoid clichés.” Darcy held the bird’s stare. “Do you talk?”

  “Birds don’t talk,” the parrot said.

  Nisha shook her head. “That’s fucked-up.”

  “Don’t teach my agent’s parrot to swear.”

  “Two dollars.”

  “Whatever.” Darcy turned to survey the rest of the room. A half-open sliding door revealed a large black marble tub, and another door stood closed. She crossed to open it and peeked inside. “Oh, my god.”

  “What is it, Patel?” Nisha was headed across the room. “Porn stash? Author dungeon?”

  “No. It’s a . . .” Darcy tried to wrap her head around the space. “I think it’s a closet.”

  It was as large as her parents’ bedroom at home. Two poles stretched from wall to wall on either side, bowed under the weight of dresses in plastic covers and suit jackets with tissue paper stuffed into their sleeves. Directly across from the door were ranks of glass-fronted drawers, with a bank of cubbyholes along the bottom stuffed full of shoes.

  Darcy walked into the closet, peering through the little glass windows into the drawers. Each held exactly three shirts, neatly folded and with a white curl of cardboard keeping their collars stiff.

  “Whoa,” came Nisha’s voice from the closet door.

  “Look at these drawers,” Darcy said, close enough to fog the glass. “You can see what’s inside before you open them!”

  She pulled on a handle, and the shirts rolled out with the shush of hidden little wheels. When she pushed, the drawer drifted slowly closed, pausing for a moment before shutting, as if an invisible hand guided its passage.

  Darcy opened and closed the drawer again. The sound had the metal fizzle of ball beari
ngs, like a bicycle wheel turning free, but less clicky.

  The flattest part of her first chapter was Lizzie’s father’s superfabulous apartment in New York City. Darcy had assembled it from images in catalogs and movies, but now she had a real-life model.

  How would she describe a closet like this in a single sentence?

  “Rewrites are going to be fun,” she murmured.

  “So where are you going to put your clothes?” Nisha asked. “Looks pretty crowded in there.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I only brought T-shirts.”

  “Seriously, Patel?”

  “That’s what Mom did when she came over. No clothes from India except jeans and T-shirts, not a single sari. She waited till she saw what Americans wore, so she could fit in.”

  Nisha rolled her eyes. “New flash: New York isn’t a foreign country. Plus it’s on TV all the time, if you wanted to find out how people dress here.”

  “Those are actors. I want to dress like real people,” Darcy said, but what she really meant was writers. There were swarms of them here in New York. From what she could tell, the population of Brooklyn was at least 10 percent writers. With so many in one spot, there had to be a certain look they shared, a way of dressing and standing and moving. And once her agent (my agent, she repeated to herself, because thoughts didn’t count against her total) had introduced Darcy around, she would know that look. Until then, she wasn’t going to walk around dressed like some girl from Philadelphia.

  So jeans and T-shirts it was, even if the plan had appalled her mother.

  “So you have to pay rent, buy furniture, and get all new clothes. Good financial planning, Patel.”

  “Yeah, I was wondering.” Darcy turned to face her sister. “Maybe you could make me a budget? I mean, you’re so good at that stuff.”

  “Flatterer,” Nisha said. “Twenty bucks.”

  A knock came from the living room.

  “You let them in.” Darcy pulled out her phone. “I want to take some notes about this closet.”

  “No way.” Nisha yanked Darcy out and shut the closet door. “If they see all those clothes, they’ll know where your fifteen percent went. And Dad’ll want to do all your contracts from now on.”