Afterworlds

  “That’s not what she said. And what about the death cult? You want to leave that up in the air? And Mr. Hamlyn? And Anna’s disease?”

  “Maybe all that stuff can be in Untitled Patel.” Saying the nontitle of her sequel filled Darcy with despair. She only had seven months left to turn in a first draft. How had she gone from someone who could write a whole novel in thirty days to someone who took half a year to rewrite four chapters?

  “When you finish this book, then you can worry about Untitled Patel.” Imogen pulled off her Sparkle Pony apron, wadded it up, and cast it aside, all business now. “You can’t forget about Yamaraj. He’s the key to your ending. Your book is all about facing death!”

  “Okay.” A little shudder of relief went through Darcy. Maybe if she just listened to Imogen talk, she might understand her own novel again. “What does fear of death have to do with Mr. YA Hotness?”

  “People don’t just fear death. They get hot for it too. That’s why teenagers love slasher films—fear and excitement and lust, all wrapped up around getting killed. That’s why Lizzie wants Yamaraj.”

  “Because she’s in love with death?”

  “Not in love with, hot for.” Imogen was shredding the air with her hands now. “In those moments at the airport, Lizzie faces her own mortality. And Yamaraj is the guy who’s already faced it. He can hear it in the stones, smell it in the air. If she holds on to him, maybe death won’t be so scary! That’s why Mr. Hamlyn collects the memories of dying little kids, because it makes him feel like he has control over death. But of course it never works. That’s why you can’t end with killing the bad man. That isn’t even a victory, because you can’t win against death.”

  Darcy stared back, dazzled as always by Imogen’s rantings. But behind the intensity was something subtle and true, a new facet of Yamaraj that Darcy had never glimpsed before. He was beautiful, not because he was hot, and not only because he’d faced down his own death. But because he was noble. Every day, he fought a war that he knew he would lose.

  But she had to ask, “So they aren’t really in love?”

  “Maybe she needed to love someone, after what happened to her. But love isn’t always a forever thing.”

  Darcy sighed at that. Even though it was probably true, it went against everything books were for. In novels, love was perfect and without end.

  “Can you just write this for me?”

  A laugh came from Imogen. “Too busy making stew. And coming up with names. What do you think of Ska West?”

  “Ska, like the music?” Darcy shook her head. “What are these for, anyway? Are you adding a bunch of new characters to Phobomancer?”

  “They aren’t for characters,” Imogen said. “They’re pen names.”

  “For who?”

  “For me.” Imogen stood up and left the table.

  Darcy sat there, stunned for a moment, but then pursued Imogen into the heat and sizzle of the kitchen. “Gen. Why do you need a pen name?”

  Imogen began to chop, her knife slicing through daikon and scallions. “For when I have to start over. For when Paradox pulls the plug on my series, and no bookstore ever stocks me again.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “Writers do it all the time. It’s better than dragging around a busted sales record.”

  Darcy took a step closer. The thought of Imogen writing under another name was horrible. As if it would change her into someone else.

  “They’re not going to cancel your series, Gen.”

  “I’ll be glad when they do,” Imogen said. “Like in those hard-boiled crime novels, when the criminals are relieved to be caught.”

  “Stop it, Imogen! You’re not a criminal, or an impostor, and Paradox isn’t canceling your series. And you don’t need a pen name, because Imogen Gray is going to be a famous bestselling author!”

  Their eyes locked, Darcy challenging Imogen to dispute her. There was silence in the kitchen, except for the burble in the pan.

  “I’ve already got a pen name,” Imogen finally said.

  “No. Imogen Gray is your real name. That’s who you are.”

  “I remember when you didn’t think so.”

  “I was wrong.”

  Imogen reached out to brush Darcy’s shoulder, her lips playing with a smile. But a moment later the expression soured, and she turned back to the cutting board. “This isn’t about me, it’s about business. Books fail. Writers fail. It’s not all YA heaven.”

  The last two words stung, as they had ever since the argument over Imogen coming down for Pancha Ganapati.

  “Where’s all this coming from, Gen?”

  “My agent doesn’t like the new opening.”

  Darcy shook her head. “You sent it to him?”

  “Yesterday, to get him all excited about Phobomancer. Not a good move, it seems.” Imogen turned away to push her wooden spoon around the pan. “He says the inside of a car trunk is the wrong place to start a book, because there’s nothing to see.”

  “But that’s the point!”

  “Then the point is not clear.” Imogen let out a sigh. “He also says it’s not scary. Which is true, and makes perfect sense. I’m not really claustrophobic. When you drove me around in the trunk, you were the one who was nervous. I was having a blast!”

  Darcy closed her eyes. It was true—Imogen wasn’t afraid of anything.

  “I wish I could fix this for you.”

  “Yeah, I know. You wish everything was YA heaven.”

  There it was again, the magic words for mocking little innocent Darcy, who thought everything was easy, because she’d never had it hard.

  She made herself swallow the insult. “Your career isn’t over, Gen.”

  “Not yet. But you never know.”

  “True. You could get hit by a bus tomorrow,” Darcy said, accepting that the real world was gritty and brutal, that life could suck. Sometimes, she wondered if Imogen’s pessimism was designed to toughen her up. As if Darcy was a project—hard work, as Gen had said on the night she’d found out about Imogen White.

  “Or a taxi,” Imogen pointed out.

  “Do you want to read the opening to me?” Darcy asked. “Sometimes out loud helps.”

  Imogen looked down at her stew. “I read, you stir?”

  “Perfect. And if it still sucks, I’ll think of some way to scare the crap out of you, I promise.”

  Imogen smiled at last, and Darcy gathered her into a hug.

  “Let me take a shower first. Gotta wash away the stench of failure.” Imogen pulled away to face her. “Thanks for talking me down.”

  “I didn’t just piss you off more?”

  “Only at first,” Imogen said, giving Darcy another smile. She handed over the wooden spoon. “Keep it simmering and skim off any foam.”

  She headed for the bathroom, pulling off her T-shirt as she went.

  Darcy took a slow breath, feeling more settled than she had all day. Helping Imogen through a freak-out had made her own crisis seem surmountable. Six days was long enough to make an ending. The main thing was not to panic.

  Darcy focused on the simmering pot, letting her mind drift away from the various endings of Afterworlds. Maybe her subconscious would come up with something brilliant while she skimmed and stirred.

  But her reverie didn’t last long, because watching stew simmer was boring. Darcy went to get her laptop, propped it open on the kitchen counter, and checked her email. There was a query from Rhea, her editor’s assistant: Can Nan call you tonight before she leaves work? She wants to see how the new ending’s going.

  It had been sent only minutes ago. Darcy sent back a yes, and a moment later the reply came: She’ll call you in five.

  The message set off a slow-building panic in Darcy, as if Imogen’s fears had leaked into her mind. Did Nan have some editor’s intuition that the work was going badly? What if the failure of Pyromancer had created a new policy at Paradox, that books were canceled before publication unless their authors could explain thei
r rewrites in vivid detail?

  “That’s just silly,” Darcy said aloud. Nan just wanted to make sure the new ending was on track for the deadline. But which ending?

  Then Darcy realized: her phone wasn’t in her pocket. She hadn’t used it that day, except to read Nisha’s text informing her that Afterworlds would be published in 241 days. Where had she left it?

  Darcy turned the flame beneath the short ribs down a nudge and went into the big room. Her phone wasn’t on the writing desk, or any of the windowsills. It wasn’t on the comfy new couch that she’d blown her January budget on. (Revised budget: according to Nisha, her spending was well into August by now.)

  Darcy went back into the kitchen and checked the counters again. Nothing.

  She flung open the door of the bathroom. “Gen!”

  “Did you get bored and burn my stew?” came the reply from a cloud of steam.

  “Not yet. Do you know where my phone is?”

  A pause. “Did you check your pocket?”

  “Yes!” Darcy groaned, slammed the door, and headed for her bedroom. No phone there, nor in the closet-and-bookshelf room.

  She imagined Nan at her desk, tired after a long day’s work, dialing and getting no answer. How annoying. How like those clueless little debutante authors who knew nothing about rewriting books, only monkey typing.

  The five minutes was surely up. Unless Rhea’s email had said Nan was going to call at five . . .

  Darcy went back to her laptop and checked. Nope. Five minutes, three of which were gone.

  “Shit, shit, shit.” She dove at the new couch again, flinging aside cushions. She found only dust, seventy-five cents, and an earring Imogen had lost a week before.

  One minute left now!

  When Nan called, the phone would make itself known, unless the ringer was off. Sitting on the desk was Imogen’s phone. Darcy swept it up, turned it on to call her own number . . .

  . . . and found herself staring at the yellow background of Imogen’s diary.

  “Never,” she murmured. But her eyes, unbidden, were already reading the first line.

  After all this hard work, another bitch.

  Darcy read it again, but the words stayed separate and meaningless, the letters spiders on the screen. She whispered the sentence aloud, but it still didn’t make sense. She turned the phone off and placed it softly back on the desk.

  As Darcy sank onto the couch, she closed her eyes. Her hand still burned where she’d held the phone. How had she been so stupid? Like a character in a fairy tale who only has to follow one simple rule, and fails.

  Once you turn the key, you can never forget what’s in the closet.

  Darcy reasoned with herself. The words could have referred to anyone, really. There hadn’t been a name or any other clues.

  But Darcy Patel was the only person who Imogen ever called “hard work.” And “another bitch”? That was Audrey Flinderson talking.

  “Crap,” Darcy said. This was why diaries were private.

  A sound reached her ears then, a muffled shrieking close by. She sprang to her feet, turning her head to triangulate its source. It came again, and a moment later Darcy was on her knees, reaching through the dust bunnies already gathered beneath the new couch.

  She pulled out the phone and answered too loudly, “Yes!”

  “Nan Eliot here.”

  “Of course. I mean, hi. How are you?”

  “Very well, Darcy. And you?”

  She was panting. Her heart was pounding and thrashing, like a spin dryer with a brick inside. “I’m good.”

  “I just wanted to ask how the rewrites were going.”

  “They’re great.” In her own ears, Darcy’s voice broke and trembled. After all this hard work . . .

  “I see.” Nan paused. She’d heard the uncertainty. “You know this deadline is very important. If you miss it, we won’t have advanced copies ready for BookExpo America. You’re already on the schedule there.”

  “Of course.” Darcy realized that the shower had turned off. She couldn’t face Imogen yet. She turned away from the bathroom door, staring out at the rooftops of Chinatown. “It’s not going to be a problem. I’ve got it under control.”

  There was another pause. Darcy wasn’t convincing Nan or herself.

  “I mean,” she stumbled on. “I’ve already got the ending done. It’s just . . . there’s more than one.”

  “Interesting. Do you need help choosing?”

  Darcy heard the bathroom door open and shut her eyes. “I’ll know what to do.”

  “It’s a little scary, isn’t it? Letting go of your first book.”

  Darcy didn’t know how to answer this. Fear was part of what she was feeling, but the uncertainty was worse. The sentence in Imogen’s diary had exposed a fault running through her new life, a split in the sky of YA heaven.

  “I’ll be okay.”

  “I’m sure you will, Darcy,” Nan said. “But there’s something I always tell my debut authors. Your first novel is like your first relationship. You won’t really understand the decisions you make until years later.” She laughed. “And you’ll probably screw up the ending.”

  “Um, I . . .” Darcy’s voice failed her. “My first what?”

  “You remember your first sweetheart, right?” Nan asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Oh, of course.” Nan laughed again. “It probably wasn’t as long ago for you as it was for me. So you must know what I mean. First love is amazing and wonderful, but a kind of panic underlies it, a sense of not knowing what you’re doing. First novels are the same way.”

  Darcy swallowed. There was a lump in her throat the size of a thimble.

  “So how do I fix that? My book, I mean.”

  “You do the best you can. But remember, it’s not going to be the most polished novel you ever write, or the wisest, or the bestselling. That would be a shame, after all, to peak with your first. We at Paradox expect great things from you, Darcy, well beyond these two books.”

  “But even if it’s my first, I still want this to work.”

  “Of course. And luckily you have one superpower right now, something you don’t need experience to find.”

  “What?”

  “Honesty. Just write the most honest ending you can.”

  Darcy closed her eyes again. She didn’t want anything to end.

  “Can you do that for me?” Nan asked.

  “What if it doesn’t have a happy ending?”

  Nan sighed. “Just consider this, Darcy—real life doesn’t have many happy endings. Why shouldn’t books make up the difference?”

  * * *

  Darcy stood at the window for a while after Nan had hung up, holding the phone at her head, half pretending to be in conversation. Staring out at the bustle of Chinatown, she slowly gathered herself, until she felt strong enough for the long walk back to the kitchen.

  “Sorry, Gen. Did anything burn?”

  “It’s fine.” Imogen didn’t look up from the stew. “Who was so important?”

  “It was Nan.”

  “Checking in on you?” Finally their eyes met. “Jesus. Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah,” Darcy said, which was a lie, and honesty was all she was good for.

  “What the hell did Nan say to you? You look awful.”

  Darcy realized she wasn’t ready to have this conversation.

  “She was telling me not to sweat it, I guess.” Darcy swallowed the hard and bitter taste in her mouth. “She said that no matter what, I’m going to look back on my first novel with embarrassment.”

  “Whoa. She really said that?”

  “Not quite. It’s more like she was telling me not to panic.”

  “Doesn’t look like it worked.”

  “No,” Darcy said, and couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Are we okay? You and me?”

  Imogen put down the wooden spoon and wrapped her arms around Darcy. “Sorry I’ve been so crazy. It’s not you, it’s the writing. You know
that, right?”

  “Of course.” She held Imogen tighter. “I know we’re good.”

  More lies, but maybe lies were better than the truth.

  CHAPTER 36

  THE NEXT MORNING I SEARCHED the local news sites for Palo Alto, and the web editions of both San Francisco newspapers. There was nothing about a murder investigation, or a man found dead in his house.

  It was weird to find nothing in the news, not a word. Of course, the bad man hadn’t exactly been a social butterfly. It could be weeks before anyone found him in his bed. That wasn’t a pretty thought.

  Before leaving for school, I cleared the search history on my laptop, in case Mom was checking up on me. That was enough to keep my mother from asking questions, but what about the police? What if there was still a clue somewhere on my hard drive? Or evidence pointing back at me from those news websites?

  I sighed. If anyone was doing serious forensics, I would’ve already been busted in a dozen other ways. The calls from my phone, maybe the data in my car’s GPS. In crime shows, it only took a tiny clue to get the murderer caught.

  But on TV there was always a clear motive. Who would imagine that a high school student had driven all night to kill some random stranger? Unless that student was already famous for a horrific brush with terrorism, the sort of experience that might leave someone obsessed with death.

  I’d always have an insanity defense, at least.

  * * *

  When I got to school I looked for Agent Reyes’s car, but it wasn’t around. He hadn’t shown up since that first day back from winter break. Which was fine. Now that I was a criminal, not being of interest to the FBI was probably a good thing. If Special Agent Reyes had been there, I would’ve been tempted to ask him another string of hypotheticals about serial killers. Not such a good idea anymore.

  I went to the attendance office first, to hand them a note from my mom. It explained that she was seriously ill, and that I might be missing some school for the next few months while I helped her out. Mom was scrupulously honest, so the note said nothing specific about my absence the day before. But everyone made the expected assumptions, and they were all very sympathetic.