Afterworlds

by Scott Westerfeld

  “It’s not your diet I’m worried about, Darcy. It’s your rent.” Lalana glanced at the lease, which lay on the table between them. The offending number was there on the first page. “Isn’t it a little expensive?”

  “It’s more than I wanted to spend, but it’s the perfect place to write.”

  “So that’s why it’s so much. Good writing vibes. Of course.”

  “My writer friend Imogen looked at it with me, and she agreed.” Darcy imagined Nisha rolling her eyes at this conversation, and making up new rules about saying “my writer friend.” “If it’s a good place to work, it’ll pay for itself.”

  “I suppose those publishers are giving you an awful lot of money. No offense, Darcy, but sometimes I can’t quite believe it.”

  “Me either,” Darcy said with a shrug. “My agent says it was the first chapter. She says the buyers from the big chains only have time to read one chapter. So if a book’s got a killer opening and an awesome cover, it’ll be in all the stores.”

  Lalana looked dubious. “But the people who buy it, don’t they read all those other chapters? Shouldn’t the rest be good too?”

  Darcy felt a twist in her stomach, as she did every time she thought of a stranger (or thousands of strangers) reading her novel.

  But she put on a smile. “Are you saying my book sucks?”

  Lalana laughed. “How can I tell? You won’t let us see it.”

  Darcy didn’t answer. Of the family, only Nisha had been allowed to read Afterworlds, and she was sworn to secrecy.

  After all, Annika Patel had never told her daughters about her murdered childhood friend. So in return, Darcy had never told her mother about discovering the story. Instead, she’d directed all her questions into her writing.

  But it still felt strange to have borrowed her mother’s childhood tragedy as a plot device.

  “Like I keep saying, you can read it once it’s officially published. I just want you guys to see it as a real novel, not just some story by, like, me.”

  “I can’t wait, Darcy, and I’m sure you’ll write many more.” Lalana’s eyes fell to the lease again. “But don’t you want to have some of your advance left over?”

  “The important thing right now isn’t saving money. It’s making my books as good as I can.”

  Lalana finally gave up, laughing. “You’re just like your mother. Nothing in half measures, always so certain of herself.”

  Darcy wasn’t sure what to make of this compliment, if that’s what it was. Lalana was the glamorous sister, the one who lived in New York, had a job in fashion and a revolving cast of handsome boyfriends. To Darcy and Nisha, she was the more driven, the one who’d always done what she wanted.

  Which was why she was the perfect choice to ask for this favor.

  “I’m certain about some things,” Darcy said. “Writing, and New York, and this apartment.”

  “I know you are. But certainty has a slippery side. You’re sure I won’t get in trouble if I cosign this lease?”

  “Of course not. Paradox owes me a hundred grand, any day now. It’s just that the building management company doesn’t believe some eighteen-year-old is getting paid that much.”

  Her aunt laughed a little. “Listen to you: ‘a hundred grand,’ like a gangster.”

  “Sorry. That’s the way Nisha always says it.”

  “I’m not worried about the money, Darcy. What I meant was, will I get in trouble with your parents? Why aren’t they cosigning?”

  “There’s no time to get the lease to them. Other people want the apartment, like, yesterday.” Darcy took another bite, which muffled her next words. “But yeah, they might freak out about the price. A little.”

  “More than a little.” Lalana neatly speared a chickpea with her fork. “And if I’m the cosigner, Annika will blame me if you starve to death.”

  “Nisha says I’ll have enough money.”

  “She does?” Lalana cocked an eyebrow. When it came to practical math, Nisha’s word was gold. Even their engineer father had her check the family tax returns.

  “Her budget says I’ve got seventeen dollars a day after rent.” Darcy looked down at her burger, which would cost at least that much after tip and tax. “That means I’ll be eating less meat. That’s good, right?”

  Lalana shook her head. “It takes more than food to cook, Darcy. Do you own any dishes? Any pots and pans?”

  “Um . . .”

  “Or anything to clean your house with? A mop? A broom? Rubber gloves?”

  Darcy laughed at the thought of herself wearing rubber gloves. But it was true that she didn’t have any of those things. Not a single scouring pad or frying pan.

  “And what about chairs? A desk to write on? Pens and paper?”

  “Nisha left room for start-up costs in my budget. Like furniture and . . . mops.”

  That last word came out flat. A mop seemed like such an uninspiring thing to buy. Darcy had only ever spent money on things she really wanted—clothes, food, music, beer, and books. But lately she’d started to realize how many boring things people owned—curtains, wastebaskets, laundry detergent, lightbulbs, extension cords, notepads, pillowcases. When she’d gone back to pick up the lease and take one last look, apartment 4E had contained nothing but dust bunnies and one old telephone wire sticking out of the wall.

  It was so empty, so ready to be filled with stories.

  “I only need a desk, a chair, and a laptop,” she said.

  “And cooking stuff. You love food.”

  Darcy couldn’t argue. She and Lalana had spent the morning in Little Italy, where the store shelves glittered with shiny metal kitchen gadgets—pasta makers and coffee machines and pizza cutters—that seemed almost edible themselves. In one shop, wheels of cheese had been stacked from floor to ceiling, each as big as a car tire. The ones on the bottom had looked shinier, and when Darcy knelt to investigate, she realized that the combined weight of all the other cheese wheels was pressing down on them, squeezing out a glistening patina of oil. The store had smelled like heaven, as if all that cheese were leaking into the air.

  But the wheels were five hundred dollars each. Or, as Darcy now had to think of it, a month’s allowance.

  “Of course, everyone has to learn to live on a budget sometime,” Lalana was arguing with herself. “Might as well be now, before you go to college.”

  Darcy nodded in agreement, but something must have shown on her face.

  Lalana looked closer. “Darcy. You are going to college once your second book gets written, right?”

  “Um . . . sure,” Darcy said. If her parents had been here, even that pause would have been fatal. “But that’s more than a year from now. It all depends on how my career is going.”

  Her voice faltered a little on the word “career,” which she felt silly saying, like a kid playing dress-up again. She’d worn her black silk T-shirt for Aunt Lalana, but her jeans were threadbare in the knees.

  “Well, then,” Lalana sighed. “I suppose it’s my auntly duty to sign. I wouldn’t want you in any other apartment.”

  “Thank you!” Darcy cried, then frowned. “Wait . . . why exactly?”

  Lalana produced a tiny silver pen from her handbag. “Paying this rent, you won’t be able to stay in the city forever.”

  “Oh.” It was true, every dollar Darcy spent brought her closer to the day when she would have to leave New York and go away to college. But if all she’d wanted was to write as long as possible, she could have stayed at home or lived in a cardboard box somewhere.

  The point was to be a writer forever. And apartment 4E was as essential as New York City itself to what Darcy wanted to become.

  Aunt Lalana’s pen hovered above the paper. “But if I sign this, you have to promise me two things, Darcy.”

  “Sure. Anything.”

  “Don’t let yourself be distracted by the city. Get your writing done.”

  “Of course. That’s all I want!”

  “And don’t keep secr
ets from me, even if you leave your parents out of certain things. I want updates, understand?”

  “I’ll tell you everything,” Darcy promised, though Aunt Lalana was already applying her wide, looping signature to the document.

  “There.” The pen smacked against the table and Lalana lifted her glass of iced chai. “You have an apartment now. And it’s all my fault.”

  Darcy felt a smile growing on her face, though at the same time the floor of the café seemed to tip dizzily beneath them. Apartment 4E was real.

  Now nothing could go wrong.

  “Now that we have a deal,” Lalana said. “What’s the first thing you haven’t told your parents? Any boys you have a crush on?”

  “You said no distractions! And I’m all about the writing.” Darcy laughed. “But there is one thing, kind of. And you really can’t tell my parents.”

  Lalana didn’t promise, just waited.

  “I missed the deferral deadline for Oberlin. It was first of June.”

  “Are you kidding, Darcy?”

  “I didn’t realize, and it was really hard to find on their website.” Darcy didn’t add that she hadn’t looked until a week ago, which had already been too late. “But it’s okay. I just have to apply again next year.”

  “This is not okay.”

  Darcy held up her hands. “I can use the same SAT scores, and I’ll whip up a whole new essay about writing novels in New York. Do you really think they won’t want me anymore?”

  Aunt Lalana turned her face to the window, then gave Darcy a sideways look. “I suppose any college would be glad to have a young novelist. But your parents aren’t around to hold your hand anymore. You have to start being more responsible.”

  “I will. Starting now.” Darcy raised her own glass. “Thanks for trusting me. I promise not to mess up again.”

  “I’m sure you’ll surprise us all,” Lalana said. “One way or another.”

  As their glasses clinked, Darcy wondered what exactly that meant.

  CHAPTER 14

  “YOU CAN SEE GHOST BUILDINGS easier in a vacant lot,” Mindy said. “And at night.”

  “Because it’s dark?”

  “No. Because there’s not as many livers around.”

  I hunched my shoulders against the cold. “Is that really a thing? Calling us ‘livers’? Because that sounds like chicken livers.”

  “Have you got a better word?” Mindy asked.

  “Um . . . how about people?”

  “Ghosts are people too.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But dead people have their own word—‘ghosts.’ People who are alive are just people.”

  “You’re being a bigot.”

  “Excuse me for living.”

  It wasn’t the first time I’d made that joke, and her only response was to make a grumbly noise. A jogger was headed toward us from half a block away, and Mindy knew I didn’t like her to talk unless we were alone.

  The jogger huffed past with a little nod to me. It was past midnight, and we were at least a mile from my house. Normally a passing stranger would’ve given me a flutter of nerves, but nothing was normal anymore.

  If anything, I was the one spreading jitters, dressed all in black, my hood up, hands deep in my pockets. It was the coldest night all winter, and steam curled from my mouth when I talked to my invisible friend.

  “What was this place when it was . . . alive?”

  “A school. It got torn down right after we moved here. Now it’s a vacant lot full of broken trucks and rusty school buses. Like that box in Anna’s closet where she throws stuff and forgets about it.” Mindy came to a halt. “But a lot of livers must remember this school.”

  She was staring at the high fence that stretched along the opposite side of the street. Its chicken-wire pattern caught the streetlights, and a makeshift barrier of wooden planks leaned against the metal from the other side. Glittering thorns spiraled along the top.

  “Do you see it?” Mindy asked.

  “What? That shit-ton of razor wire I’m going to have to climb over?”

  “No, behind that. Behind everything.”

  I squinted into the darkness, but couldn’t see anything except the rusty yellow tops of school buses. “Sorry.”

  “Here.” She took my hand, and a trickle of death traveled up my arm. Over the past week I’d gotten good at crossing over, with or without Mindy’s touch. But there was always a shiver of reluctance just before, as if I were about to dive into cold water. Something inside me didn’t want to cross over. My body knew the scent of death.

  But I needed to practice using my powers, which meant getting over the whole death-is-scary thing.

  I hadn’t called Yamaraj again. I didn’t want to be some floundering girl, needing him to show me the ropes. I wanted to demonstrate that he didn’t have to be afraid for me, that I belonged in his world, even if I didn’t know what to call myself yet. “Soul guide” sounded too wimpy. “Psychopomp” too psycho. “Reaper” too grim. I was still looking for something better.

  As I crossed over, the moonlight shuddered around us, and the taste of metal filled the air. The sky above went from velvet black to flat gray dotted with red stars. Mindy’s hand grew solid in mine.

  “See it now?”

  I nodded, still breathing hard. Rising up behind the fence was a terra-cotta roof against the gray sky. The building was much smaller than my high school a mile up the road. Parts of the roofline were sharp and clear, but other sections had faded into translucence, like old paint wearing away.

  A ghost building.

  Mindy had explained that a lot of things had ghosts, not just people. Animals, machines, even things as vast as a paved-over forest or as humble as the smell of good cooking could leave traces of themselves behind. The world was haunted by the past.

  “Come on.” I headed across the street. As we drew closer, the fence grew fainter, almost transparent. It hadn’t stood there in the old days, I guess, so it was only a ghostly presence here on the flipside. I walked up to the chicken wire and reached out. . . . My fingers passed through, then dipped into the wood behind.

  “Sweet,” I said.

  This was my first time using the flipside to pass through something solid, at least since Yamaraj had led me through the metal gate at the airport. Mindy ran by me like it was nothing, straight through the fence and across the school grounds. The school buses and city trucks, parked so tight they were almost touching, offered no resistance to her.

  As I followed, the fence tugged at me, like a thornbush catching my clothing. But then I was on the other side, the school yard growing clearer before me, the buses and trucks fading.

  It was like going back in time. The parking lot was tiny—I guess kids didn’t drive themselves to school back then—and there were no white lines, just hand-painted signs for a few teachers’ spaces. The ghost playground looked dangerous, with its ten-foot-high jungle gym over hard asphalt. Mindy climbed to the top, hooked her knees over the highest bar, and hung there, upside down and facing me.

  The building itself looked more like a mansion than a school, with its tiled roof, stucco walls, and long front porch. The windows just looked wrong. They were empty rectangles, black pits that didn’t reflect the streetlights.

  “Are there ghosts in there?” I asked.

  Mindy swung her arms, her pigtails swaying. “Might be.”

  “Isn’t that the point of ghost buildings? For ghosts to live in?”

  “Don’t be stupid.” She reached up to grab the bar, unhooked her knees, and swung down to land on her feet. “Ghosts live in normal places.”

  “Like my mom’s closet?”

  “Closets are nice.” Mindy stared at the school in silence for a moment. “But a lot of ghost buildings aren’t. I don’t go inside them.”

  “You don’t have to come with me.” I took a slow breath, tasting rust in the air. The ghost building shimmered before me, as if uncertain of its own existence. “But I need to know how this flipside stuff
works.”

  “It’s okay.” She took my hand and pulled me forward. “I’m not scared with you here. Just don’t leave me in there.”

  “Trust me, I won’t.”

  As we got closer, the school grew less shimmery. The front steps felt solid beneath my feet, and I knelt to place one palm flat against the painted concrete. It felt cold, just like stone on a cool night.

  “It’s so real,” I said.

  Mindy had stopped, unwilling to venture ahead without me. “That means everyone remembers this place. Maybe something bad happened here.”

  “Or maybe everyone totally loved it.” I rose to my feet and climbed the stairs. “Whoa. How am I going up like this? I mean, these steps aren’t here anymore. So does that mean I’m levitating?”

  “The steps are here,” Mindy said. “But the flipside is a here that livers don’t see, except for pomps like you.”

  I sighed. “Pretty much every word of that answer was annoying.”

  “Well, maybe you’re asking annoying questions!”

  I bit back my reply. Mindy was gradually becoming my friend, even if she was a little odd. She was helping me learn about the afterworld, so I wouldn’t be as clueless the next time Yamaraj and I met.

  I still hadn’t told Mindy about him, though. No point in scaring her off.

  “Sorry,” I said as we climbed the stairs. “I’m just nervous. Never been in a ghost building before.”

  “But you’re a pomp! Ghosts should be afraid of you.”

  I smiled down at her and stood straighter, trying to conjure up some psychopompish bluster.

  The front doors of the school were already open, as if welcoming us in. Locker-lined hallways stretched out, empty and dark, and a hand-painted sign pointed the way to the main office. There were no posters on the walls, no loose papers on the floor, not even dust in the air, as if the transient details had been worn away by time. But the murmur of children’s voices lingered at the edge of my awareness.