Afterworlds (12 page)

I leaned in closer, my lips only inches from his ear.

“Hey, dipwit!”

His long eyelashes blinked once, but otherwise he didn’t respond. I let out a nervous laugh, then leaned farther into the car, trying to read from his tablet.

On his screen was a list of emails. My eyes darted through the subject lines. Nothing weird—a reminder about a party, someone asking for a missing file, and the usual smattering of spam. He tapped at one of the emails, and it expanded to fill the screen. I leaned in closer to read, my cheek almost pressing against his.

Maybe I brushed against him then, or maybe it was just a coincidence, but at that exact moment he decided to scratch his ear. The back of his hand slid across my cheek, leaving sparks and tingles in its wake. I startled, pulling away, and banged my head on the top of the car window.

“Crap!” Anger surged through me.

Mindy stumbled back from the car. “We should run!”

“Run? What do you . . . ,” I began, but already it was happening—the world brightened around me, the gray wash over my vision peeling away. Warmth flooded into my body, and I sank to one knee, dizzied by the onrush of light and color, gulping in the air that suddenly tasted fresh and real.

“Come on, Lizzie!” Mindy shouted, already running away.

A moment later I was sitting there by the stalker’s car, blinking in the bright, all-too-normal sunshine, and he was staring down at me with his eyes wide open.

CHAPTER 11

THE MORNING AFTER YA DRINKS
Night, Darcy sat up in bed to discover that she had a hangover. She was still wearing the little black dress, to which clung an inescapable whiff of beer. Her first instinct was to lie back down again, but by then the bed was spinning.

Her first few minutes upright were difficult, but once Darcy had a bathrobe on and coffee in hand, her condition began to shift from dizzy to quietly philosophical. The churning of the world outside Moxie’s ten-foot-high windows proved soothing. Airplanes drew stately contrails across the sky, and a steady flow of cars and taxis headed northward toward the spires of Empire and Chrysler. Darcy watched the people sifting through Astor Place from a writerly remove, telling stories about them for her own amusement.

The refrigerator contained only batteries, mustard, and makeup
and the pantry held even stranger things, like canned truffles and pickled quail eggs. But while starting up the house wifi to search for nearby food, Darcy found a sheaf of menus on Moxie’s desk. These offered breakfast, lunch, and dinner all delivered to the door, which was exactly what Darcy needed.

After ordering breakfast, she had an intense conversation with Sodapop about how birds couldn’t talk, then connected to You_Suck_at_Writing. There were emails from Carla, Sagan, and Nisha, and she replied to them all with the story of having met Kiralee Taylor, Coleman Gayle, and Oscar Lassiter in the flesh. Indeed, she hadn’t just met these writers, but had discussed superpowers and book titles and cultural hijacking with them. Darcy tried to convey how intoxicating it all had been, while only hinting at how terrifying.

Her mother had also sent an email, making sure that Darcy hadn’t been mugged or murdered overnight. Darcy thanked her for the little black dress, and managed to mention that she’d gotten home before eleven the night before. Then she replied to Aunt Lalana’s welcome to New York City, cc’ing her mother so that the whole family knew that all was well.

Thankfully her in-box held nothing from Paradox. Darcy felt far too fragile for the long-awaited editorial letter. It was all she could do to reassure herself that last night had been real, that no one had questioned her right to be here in this city.

It felt safe, holing up here in Moxie’s tower for her first full day in Manhattan. Everyone she’d met at YA Drinks Night had seemed so poised, so sure that they were really writers. Not melting into a puddle in the face of their certainty had left Darcy emptied of all her aplomb. She needed to recharge.

*  *  *

The next day she made sorties out of the apartment, noting cafés and bank machines, buying two reams of paper at an office supply store, and dropping off the indispensable little black dress at a dry cleaner’s. Her confidence grew with every transaction, and Darcy wondered if she should limit her apartment search to Moxie’s neighborhood, now that she had a beachhead here.

Or was that cowardly, like those limpet girls who became best friends with whoever they met on the first day of school?

New York had dozens of neighborhoods, after all, whose inhabitants swore by them with a kind of tribal loyalty. But Darcy didn’t know much past what she’d gleaned from movies and TV, and she had only twelve days before Moxie returned. Her cluelessness gave her the same empty feeling as unfinished homework. Maybe she should have spent the last month researching the city instead of going to senior parties.

So on the third morning after YA Drinks Night, she decided to call for help.

“Um, would you want to look at apartments with me?”

“Sure, I guess.” Imogen sounded amused. “Where were you thinking?”

“Um, the East or West Village. Or maybe Tribeca, Chelsea, or Chinatown?” These were all the neighborhoods Darcy could name off the top of her head.

“So . . . Manhattan. Do you have a list of places to see?”

Darcy did, printed out on the first sheets of those reams of paper that would one day hold rewrites and sequels. She and Imogen agreed on a place nearby and a time between breakfast and lunch.

*  *  *

“You have to accept that the first places will suck.” Imogen was staring down at her phone, using it to guide them through the grid-addled streets of the West Village. “But that’s just to soften you up.”

“Right. So the realtors show you the crappy places first, to get you to pay more.”

“No, I don’t mean them. It’s the city itself, fucking with you.” Imogen looked up from her phone, dead serious. She was dressed in a rust-colored sundress, worn over jeans that she’d obviously worn while painting. The flecks of paint were the same ruddy color as the dress, which Darcy found rather artful. “You have to prove to New York that you really want to live here.”

“But I totally do.” Darcy was already certain there was nowhere else, that she would crawl over glass to live here. “Can’t the city just
know
that?”

“It’s a ritual. Embrace it.”

Darcy nodded and took a steadying breath, one of many that day.

The first apartment was situated in a basement from whose cold floors arose the smell of wet concrete. The only sunlight entered through a high sliver of window in the very back, which looked as though the ceiling and the rear wall hadn’t quite met during construction, and the rift had been plugged with glass.

“Okay. This is weird.” Darcy was trying vainly to catch a glimpse of sky, hoping to dispel the claustrophobia the apartment was giving her. It was like peering up through the lid of a giant coffin slid slightly ajar. “What’s this window thing called?”

“In a bomb shelter,” Imogen said quietly, “it would be the viewing slit.”

“It’s a loge,” supplied the agent, but he had lost Darcy’s confidence by trying fourteen keys before finding the right one for the front door. “Very whimsical.”

“Very.” Imogen was staring at the matte-black claw-footed bathtub in the kitchen. “And it’s all this one room?”

“Yes,” the agent said. “Basement lofts are very popular now.”

“Basement lofts,” Darcy repeated, and she and Imogen smiled at each other, sharing amusement at the contradiction in terms. But then her claustrophobia started to come on stronger, and Darcy had to leave.

The next apartment was equally whimsical, though the real estate agent here was better with keys. It spanned the top floor of an old freestanding servants’ quarters, which occupied a courtyard behind a West Village row house. This apartment smelled fresher than the basement loft had, and was blessed with views in all directions. But every window looked straight into the tenements surrounding it, which were only yards away.

“Panopticon,” Imogen said, engaged in a staring contest with an orange tabby in a neighbor’s window.

Darcy didn’t know the word, but it had a lovely sound and its meaning was clear enough. She wondered if there was any way to fit “panopticon” into
Afterworlds
, and if Imogen would remember today and suspect she’d inspired its use.

As they descended the stairs, Darcy said, “So is the city done with me yet? Can we see the
good
apartments now?”

Imogen shook her head. “After only two? You’re not very steadfast.”

“I’m steadfast. I’m the fucking steadfast tin soldier. But Moxie’s
coming back in eleven days!” Darcy pulled out her list. “Maybe we should skip to the more expensive ones.”

They were out on the street now, and the sky had darkened. All of Darcy’s weather apps had warned her of rain today, but she had no umbrella of her own, and Moxie’s was huge and covered with vintage images of naked men.

Imogen held out a palm to check for drops. “Those last two places looked pretty pricey already, even if they were whimsical. What’s your budget?”

“Three thousand a month.”

Imogen’s eyes widened a little. “Seriously?”

“That’s what my little sister says.”

“Your little sister’s coming to live with you?”

“No way! I mean, she’s only fourteen.” This might have been an apt time for Darcy to tell Imogen her own age, but she didn’t. “Nisha’s the math brain in the family. She made me a budget for the next three years, because
Afterworlds
comes out next year, and the sequel a year later. So I figure by the year after
that
, I’ll know if I’m a real writer or not.”

“You mean, you’ll know how you’re selling?”

Darcy nodded, wondering if her words had been a false step. “That’s a habit Nisha got me into. She keeps saying I’m a
real
writer now, but I might not always be.”

“You wrote a book,” said Imogen. “That’s real, whether it’s a bestseller or not.”

Darcy stared down at the black fossils of chewing gum on the sidewalk. “But it’s not just sales. It’s getting to say ‘my agent’ and being allowed in at Drinks Night. I know it’s kind of pathetic, but all that stuff makes me feel more real.”

“Don’t apologize. Money and status are pretty real.”

“It’s not that I need to be super-rich and famous,” Darcy went on. “It’s just . . . it feels like someone’s going to ask me for ID. Like, writer ID.”

The sky let out a rumble, and they both stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. As the first drops fell a man went past them in a hurry, walking a beautiful black greyhound. The metal dog chain slid for a moment against the knee of Darcy’s jeans.

Imogen pulled Darcy beneath an awning, and they stood together against the glass front of a shop that sold pipes and cigars. The sweet, heavy smell of tobacco mixed with the fresh scent of rain.

“I know what you mean,” Imogen said. “Remember back in high school, when you were at a party, and if you weren’t talking to
that one
person you had a crush on, it was pointless being there? Like everyone else wasn’t real. Which is a crappy thing to think about other people, but that’s what it felt like, you know?”

Darcy knew very well, but she nodded vaguely, as if those days were a distant memory.

“Or sometimes it’s food,” Imogen said, the rain coming on harder as she spoke. “Like when a big pile of french fries is the only real thing to eat, and you have to go out at midnight and find some or you’ll die.” Imogen’s hands were in fists now. “For me, writing’s the only thing that’s
always
real. I’ve never regretted a day I wrote a good scene, whatever else I screwed up that day.
That’s
what’s fucking real.”

Darcy had stopped breathing, because she agreed so much. She wished she could spin time backward and steal Imogen’s words, just to hear them in her own voice.

“I know,” she managed. “But it only happened once. . . .”

Last November, she meant, when that billionth random monkey had taken up residence in her head and helped her type
Afterworlds
.

“Right. Sophomore slump.” Imogen waved a hand, her intensity fading. “I was like that after
Pyromancer
. Because my first girlfriend was a pyromaniac, so maybe that was the only thing I could ever write about. Like it was all an accident. But books don’t happen by accident.”

Darcy nodded. Imogen’s certainty was contagious, and Darcy felt more real just standing here with her, the rain building to a roar and clearing the air around them. “So I just need to write another book, and I’ll be cured.”

“For a while. There’s one little hitch: I felt the same way again after finishing
Ailuromancy
. And Kiralee says that every book she’s ever written feels like an accident. We can all look forward to an endless sophomore slump.”

“That’s okay, kind of,” Darcy said. The slumps would be worth it, as long as there were more Novembers.

Imogen was smiling now. “So you can suffer a lifetime of angst, but you can’t deal with a few more whimsical apartments?”

“I remain steadfast.” Darcy looked at her list, but the addresses had begun to swim before her eyes. “Where do
you
live, anyway?”

“Chinatown.”

“Is that good for writers?”

Imogen laughed. “I live there for the food.”

“Oh, right,” Darcy said. “I like noodles.”

This made Imogen laugh as well, though it had sounded feeble in Darcy’s ears.

“If you hate everything up here, we can go look near my place. Got anything on your list?”

“A few, I think.” Uncertain of where Chinatown began and ended, Darcy handed over the printouts. “I’m not keeping you from writing a good scene, am I?”

“I don’t write when the sun’s up. Too unromantic.”

“Well, if we’ve got all day . . .” Darcy waited to be contradicted, to be told that Imogen only had another hour or two to spare, but Imogen said nothing. “Let me buy you lunch, then we can keep looking?”

“Great.” Imogen handed back the printouts and pulled Darcy into motion, despite the rain. “I know a place with noodles.”