Afterworlds (50 page)

*  *  *

Mom stayed outside, giving the new car another once-over, so I slipped into her room.

“Mindy?”

No answer, and the closet was empty. I had an awful thought: What if the bad man’s memories had been the only thing keeping her from fading? What if I had just erased my ghostly friend?

But then I heard a giggle behind me.

I turned and saw a shadow scampering away. Following the giggling to my own room, I found Mindy sitting on my bed.

“Finally!” She smiled, patting the blanket for me to sit beside her. “I thought Anna was going to yell at you
forever
. She’s pretty mad, huh?”

“Yeah, she was upset.”

“You’re naughty, sneaking away like that.”

I stared at Mindy. Her hair was combed straight again, tucked neatly into two little pigtails. She looked so happy, more at ease than I’d ever seen her. It was as if she already knew that the bad man was dead.

“You didn’t used to be bad,” she said, still smiling.

“I had something important to do. Remember how I said I’d fix things?”

“Like what?” she asked, patting the blanket again.

I sat down, speaking softly. “Last night I went back to your old neighborhood, and I got rid of the bad man. You don’t have to worry about him.”

“What bad man?” Mindy asked.

It took me a moment to speak again. “What do you mean?”

“What bad man did you get rid of?” She giggled a little. “And why was he so bad?”

“Because he . . .” I didn’t finish. “You don’t remember him?”

She made a show of thinking, squinting her eyes. “Not unless you mean your dad. He was pretty annoying.”

Of course. The part of Mindy that had been terrified all these years had existed only in the bad man’s head. All that remained of her now was what my mother remembered, the carefree child of eleven.

Things were fixed far better than I’d imagined.

I swallowed something hard in my throat. “Yeah, he was annoying. But he’s gone now.”

“It’s just us three!” Mindy leaned across the bed and wrapped her arms around me. Her embrace was still cold, but there was a spark along her skin that had been missing before. When she pulled back, she was giggling again. “So what’s Anna going to do to you for running away?”

“She took my car keys. In fact, I’m pretty sure she took my car. Who knows when she’ll let me drive it again.”

“What a drag.” Mindy frowned. “Wait. When did you get a car?”

“Yesterday. Lost it pretty quick, huh?”

Suddenly we were both laughing together, not holding back at all. After the last twenty-four hours, I desperately needed to find something funny. It was probably lucky that my mother was still outside, out of earshot.

But there was something freaky about how happy Mindy was. Her three decades of fear had been erased overnight. It felt almost as if Mr. Hamlyn were right, and ghosts weren’t real people after all. And if Mindy wasn’t really herself anymore, it was my fault. I’d taken away the hours that had made her the ghost she was.

I decided to test something. “You know what my mother told me?”

“What?”

“That your real name is Melinda.”

A thoughtful expression crossed her face, and it took a long moment until she finally nodded. “That’s right. That was my name.”

Was
, she’d said. Mindy was her real name now, because my mother’s memories were all that she had left.

“Did you know my mother was sick?”

She shrugged. “Sometimes she talks to doctors on the phone, about how she’s tired all the time.”

“Okay.” Maybe stem-cell diseases weren’t an easy concept for an eleven-year-old. “But that’s it?”

“I guess. Is Anna going to be okay?”

I nodded. “They figured out what’s wrong. And she’s going to get it fixed.”

Mindy smiled, and I knew that lying had been the right thing to do. If my mother died, Mindy would have no one left who remembered her as a living girl. What did that mean to a ghost?

In any case, it was easier for me to pretend that my mother was okay.

CHAPTER 35

“SIX MONTHS!” DARCY CRIED. “I
had six months to do this, and now I’ve only got six days!”

Imogen didn’t answer. She was busy in the kitchen, filling the house with the scent of simmering meat. It was four thirty in the afternoon, but Imogen’s stew required hours of cooking. Of all their experiments in the Chinatown markets, from fried whelks to sea urchin to salted duck tongue, short rib stew had proven the most successful.

Even in her deadline panic, Darcy felt herself getting hungry.

“This is just like high school,” she muttered to herself. “I always did everything the night before.”

“That’s the curse of being clever!” Imogen called out.

“What is?”

Imogen stepped from the kitchen, her hair in a headband, wearing an apron emblazoned with a black velvet painting of
Shimmer-Tail (Nisha’s favorite Sparkle Pony). “All those years of doing schoolwork the night before, and still getting an A. Now you’re stuck with the habit.”

“That’s not fair. I’ve been trying to rewrite this stupid ending for months!”

“Yeah, but in your heart of hearts, you know it doesn’t really count until the night before it’s due.” Imogen smiled evilly. “If you were a little less clever, you’d have a much better work ethic.”

Darcy back stared at her. “Are you complimenting my intelligence or insulting my character?”

“Just working out my own issues.” Imogen disappeared back into the kitchen.

Darcy didn’t bother to answer that. Lately, Imogen was overwhelmed with her own anxiety about the first draft of
Phobomancer
. Two deadlines in the house at once was perhaps one too many.

Open on Darcy’s laptop screen were a dozen documents, the twelve best versions of the end of
Afterworlds
. Some were dark and melancholy, some light and uplifting, and some straight-up Happily Ever After. Darcy felt as though she’d written every possible ending for the book, and now it was simply a matter of picking one.

“I’m a writer, not a decider,” Darcy mumbled to herself. The words danced in her head for a while, as meaningless as the burble of boiling water from the kitchen.

Maybe she was afraid to pick an ending, because once this book was finished, the die was cast. She would either be a success or a failure, all her realness determined by that single throw.

Or maybe it was because she wasn’t so much a writer as a thief.
She’d stolen her little ghost from her mother’s childhood, a kidnapping scene from her girlfriend, and the love interest from her own religion. Maybe she had no perfect ending because there wasn’t one to steal.

Imogen popped out from the kitchen again, a paring knife in hand. “What do you think of River Treeman?”

Darcy looked up. “Who’s that?”

“No one, yet. But how do you like it as a name?”

“Sounds like they had hippie parents. Or is this person an elf?”

“Crap. Never mind.” Imogen disappeared again.

Darcy shook her head, staring again at her laptop screen.

If only Kiralee Taylor had just
told
her how to end her book, or shamed her into fighting for her original tragic ending. But she’d made the whole experience a test of skill, in which Darcy either had to write a happy ending that went with the unhappy themes of her novel, or an unhappy ending that kept her unhappiness-hating publisher happy.

The word “happy” had started to sound wrong in Darcy’s head, like a random collection of Scrabble letters.

“What about Amanda Shearling?” Imogen called from the kitchen. “As a name.”

“Sounds like a really rich person.”

“Ugh.”

Apparently, Imogen’s mechanism for dealing with stress was to make up bad character names and cook. Of course, both were probably more useful than Darcy sitting here staring, as if her eyes could arrange the letters on the screen.

What if it was too late? What if she’d already written so many
endings that she would never find the right one? Like kids who’ve told so many lies that they can no longer remember the truth.

“Gen?” she called. “Once the stew is stewing, I think I need you.”

It wasn’t long before Imogen emerged from the kitchen again, pulled out the chair opposite from Darcy, and sat down.

“The ribs are stewing, the mushrooms soaking. What’s up?”

“All my endings suck.”

“How many pages are we talking about exactly?”

“The last four chapters. Lizzie’s killed the bad man and chopped his memories up, then returned home and found out what her mom’s disease is. But after that . . .” Darcy stared her laptop. “Maybe the book’s already over. Killing the bad man is the climax, and confronting her mom is the denouement. Maybe I’m just waffling for another ten thousand words. Maybe
I’m already done
.”

Imogen didn’t look convinced. “This isn’t an action movie, Darcy. You don’t kill the bad guy and then roll the credits.”

“If it’s not an action movie, what it is? A horror-slash-romance? A Bollywood musical? An indie film about a wilted helium balloon?”

“It’s not a movie at all, Darcy; it’s a
novel
. And novels are messy and tangled and complicated. If you end it right after the bad man dies, then we never find out what happens between Lizzie and Yamaraj.”

Darcy shook her head. “Maybe the book’s not really about him. Maybe Kiralee’s right, and he’s just there for purposes of YA hotness.”

“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?”