Afterworlds Read online

  Ariel started to protest again, but tasted defeat before the words left her mouth. She sighed, turned, and walked out of the Cage, through the locker room, and back to the court. Her heart was no longer racing from her escape from Peterson, nor with the dying dregs of her crush on Coach Dale.

  This sucked.

  She knelt at center court, counting black smudges until her tally reached twenty. She rubbed at the smallest mark with the eraser, spitting on it once or twice, until it had completely disappeared.

  Then Ariel looked up at the big sweep-hand clock over the door. Twelve minutes left till homeroom, more than nineteen marks to go. She doubted Coach Dale would be writing her a late pass.

  That was the hitch with getting caught. One infraction led to another until you were certified a bad kid, unsalvageable. But all Ariel could do was keep erasing little black marks and ignoring how cold her feet were.

  She was less than halfway done when the first-period late-bell rang. A moment later a crowd of girls surged from the locker rooms, already suited up in field hockey uniforms.

  Coach Dale followed them out, yelling, “Four laps, ladies! No cutting corners!”

  Ariel made the mistake of looking up, and caught the eyes of the first runners in the pack. She saw their expressions switch from momentary confusion to a mix of amusement and pity.

  She stared at the floor again, at her pink eraser rubbing hopelessly at the black marks. Ariel was an expert at keeping her head down, but that didn’t do much good here in the middle of the gym, a score of girls running circles around her with nothing else to stare at. Her face grew as hot as her feet were cold.

  “Any time now, Flint,” Coach Dale called from the sidelines. “I need my basketball court.”

  “Sorry,” Ariel muttered, just to be saying something.

  She heard her last name repeated by the runners, like a whisper traveling through the gym. She closed her mind to her surroundings, narrowing her focus to the black marks in front of her. . . .

  Then she felt it happening—the friction kindling beneath the pink tongue of the eraser, the growing heat at her fingertips. Her awareness expanded, not outward to the titters of the girls around her, but down into the materials of the gym itself. She felt the pine under her hands and knees, sensed the oxygen trapped in the tiny spaces of the wood’s grain, the resins and oils that gave it color. Then farther out to the dry wood of the bleachers, the banners hanging from the walls. She could smell the iron oxide in the half-disintegrated eraser, and the hot filaments of the lightbulbs overhead.

  The school was full of volatiles, wood and plaster, cloth and plastic, cans of paint and stacks of paper.

  All of it waiting for a single spark. . . .

  * * *

  Darcy heard a bang and looked up from her screen.

  But it wasn’t Carla and Sagan in the other bedroom, just a truck rattling over a manhole cover down on the street. Darcy stretched her arms. The laptop had grown hot against her thighs, and her shoulders were tight from reading.

  She let them relax, breathing out the words, “Thank fuck.”

  Pyromancer didn’t suck, not even remotely. And more important, she could feel Imogen in its diction, in the rhythm of its prose, even in its hesitations, the quirks of commas and ellipses.

  Darcy knew that she should get up now, shower and dress and ready herself for a day of museums with Carla and Sagan, of prying questions about Imogen, and of blowing her budget for at least a week.

  But she wanted more Pyromancer. Not just because the sentences tasted like Imogen, but because the story had pulled her in.

  These were pages that she needed to turn.

  “My girlfriend’s got the juice,” Darcy whispered, and bent her knees to read some more.

  * * *

  “So what’s she like?” Carla asked out of nowhere.

  The three of them were at the Metropolitan Museum, in a vast gallery built around the Temple of Dendur, an ancient shrine to Osiris that had been shipped from Egypt in pieces and put back together stone by stone. The room’s northern wall was made entirely of glass, and late-morning sunlight filtered through it to bathe the ancient sandstone. Sagan was inside the temple, reading centuries-old graffiti carved by soldiers. Carla had stayed outside with Darcy, who found the temple’s interior claustrophobic—too many millennia crammed into such a small space.

  “You met her last night,” Darcy said. “She’s like that, mostly.”

  “She seemed pretty easygoing.”

  Darcy had to frown. True, Imogen never seemed nervous, and she had a physical grace that drew Darcy’s eye from across a room. But “easygoing” was off the mark.

  “She’s pretty intense, actually. You should see her talk about writing, or books.”

  Carla’s hands fluttered in the air, then grabbed each other. “It’s so cool that you’re both writers. I can’t wait to read her novel!”

  “It’s really good.” Darcy was whispering now. “I started it this morning.”

  “So do you two, like, write together? In the same room, I mean.”

  “Um, I haven’t written much since coming up here.”

  “Oh.” Carla’s expression sent a stab of guilt through Darcy.

  “There’s been so much to do,” she explained. “Finding an apartment, moving, buying new stuff.”

  “New friends, new girlfriends, fancy parties.” Carla sighed. “I get it. But when I think of you up here, I imagine you writing furiously all the time. Why else would you move away from Philly and cheat us of our last summer together!”

  Carla was grinning as she said all this, but the guilt in Darcy’s stomach tangled a little. Every day since moving here, she’d thought of her friends back in Philly less and less.

  But this weekend was her chance to fix that. She had to spill all the details.

  “I didn’t even know Gen liked me until last night,” Darcy said.

  Carla’s eyes widened. “That’s why you were missing when we got there!”

  “We were up on the roof. Um, hooking up, I guess.”

  Carla made a soft squee that echoed among the footfalls and murmurs filling the temple room. “Rooftop New York kissing scene!”

  Darcy laughed. “I guess so.”

  “Was there dancing?”

  “Imogen and I aren’t really a musical,” Darcy said. “We’re mostly about words. And noodles.”

  “Noodles? Is that some new thing I don’t know about?”

  “They’re like the noodles you know, but way more expensive. Gen’s really into food. She says that to know a city you have to eat it.”

  Carla’s smile ratcheted up a little. “Does she say that about anything besides cities?”

  This question paralyzed Darcy for a moment. Indeed, she might have been frozen much longer—minutes, hours—if Carla hadn’t burst out laughing.

  “I’m sorry!” Carla managed, her titters bouncing sharply from the marble and glass of the temple room. “But there are certain turns of phrase.”

  Darcy noticed other tourists staring, and put a shushing finger to her lips.

  “This conversation looks promising,” Sagan said from behind her. “I assume it’s about Imogen.”

  “Of course,” Darcy sighed. “Join in.”

  “You weren’t supposed to have this talk without me,” he said to Carla. “We explicitly agreed.”

  “Sorry!” Carla said. “But you didn’t miss much yet. I swear.”

  “Any salacious details?” he asked.

  Darcy let out a groan. Sagan’s voice was always a bit too loud, but here in the hush of the temple room, discussing this particular subject, he was like a foghorn talking. It didn’t help that his question had sent Carla back into hysterics.

  Darcy took them both by the arms and marched them toward the American Wing. She kept moving until they had reached the relative privacy of the Frank Lloyd Wright Room. The reconstructed living space, with its stately geometries and stained glass ceiling, helped to squelch th
e sputtering noises Carla was making.

  Darcy faced her two friends. “Could you guys be any more like little kids?”

  “You’re the one who’s blushing,” Sagan said. “Does blushing mean that there are salacious details?”

  “Was there sex on the roof?” Carla asked.

  “The roof?” Sagan turned to Carla. “So I did miss something.”

  “They hooked up for the first time last night!” Carla was clapping. “On the roof!”

  “Sex on the roof,” Sagan said. “That sounds like a drink.”

  Darcy groaned. “There was a party. We needed privacy. The roof was private. There was no singing or dancing. There was no sex on the roof. You’re all caught up now, Sagan.”

  “Who made the first move?” he asked.

  Carla giggle-snorted. “Duh. Who do you think?”

  Darcy gave her friend a sideways look, but couldn’t argue.

  “Did you know she liked you?” Sagan asked.

  “Did you know you liked her?” Carla asked.

  “Did you know you liked girls?” Sagan added.

  Darcy swallowed. She hadn’t known anything, really. Last night had simply happened without any initiative on her part, or action, or even desire. Which seemed pretty pathetic, now that she thought about it. But it had also been magical how one rooftop kiss—almost out of nowhere—had transformed everything.

  “We’ll take your silence as no, no, and no,” Carla said. “Poor little Miss Darcy.”

  “How old is Imogen, anyway?” Sagan asked.

  “She’s . . . ,” Darcy began, but no specific number came to mind. “Um, she graduated college a year ago. Is that twenty-three?”

  Carla shook her head. “Whatever it is, she’s totally an adult.”

  “And how does this age disparity make you feel?” Sagan asked, thrusting an invisible microphone into Darcy’s face.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said, pushing his empty hand away. “When I got here, I didn’t tell anyone my age. It never even came up till last night. I guess she just accepted me as another writer.”

  “Writing conquers all!” Carla said. “That’s so sweet.”

  “Possibly too sweet,” Sagan said. “I’m detecting a lack of salacious details.”

  “We’re taking it slow.”

  Carla patted Darcy’s shoulder. “We would expect nothing less of you.”

  “Hey! Going slow was her idea, not mine!” Darcy took a step back from them both. “Do you really think of me as Little Miss Innocent?”

  Even as the question left her mouth, Darcy knew the answer. She was much worse than innocent; she was oblivious. And to make things worse, now they were both staring at her with adoring expressions.

  “Here’s what I don’t get,” Carla said. “How did someone as clueless as you manage to write a convincing romance?”

  “Actually,” Sagan jumped in, “until the early eighties romance heroines were always virgins. Write what you know.” He frowned. “Although it’s unclear what constitutes virginity when it’s two girls. There is debate on the internet.”

  Carla stared at him. “Exactly why were you googling that?”

  “It was from the Sparkle Pony forum. You know how in episode forty-one, it’s strongly implied that Tensile-Toes has a unicorn girlfriend? Of course, unicorns allow only virgins to touch them, so either Tensile-Toes is an actual virgin, like Darcy here, or she’s only technically—”

  “Shush!” Darcy hissed. A pair of girls in school uniforms hovered at the entrance to the Frank Lloyd Wright Room, taking notes, hopefully on the architecture.

  Carla’s words were soft but intense. “Darcy, we both love you exactly the way you are. Also, unicorns avoiding nonvirgins clearly doesn’t apply to other equines.”

  “Agreed,” Sagan whispered. “On both points.”

  Darcy nodded meekly. “I know Imogen likes me, for now. But what if I mess this up? This feels really real, and dangerous. Like taking my first driving lesson in a Ferrari!”

  “Ferraris are quiet safe, actually,” Sagan said. “Their high fatality rate is due to a high percentage of their owners being douchebags.”

  “Exactly!” Carla said. “You’ll be fine as long as you go slow.”

  “I’m glad everyone’s agreed on that,” Darcy said, intending sarcasm, but she sounded earnest in her own ears. Last night at her party, she’d felt so mature and connected, fully equipped to show off in front of her high school friends. But the truth was that Carla and Sagan knew her better than anyone in New York, and she was still Little Miss Innocent in their eyes.

  Darcy turned away and slipped past the schoolgirls, who were muttering to each other in what sounded like French, presumably about Darcy’s virginity. She kept walking, through the American galleries and up a random set of stairs, with Carla and Sagan trailing silently behind.

  They entered a wing of the museum with rust-colored carpets and soft lighting, full of painted folding screens behind glass. It was almost empty here, and Darcy slowed, no longer feeling as though the schoolgirls were pursuing them, notebooks in hand.

  “Sometimes it’s like I’m only pretending to be an adult.”

  Carla smiled. “I think that’s how it works. You pretend for a while, and eventually it’s real.”

  “Like playing sick to get out of school,” Sagan said. “You wind up with a stomachache.”

  “Then I’m all set. I’m great at pretending.” Darcy forced herself to smile, willing her desultory feelings to fade. So what if she was romantically clueless? So what if she was young? What she had with Imogen was real, and as long as that was certain, her other worries were meaningless.

  Well, except for her worries about rewriting a book, starting a sequel, and not spending more than seventeen dollars a day.

  “Hey, check this out.” Sagan was pointing at a huge painting on cloth. “This guy killed your romantic lead.”

  Darcy stared at the painting. It was taller than her, and featured a three-eyed, blue-skinned monster surrounded by a halo of flame, wearing a headdress of skulls.

  “Yamantaka, slayer of Yama,” Sagan said, reading from the plaque on the wall. “The dude who killed Death!”

  “Pretty badass,” Carla said. “You should use him in your sequel.”

  “I’ve never even heard of him.” Darcy nudged Sagan aside to read the plaque. “Right, because this guy’s Buddhist. I’m in enough trouble without throwing in stuff from other religions.”

  “You’re in trouble?” Sagan asked.

  “Kind of,” Darcy sighed. She’d been meaning to talk to Sagan about this today, and she couldn’t ask for a better setting. “You know the first night I was here? When I met Kiralee?”

  “Darcy’s on a first-name basis with Kiralee Taylor,” Sagan said to Carla. “It still freaks me out.”

  “You shared guacamole with Standerson!”

  “Guys, listen,” Darcy said. “That night at Drinks, they were asking about how I used a real god as my romantic lead. And about all the stuff I borrowed from the Vedas. Did you find any of that offensive, Sagan? Like, as a Hindu?”

  He shrugged. “It seemed weird at first, but then I figured that it wasn’t a problem, because there’s no Hinduism in your universe.”

  Darcy blinked. “What?”

  “Well, you know when Lizzie’s trying to find a word that’s better than ‘psychopomp,’ and she googles all those death gods? At first I didn’t get why she never ran into the concept of Yama.”

  “Because that would be weird,” Darcy said. “I mean, she’s been making out with him. And he’s not a god in my world, he’s a person.”

  “Exactly. So I figured that the Angelina Jolie Paradox applies.”

  Darcy glanced at Carla, who looked equally confused.

  “The what now?”

  Sagan cleared his throat. “You know when you’re watching a movie starring Angelina Jolie? And the character she’s playing looks just like Angelina Jolie, right?”

  “U
m, yes. Because that’s who she is.”

  “No, she’s a regular person in that world, not a movie star. But the other characters never mention that she looks exactly like Angelina Jolie. No one ever comes up to her on the street and says, ‘Can I have your autograph?’ ”

  “Because that would mess up the movie,” Carla said.

  “Exactly. So when you cast Angelina Jolie in a film, you’re creating an alternate universe in which actress Angelina Jolie does not exist. Because otherwise people would be noticing the resemblance all the time. This is what I call the Angelina Jolie Paradox.”

  “You know, Sagan,” Carla said. “You could have named that paradox after any movie star.”

  “True. But as the paradox’s discoverer, I have chosen Angelina Jolie, as is my right.”

  “I accept your nomenclature,” Darcy said. “But what does it have to do with my book?”

  “Well, given that Lizzie’s been researching death gods, and yet somehow never realizes that her boyfriend is an actual death god for, like, eight hundred million Hindus, I assume your book takes place in a universe in which Hinduism does not exist. There’s no other explanation.”

  “Fuck. You’re right,” Darcy said. She stumbled backward, dropping onto a dark wooden bench in the center of the room.

  “Dude.” Carla laughed and sat beside her, punching Darcy on the arm. “You just erased your own religion. That’s like going back in time and killing Buddha or something.”

  “Stop laughing!” Darcy returned the punch. “This is serious!”

  “Are you going to get, like, excommunicated?”

  “The question is moot,” Sagan said. “We have no one in charge to do the excommunicating.”

  “It’s still not okay!” Darcy cried, staring at Yamantaka on the wall and realizing that she and the blue-skinned monster had something in common—they’d both killed Yama, Lord of Death. “I mean, are you kidding with this?”

  “Granted, the Angelina Jolie Paradox is not widely accepted,” Sagan said. “It’s more of a conjecture than a theory.”

  “Also, it’s very silly,” Carla pointed out.

  “But it’s in my head now,” Darcy said, because however ludicrous Sagan’s paradox was, she couldn’t deny that it contained a grain of truth.