Afterworlds Read online

  Whenever she began to type a story, Darcy felt an alternate universe inside her computer taking form. Some parts of it intersected with her own world, real places like San Diego and New York, but other parts were made up, like Lizzie Scofield or the Movement of the Resurrection. Those connections with reality gave stories their power, and when that realness began to fray and splinter, something broke inside Darcy as well.

  She looked up at the painting. A character like Yama, someone borrowed from the Vedas, already had his own stories out here in the real world. And every day, Darcy grew more uncertain whether he was hers to play with anymore.

  “You could change his name,” Carla said. “Call him Steve, or something.”

  Darcy coughed out a small cry, as if she’d swallowed a bug. “Steve?”

  “Okay, an Indian name. She could use yours, right, Sagan?”

  “My name means ‘Lord Shiva,’ so not really.” Sagan struck a Bollywood archer’s pose. “But I’m available to play Yamaraj in the movie.”

  Darcy shook her head. She could no more change Yamaraj’s name than she could Lizzie’s, or any of the characters. It was too late for that. Besides, filing the serial numbers off a stolen car didn’t mean you owned it.

  “You guys are killing my brain.”

  “And I haven’t even told you the paradoxical part,” Sagan said. “The only way not to erase Angelina Jolie is to never cast her in a movie.”

  Carla’s eyes went wide. “Which would also erase Angelina Jolie.”

  Darcy made a small and whimpering noise.

  Carla sighed, and stroked her shoulder gently. “You really think a three-thousand-year-old death god cares what you write about him?”

  “Yamaraj is who he is,” Darcy said. “This is about who I am.”

  CHAPTER 20

  JAMIE KEPT LOOKING AT MY scar. Not the one on my forehead, where the stitches had almost dissolved, but the oval of reddened skin that descended from my left eye, tracing the shape of a single tear.

  “Can I touch it?” She was already reaching out.

  I leaned closer across the Formica table. We were eating breakfast at a diner before our first day back at school, a celebration to mark the start of our final semester.

  “Does it hurt?” she asked.

  “No. It’s kind of like a chemical peel, a really small one.” Her fingertip was a whisper against my cheek. “From the tear gas reacting with water. That’s my terrorism beauty tip: if you get sprayed with tear gas, don’t wash your face!”

  All yesterday I’d practiced this line in my head, going for comedy in the face of tragedy. But Jamie was wide-eyed and silent.

  I cleared my throat. “Just kidding. I have no terrorism beauty tips.”

  “But it is kind of pretty.” Jamie picked up her phone from the table. “You mind?”

  I leaned forward, and she snapped a picture from inches away.

  Now she was staring at her phone instead of my face. “It’s like a tattoo of a teardrop.”

  “That’s what it is. I cried a tear, which left its mark.”

  “Whoa, deep. But only one tear? That’s some pretty crappy tear gas.”

  I didn’t explain how I’d mostly avoided the gas by willing myself to an alternate reality, one inhabited by ghosts and psychopomps and threads of memory twisting cold and wet and hungry in the wind.

  Instead I said, “Can I have the rest of your bagel?”

  She pushed it forward, her gaze still riveted to her phone.

  * * *

  Jamie was the first person I’d called with my new phone, which had shown up the day before, arriving via overnight express. (That was classic Dad behavior: waiting for more than a week to do something, then paying extra to make it happen faster. When I left a message thanking him, he texted back, Thank Rachel. She kept bugging me. Also classic Dad.)

  Jamie had announced that she was picking me up for school an hour early, because we had so much to catch up on, and we’d wound up heading to breakfast here at Abby’s Diner.

  This was much more fun than Mom driving me to school. Between Mindy and Yama and having a strange new reality to explore, I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed my best friend.

  “I think it’s really cool how you never went on TV,” Jamie was saying.

  “Mom made that decision, I guess. I never even thought about doing an interview.”

  “Would you have wanted to?”

  “It’s not like I’ve had time.” There’d been skills to learn, after all. Afterworlds to conquer. “I didn’t even practice my Spanish over winter break. For once Mom didn’t make me.”

  “Poor Anna,” Jamie said. “She must still be freaking out.”

  “Pretty much.” It didn’t help that she’d found me sleeping in a closet two nights ago, with a knife as a teddy bear. “She’s tired all the time these days. Like she never really recovered.”

  “Was it weird, her and your dad seeing each other in Dallas?”

  “He didn’t come.”

  Jamie froze for a second, then she placed her fork down firmly. “What the actual fuck?”

  I shrugged. My dad’s behavior was always freaking people out, but I was used to him. “He doesn’t deal well with stuff like this.”

  “Who the hell does? I know he’s weird, but that’s beyond crazy. And after you got this close to getting . . . crap. I wasn’t going to ever say that out loud. I suck.”

  “Hey, I know I almost died. It’s okay.”

  “Sorry.”

  I shrugged. “We’re all freaked out.”

  “Not just us. Air travel’s down, like, eight percent. And when the Feds searched the houses of those gunmen, they found all kinds of explosives and other scary shit. Like they were planning something really big. Everyone says the FBI is going to raid the cult’s big compound soon.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Been keeping up with the news?”

  “Obsessively!” Jamie cried, loud enough that heads turned. Her gaze dropped to the table, and she began to adjust her knife and fork. “I hope that’s not weird. It’s just that when you didn’t answer my emails, I had to get my info from somewhere.”

  “I know. And you’re really awesome to not be mad at me.”

  Jamie was still staring at her silverware, and I could see that she was feeling everything at once: relief that I was alive, anger that I’d taken so long to get in touch, horror that the world was so random and deadly.

  “It’s my fault you haven’t had a chance to process,” I said. “It was selfish of me, hiding like that.”

  “Don’t be silly. You’re the one who was terrorized,” Jamie said to her half-finished omelet.

  “I get to be silly. And I get to hide, too. But I choose to get over myself now.” I handed her one of my french fries. “See? Selflessness.”

  She took the french fry and ate it solemnly. “You can talk to me about what happened, Lizzie. Or about anything. You know that, right?”

  “Of course.”

  She reached for another of my french fries. “Your mouth just did that thing it does when you’re lying. How come?”

  I looked away from her, letting out a sigh. “Maybe because I just lied. There are things I can’t talk to you about. But it’s only because I can’t talk about them with anyone. Okay?”

  I realized why I’d waited so long to call Jamie. It had nothing to do with being traumatized by terrorists or hiding from my weird new fame. It was because of how badly I wanted to tell her everything.

  She was my best friend, and I couldn’t say a word about the scariest and most wonderful thing that had ever happened to me. I couldn’t tell her about knowing what came after death, or the ghost that haunted my mother, or those five little girls in Palo Alto. And worst of all, I couldn’t tell her about Yama.

  Being with him had changed everything. There were energies inside me that I’d never felt before, a psychopomp shine on my skin and fire in my hands. I hadn’t slept in two days. The old man under my bedroom floor was rig
ht—I didn’t need to anymore.

  I was becoming something else. Something powerful and dangerous.

  “Do you hate me?” I asked.

  Jamie shook her head. “I didn’t say you had to talk to me, just that you could. But maybe you need some other kind of help.”

  “Like a shrink.” Suddenly I was annoyed. Mom had also suggested seeing someone, but it seemed different when a friend said it. “I’m okay, Jamie. In some ways, I’m better than okay. Better than I was.”

  There was a glimmer of sadness in her face. “How are you better?”

  “Well, some of what I can’t talk to you about, it’s not really bad. It’s more like, um, positive developments.”

  Jamie leaned closer, her eyes interrogating mine. My fingers went unbidden to my lips. It felt as though Jamie could see Yama’s heat lingering there.

  “Holy crap, Lizzie. You met someone.”

  I should have denied it, but I was too surprised. We sat there staring at each other, every second of silence confirming what she’d said.

  Jamie shook her head. “I thought you were being kind of perky.”

  Something about the way she said “perky” made me giggle.

  “Jamie . . . ,” I began, but had nowhere to go. I giggled again.

  “Lizzie,” she said back at me. “Did this happen in New York? No, because you would have told me about that already. So you met someone in Dallas?”

  A soft moan slipped out of my mouth, as if she were dragging the truth from me. But what I really felt was relief at finally telling someone, along with a happy panic as I tried to figure out what to say. “Yeah. I did.”

  “That’s so romantic.” Her eyes were wide and glistening. “At the hospital?”

  “No.”

  “So, not another patient, and you’re being super cagey about it. You haven’t told Anna about this, have you?”

  “Hell no.”

  “Aha! So he’s older than you. Or are you being cagey because he’s not a he? Did you switch teams, Lizzie? You know I don’t care if you did.”

  “I know, but he’s a he. And yeah, older.” It felt weird saying it that way. Yama might have been born a long time ago, but he hadn’t changed much since he’d left the real world. If Mindy was still eleven, surely Yama was my age. “Kind of older.”

  “A hot young paramedic?”

  “No,” I said, smiling. Jamie’s guesses would never get her to the truth, of course, but for some reason it felt good to have her trying. It felt normal. “He was just somebody who helped me. And we have . . . a connection.”

  “That’s sweet, but ‘just somebody who helped you’? You suck at hinting.”

  “Who says I’m hinting?”

  She reached across the table and punched me. “I say you are! More hinting, now!”

  “Okay,” I said. But what could I tell her that would even make sense? “He knows how to deal with tragedies.”

  “Like a grief counselor?”

  This was probably as close as she would ever get, so I nodded.

  “Deep.” But then she frowned. “Isn’t that kind of unethical? Swooping in on someone who’s totally traumatized?”

  “It’s not . . .” I groaned. “He’s not an actual grief counselor, Jamie.”

  “You just said he was.”

  “Not officially or anything.” This conversation was getting too specific, so I went for vague. “He’s just someone who gave me what I needed to survive all this. When nothing else made sense, he saved me. He’s why I’m not falling apart right now.”

  She nodded slowly. “Okay, I like him so far. But he must be in Dallas, right? You know long-distance relationships mostly suck.”

  “He’s here sometimes. He travels a lot. Um, for his job.”

  “His job? Lizzie, what is he?”

  I opened my mouth, then closed it again. Soul guide? Psychopomp? Guardian of the dead?

  “It’s a secret,” I spluttered. “His job is a secret.”

  There was a long pause as Jamie considered this, while I contemplated the epic corner I had painted myself into. Maybe this was why I hadn’t called Jamie, because she always made me tell her more than I wanted to.

  “Wait,” she said a moment later. “He’s some kind of spook, isn’t he?”

  “Um, what?”

  “It’s obvious.” Jamie started ticking off points on her fingers. “Secret job. Travels a lot. Was at terrorist attack. Good at dealing with tragedies. Age inappropriate.”

  “Not that inappropriate. He looks really young.”

  “You’re hooking up with a government agent!” she cried. “And how old he looks is what you’re focused on?”

  I looked around, wondering if anyone in the diner had managed not to hear Jamie’s outburst. Nobody I recognized was there, but my mom’s friends came to Abby’s all the time. Plus, my face had been on the news a lot lately.

  “We should stop talking about this now,” I whispered.

  “Because you can neither confirm nor deny.” Jamie checked her phone. “Plus, we should get to school. I’ll pay.”

  * * *

  A little later we were in the car, watching the road slip past in silence.

  This was what I got for opening up. I was stuck with a lie, and a ridiculous one. But if I denied that my secret boyfriend was some sort of secret agent, Jamie would just start asking questions again. And there wasn’t anything true I could tell her that would make as much sense.

  For that matter, how much truth did I have to tell? What did I really know about Yama? I had only the vaguest notions about how old he was or where he was from. He’d never even had a chance to finish his story about becoming a psychopomp. Something about a donkey, was all I remembered.

  I didn’t know the answers to any of the questions Jamie probably wanted to ask. But I had to say something.

  “I know this all seems weird.”

  “Yeah, it does.” She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “Part of me wants to believe that you’re just straight-up crazy. Like, you invented a secret-agent boyfriend to make yourself feel safer.”

  “Why would you want to believe that?”

  “Because then no one’s taking advantage of you,” she said.

  I stared at her, my breakfast twisting in my stomach. “He’s not like that.”

  “I’m sure it doesn’t seem that way, Lizzie. Because in every action movie the girl hooks up with the guy who saves her, like that’s supposed to be normal. But in real life it’d be a pretty messed-up way to fall in love, because your emotions go all haywire when you’re getting shot at. Isn’t it called Stockholm syndrome or something?”

  “Um, I think that’s when you fall in love with the terrorist, not the good guy.”

  “Right. That would be worse. But you didn’t just hook up with somebody because you were scared, did you?” She pulled her eyes from the road to stare at me.

  I shook my head. “It’s not like that at all. In fact, he kept saying it would be better if I forgot the whole attack, even if that meant forgetting him. But I couldn’t. We’re connected, since the first moment I saw him.”

  Her eyes were on the road again. “By which you mean, he’s hot.”

  “Yeah, he is.” For a moment, I didn’t know where to start, though my body was singing at the thought of describing him aloud. “Brown eyes. Brown skin, too. He’s tall, kind of wiry.” I could still feel the way his muscles moved beneath silk.

  “Wiry? You mean he works out?”

  “No. He’s more like someone who grew up on a farm.” As I said the words, it fell into place. There’d been lots of manual labor all those years ago.

  “Wiry. Okay.”

  Suddenly I wanted to tell Jamie everything, or at least everything that would make sense to her. “He’s got this twin sister who’s really important to him. It’s like they have a bond.”

  “That’s weird, but cool.” Jamie sighed. “So you hooked up in Dallas? Like, while you were in the hospital?”


  “No. It was here, two nights ago. That’s the first time we . . . the first time anything happened.”

  “He was here in San Diego? Not stalking you, I hope.”

  “No. He just happened to be here. And I’m the one who called him. Like I said, we have this connection. Just trust me on this.”

  She turned to stare at me, and it was a long moment before her eyes went back to the road. “Okay. I trust you, Lizzie. And I’m glad someone was there for you. Just be careful.”

  “I will be.” Of course, that was a lie. Being careful would mean taking Yama’s advice and forgetting all about the five little girls in Palo Alto. But I couldn’t do that. Mindy needed to know for sure that she was safe from the bad man. And I needed to know that everyone else was too.

  I reached out and put my hand gently on Jamie’s, wanting to say something that wasn’t a half-truth. “I’m really glad we talked about this. It all seems more real to me now, just from saying it out loud to you.”

  She gave me a smile, our hands parting as she turned the wheel to guide her car into the student parking lot. It was already swarming, groups of friends clumping together, excited to see each other again or mutually depressed about being back at school. It all looked so normal and of-this-world that it made my heart twist a little.

  Like I didn’t belong here anymore.

  It was strange. When I was in the gray world, I looked out of place, shiny and full of color. But this school parking lot felt foreign as well, too full of life for a psychopomp like me.

  That word sucked. I’d started searching online for something better to call myself, but had found only the old standbys like “soul guide” and “grim reaper,” and lots of gods and goddesses with names like Oya, Xolotl, Pinga, and Muut, plus two from Chinese mythology called Ox-Head and Horse-Face.

  For obvious reasons, I was still looking.

  Jamie drove us carefully through the throng and pulled into an empty spot. The moment I stepped out of the car, people were eyeing me with furtive looks of recognition, a few of them pulling out their phones. But at least there were no TV cameras or reporters. The winter break had lasted just long enough for my survivor fame to recede.