She looked so happy that Darcy didn’t point out that she had been eighteen back when the sister debs had laid their bets. Instead, she signed their copies of Afterworlds.
As they headed off, Kiralee Taylor and Oscar Lassiter came winding through the empty corral of stanchions.
“I’ve been told there’s some sort of Hindu death-god book available here?” Kiralee called. “Can such a thing be true?”
Darcy laughed. She hadn’t seen Kiralee in person since the blurb had been bestowed. “Very true, and it’s free for famous authors!”
“Having fun?” Oscar asked.
“I was. Then business tapered off.”
“More will come,” said Kiralee. “For the moment, you’ve got some stiff competition down the way.”
“You mean Big Head?” Rhea frowned. “My sister and I always hated his show.”
“Not him,” Kiralee said. She was wearing a mysterious smile. “And don’t worry, I’ve tweeted your august presence. Prepare to be positively swamped.”
Rhea slid Darcy a book, already opened to the full title page. For a moment, Darcy froze, the Uni-Ball Vision Elite a thick and clumsy thing in her hand.
“K-I-R—” Kiralee began.
“Hush!” Oscar said. “She’s thinking.”
This was only partly true. There was a glimmer of cognition in Darcy’s head, which might have been translated as, Oh shit, I’m signing a book for Kiralee Taylor. But really it was nothing but a buzzing in her ears.
The book splayed out before her was real. Kiralee standing there waiting for a signature was real. The rumble of the crowds and the smell of freshly printed and bound paper was real. Darcy Patel was a published author now.
“Well, this is a bit awkward,” Kiralee said a moment later.
“Ignore her,” Oscar said gently. “Take your time.”
And Darcy suddenly knew what to write.
Thanks for all the nightmares of red mud.
She signed it with a flourish, and then moved on to Oscar’s.
Writing is a lonely business, except for Drinks!
The two of them were very kind about what she’d written and, still kinder, they stuck around until the line built up again, attracting strays from the other aisles and a handful of Kiralee’s followers. Soon Darcy was signing again, careful never to rush, pausing to talk to everyone, at least until more people waited behind them. The line ebbed and flowed, until, quite suddenly, the hour was done and Rhea was packing things away.
“Great job,” she said. “Only a box and half left!”
Darcy was stunned. It hadn’t felt anything like seventy people, but her right hand was marvelously sore.
“Oops, two more. You sign, I’ll pack.” Rhea dropped a pair of books on the table and began to kick-slide the leftover box away behind the curtain.
Darcy looked up. It was Carla and Sagan.
“Where did you guys come from?”
“From our dorms, where we live,” Sagan said. “We decided to road trip down this morning.”
“Road trip!” Carla yelled. She was hugging a dozen books to her chest already.
“How did you get in?”
“Imogen weaseled us day passes from Paradox,” Sagan said. “Like, in case you needed friendly faces at your signing.”
“Sorry we’re late,” Carla said. “But the free is strong in this place!”
“Wait. Imogen got you in?” Darcy blinked. She hadn’t checked the schedule, but of course Imogen would be here somewhere. It was strange, how on busy days Darcy could go for hours without noticing the missing pieces of her heart. But when memories did come, they hit all at once.
“Why the sad face?” Carla asked.
“She didn’t come to my signing.”
“No shit, Sherlock.” Carla fumbled a book out of her hoard. Its cover was filled by a black cat, the eyes shining a familiar flame-red. “She’s busy down on aisle 2. That’s why we’re late.”
“Seriously?”
“We went to tell her thanks,” Sagan said. “And she had this huge line! It took us forever to get over here.”
Darcy pulled the advanced copy of Kleptomancer from Carla’s hands. She’d read the first draft almost a year ago, but had never seen the cover. “I forgot these would be here. Did I ever tell you how I—”
“Named that book?” Carla and Sagan said in unison, then burst into giggles.
“You guys suck.”
“Oh, really?” Carla snatched the copy of Kleptomancer back. “Is that why we haven’t heard from you lately.”
“I was madly writing. I got a whole draft done!”
“In a month?” Sagan said. “That’s, like, old-school Darcy behavior.”
“So what are your plans now?” Carla asked.
“Hang out with you guys, obviously. After the Paradox party.”
“Not tonight,” Carla said. “Now as in . . . the future. Are you going to Oberlin? Staying here forever?”
“Yeah,” Sagan said. “You never told us what you did with that lease renewal.”
“Oh,” Darcy said softly. “I kind of forgot about it.”
“So you get kicked out on July 1?”
“I guess so.” Over the last month, Darcy hadn’t focused on her apartment situation, or the future in general. The first draft of Untitled Patel had consumed her mind and soul, along with certain household details like laundry, cleaning, and paperwork.
“Smooth,” Carla said with a laugh. “I’m glad that living on your own has made you so mature.”
Darcy sighed. She’d tried hard to grow up a little in her time alone in apartment 4E. But maybe she was doomed to be forever adulthood-challenged.
She opened one of the books on the table. “How about, ‘From your loving high school best friend. Thanks for all the maturity advice’?”
“Sucks!” Carla and Sagan said in concert.
“You guys have to stop doing that. Talking together is creepy-twins.”
“I have an idea,” Carla said. “How about you write—”
“No! I have expertise in this now. This is my job.” Darcy stewed in silence for a moment, then lifted up her pen.
Without you guys, all that reading wouldn’t have been half as fun.
She wrote the same in Sagan’s copy.
“Time to saddle up,” Rhea said from behind her. “The next author’s waiting, and the party’s in half an hour.”
“Sorry!” Darcy leaped up from the seat. It belonged to someone else now.
“By the way, can we stay with you tonight?” Carla asked.
“Duh. See you later,” Darcy said, and handed over her keys.
* * *
The Paradox party was only a half-hour walk away, but it was a hot day, and the broad expanse of Ninth Avenue offered no shade at all. Darcy was sweating in her little black dress by the time she and Rhea arrived at the bar.
“Guinness, right?” Rhea asked as she headed away.
“Yes, please!” Darcy called after her. It was mercifully cool and dark here, but she was in serious need of a drink. The restaurant was crowded with Paradox authors and editors and people from marketing, publicity, and sales. All of them were important to her future, and most she’d only met for the first time today. Luckily, they still had their name tags on.
But she lingered at the edge of the crowd, not yet ready for more small talk after her hour at the signing table. Darcy found herself glancing at the restaurant doors, wondering if Imogen was coming. She wouldn’t spurn her own publisher just to avoid an ex, would she?
“Darcy! How did your signing go?” said Moxie Underbridge, sweeping from across the room.
Darcy winced a little. Since sending off her first draft of Untitled Patel, she’d begun to wonder if it wasn’t a bit too first-drafty, a lot too chaotic. Moxie hadn’t responded to it yet, which seemed like a bad sign.
“Pretty good, I guess. Maybe sixty people?”
“Seventy-three!” Rhea corrected as she sailed by, depositing a cold Guinness in Darcy’s hand, not waiting for thanks.
“Not bad for your first signing,” Moxie said.
“Better than I expected. Weird too. People have actually read me now, which was kind of scary. They had opinions.”
Moxie laughed at this. “Opinions mean they want a sequel. Which is in lovely shape, by the way. Just finished the draft last night.”
“It’s okay?” Darcy took a steadying drink. “I was thinking you might find it a bit . . . shaky.”
“Shaky?” Moxie shook her head. “It’s so much better than the first draft of Afterworlds. You’ve grown a lot.”
“Are you kidding? It doesn’t feel that way.”
“You probably don’t even remember how Afterworlds started. Those two chapters at the beginning, in the silly underworld palace, and that maudlin last scene on Yamaraj’s deathbed? Nan was worried you’d never get the ending right.”
Darcy blinked. “You never told me that.”
“Well, it’s not my job to frighten you, darling. Debutantes need careful handling.”
“But if Nan was worried, why did Paradox give me so much money?”
Moxie shrugged. “Because they knew it might be a huge book. And Sales loved that first chapter.”
“That’s all they liked?”
“Of course not. But it showed great promise, so Paradox committed. And now it’s paying off! You’ve got great buzz, and it’ll only get bigger after today.” Moxie patted Darcy’s shoulder, but then sighed. “Of course, we probably wouldn’t get that much money these days. It was a different era.”
“Um, it was only a year ago.”
“That long? Good heavens.” Moxie fanned herself and took a long swig of her martini. “It feels as though you’ve been with us forever, Darcy.”
Darcy smiled. On good writing days it did feel that way, as though she’d been born in New York City, or had somehow risen up through its sun-baked asphalt, a fully formed novelist. But most of the time, she still felt like a kid.
“Hey, you.” The familiar voice went fizzing through Darcy, and she turned.
It was Imogen, of course. She was dressed up for her signing, in a crisp white shirt, her fingers strewn with sparkling rings. A black jacket was slung over one arm from the heat of the walk here, and she had a sweating beer in her other hand.
There was always a part of Darcy’s brain that expected to run into Imogen—on the streets of Chinatown, in the subway, at some restaurant they’d both loved. So over the last two and a half months, she’d crafted a hundred artful versions of what to say next.
But what she said was, “Hi.”
This greeting seemed to please Imogen. “Good signing?”
“It was great. Yours?”
“Pretty decent.”
“Decent? Carla and Sagan said your line was huge.” Darcy laughed, because she could tell by Imogen’s embarrassed expression that it was true.
“Weird, huh? Just some random photograph, and everything changes.”
“It wouldn’t have changed anything if your book wasn’t great,” Darcy said, then cringed inside at the earnest tremor in her voice. She took a drink, pulled herself straighter. “Thanks for getting my friends in. I didn’t even know we could do that.”
Imogen’s smile returned. “Writerly superpowers, tiny but potent.”
Neither said anything for a moment, but the chatter of the crowd didn’t rush in to fill the silence. An invisible barrier seemed to hover in place, shielding the two of them from interruption. Moxie had simply disappeared.
“I loved your ending,” Imogen said at last.