But being under contract to write a novel was pretty exceptional, wasn’t it?
“I don’t know about this, Darcy.” Her father shook his head. “First you don’t apply to any universities in India, and then—”
“I’d never get into a good school in India! Even Sagan couldn’t, and he’s a math genius.” Darcy turned to her mother, who actually read novels. “You guys thought it was awesome when my book sold.”
“Of course it’s wonderful.” Annika Patel shook her head. “Even if you won’t let us read it.”
“Just until I do the rewrites.”
“That’s up to you,” her mother said. “But you can’t expect every novel you write to make this tremendous amount of money. You have to be practical. You’ve never lived alone, or paid your own bills, or made your own food. . . .”
Darcy didn’t trust herself to speak. Her eyes stung, and her throat was tight. Nisha had been right—now that she’d uttered her dream aloud to her parents, it had become real. Too real to lose.
But at the same time countless other things had become real, all the nuts and bolts of food and shelter. Darcy had never even done her own laundry.
She looked pleadingly at her little sister. Nisha placed her fork down with a little tap, just loud enough.
“I was thinking,” she said as everyone turned to her. “Moneywise, it might be better if Darcy takes a year off.”
No one said anything, and Nisha played the silence for a moment.
“I was looking at Oberlin’s financial aid forms. And of course the main thing they ask is what the parents earn. But there’s another place where they ask for the student’s income. Turns out, whatever Darcy makes comes straight off the top of any aid they offer.”
Still no one spoke, and Nisha nodded slowly to herself, as if she were realizing all this just now.
“Darcy’s going to make more than a hundred grand this year, just by signing that contract. So if she starts college now, she won’t get any financial aid at all.”
“Oh,” Darcy said. Her two-book advance was about the size of a four-year education. By the time she’d finished college, every penny would be gone.
“Well, that doesn’t seem fair,” her father said. “I mean, maybe there’s a way to change the contract and delay the—”
“Too late,” Darcy said, marveling at her little sister’s deviousness. “Already signed and mailed it.”
Her parents were staring at each other now, communing in some unspoken parental way, which meant that they would discuss the matter in private, later. Which meant that Nisha had opened the door a tiny crack.
Now was the time to seal the deal.
“New York’s a lot closer than Oberlin,” Darcy said. “I’ll only be a train ride away, and Aunt Lalana lives there, and there’s a much bigger Gujarati community than in—”
Annika Patel raised her hand, and Darcy stammered to a halt on the word “Ohio.” Maybe it was best to save a few arguments for later, in case this battle went to round two.
But already something momentous had happened here at this table. Darcy could feel her course in life, which had been set so determinedly since she was a little girl, bending toward a new trajectory. She had changed the arc of her own story, merely by typing a couple of thousand words each day for thirty days.
And the taste of that power, the power of her own words, made her hungrier.
Darcy didn’t want this interruption to last only a year. She wanted to see how long she could stretch this feeling out. To be dizzy with words again, like in that glorious week at the end of last November when everything had fallen into place. Darcy wanted that feeling not just for a year.
She wanted it forever.
CHAPTER 4
WHEN MY EYES OPENED, EVERYTHING was wrong.
My head hurt from having fallen to the floor. I touched my hand to my brow and felt the stickiness of blood. I was too dizzy to stand, but managed to sit up.
Beneath me was an expanse of gray tile, just like the airport floor, but everything else had disappeared. I seemed to be sitting in the midst of a formless gray cloud. All I could see were shadows, wisps of motion in the fog.
Hitting my head had done something to my senses. The light filtering through the mist was cold and hard, and there were no colors, only grays. A roaring sound echoed in my ears, like rain on a metal roof. The air tasted flat and metallic. My body felt numb, as if the darkness I’d fallen through had left me chilled.
Where the hell was I?
A dark shape flickered in the corner of my vision. But when I turned my head, it vanished back into the mist.
“Hello?” I tried to call, but could barely squeeze the word out. Then I realized why—I hadn’t taken a single breath since waking up. My lungs were like the rest of my body, filled with cold black ink.
I sucked in a startled gasp, my body starting up like an old car, in jerks and shudders. A few shallow breaths forced themselves into me. I shut my eyes, concentrating on breathing . . . on being alive.
When I opened them again, a girl stood in front of me.
She was about thirteen, with large, curious eyes that met my gaze. She wore a skirt that fell to the floor, a sleeveless top, and a scarf across one shoulder—all of it gray. Her face was gray too, as if she were a pencil drawing come to life.
I drew a careful breath before speaking.
“Where am I?”
She raised an eyebrow. “You can see me?”
I didn’t answer. In that billowing cloud, she was the only thing I could see.
“You’ve crossed over,” the girl said, stepping a little closer. Her eyes focused on my forehead. “But you’re still bleeding.”
My fingers went to my brow. “I hit my head.”
“So you’d look dead to them. Clever girl.” She spoke with an accent that I couldn’t recognize at first. And though I could understand her words, what the girl was saying made no sense. “You’re shiny. You thought your way here, didn’t you?”
“Here? Where am I?”
She frowned. “Maybe not so clever after all. You’re in the afterworld, my dear.”
For a moment it was like falling again, the floor dropping out from under me. The distant rumbling sound grew louder in my ears.
“Are you saying . . . I’m dead?”
She glanced up at my forehead again. “The dead don’t bleed.”
I blinked, not knowing what to say.
“It’s very simple.” She spoke carefully, as if explaining something to a child. “You willed your way here. My brother is just like you.”
I shook my head. Anger was rising up in me, along with the certainty that she was trying to be confusing.
But before I could say something rude, an awful sound came through the mist.
Squeak, squeak . . . tennis shoes on the tile floor.
I spun around, staring into the formless gray. “It’s him!”
“Stay calm.” The girl stepped forward to take my hand. Her fingers were cold, and their iciness flowed into me, stilling my panic. “It isn’t safe yet.”
“But he’s . . .” Squeak, squeak.
I faced the sound as he emerged from the cloud—the gunman who’d shot at me. He looked even more hideous now, with a gas mask hiding his face. He was coming straight toward us.