“Ooh, I like that word,” said Jims. “Jims Lascewski: Primed and Ready for Action.”
“Jims kept insisting he saw something,” said Raphael, “and we got mad. It wasn’t the time for his stupid games. But then Lily saw it, and then I did, too.”
“Guess who was last,” said Taylor.
“We walked through the doorway, and all hell broke loose. Suddenly, we were surrounded by guards pointing weapons at us.”
“And who saved the day?” said Jims. “Go on. Who?”
“Jims did,” Raphael and Lily chorused wearily.
“That’s right. I whipped out McCrea’s badge and began waving it around, telling them I was Agent McCrea, returning from an important mission, and I outranked them, and they’d better shut up and let me bring my prisoners back to the Interdimensional Bureau of Investigation.”
“Didn’t they notice that you look nothing like Conn?” I said.
“I held my thumb over the photo. It always works in movies.”
Lily said, “We settled into the city and spent every day looking for you. We were afraid to go to the IBI, because that’s Conn’s home ground. Plus we didn’t want anyone to recognize us from that stunt we pulled at the mausoleum and decide to boot us back home—or worse, arrest us. Then we heard about Shades. And we knew.”
“Did Marsha tell you what happened at her house?” I asked. “How she threw a knife at me—accidentally—and I vanished?”
“No. She never mentioned that.”
“Then…”
“It’s because of the way you look, dummy,” said Taylor. “It was obvious.”
I felt suddenly tired. I sank down onto the sofa with Lily next to me, while Raphael and Jims arranged themselves into armchairs and Taylor coolly watched us. “You don’t … care about what I am? You’re still my friends?”
“How can you even ask that?” said Lily.
“Shades are mass murderers,” I muttered.
“But you’re not. A few Shades have done some awful things, but that doesn’t mean they’re all evil.”
Which was the point I’d been making to Conn.
“People here have lost perspective,” she continued. “Shades are the monster under the bed.”
“Frankly,” said Jims, “I think you’re awesome. Aside from fire being your obvious kryptonite, you’re practically invulnerable.”
In a low voice I said, “I don’t feel invulnerable.”
“That’s okay,” said Jims. “You’ve got us. We’ll play Robin to your Batman.”
Lily looked at me. She knew I wasn’t talking about physical weaknesses. She leaned comfortingly against me.
“I still can’t believe you’re here,” I said. “I can’t believe we ever found each other.”
“We hoped you’d make it back to the Couch Mausoleum,” said Raphael, “and try to go home. Of course we wouldn’t have been able to see you, but you’d at least notice one of us. So we took shifts watching it around the clock.”
“Except Jims,” said Taylor. “Jims didn’t have to stand around in the cold. At night. In the snow.”
“Jims has a job that keeps the roof over our heads,” said Jims.
I glanced around the swanky apartment, then back at him.
“That’s right,” he said. “Daddy’s bringing home the bacon.”
“Please stop calling yourself that,” Lily moaned.
“Exactly what kind of job do you have?” I paused. “Are you a drug dealer?”
“Close,” he said. “I’m a Storyteller.”
“This world has no television, no movies,” said Raphael, “but it’s big on the performing arts, like theater, ballet, and—”
“—role-playing games,” Jims finished. “I happen to be a very talented Game Master. I run about fifty games a week, and I am rolling in money. Oh, and can we please talk about my social life?”
“Jims,” said Lily.
“The ladies here love me.”
Lily rolled her eyes.
“I am a thousand volts of deliciosity,” Jims insisted.
“I’ve heard more than I ever need to on this subject,” said Taylor. “I don’t want to talk about it. I want to know what Darcy’s been up to.”
“Taylor,” warned Raphael.
“No, seriously. We deserve some answers. So.” Her hazel eyes bored into mine. “Spill.”
“Taylor, shut up,” said Lily.
“Why? We told her everything that happened to us.”
“She’ll tell us if she wants to!”
“I do want to,” I said quietly. “But not tonight, okay? Tonight I just want to be happy. I want to hang out with my best friends.”
“Done.” Jims stood and clapped his hands once. “How about dinner? Darcy’s cooking. Right, Darcy?”
“For you guys? Anything.”
* * *
AS WE SAT AROUND the table in the dining room with steaming plates of curried veggies in front of us, Jims opened a bottle of champagne. “We were saving this for tomorrow night, but I guess in the morning we’ll pack up and head home. Unless you want to stick around for New Year’s Eve, Darcy? It could be fun.”
I shuddered at the thought of my friends in the heart of Meridian’s catastrophe. But it wouldn’t happen. It couldn’t happen. The mayor would cancel the celebration. Even the thought, though, upset me. “No,” I said.
“Any special reason why not?” Taylor speared a carrot and inspected it before eating.
“If you’re worried about getting a kiss at midnight,” Jims told me, “I’m sure someone here will do the honors.”
“I just want to go home,” I said.
Taylor heaved an irritated sigh. “I can’t stand this sentimental secrecy. Get over whatever’s bothering you, Darcy. It can’t be that bad.”
A silence fell, and I watched Taylor eat.
She caught me staring. “What?” she asked, lowering her fork. Then, with an understanding air, she dabbed her lips with a linen napkin and said, “It’s good, okay? The food tastes absolutely yummy. God, this is what I get for living with a bunch of nerds in another dimension. You’re all so insecure.”
“That’s not it,” I said. “It’s … well, I can’t figure out why you’re still here, Taylor.”
“And they say I’m rude.”
“I didn’t mean it like that. What I meant was … I’m surprised. If it was only the three of you doing shifts at the mausoleum while Jims worked, that means you spent eight hours a day waiting around for me to show up. And we were never friends. I’m grateful, Taylor. Really grateful. But I’m surprised, too.”
“Well.” She played with a lock of her hair, searching for nonexistent split ends. “Beats being in school.”
“Oh God,” I said. “School.” A sick feeling of crisis swept over me. You wouldn’t think the sudden realization that I’d missed a ton of class and my finals would freak me out after everything I’d been through, but believe me. It did.
“Now, now,” said Jims. “Don’t tell us you’re crying salty tears over missing the fetal pig dissection in Bio.”
“But my grades,” I said. “My GPA. I hoped … I hoped to get a scholarship.” I wanted my old life back, my old dreams, and now I saw my chances of going to the School of the Art Institute shrink to zero.
“Don’t worry,” said Lily. “I’m sure we’re all going to end up in summer school together—”
Taylor buried her face in her hands.
“—but everyone at Lakebrook High will do their best to help you. As far as excuses go, getting kidnapped is pretty airtight. Marsha saw Conn attack you.”
I felt a little better, but still … “Marsha.”
“She’ll take you back.”
“You think so? I don’t know. She saw me ghost—disappear—right in front of her. I’ll have to explain that. Unless…” I glanced around the table hopefully. “You didn’t let her know somehow, did you? Maybe you popped back home through the portal to tell her I was a supernatural creature, and got her reaction?”<
br />
“Nah,” said Taylor. “We thought about it but decided not to. They were afraid she wouldn’t take you back.”
“Taylor!” said Lily.
She spread her hands innocently. “It’s the truth.”
“Hey, Taylor,” said Raphael, “why don’t you take the sofa tonight, and let Darcy sleep in your and Lily’s room?”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s a two-bedroom apartment,” he explained with more patience than I would have thought possible. “Darcy and Lily need to catch up, so—”
“But why me? Why don’t you sleep on the sofa?”
“Are you saying”—Jims snaked an arm over her shoulders—“that you want to share a bedroom with moi?”
Taylor shot out of her chair. “Fine! I’ll take the sofa,” she shouted, and stormed from the dining room.
We laughed. Little bursts of happiness fizzed and sparkled in me like the champagne, and as we ate my friends told me about their interdimensional escapades. I remembered, as I looked around the table, what I’d said to Aunt Ginger long ago on her blueberry farm, when she’d asked me to confess my greatest wish: I want a family.
Why, make your own, she’d answered.
And I had.
After dinner, the boys volunteered to clean up and Lily took me to her room, where she gave me a set of pajamas and said I could use her toothbrush. “I’d only do that for you,” she said as we washed our faces at the marble double sinks in her and Taylor’s private bathroom.
I climbed into Taylor’s bed and Lily slipped into hers, and we lay there, silent in the soft glow of the lamp. The sheets smelled like Taylor’s perfume: exotic and a little outrageous. The perfume was nothing like the scent of Conn’s skin, but I still remembered it, still couldn’t block out how it had felt to be held by him. Even though I hadn’t meant to say anything to Lily tonight, the pressure of everything that had happened in the past months swelled inside me.
It wasn’t all about Conn. I knew that. But it had started with him and somehow ended with him, too. I cleared my throat. “Conn—”
“I want to kill him,” Lily said flatly.
“Then you’re not going to like what I have to tell you.”
44
I told Lily everything. When I finally stopped, my throat was sore from speaking.
I pulled the blankets up to my chin and waited for Lily’s reply, looking at her somber face, wondering if I’d said anything unforgivable. There was so much, from me spying for the IBI to my murderous parents to Meridian’s plot to my stupid, impossible love for Conn. I didn’t know what might be too hard for her to understand.
She sighed. “Why does it have to be him? What about Raphael?”
I sat up in bed and stared across the room at her. “What about him?”
“Oh, please. That boy has been carrying a torch for you since—”
“Can we please not talk about torches, even metaphorical ones?”
“Darcy, don’t avoid the point.”
I turned it over in my mind, considering this possibility. It seemed as startling as the existence of another world. “I can’t,” I said. “I can’t think of Raphael that way. Maybe I could have, before. But…”
“Conn,” she said with disgust.
“You don’t know him.”
“You don’t even know how he feels about you. Just because he tried to get you into bed—”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Honestly? You two sound like a pair of misfit toys who are going to end up breaking each other.”
“Well. We’ll never know. We’re going home tomorrow.”
Lily hesitated. “Are you sure about that? I mean, I can’t believe I’m advocating anything that might throw you and Conn together again, but maybe you could help stop the attack.”
“It’s not going to happen. The mayor will cancel the celebration.”
“I haven’t heard anything about that. You’d think he would have announced it already.”
“Maybe it’ll be a last-minute thing.”
“Look, if you want to go home tomorrow, that’s what we’re going to do, okay?”
“Yes,” I said, and turned off the light.
We lay there, talking in the dark until our voices grew tired and our sentences farther apart.
“Doesn’t it bother you?” I finally asked. “What my parents did?”
She paused. “Yes. But you didn’t do it. You’re not your parents.”
That was a kind of comfort.
The silence stretched. Then, drifting near the edge of sleep, I murmured, “Lily? How come your hair’s not purple? Or pink?”
She chuckled. “It probably would be if black wasn’t so bottom of the fashion barrel. People here drive me crazy, the way they demonize Shades. It’s racism, you know.”
“I don’t think we’re a separate race. We might be a separate species.”
“Still.” She paused. “Anyway…”
I closed my eyes, and Lily’s words began to weave into the threads of a dream.
“… it reminded me of you.”
I smiled and fell asleep.
* * *
A STENCH WORMED INTO MY DREAMS, bitter and thick and searing, like poisonous gas, though I knew that wasn’t it. It was the smell of destruction. It was the smell of things being eaten alive. It was fire.
I saw flames flash down the streets. Fire bloomed in my mother’s face.
Then I was awake, on my feet, too terrified to scream, and running down the hall, because there was a fire, there was a fire here, and I had to put it out. I had to save my friends.
I chased the smoke to its source. The living room.
Raphael was reading in an armchair pulled up to the fireplace. A small flame writhed behind the iron grill.
“Darcy?” he looked up. “What’s wrong?” He followed my wide-eyed gaze. “Oh, crap. I’m an idiot.” He scrambled to his feet. “I totally forgot. I’ll put it out.”
I found my voice. “No, don’t. That’ll make it smell worse.”
He opened a window, and cold air rushed in, clearing my head. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’m not used to thinking of you like—”
“It’s okay. And … I need to get used to fire. Shades can, you know. Sometimes I think I’m getting better.” The burning wood popped, and I jumped. “Or not.”
“Sit with me over here,” Raphael took my hand and pulled me toward the sofa, which was far from the fire. “I’m really, really sorry,” he said again.
I steeled myself against the fire, pretended it didn’t exist. “You can’t sleep?”
“Nope. Too happy, I guess.”
“Where’s Taylor? Shouldn’t she be sleeping right here? And snoring. I bet she snores.”
“She went out. To a club, or something. She’ll probably be back by dawn. You know…” He paused. “Taylor’s all right. We did need a ride, the day we left Lakebrook, but that’s not why I called her. We needed someone like her. She’s tough.”
“I got that.” I didn’t particularly want to talk about Taylor, so I picked up Raphael’s book. “Hamlet? But the fall play … it’s over,” I realized. “You missed the performances. Oh, Raphael.”
He shrugged. “There’ll be other plays.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Hey, I’m right where I want to be.”
I looked at his face glowing in the firelight and thought about missed chances, and other lives, and how you can’t go back. Or I couldn’t.
My thumb fanned the pages into a flipping arc. “Why’re you reading this, then?”
“It’s a good play.”
“Sure, if you like tragedies.”
“That’s the thing. It didn’t have to be a tragedy. I mean, yeah, it sucks that Hamlet’s uncle killed his dad and married his mom, but that doesn’t mean everyone had to be poisoned or drowned or stabbed by the final act. Sometimes I like to read Hamlet and think about how everything could have gone differently. Hamlet and Ophelia could’ve
run off and lived happily ever after.” He smiled.
I held the book with both hands. “Raphael…”
Understanding flashed across his face, then disappointment. “Don’t,” he said.
“It’s just that—”
“Please.” He found his smile again, though it was different now. “Hey, weren’t you sleeping? Didn’t I thoughtlessly wake you? You should go back to bed.” He glanced at the fire. “I’ll stay up until it goes out.” He added, “And pour water over the ashes. I promise.”
“Okay.”
Raphael hugged me. I wished my brain could tell my heart what was good for it.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he said.
* * *
WE ALL SLEPT IN. It was almost two o’clock in the afternoon when I went into the kitchen to make blueberry pancakes. One by one, the others straggled into the dining room, their faces gleeful at the sight of stacks of pancakes. Even Taylor. Everyone heaped butter and maple syrup on top, since they knew that’s the best way to eat them, except for Jims. He ate his with peanut butter.
“So good,” he mumbled with his mouth full, and the others agreed, but the bready, sweet smell of pancakes couldn’t quite mask the lingering odor of last night’s fire. The pancakes tasted like ashes to me. Then I remembered eating blueberry pancakes at the Lakebrook diner with Conn and wished I’d never made them.
Jims finished eating. “Now it’s time for some dessert,” he said. “I’m going out for pastries. You kids start packing. And pack only”—he glared meaningfully at Taylor—“what you can carry. We still have to figure out how we’re going to get past the guards.”
The apartment whipped into chaos, with Taylor spreading her clothes across the living room, trying to figure out how to make everything fit into a rolling suitcase, Lily telling her to get on with it already, and Raphael stacking maps and books about this world’s history on the kitchen table. I kept them company and helped when I could, since all I had to bring back home with me was the Society-issued black clothes I wore and the silver spoon in my pocket.
Then Jims came back with pastries and a newspaper, and the pastries turned into a very late lunch. Lunch turned into coffee, and more packing, and more coffee, and it wasn’t until I was sipping a cappuccino out of a porcelain cup that I glanced at the paper resting on the table.