“Okay, invisible,” I murmured. “Sweet.”
I walked out from the back lane and toward the black sedan. The man’s gaze stayed on his tablet, even when I stood right in front of his car.
Finally his eyes flicked up at me, but they registered nothing, peering straight through me to my house beyond.
Mindy came up timidly beside me. “He’s scary, right?”
“He’s stalking my house. What do you think?”
I went to the driver’s side and knelt, looking straight at the guy. It was almost intimate, being this close without him seeing me, like spying on someone through a one-way mirror. I could hear him breathing through the open window, and could smell his coffee in the cup holder below the car window. He looked younger than I’d thought at first, in his midtwenties, maybe. He wore a dark suit and tie, and thick-framed nerdy glasses.
“What’s he doing with that computer thing?” asked Mindy.
I looked at her. “You mean his tablet?”
She gave me a shrug, and I wondered how much of her understanding of the world was stuck in the 1970s.
I leaned in closer, my lips only inches from his ear.
“Hey, dipwit!”
His long eyelashes blinked once, but otherwise he didn’t respond. I let out a nervous laugh, then leaned farther into the car, trying to read from his tablet.
On his screen was a list of emails. My eyes darted through the subject lines. Nothing weird—a reminder about a party, someone asking for a missing file, and the usual smattering of spam. He tapped at one of the emails, and it expanded to fill the screen. I leaned in closer to read, my cheek almost pressing against his.
Maybe I brushed against him then, or maybe it was just a coincidence, but at that exact moment he decided to scratch his ear. The back of his hand slid across my cheek, leaving sparks and tingles in its wake. I startled, pulling away, and banged my head on the top of the car window.
“Crap!” Anger surged through me.
Mindy stumbled back from the car. “We should run!”
“Run? What do you . . . ,” I began, but already it was happening—the world brightened around me, the gray wash over my vision peeling away. Warmth flooded into my body, and I sank to one knee, dizzied by the onrush of light and color, gulping in the air that suddenly tasted fresh and real.
“Come on, Lizzie!” Mindy shouted, already running away.
A moment later I was sitting there by the stalker’s car, blinking in the bright, all-too-normal sunshine, and he was staring down at me with his eyes wide open.
CHAPTER 11
THE MORNING AFTER YA DRINKS Night, Darcy sat up in bed to discover that she had a hangover. She was still wearing the little black dress, to which clung an inescapable whiff of beer. Her first instinct was to lie back down again, but by then the bed was spinning.
Her first few minutes upright were difficult, but once Darcy had a bathrobe on and coffee in hand, her condition began to shift from dizzy to quietly philosophical. The churning of the world outside Moxie’s ten-foot-high windows proved soothing. Airplanes drew stately contrails across the sky, and a steady flow of cars and taxis headed northward toward the spires of Empire and Chrysler. Darcy watched the people sifting through Astor Place from a writerly remove, telling stories about them for her own amusement.
The refrigerator contained only batteries, mustard, and makeup and the pantry held even stranger things, like canned truffles and pickled quail eggs. But while starting up the house wifi to search for nearby food, Darcy found a sheaf of menus on Moxie’s desk. These offered breakfast, lunch, and dinner all delivered to the door, which was exactly what Darcy needed.
After ordering breakfast, she had an intense conversation with Sodapop about how birds couldn’t talk, then connected to You_Suck_at_Writing. There were emails from Carla, Sagan, and Nisha, and she replied to them all with the story of having met Kiralee Taylor, Coleman Gayle, and Oscar Lassiter in the flesh. Indeed, she hadn’t just met these writers, but had discussed superpowers and book titles and cultural hijacking with them. Darcy tried to convey how intoxicating it all had been, while only hinting at how terrifying.
Her mother had also sent an email, making sure that Darcy hadn’t been mugged or murdered overnight. Darcy thanked her for the little black dress, and managed to mention that she’d gotten home before eleven the night before. Then she replied to Aunt Lalana’s welcome to New York City, cc’ing her mother so that the whole family knew that all was well.
Thankfully her in-box held nothing from Paradox. Darcy felt far too fragile for the long-awaited editorial letter. It was all she could do to reassure herself that last night had been real, that no one had questioned her right to be here in this city.
It felt safe, holing up here in Moxie’s tower for her first full day in Manhattan. Everyone she’d met at YA Drinks Night had seemed so poised, so sure that they were really writers. Not melting into a puddle in the face of their certainty had left Darcy emptied of all her aplomb. She needed to recharge.
* * *
The next day she made sorties out of the apartment, noting cafés and bank machines, buying two reams of paper at an office supply store, and dropping off the indispensable little black dress at a dry cleaner’s. Her confidence grew with every transaction, and Darcy wondered if she should limit her apartment search to Moxie’s neighborhood, now that she had a beachhead here.
Or was that cowardly, like those limpet girls who became best friends with whoever they met on the first day of school?
New York had dozens of neighborhoods, after all, whose inhabitants swore by them with a kind of tribal loyalty. But Darcy didn’t know much past what she’d gleaned from movies and TV, and she had only twelve days before Moxie returned. Her cluelessness gave her the same empty feeling as unfinished homework. Maybe she should have spent the last month researching the city instead of going to senior parties.
So on the third morning after YA Drinks Night, she decided to call for help.
“Um, would you want to look at apartments with me?”
“Sure, I guess.” Imogen sounded amused. “Where were you thinking?”
“Um, the East or West Village. Or maybe Tribeca, Chelsea, or Chinatown?” These were all the neighborhoods Darcy could name off the top of her head.
“So . . . Manhattan. Do you have a list of places to see?”
Darcy did, printed out on the first sheets of those reams of paper that would one day hold rewrites and sequels. She and Imogen agreed on a place nearby and a time between breakfast and lunch.