Even as the question left her mouth, Darcy knew the answer. She was much worse than innocent; she was oblivious. And to make things worse, now they were both staring at her with adoring expressions.
“Here’s what I don’t get,” Carla said. “How did someone as clueless as you manage to write a convincing romance?”
“Actually,” Sagan jumped in, “until the early eighties romance heroines were always virgins. Write what you know.” He frowned. “Although it’s unclear what constitutes virginity when it’s two girls. There is debate on the internet.”
Carla stared at him. “Exactly why were you googling that?”
“It was from the Sparkle Pony forum. You know how in episode forty-one, it’s strongly implied that Tensile-Toes has a unicorn girlfriend? Of course, unicorns allow only virgins to touch them, so either Tensile-Toes is an actual virgin, like Darcy here, or she’s only technically—”
“Shush!” Darcy hissed. A pair of girls in school uniforms hovered at the entrance to the Frank Lloyd Wright Room, taking notes, hopefully on the architecture.
Carla’s words were soft but intense. “Darcy, we both love you exactly the way you are. Also, unicorns avoiding nonvirgins clearly doesn’t apply to other equines.”
“Agreed,” Sagan whispered. “On both points.”
Darcy nodded meekly. “I know Imogen likes me, for now. But what if I mess this up? This feels really real, and dangerous. Like taking my first driving lesson in a Ferrari!”
“Ferraris are quiet safe, actually,” Sagan said. “Their high fatality rate is due to a high percentage of their owners being douchebags.”
“Exactly!” Carla said. “You’ll be fine as long as you go slow.”
“I’m glad everyone’s agreed on that,” Darcy said, intending sarcasm, but she sounded earnest in her own ears. Last night at her party, she’d felt so mature and connected, fully equipped to show off in front of her high school friends. But the truth was that Carla and Sagan knew her better than anyone in New York, and she was still Little Miss Innocent in their eyes.
Darcy turned away and slipped past the schoolgirls, who were muttering to each other in what sounded like French, presumably about Darcy’s virginity. She kept walking, through the American galleries and up a random set of stairs, with Carla and Sagan trailing silently behind.
They entered a wing of the museum with rust-colored carpets and soft lighting, full of painted folding screens behind glass. It was almost empty here, and Darcy slowed, no longer feeling as though the schoolgirls were pursuing them, notebooks in hand.
“Sometimes it’s like I’m only pretending to be an adult.”
Carla smiled. “I think that’s how it works. You pretend for a while, and eventually it’s real.”
“Like playing sick to get out of school,” Sagan said. “You wind up with a stomachache.”
“Then I’m all set. I’m great at pretending.” Darcy forced herself to smile, willing her desultory feelings to fade. So what if she was romantically clueless? So what if she was young? What she had with Imogen was real, and as long as that was certain, her other worries were meaningless.
Well, except for her worries about rewriting a book, starting a sequel, and not spending more than seventeen dollars a day.
“Hey, check this out.” Sagan was pointing at a huge painting on cloth. “This guy killed your romantic lead.”
Darcy stared at the painting. It was taller than her, and featured a three-eyed, blue-skinned monster surrounded by a halo of flame, wearing a headdress of skulls.
“Yamantaka, slayer of Yama,” Sagan said, reading from the plaque on the wall. “The dude who killed Death!”
“Pretty badass,” Carla said. “You should use him in your sequel.”
“I’ve never even heard of him.” Darcy nudged Sagan aside to read the plaque. “Right, because this guy’s Buddhist. I’m in enough trouble without throwing in stuff from other religions.”
“You’re in trouble?” Sagan asked.
“Kind of,” Darcy sighed. She’d been meaning to talk to Sagan about this today, and she couldn’t ask for a better setting. “You know the first night I was here? When I met Kiralee?”
“Darcy’s on a first-name basis with Kiralee Taylor,” Sagan said to Carla. “It still freaks me out.”
“You shared guacamole with Standerson!”
“Guys, listen,” Darcy said. “That night at Drinks, they were asking about how I used a real god as my romantic lead. And about all the stuff I borrowed from the Vedas. Did you find any of that offensive, Sagan? Like, as a Hindu?”
He shrugged. “It seemed weird at first, but then I figured that it wasn’t a problem, because there’s no Hinduism in your universe.”
Darcy blinked. “What?”
“Well, you know when Lizzie’s trying to find a word that’s better than ‘psychopomp,’ and she googles all those death gods? At first I didn’t get why she never ran into the concept of Yama.”
“Because that would be weird,” Darcy said. “I mean, she’s been making out with him. And he’s not a god in my world, he’s a person.”
“Exactly. So I figured that the Angelina Jolie Paradox applies.”
Darcy glanced at Carla, who looked equally confused.
“The what now?”
Sagan cleared his throat. “You know when you’re watching a movie starring Angelina Jolie? And the character she’s playing looks just like Angelina Jolie, right?”
“Um, yes. Because that’s who she is.”
“No, she’s a regular person in that world, not a movie star. But the other characters never mention that she looks exactly like Angelina Jolie. No one ever comes up to her on the street and says, ‘Can I have your autograph?’ ”
“Because that would mess up the movie,” Carla said.
“Exactly. So when you cast Angelina Jolie in a film, you’re creating an alternate universe in which actress Angelina Jolie does not exist. Because otherwise people would be noticing the resemblance all the time. This is what I call the Angelina Jolie Paradox.”
“You know, Sagan,” Carla said. “You could have named that paradox after any movie star.”