“True. But as the paradox’s discoverer, I have chosen Angelina Jolie, as is my right.”
“I accept your nomenclature,” Darcy said. “But what does it have to do with my book?”
“Well, given that Lizzie’s been researching death gods, and yet somehow never realizes that her boyfriend is an actual death god for, like, eight hundred million Hindus, I assume your book takes place in a universe in which Hinduism does not exist. There’s no other explanation.”
“Fuck. You’re right,” Darcy said. She stumbled backward, dropping onto a dark wooden bench in the center of the room.
“Dude.” Carla laughed and sat beside her, punching Darcy on the arm. “You just erased your own religion. That’s like going back in time and killing Buddha or something.”
“Stop laughing!” Darcy returned the punch. “This is serious!”
“Are you going to get, like, excommunicated?”
“The question is moot,” Sagan said. “We have no one in charge to do the excommunicating.”
“It’s still not okay!” Darcy cried, staring at Yamantaka on the wall and realizing that she and the blue-skinned monster had something in common—they’d both killed Yama, Lord of Death. “I mean, are you kidding with this?”
“Granted, the Angelina Jolie Paradox is not widely accepted,” Sagan said. “It’s more of a conjecture than a theory.”
“Also, it’s very silly,” Carla pointed out.
“But it’s in my head now,” Darcy said, because however ludicrous Sagan’s paradox was, she couldn’t deny that it contained a grain of truth.
Whenever she began to type a story, Darcy felt an alternate universe inside her computer taking form. Some parts of it intersected with her own world, real places like San Diego and New York, but other parts were made up, like Lizzie Scofield or the Movement of the Resurrection. Those connections with reality gave stories their power, and when that realness began to fray and splinter, something broke inside Darcy as well.
She looked up at the painting. A character like Yama, someone borrowed from the Vedas, already had his own stories out here in the real world. And every day, Darcy grew more uncertain whether he was hers to play with anymore.
“You could change his name,” Carla said. “Call him Steve, or something.”
Darcy coughed out a small cry, as if she’d swallowed a bug. “Steve?”
“Okay, an Indian name. She could use yours, right, Sagan?”
“My name means ‘Lord Shiva,’ so not really.” Sagan struck a Bollywood archer’s pose. “But I’m available to play Yamaraj in the movie.”
Darcy shook her head. She could no more change Yamaraj’s name than she could Lizzie’s, or any of the characters. It was too late for that. Besides, filing the serial numbers off a stolen car didn’t mean you owned it.
“You guys are killing my brain.”
“And I haven’t even told you the paradoxical part,” Sagan said. “The only way not to erase Angelina Jolie is to never cast her in a movie.”
Carla’s eyes went wide. “Which would also erase Angelina Jolie.”
Darcy made a small and whimpering noise.
Carla sighed, and stroked her shoulder gently. “You really think a three-thousand-year-old death god cares what you write about him?”
“Yamaraj is who he is,” Darcy said. “This is about who I am.”
CHAPTER 20
JAMIE KEPT LOOKING AT MY scar. Not the one on my forehead, where the stitches had almost dissolved, but the oval of reddened skin that descended from my left eye, tracing the shape of a single tear.
“Can I touch it?” She was already reaching out.
I leaned closer across the Formica table. We were eating breakfast at a diner before our first day back at school, a celebration to mark the start of our final semester.
“Does it hurt?” she asked.
“No. It’s kind of like a chemical peel, a really small one.” Her fingertip was a whisper against my cheek. “From the tear gas reacting with water. That’s my terrorism beauty tip: if you get sprayed with tear gas, don’t wash your face!”
All yesterday I’d practiced this line in my head, going for comedy in the face of tragedy. But Jamie was wide-eyed and silent.
I cleared my throat. “Just kidding. I have no terrorism beauty tips.”
“But it is kind of pretty.” Jamie picked up her phone from the table. “You mind?”
I leaned forward, and she snapped a picture from inches away.
Now she was staring at her phone instead of my face. “It’s like a tattoo of a teardrop.”
“That’s what it is. I cried a tear, which left its mark.”
“Whoa, deep. But only one tear? That’s some pretty crappy tear gas.”
I didn’t explain how I’d mostly avoided the gas by willing myself to an alternate reality, one inhabited by ghosts and psychopomps and threads of memory twisting cold and wet and hungry in the wind.
Instead I said, “Can I have the rest of your bagel?”
She pushed it forward, her gaze still riveted to her phone.
* * *
Jamie was the first person I’d called with my new phone, which had shown up the day before, arriving via overnight express. (That was classic Dad behavior: waiting for more than a week to do something, then paying extra to make it happen faster. When I left a message thanking him, he texted back, Thank Rachel. She kept bugging me. Also classic Dad.)
Jamie had announced that she was picking me up for school an hour early, because we had so much to catch up on, and we’d wound up heading to breakfast here at Abby’s Diner.
This was much more fun than Mom driving me to school. Between Mindy and Yama and having a strange new reality to explore, I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed my best friend.
“I think it’s really cool how you never went on TV,” Jamie was saying.
“Mom made that decision, I guess. I never even thought about doing an interview.”
“Would you have wanted to?”
“It’s not like I’ve had time.” There’d been skills to learn, after all. Afterworlds to conquer. “I didn’t even practice my Spanish over winter break. For once Mom didn’t make me.”
“Poor Anna,” Jamie said. “She must still be freaking out.”