“That would be fantastic! Social pressure becomes increasingly effective the more people you have,” Rylin said, babbling. “We could use the help, if you’re not busy.”
“I don’t mind helping,” Hiral ventured warily. “What do we do?”
Cord began to explain the experiment. Rylin nodded in vigorous agreement, though her eyes had zeroed in on Hiral’s shopping bag. It was from Element 12, an upscale jewelry store. She felt even more miserable. Hiral had gone out shopping, most likely for a present for her, and here she was, hiding the fact that she was spending time with her ex.
Dimly she realized that the pod was pulling to a stop. The three of them all whirled around to face the back. Sure enough, a couple a few years older than them stepped on, and unquestioningly kept on facing the back of the pod. Rylin let her eyes dart toward Hiral. He seemed incredulous.
When they disembarked at the bottom, Hiral shook his head. “I never realized how quickly people change their behavior. And for no good reason.”
She wondered if he was talking about her.
“We have to do that at least thirty more times if we want valid results. You don’t have to stay, though,” Rylin hastened to add.
“That’s okay.” Hiral now he met her gaze. “I’m happy to stay.”
Rylin nodded, not trusting herself to break the tentative truce that seemed to have woven itself around the three of them.
CALLIOPE
CALLIOPE GAVE A private, self-satisfied smile. She was about to go on a date with Brice Anderton.
At least . . . she thought it was a date. She wasn’t totally sure, which to Calliope’s mind was reason enough for going. It was rare indeed that a boy’s intentions confused her.
She hadn’t expected to hear from Brice again, after she ran into him at the ComBattle. But to her surprise, and unexpected delight, he had flickered her earlier to ask if she was free tonight.
“Sure,” Calliope had replied saying the words aloud to send as a flicker. Her mom and Nadav were meeting with a wedding vendor, leaving her home with Tamar and Livya. And Calliope felt confident that she could shake the two of them.
Then came Brice’s reply. Thanks. I’m backing a new business venture. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it, as a potential target customer.
Business venture? Calliope should have been irritated, yet all she felt was intrigued.
She slipped out of Livya’s bedroom—they were sharing now, since Nadav’s mom was still in town—and paused to glance both ways. All clear. She crept down the hallway on quick, silent feet, holding her breath.
“Where are you sneaking off to?” Livya cried out, emerging from the darkened living room. Her pale face was illuminated with an ugly, twisted glee. Oh my god, Calliope thought wildly, had Livya been waiting for her, just hoping to catch Calliope in some misdeed?
“To school.” Calliope inwardly cringed. She should have thought of a better lie.
“School,” Livya repeated, with marked skepticism.
“I have a review session for my calculus class. Basic stuff. I’m really struggling with the material.” For a moment Calliope thought she’d laid it on too thick; but to her relief, Livya gave a self-righteous smirk. She clearly relished the idea of Calliope taking remedial calculus.
“Good luck studying. Sounds like you need it,” she simpered and stepped aside.
On the corner of their street, Calliope paused to yank her enormous sweater over her head, revealing a cap-sleeved shirt with appliqué floral embroidery. Then she logged on to her contacts to summon a hover, leaning one hand on a wall for balance as she traded her plain black flats for studded heels. She instantly felt more like herself again.
When she arrived at the address Brice had given her, she was surprised to see that it was a shopping district on the 839th floor. Brice was waiting at the end of the promenade, before an industrial-style storefront that Calliope had never noticed. THE CHOCOLATE SHOP, read the massive block letters above the entrance.
“Thanks so much for coming.” He held open the door for her in a show of unnecessary chivalry.
“If you’d told me we were buying chocolate, I would have come sooner,” Calliope said lightly.
She had been to countless chocolateries, all over the world. The cozy Middle Eastern ones, with colorful throw blankets and spicy Turkish coffee; the Parisian ones, with herringbone china and hot chocolate so thick it was more like pudding. But Brice’s chocolate shop felt startlingly like a science lab. Everything was done in an imposing white and chrome, all the surfaces sterile, with scattered touch screens. Behind the titanium counter Calliope saw test tubes and vials, labeled with things like SUCROSE and EMULSIFIER and VANILLIN.
“Let’s place your order,” Brice said with a lazy smile.
He placed his hand on the counter, but it didn’t call up a menu, as Calliope had expected. Instead, a slot opened on the counter to dispense a single white pill, almost like a breath mint. “Just take that,” he said, placing it in her palm.
“Oh, come on,” Calliope laughed. “Don’t you think I know better than to accept drugs without knowing what they are?”
“It isn’t a drug,” Brice protested as one of the shop’s staff finally appeared from behind the counter, a young man with auburn hair and a stark white lab coat.
“Brice! So good to see you, as always. Sorry for the delay.” His eyes flicked to the tablet on the counter, and he nodded. “I see you’ve already got your colloidosome tablet.”
“My what?” Calliope demanded.
“You put it on your tongue, and it makes a taste profile of your palate,” the lab technician, or whatever he was, informed her. “The tablet itself is harmless, but it’s coated in nanostructures that record the chemical compounds of your individual taste buds and transmit them to our main computer. We’ll use that information to design you the perfect personalized chocolate.”
“I don’t need that. I already know what I like,” Calliope said firmly. “I love caramel, and raspberry, but I hate chocolate covered in salt. I mean, honestly, salt belongs on margaritas and nowhere else. . . .”
She trailed off, realizing that both men were watching her expectantly. What the hell? she figured, and put the tablet on her tongue. It tasted like nothing at all, like air; and before she knew it, it was gone. She smacked her lips, puzzled.
“Interesting. You have less of a sweet tooth than I would have guessed, given that you claim to like caramel,” the chocolatier said, almost to himself, “with incredibly strong quinine receptors. Let’s see . . .” He moved from one beaker to another, humming slightly.
“Claim to like caramel?” Calliope whispered with mock outrage.
“You’ll see,” Brice assured her. “I bet you right now that this is the best chocolate you’ve ever tasted.”
Calliope lifted an eyebrow. “Oh yeah? What are the stakes of this bet?”
“Dinner,” he said smoothly. “If it’s your favorite chocolate in the world, you go to dinner with me.”
“And if it isn’t my favorite?”
“Then I’ll go to dinner with you.” He grinned.
“Interesting terms,” Calliope murmured as the dispenser spat out a perfectly round truffle, with no designs of any kind.
“Here,” Brice said, reaching for the chocolate, “let me.”
Calliope started to protest, but before she could say anything, he’d popped the truffle into her mouth.
Her eyes fluttered closed as it melted on her tongue, dissolving all thought. She couldn’t have said what it tasted like exactly; it wasn’t any flavor she recognized. All she knew was that it was utter bliss, as if all her taste buds were firing at once.
“Oh my god.” She opened her eyes, only to see that Brice was right there before her.
“Sounds like you liked it.” Brice turned back to the chocolatier. “Peter, we’re going to need a dozen more of those.”
“I’ll throw in a few of your custom blend too, Brice,” Peter offered, evidently pleas
ed by Calliope’s reaction. “I still have it on file.”
They settled at a table by the window. A moment later, Peter appeared with their tray of chocolates and several glasses of sparkling water.
“I can’t get over these,” Calliope said, reaching for another truffle. “I mean, I transmit some tongue data, and now it supposedly knows me?”
Brice leaned back, studying her. “All it knows is your palate. I, however, would like to get to know you.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Anything. What kind of music you listen to. What magical power you would pick, if you could have one. Your greatest fear.”
“That started shallow and got serious fast,” Calliope pointed out.
“Well, I never know how long I’ll get before you disappear on me.” Beneath the seeming lightness of Brice’s tone, Calliope heard a note of something else, something that made her shiver a little in anticipation.
She opened her mouth to spin another lie—and paused. She was sick of hiding behind layers of pretend.
“You’re going to laugh, but my favorite band is Saving Grace.”
“Wait—the Christian band?”
“I didn’t realize they were a Christian band when I started listening! I just liked their music,” Calliope said defensively. “And all the songs are about love!”
“Yeah, divine love.” Brice sounded amused. “I had no idea you were so holy.”
“Trust me, I’m more of a heathen. As for a magical power . . .” Calliope reached for another truffle. She didn’t usually like questions like this, ones that dealt in fantasy. Perhaps because her life already felt like make-believe. “The ability to transform into a dragon,” she concluded.
“A dragon? Why?”
“So that I could fly and burn things. Two powers in one.”
A smile tugged at the corner of Brice’s mouth. “Always bargain shopping, aren’t you?”
“What about you—what power would you pick?” she asked, genuinely curious.
“The ability to turn back time,” Brice said quietly, his eyes drifting toward the window. Calliope fought back the urge to reach across the table for his hand. He must be thinking of his parents.
“What’s your mom like?” he asked after a moment. “You guys are really close, right?”
Calliope was startled by the insightfulness of the question. She’d never been on a date where a guy asked about her relationship with her mom. Then again, she’d never been on a date where she didn’t have an ulterior motive.
“My mom is my best friend,” she admitted, feeling a little dorky as she said it. “She’s hilariously witty, and upbeat, and smarter than people give her credit for. And she has such a sense of adventure.”
“She sounds like you.”
Calliope flushed and kept going. “We used to have this tradition, that whenever we had a big decision to make, we would go to afternoon tea, no matter where we were in the world. It was our signature thing.”
“That makes sense,” Brice replied, instantly understanding. “You wanted to keep doing something British even when you were traveling. A link to where you came from.”
Calliope twirled her straw in the cup of sparkling water. This was all veering dangerously close to the truth, and yet she didn’t feel as afraid as she should. “Do you and Cord have any traditions like that?”
“Skydiving and strip clubs,” Brice said evenly, then laughed at her reaction. “I’m kidding. Despite what you’ve heard, Cord and I aren’t all that bad. So where is your favorite place for tea in New York? The Nuage?”
“We haven’t had time to go out for tea much these days. My mom is so busy, with all the wedding planning,” Calliope said, sighing.
“Wow. You sound utterly thrilled.”
Calliope couldn’t hold it in anymore. She’d been feigning excitement about this wedding for months, nodding and smiling and reciting the same tired sentiments over and over. “It’s going to be miserable,” she said baldly. “And boring. And I won’t have a single friend there—”
“You’ll have me,” Brice interrupted, and Calliope was startled into silence.
“I was invited,” he went on, his eyes brushing hers. “I do some business with your stepfather. I guess he felt obligated to invite me, as a courtesy. I wasn’t planning on coming . . . but now I’m wondering if I should.”
Calliope’s heartbeat picked up speed. “Maybe you should.”
“Hey,” Brice realized, “you never answered my third question. What’s your greatest fear?”
For years, Calliope had thought that her greatest fear was getting caught and going to prison. Now she wasn’t so sure. Maybe it was more terrifying to live a life that wasn’t yours.
“I’m not sure,” she evaded. “Do you know yours?”
“Like I would tell you that, and give you a weapon you could use against me,” Brice said lightly. But Calliope didn’t laugh. It was too close to something that she and her mom would have really done not that long ago.
She opened her mouth to say something—just as Brice leaned in to kiss her.
He tasted like heat and like the magic chocolate, and without quite knowing how it happened, Calliope was tipping forward and grabbing at his sweater. She knew this was reckless; it was dangerous, but like all dangerous things, it had a deep, thrilling undercurrent that was richer and better and more alive than anything safe.
Later that evening, as they walked along the promenade of the shopping center, Calliope paused before an enormous fountain. Her eyes drifted to the wisher station a few meters away. “I haven’t seen one of these in ages.”
A couple of children were clustered around it, begging their parents to let them buy a wisher—the small round disks designed to be thrown into a fountain, accompanied by a wish. These were expensive wishers, so Calliope knew they would produce a special effect when they collided with the water: a cloud of dark ink, or a miniature whirlpool, or a temporary light effect that mimicked a school of fish.
Apparently, in the days before currency was digital, people actually threw money into fountains. It sounded to Calliope like something unbearably lavish, something only the wealthiest people on earth would have done—to be so rich that you literally tossed your money away for your own amusement.
“Want one?” Brice asked, following her gaze.
“It’s okay—I didn’t mean—” Calliope stammered, but he’d already scanned his retinas for the purchase.
“Come on,” he urged, giving a surprisingly boyish smile. “Everyone should make a wish every now and then.”
Calliope curled her fingers around the cool metal disk, burnished the color of copper. She wondered which kind it was. You never knew until you threw it into the water.
I wish that I could find my way forward. That I could feel like myself again, she thought fiercely. Then, with a wordless sort of desperation, she threw the wisher into the water. It instantly erupted in a shower of bubbles.
“What did you wish for?” Brice asked.
Calliope shook her head, smiling at the silliness of it. “I can’t tell you! If you tell, it never comes true.”
“So the wish was about me!” Brice proclaimed, causing Calliope to shove him in halfhearted protest.
As they turned away, the stream of bubbles was still floating cheerily to the surface.
AVERY
THE MORNING OF the New York municipal election, the thousandth floor erupted in a firestorm of frenetic energy.
Pierson Fuller stood at the center of it all, talking at twice his normal speed with the cluster of assistants and political strategists who surrounded him. His cheeks were ruddy, and he kept fidgeting with his blazer in a way that reminded Avery of an overgrown schoolboy. He didn’t even glance up as Avery walked past—but her mother did.
“You can’t wear that to the polling station. It’ll look terrible in the photos.” Elizabeth’s eyes widened reproachfully.
Good morning to you too, Mom. Avery gestured at her pla
id skirt and white shirt in mild disbelief. “This is my school uniform,” she pointed out unnecessarily.
“And it’s not photogenic,” her mom said crisply. “Go put on one of those dresses I tagged in your closet, then you can come back after you vote and change for school.”
“Let her wear the uniform; it’s fine,” her dad said, and turned to Avery. “You’re okay with doing a few interviews after you vote, aren’t you, Avery?”
“I guess,” she said hesitantly.
“That’s my girl. You know my stance on all the main issues, don’t you?” Her father reached for his tablet. “Actually, I have a summary page I’ll send along. Very short and simple.”
We wouldn’t want my poor brain to be overwhelmed by anything too complicated, would we? “I think I’ve got it,” Avery assured him. She tried to remind herself that he was under a lot of pressure, that he didn’t really mean anything by it.
“I know you do. Just be charming and keep smiling and stick to those talking points. They’ll love you!” Pierson exclaimed. Avery noticed that the one thing he hadn’t said was Be yourself.
As always, there was a hover ready and waiting at the exit of her family’s private elevator shaft—but to Avery’s surprise, it wasn’t empty.
“Max! I didn’t know you were coming with me.” She slid into the seat next to him and keyed in the address.
“And miss the chance to watch the American democratic system at work?” he exclaimed, though it was evident why he had really come. He knew that Avery was dreading this day, and he wanted to support her.
Max kept up a steady stream of chatter as the hover sank into one of the vertical corridors that ran through the Tower. “I’m fascinated by the way Americans insist on meeting somewhere to vote in person. In Germany, you know, voting is considered a private thing. We all vote online.” He gave a sheepish grin, his hair falling forward into his eyes. “But of course you Americans prefer voting together, all in the same place. The same way girls always go to the bathroom together, like animals that have to band together for security.”
“I don’t do that,” Avery protested, though she was smiling.
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