“College?” Calliope had never really considered it.
“What else are you going to do, start running cons by yourself?” Elise shook her head. “I don’t want that for you.”
Calliope didn’t want that either. Yet she couldn’t really picture herself in college, at least not in classes. Lounging around a coffee shop and scouting out boys, maybe. Flitting around parties and breaking hearts, definitely. Joining a sorority, rising to the top of its hierarchy, and ruling it with an iron fist, for sure. But actually going to classes and studying to become something? Calliope wouldn’t even know where to start.
“I’ll give college some thought,” she said vaguely.
“Knock, knock,” Nadav said, pushing open the closet door. Calliope barely refrained from rolling her eyes. Of course Nadav was the type of person who said knock, knock instead of just knocking.
“Are you almost packed? Oh, hi, Calliope,” he added.
“I was just giving my mom some fashion advice,” she said, standing up quickly.
“Good. I’m glad someone is doing that, since I’m definitely not qualified.” Another lame dad joke. Nadav’s gaze drifted to Elise, and he flashed an indulgent smile. “I just wanted to remind you that our plane leaves at six.”
“I can’t wait,” Elise said warmly. She was gazing at Nadav with such affection that the intensity of it almost knocked Calliope backward.
She and her mom had lived so many lives through the years, casting off their used identities each time they moved, like last season’s discarded clothing. But Nadav brought out another side of Elise: the happiest side of her, maybe even the best side. And if this was what her mom wanted, then Calliope would do everything in her power to help her get it.
She didn’t even know Brice that well, so she wasn’t sure why she was so disappointed to lose him. But it didn’t matter. She wouldn’t see him again.
She had to give him up, for her mom’s sake.
AVERY
AVERY WAS SHOCKED at the crowd that had showed up to watch the Fuller siblings’ showdown. Though technically, she supposed, the showdown was only half theirs.
She’d never competed in Altitude Club’s annual young members’ tennis tournament before. She’d always found the whole thing showy and false, much more about the after-party than the tennis. It was all white pleated skirts and high, bouncing ponytails and passed cocktails—an excuse for the young members to carry their unused rackets in a false show of athleticism. But a few weeks ago, at Altitude brunch, Max had seen the tournament advertised on the flickering display screens.
“Mixed doubles! Come on, we’re a great team.”
“I don’t really want to,” Avery hedged. She thought longingly of those golden summer afternoons back in Oxford, when she and Max would play against their friends on the clipped emerald courts of the public park. The games were loose and carefree. They never even kept score—the only thing they counted were the number of Pimm’s they had consumed—and when they got tired of playing, they would settle on the grass with a basket of cheese and baguettes, to feast in the glorious liquid sunshine.
“You love tennis,” Max had insisted. “What do we get if we win?”
“Nothing! Just our names on a plaque outside the locker room.”
“You’re telling me that you have the chance to win eternal glory and you’re passing it up? Frankly, I’m shocked,” he professed, which coaxed a smile from her.
“All right, fine,” Avery had proclaimed, throwing up her hands in mock surrender. She knew that Max was just trying to distract her from all the stress of the election and college applications. It was sweet of him, although misguided.
At least she was heading back to Oxford soon. Avery had been invited to interview there, which was a good sign; only the top applicants were asked to interview on campus. And Max would be coming back with her for moral support.
It would be a weekend away, she kept telling herself, just like old times. She needed that. She could use a reminder of what she and Max had been like this summer, before he came to New York with her—before the election, before Atlas came home. Before he kissed her.
She hadn’t realized that Atlas was planning on entering the tennis tournament too. But he did, partnering with his old friend Sania Malik, the same girl he’d taken to the Under the Sea ball last year, when he was trying to hide his secret relationship with Avery. In a strange turn of events, Sania was in Max’s class at Columbia, and they were friends, which made this whole thing even weirder.
Avery kept hoping that Atlas and Sania would fall out of the competition. But to the entire club’s surprise and delight, both of the Fuller pairs kept winning, climbing up their separate brackets until now they were facing off in the finals.
Now, standing against the baseline, Avery lifted her hand to shade her eyes. She’d never seen the stands of Altitude’s Centre Court so packed; but then, people always did love a good family rivalry. Especially when that rivalry was in the family of the newly elected mayor.
She saw a lot of her classmates, though there was no sign of Leda. Every time Avery had tried to meet up with her lately, Leda had proclaimed that she was busy. Avery just hoped that busy meant happy or with Watt. If so, then Avery would gladly stop pestering her.
She clenched her palms tighter around her racket. Max glanced back over his shoulder and winked at her. “You’ve got this,” he said softly. They had won the first set 6–4, but this one was much closer. Atlas and Sania seemed to have finally found their rhythm.
Avery nodded and looked across the court—directly into Atlas’s eyes.
Something in them made her catch her breath. A look, a plea, something so fleeting that Avery couldn’t even begin to make sense of it, just as the ball abruptly collided with the court near her feet. She blinked, startled. She had lost the set.
The announcer called their five-minute changeover period. On the other side of the court, Max was already grabbing his electrolyte drink, chatting easily with Sania. Avery watched in dazed fascination as they leaned in and snapped a selfie, as if this whole thing were casual, good-natured fun.
She stalked over to the hydration station on their side and grabbed a water. Atlas gave a rueful smile, nodding to where their parents sat in the bottom row of the stands, surrounded by eager well-wishers. “Mom and Dad clearly think this is hilarious,” he remarked.
Something about the comment rankled Avery. “It is hilarious,” she said tersely. “You being here, playing tennis against me, as if we’re any old brother and sister who happened to make it to the finals. The new mayor’s kids’ epic showdown. What a hilarious joke,” she spat, twisting angrily at the cap of the water bottle.
Atlas seemed saddened by her outburst. “You’re the one who said to forget that anything ever happened with us. To act like normal siblings.”
Normal siblings. As if they could ever go back to that.
“I’m sorry, I just . . .” she said helplessly as the buzzer sounded.
It wasn’t fair of Atlas to do this to her. She’d been doing just fine before he came back to town and threw everything into disarray. Why couldn’t he have stayed on his side of the world?
But she hadn’t been fine, a small voice inside her whispered. She hadn’t been fine since the moment she set foot back in New York, and all her old problems came rushing back to meet her.
There was a slight buzz near her head as Avery lined up along the baseline. Another zetta, hoping to get a good shot for whoever was watching on the feeds. All right, she thought, suddenly angry. If they wanted to see flawless, famous Avery Fuller, she might as well give them a show.
Avery tossed the ball into the air and incinerated it with her serve. The shot whipped past Sania before the poor girl could react. Avery felt oddly gratified by the startled expression on Atlas’s face.
She kept on playing like that, fueled by a hot, queasy adrenaline. She played so fiercely that she was no longer thinking, not about Atlas or Max or her parents’ laug
hter or the blurred, painted faces of the crowd. It felt good to shut down her brain like this, to become nothing but a bundle of fast-twitch nerve endings in a shiny package.
She won one game after another with almost no assistance from Max, who tried a few times to make a shot or two, only to interfere with the blaze of her warpath. Eventually he stood aside and just let Avery play the game herself. Across the court, Sania had done the same.
But that was how she’d wanted it, wasn’t it? A singles match, her versus Atlas?
She won the remaining games one after the other, stacking them neatly in a row, until suddenly it was match point. When the ball came toward her, Avery barreled it across the court at full force. Atlas barely managed to hold up his racket, sending the ball straight into the net.
Avery forced her lips to curl into a smile. She walked up to the net to thank Sania and Atlas, trying to ignore the bright, hot yells of the crowd.
Atlas didn’t say anything when they shook hands. He barely touched her at all.
“Damn, you really turned up the heat out there! I don’t think I’ve seen that side of you before.” Max threw an arm around Avery’s shoulders and leaned in, his breath warm in her ear. “It was kind of a turn-on, seeing you get that competitive.”
Avery nodded and smiled mechanically. Max probably still thought that he’d helped take her mind off things. She didn’t have the heart to tell him that she only felt worse.
People began swarming onto the court in congratulations, a million grinning faces seeming to leer up at her. A white tent had been set up nearby—only at Altitude did they feel the need to pitch a tent indoors—where pink champagne was being passed on engraved trays.
Avery couldn’t help looking over at Atlas.
When their eyes met he gave a sad smile, and the sight of it turned Avery’s victory to ashes in her mouth. Unlike everyone else here, Atlas knew her. He knew what that display on the court had meant, how strangely unsettled Avery was feeling. And he knew that he was the reason.
Avery couldn’t take his eyes on her anymore. She rose on tiptoe to kiss Max, letting her racket clatter dramatically to the ground as she wrapped her arms very publicly around him, drawing out the kiss much longer than she needed to.
When she finally stepped away, her eyes darted reflexively to Atlas. He was retreating toward the Altitude Club exit. She realized, with a flush of shame, that it was exactly what she had intended.
“Ready to go in?” Max asked good-naturedly, with a nod to the party.
Avery nodded, holding tight to his hand like a lifeline. She needed Max right now, to reassure her that she was still here, still herself. That she was the Avery Fuller he knew and loved, and not the broken girl who Atlas had left in his wake all those months ago.
LEDA
EVERYTHING FELT WRONG to Leda these days.
She stumbled through the world at the center of a cloud of wrongness, which seemed to pervade everything, closing its fingers stealthily around her throat. The ground felt unsteady beneath her, like the surface of a ship, like melting quicksand.
It was the same as last year, when she came back from Dubai with the knowledge that Eris had been her half sister—except that this time it was worse, because this time Leda had no idea what she had done. Could she have truly killed Mariel and blacked it out? Why did the world keep doing this to her, piling one brutal revelation atop another until she couldn’t stand it?
All she wanted was to forget. To fight back against the dark cloud with a cloud of her own.
So at lunch on Monday, instead of sitting with Avery in the cafeteria, Leda retreated to the secret garden.
The garden wasn’t actually secret; that was just what the elementary school kids called it. Tucked along the inner border of campus, it stretched long and narrow behind the lower school cafeteria, fed by enormous sun-bulbs overhead. It was technically part of Berkeley’s sustainability initiative, to keep the school up to oxygen input-output codes. But Leda had also found that it was the easiest place on campus to be alone—especially when what you wanted to do alone was smoke up.
Autumn had always been her favorite time of year in the garden. In the spring it was too pastel, and in the winter it was even worse, with all those white-and-red candy cane plants and holographic gingerbread men running around for the little kids. But right now the garden was a rich explosion of fall colors, not just brown, but reds and oranges and occasionally a smoky forest green. The leaves crunched pleasantly underfoot. Balloon pumpkins—which had been genetically engineered to be less dense than air—floated at waist height, tethered to the ground by their gnarled green stalks. As Leda walked, the pumpkins bobbed a little in her wake.
She turned the corner, past the massive golden beehive and a burbling fountain, to station herself beneath an air vent. It was barely perceptible from the ground, since the ceiling was nine meters high—you had to be really know what you were looking for to even notice that it was up there.
Leda’s hands shook as she fumbled in her bag for her gleaming white halluci-lighter, the tiny compact pipe that you could smoke almost anything in. Her chest felt like a bundle of twitching wires. She touched the pipe to the heat pad on the edge of her beauty-wand, gently toasting the weed within. Nothing fancy, just your usual marijuana-serotonin blend, because god help her, she needed a little kick of happiness right now.
Leda inhaled deeply, letting the smoke curl delicately into her lungs, suffusing her with an instant warmth. Suddenly, she wished someone were here with her. Not Watt—she was still stung by his accusation, and hadn’t answered any of his pings since she’d run away from his room. She didn’t know when she would be able to face him.
Still, she wouldn’t hate having someone here right now, just to hear another voice. She was always at odds these days; when she was alone she wanted to be with other people, and when she was with other people she just wanted be alone.
Footsteps sounded on the flagstones. Leda quickly twisted her arm behind her back to hide the halluci-lighter, cursing, because the smell was definitely still there—
Then she saw who it was, and let out a disbelieving laugh.
“Since when do you skip lunch to come smoke?” she asked Rylin, a challenging edge to the question.
Rylin strode over and reached for Leda’s halluci-lighter. She took a single slow breath, with the cool composure of someone who had done this many times before, then nonchalantly exhaled the smoke into a perfect green O. Totally badass, Leda thought grudgingly.
“I don’t know if it counts as skipping lunch if I actually came here to eat,” Rylin replied, holding up a recyclable go-bag from the cafeteria. She settled on the lower step of the fountain, her plaid skirt fanning out over her lap, and unfolded the waxy sandwich paper.
Leda smiled in spite of herself. Even though they went to the same school, she hadn’t seen much of Rylin this year, except, of course, for that emergency meeting at Avery’s. She found herself wishing that they had stayed better friends after that brief truce in Dubai. Leda would never have admitted it aloud, but she saw something of herself in Rylin’s no-nonsense attitude, her deeply private nature, her impatience with the world’s conventions.
She sank down next to Rylin and tucked her legs behind her mermaid-style, still clutching the halluci-lighter in one hand. When Rylin wordlessly held out half her sandwich, Leda took it with a nod of thanks. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was.
They sat for a while like that, the silence broken only by the crunch of the crispy pretzel bread, the occasional listless puff of the abandoned halluci-lighter. Leda offered the pipe to Rylin again, but to her surprise, the other girl shook her head.
“Smoking isn’t really my thing anymore, after . . .”
“After Cord broke up with you for stealing his drugs?” Leda prompted, then cringed at the callousness of the wording. “I didn’t mean—”
Rylin waved away the apology. “Yeah, that. Also, after my ex-boyfriend got arrested for dealing.”
Rylin glanced over. “Are you okay, Leda?”
The simplicity of the question nearly broke Leda’s self-control. People didn’t do that often enough—just look at each other and ask Are you okay?
“Did you bomb the SATs or something?” Rylin guessed.
“The SATs?” Leda’s college applications felt oddly detached from her, as if they had never really belonged to her in the first place. So much of what she had wanted before felt that way now. Watt’s revelation seemed to have cleaved the world into two universes: the one where she was just Leda, and the one where she might be a killer.
No, she corrected, might be a killer was the wrong way to put it. She already knew she was a killer. She had killed Eris.
But instead of confronting what she’d done, Leda had tried to bury it every way she knew how—by blackmailing people to keep the secret for her, by doing drugs until she blacked out. She had turned forcibly away from the truth, even when the truth literally dragged her to the brink of death.
“Is it about the Mariel investigation?” Rylin tried again.
Leda glanced over at her. Strangely, she wasn’t afraid of discussing this with Rylin. They were already so inextricably bound together, each in possession of the other’s secret. And Rylin—more than Avery with her picture-perfect life; more even than Watt, who walked around with a computer in his brain—would understand what it felt like to be lost.
“Sort of,” Leda admitted, and tossed the pipe aside. “I’ve done some really shitty things, you know.”
“News flash, Leda, we all have.”
“But these are mistakes I can’t undo! I can’t make it right! How do you live with yourself after something like that?”
“You live with yourself because you have to.” Rylin stared into the refracted blue surface of the fountain. “You forgive yourself for what you’ve done. It can only kill you when you try to run from it. If you just look it in the eye and face it, it becomes part of you, and it can’t hurt you anymore.”
The Towering Sky Page 19