The Towering Sky

by Katharine McGee

  Leda looked down. She had folded the empty wax paper over and over, into a tiny triangle. “You have a sister, don’t you? What’s it like?”

  “Having a sister?”

  “Yes.”

  Rylin bit her lip. “A sister is a built-in best friend. She knows me better than I know myself, because she’s lived my life alongside me, and helped me through the best and the worst of it,” she said. “We fight, but no matter what I say, I know that Chrissa will always forgive me.”

  Rylin’s words fell into Leda’s mind, and burned where they landed. That was what having a sister should be like. And instead, Leda had killed hers.

  “I have to go,” Leda said abruptly. There was something important she needed to take care of.

  But before she reached the entrance to the secret garden, Leda paused. “One more thing,” she added. “What were you doing hiding down here during lunch instead of sitting with Cord?”

  “I—I have a lot going on—” Rylin stammered.

  “I’ve seen you two dancing around each other all year. Can you please give it a shot? For my sake, if nothing else.” Leda smiled. “I could really use something to root for.”

  Later that afternoon, Leda took the monorail to Cifleur Cemetery, in New Jersey.

  It was cold out, the Tower looming over the water like a dusky shadow. She paused to look in the floral vending machine at the cemetery’s gates, but everything inside felt too trite, all white wreaths tied with satin bows. Leda quickly logged on to her contacts and ordered something that was much more Eris: a profusion of oversized vivid blooms, with a few incandescents tucked in, twinkling like fireflies. The flowers appeared by drone-drop within minutes.

  Leda had been to Eris’s grave only once: the day that Eris was buried. She realized with a mortified pang that this visit was overdue.

  “Hey, Eris,” she began, her voice ragged. This stuff didn’t come easily to her. “It’s Leda. But, um, maybe you knew that already.”

  A hologram flared to life before her, and Leda stumbled back a step. It was an image of Eris, standing before her headstone, waving and smiling like a prom queen greeting her subjects. Leda assumed the holo was voice-activated, by the use of Eris’s name.

  She took a breath, trying to get over the weirdness of seeing hologram-Eris here. “I brought you some flowers,” she said, setting down the bouquet. It had a heady, dusky scent that Eris would have liked. Actually, knowing Eris, she would have plucked a rosebud from the arrangement, tucked it behind one ear, then promptly forgotten all about it.

  It would have been Eris’s birthday that week. Leda wished so fervently that she were still here. Leda would have thrown her a party, complete with those bubbles of champagne Eris had loved so much—hell, an entire blimp full of champagne.

  She knelt awkwardly before the headstone, as if she were in church. Her eyes darted over every last detail of holographic Eris, desperate to find something they had in common, some proof of their shared DNA.

  She remembered the day she’d first met Eris. It was in seventh grade, back when Leda was still silent and invisible, before she’d mustered up the confidence to approach Avery. Leda and Eris were both in the children’s theater club, which was performing The Little Mermaid. Eris, unsurprisingly, had been cast as the mermaid.

  Half an hour before their first show, Leda was checking the prop table backstage when she heard Eris’s voice emanating from a dressing room. “Is anyone out there? I need help!”

  “What is it?” Leda pushed open the door, only to find Eris standing inside, completely topless.

  “I can’t get this to fasten.” Eris held out her glittery shell bra, utterly unselfconscious. Even back then she was all curves and smiles. Behind her glimmered a holographic tail, projected from a single-process beam on the back of a headband.

  “I’ll find you some insta-stick.” Leda had darted out of the closet, painfully aware of her bulky sea anemone costume.

  As the years went by, the two girls saw each other more, drawn together as they were by the common thread of Avery. But Leda had never really understood Eris. Eris seemed to flit around like a firefly, always coming up with some wild and impractical idea, dragging her friends on adventures from which she alone bounced back unscathed. She fell recklessly in and out of love, laughed when she was happy, dissolved into public tears when she was upset. It had seemed so foolish to Leda, who did everything in her power to conceal what she was feeling. But she saw now that it was brave, in its own way—wearing your heart on your sleeve like that.

  What would things have been like if Eris hadn’t died? If instead of pushing her, Leda had taken her hand and actually listened? Perhaps they would have joined forces and gone to talk to their dad together. Perhaps by now they would be doing all those things Rylin had talked about—supporting each other, trusting each other, sharing their fears and secrets.

  Accident or not, Leda had killed her half sister, then forced all the witnesses to help cover it up. What kind of sister did that?

  “Eris. I’m so sorry. I never meant to hurt you. I can’t believe that I’m here and you aren’t. I wish . . .” Leda faltered, because there were so many things she wished, she could never list them all. “I wish we could start over.”

  She had tried so hard, for so long, to avoid thinking of what she’d done to Eris—to amputate that part of herself and start over. But the damage was still there, buried deep within her like scar tissue. Real grief left that kind of mark on you.

  The only way to heal from grief like that was roughly: step by clumsy step, as you muddled your way back toward some form of peace, or redemption, or forgiveness, if you were lucky enough to get it.

  Leda couldn’t change what had happened, couldn’t bring Eris or Mariel back to life. She could only do the best she could from now on. Whatever that was.

  The holo seemed to flicker for a moment, almost as if it were nodding. Leda couldn’t look at it anymore; she waved her hand through it to dispel it. Now it was just her, alone in the hushed shadows of the cemetery. Which she deserved.

  Leda closed her eyes and kneeled before Eris’s headstone, her head bowed in prayer. It had been a long time since she prayed like this.

  But if anyone needed a prayer right now, it was her.

  CALLIOPE

  “WE MISS YOU girls!” the holographic image of Elise exclaimed, from where she was projected over the coffee table like a ghostly apparition—if ghosts appeared in high-res safari attire. She and Nadav were at the woolly mammoth camp in Mongolia, bundled up in scarves and dirty hats, grinning ear to ear.

  At least these daily pings from the happy couple would end soon. Calliope couldn’t take them anymore.

  “We miss you too! It looks like such rewarding work.” Livya edged imperceptibly farther from Calliope on the couch, wearing her school uniform and her usual sticky-sweet smile.

  “It’s so cool of you guys to use your honeymoon as an opportunity to give back, rather than to celebrate yourselves,” Calliope gushed, never one to be outdone.

  “I know. It was all your mom’s idea.” Nadav exchanged a smile with Elise. “She has the biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever met.”

  Only if her heart is in proportion to her cleavage, Calliope thought, trying to amuse herself. Then it is definitely big.

  “Livya,” Nadav went on, “is your grandmother there?”

  “She’s right here! Say hi, Boo Boo,” Livya simpered, reaching for the vid-cam and angling it toward Nadav’s mother.

  “Hello, Nadav. I hope you don’t get sick in that freezing weather,” Tamar said implacably. She didn’t even bother to acknowledge Elise.

  Tamar would be staying here, living in Calliope’s room, until Nadav and Elise returned—she was literally babysitting the two eighteen-year-old girls. Calliope thought the whole thing was ludicrous. Even worse was the fact that she now had to share a room with her stepsister. That first night, Calliope had taken one look at Livya’s queen-sized bed and decided instead to infl
ate the insta-mattress, mumbling that she snored. No way in hell was she sharing a bed with Livya. She would probably wake up with a knife in her back.

  Even though they slept in the same room, Calliope and Livya had barely spoken since the wedding. They behaved like a pair of queens presiding over warring dominions from a joint palace.

  “Have a great night, girls!” Nadav butted his face before the projector so, from their end, he seemed to hover before them like a disembodied head.

  “Be safe!” Calliope waved good-bye just as a flicker came through on her contacts. Are you still under house arrest?

  It was from Brice.

  Calliope quickly turned aside and logged on to her tablet. No way could she answer this as a flicker. Livya would hear her whispered reply and know precisely what she was up to.

  Unfortunately, she typed back.

  Brice had flickered her a few times since the wedding, and each time, she’d pretended that she was grounded. It made her sound completely lame and high-school, but it was essentially the truth.

  Calliope couldn’t bring herself to reply the way she knew she should, the way Elise would want her to—with a snide dismissal, making Brice think that she no longer cared about him. Because she did care about him.

  Even if she couldn’t see him, at the very least she could keep communicating with him.

  Don’t forget our bet. You owe me dinner, Brice replied.

  Calliope bit back a smile, which would certainly have given her away. We never technically made that bet. I don’t recall shaking on it.

  A verbal agreement is binding in the state of New York.

  In that case, I owe a lot of people a lot of things that I never delivered on, she couldn’t resist answering.

  Don’t change the subject, he chided. Your mom and Nadav are out of town. It’s just dinner. What do you have to lose?

  Calliope hesitated, her tablet pulled close to her chest. She knew she was playing a dangerous game. If she wasn’t careful, someone would post a snap of them—or worse, mention to Nadav that she had been out with Brice. But how would that happen? Brice and Nadav didn’t have any friends in common. It wouldn’t do any harm, would it, as long as Livya and Nadav never found out?

  She stood up and started toward the living room door.

  “You’re going out.” Livya’s voice was trenchant with accusation.

  Calliope tossed her hair over one shoulder in cool unconcern. “I’m going to the hospital to read in the children’s wing. You’re welcome to join me,” she added. It was risky, but Calliope knew that Livya had her violin tutor tonight.

  “Maybe next time. If there is a next time,” Livya replied in a tone that indicated her clear disbelief. Calliope didn’t let it slow her down.

  She had never been to the Captain’s Bar at the Mandarin Oriental before. Which was unusual, given that Calliope prided herself on knowing all the hotel bars in every city she had ever visited. But this wasn’t her typical sort of bar. She cast a low, pioneering glance around its deep leather couches and burnished silver mugs, covered in warm shadows. In the corner, a woman in a black gown sang a throaty ballad, something poignant and full of longing.

  Yes, everything was high-end and expensive, but definitely not young or glamorous. This was the type of bar intended for serious conversation or serious drinking, or both.

  She positioned her elbows on the varnished surface of the bar and took another sip of her champagne, waiting for Brice. He had flickered to tell her that he was running a few minutes late. Not that Calliope really minded. There was something fun about sitting alone at a bar—the way her feet dangled over the edge of the barstool, making it feel as if she were floating. The soft layers of noise, the choreographed dance of the bartenders moving back and forth. The bubbles in her champagne glass rose in an eager stream to the surface, reminding her of the bubbles from the wisher. She felt incognito in a pleasant, tingly way.

  “Sorry I’m late.” Brice slid onto the barstool next to her.

  “I don’t mind. I actually like sitting alone at hotel bars.”

  “Because of the excellent people watching?” Brice nodded at their mostly empty surroundings.

  Calliope shrugged. “No one expects anything of you at a hotel—no one cares who you are or where you came from. I’ve always thought of hotel bars as miniature foreign embassies. A place you can seek asylum, if you need it.”

  “I can’t imagine you needing to run from anything,” Brice joked, at which Calliope fell silent. She had run away from every place she’d ever visited, hadn’t she?

  Brice waved over a bartender. “Two ginger smashes,” he ordered, and pushed Calliope’s champagne to one side. “If you’re coming to the Captain’s Bar, you should do it right.”

  Calliope tossed her head, letting her earrings dance. “I believe it was Napoleon who said that champagne is never a bad idea.”

  “You’re quoting a notorious dictator. Why am I not surprised,” Brice deadpanned, and Calliope laughed.

  Their drinks arrived in a pair of enormous silver tankards. They were a deep amber color, made with crushed ice and a stick of ginger wedged at the top.

  Calliope leaned forward to take a sip of the cocktail. It was sweet and spicy all at once. “Did you know these mugs are actual sunken treasure?” she heard herself say. “Apparently they sat for centuries on the ocean floor before the Mandarin retrieved them from the wreck of a Spanish galleon.”

  “What a fantastic story. It would be even better if it were true.” Brice lifted an eyebrow. “You’re very good at making up stories.”

  Calliope felt instantly foolish. She shouldn’t be doing this, letting her compulsive lying streak get the better of her. She was more of a professional than that.

  “I was thinking we could do dinner at Altitude, if that works for you,” he went on, after a moment.

  Calliope bit her lip. Altitude was one of the places that she and Brice definitely could not go. Far too many people there knew the Mizrahis—people who might casually remark to Nadav or Livya that they had seen Calliope out with Brice.

  She opened her mouth to deliver some excuse, to say that she’d already been to Altitude twice this week and was sick of it. But the words congealed in her throat.

  “Actually, it would be better if we didn’t.”

  Brice tapped his fingers lightly on the table. His hands looked strong and surprisingly callused. “Okay,” he said levelly.

  “It’s just—my family doesn’t want me seeing you. They don’t want me doing anything like this, really,” she added, gesturing to her outfit, a low-cut black halter dress and startling red paintstick. “They want me to be more like my stepsister.”

  “And since when are you the type of girl who does what she’s told?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “I just don’t understand why you’re trying so hard to be someone you’re not,” he insisted.

  “You wouldn’t understand.” You don’t know what it’s like to constantly play pretend. To trade in falsehoods—false identities, false alarms, false hopes—all to gain something that you aren’t even sure you want anyway.

  “Explain it to me, then.” Brice studied her, his deep-blue eyes shadowed with a question, and Calliope realized with a start that he might, possibly, care about her. She felt thrilled and terrified at once.

  “My mom fell in love with Nadav, and it turns out he’s really strict. I don’t want him to realize that I’m not the girl he thinks I am, and regret marrying my mom,” she said haltingly. “I just want them to be happy.”

  “He’s so strict that he won’t even let you go on dates?” Brice asked, incredulous.

  “Not with you,” Calliope said, then immediately worried she’d gone too far.

  “Once again, my reputation precedes me.” Brice said it jokingly, but underneath, Calliope heard a vein of sadness. “Where did you say you were going tonight, rescuing puppies at the animal shelter?”

  “Close. Reading to children at th
e hospital.” Calliope realized, as she said it aloud, how ridiculous it sounded. But how else could she have gotten out of the apartment?

  “Did your mom date anyone else, before Nadav?” Brice asked.

  You have no idea. “A few people,” Calliope evaded. “No one very serious.”

  “What happened to your dad?”

  She looked down into her drink, idly stirring the surface with the stick of ginger. “We don’t really talk about him. He left when I was a baby.”

  “You aren’t curious about him?”

  “No,” she said defensively, then sighed. “I used to be, though. When I was little, my mom and I played this game—every time I asked her where my dad was, she gave a different answer. One day she would say that he was a doctor and was busy curing some terrible disease. The next day, that he was an astronaut living in the colony on the moon, or that he was a famous actor, busy filming his next movie.”

  “Now I know where you get your flair for the dramatic,” Brice said with false lightness.

  “There was always a different answer, no matter how many times I asked the same question. But none of those million answers were true. I guess eventually I stopped caring. What did it matter, anyway? We were perfectly happy without him, just the two of us. Except it isn’t just the two of us anymore,” she added in a softer voice.

  “I know the feeling,” Brice said quietly. “I’m very used to it being just the two of us—just me and Cord. Which was why I refused to let our aunt and uncle from Brazil adopt us after my parents died.”

  “You did?” Calliope hadn’t known that.

  “Yeah,” Brice said gruffly. “They wanted us to leave everything behind, move to Rio. But we didn’t need them, you know? I could tell, even back then, that Cord and I were just fine on our own.”

  Of course the Andertons could afford to take care of themselves financially. And yet Calliope’s heart went out to them, two boys trying to live on their own, with no adult guidance. No amount of money could make up for that.