The Towering Sky

by Katharine McGee

  “I have no idea what you’re—”

  “You can drop the act with me. It doesn’t look good on you anyway,” Livya snapped, all the sticky, syrupy sweetness gone from her voice.

  Calliope squared her shoulders. Her reflections in all the countless mirrors did the same, tipping up their chins with quiet, unmistakable pride. “I have no idea what you mean,” she said coldly.

  “Of course. You’re just a sweet little philanthropist from nowhere, aren’t you?” Livya tilted her head. “You and your mom must have made such an impact through the years, traveling all over the world, saving the planet. Remind me again, why are none of your friends coming to the wedding?”

  Calliope reached down to re-fluff the tulle in her bell-shaped skirt, to avoid looking at her future stepsister. “It’s a long way for many of them to travel,” she recited, the lie that she and her mother had told over and over these past months. “Besides, most of them can’t afford it.”

  “What a shame. I was so looking forward to meeting them,” Livya said, not at all convincingly. “You see, my dad has a hard time trusting people. Most of the women who’ve dated him in the past were just in it for the money. One of the things he loves most about your mom is how truly selfless she claims to be. That all she cares about is saving the world. That she would never use him like that.”

  Calliope heard the challenge in that statement—in Livya’s use of the word claim—but she decided it was safer to let it lie. The fine dark hairs on the back of her arms prickled.

  Girls like Livya would never understand. When they wanted something, all they had to do was hold out their hand and ask their parents for it, pretty please. Calliope had been forced to flirt, plot, and manipulate for every nanodollar she’d ever spent.

  “You know,” Livya went on, almost conversationally, “I saw the strangest thing in our apartment earlier this week. I could have sworn that I saw someone sneaking out late, on a weeknight, wearing a slutty silver dress.”

  Calliope could have kicked herself. She’d grown sloppy, playing the same role for far longer than was good for anyone. This was exactly why their cons usually had a four-month time limit: The longer they stayed in one place, the greater their risk of being found out. No matter how convincing a story you wove, eventually the lies and blank spaces would begin to catch up with you. Eventually you would slip up.

  “You might want to be careful, taking too many practice SAT tests in a row,” Calliope replied with remarkable self-possession. “It sounds like you’re beginning to hallucinate.”

  “Right. Because a girl like you, out to dig wells or save the fishies or whatever it is you and your mom care about—a girl like you would never sneak out,” Livya said sweetly.

  “Exactly.” Calliope had pulled the tablet back up and was scrolling viciously through the color bar, faster and faster, changing the shades of their dresses so rapidly that it was becoming nauseating.

  Just then, Elise’s and Tamar’s footsteps sounded from the dressing room. Calliope quickly lowered the tablet to her side, leaving their gowns at a pale dove gray.

  “Oh! This is it!” Tamar crowed as she sailed into the room wearing a webbed purple thing with long sleeves that tapered to a point over her wrists. In Calliope’s opinion, it made her look even more witchlike than ever.

  Tamar turned to Miranda peremptorily. “The dresses will be perfect in this soft gray. It’s a fall wedding, after all.”

  “How lovely!” Elise exclaimed, good-natured as always. She tried to hug her future mother-in-law, who just stood there in stiff-backed silence.

  Then Elise stepped forward and wrapped an arm around each of the teenagers, pulling them closer, as if they were all one happy family. “My two girls,” she said quietly.

  “Your dress is stunning, Mom,” Calliope replied. Elise’s gown had long sleeves and a high neck, but instead of looking dowdy it was elegant and demure, a swirl of hand-stitched lace scattered with tiny crystals that caught the light.

  Livya cut in, not to be outdone. “You look absolutely perfect, Elise,” she simpered, in her prim, kiss-up voice—no trace of the threatening creature who had been there a moment previously.

  Calliope looked up to where their three reflected faces hovered together, illuminated by the ambient light. Her eyes met Livya’s in the mirror. The other girl was staring at her hungrily, looking suddenly like a predator, alert and watchful for the slightest sign of weakness.

  Calliope held her gaze, refusing to blink.

  LEDA

  LEDA TRAILED DOWN the unfamiliar street after Watt, wondering what exactly she’d gotten herself into.

  He’d flickered her earlier this afternoon that he needed to show her something, about Mariel. Meet me at the Bammell Lane monorail station at nine, he’d insisted.

  Leda had taken a slow yoga breath, trying to settle her mind. She wasn’t ready to see Watt again, to let him disturb the fragile equilibrium she’d worked so hard to maintain. But even worse than her fear of facing Watt was her fear of what would happen if this investigation dug up the truth.

  And honestly, Leda was already pretty unsettled. Ever since that questioning at the police station, she’d been having the old nightmares again, even worse than before—because now the images of Eris’s death alternated with flickering visions of Mariel, drowning, reaching for Leda with icy, implacable hands. Leda would gasp, fighting her off, but Mariel kept dragging her down. . . .

  Okay. I’ll be there, she told Watt.

  When their monorail car uncoiled itself from the city and began to snake through the air, Leda couldn’t help looking down at the surface of the East River. A few boats sliced through the water on silent motors, the V’s of their wakes disappearing in the darkness.

  It seemed terrifyingly cold, the light of the quarter moon breaking and fragmenting on the river’s choppy surface. Leda shivered and moved unconsciously closer to Watt, trying not to think about her nightmares.

  The streetlamps flickered to life around her, their light falling in golden pools onto the pavement, which glittered with the telltale sparkle of the magnetic shavings that kept hovercraft aloft. Not that any hovercraft were zipping past. Brooklyn had been slowly draining of people for years, now that it went dark around noon, thanks to the hulking shadow cast by the Tower.

  Leda couldn’t quite believe that she was here, with Watt, standing next to him again after all these months. It felt oddly surreal, like she’d slipped through the meshes of reality only to find herself back where she’d been a year ago. She kept stealing small glances at him, as if to compare this Watt with the one she remembered—his hair a little thicker and more unruly, his eyes as bright as ever.

  He caught her staring and smiled. Leda bit the inside of her cheek, flushing with mortification.

  “Where are we going?” She felt a desperate need to say something, anything, as if the silence was becoming infused with layers of meaning she didn’t know how to interpret. “Or do we not have a destination at all? Are we just wandering aimlessly out here in the wilderness?”

  “Right, because Brooklyn is definitely the wilderness,” Watt deadpanned.

  “It might as well be!”

  “I promise it will be worth it,” he assured her. “Just trust me.”

  Trust Watt? That felt hard to do, given all the broken promises that lay between them. Leda turned away, to keep from looking into his eyes.

  Two girls stood at a small bitbanc kiosk on their right: one of those touch screen stations where people might check their balance or make transfers, if they didn’t have contact lenses. It took Leda a moment to realize that the girls weren’t using the kiosk at all. They were preening and applying lip gloss, watching their reflections on the sliver of curved security mirror above the interface. One of them met Leda’s eyes in the mirror and politely stepped aside, as if to make space.

  “Last mirror before José’s,” she explained and then smiled.

  “Um, thanks,” Leda mumbled. What was José’s?r />
  “We’ll see you in there,” Watt replied. Leda couldn’t help noticing the warm way both girls were staring at him. For some stupid reason it irritated her.

  She followed Watt onto the stoop of an old brownstone. Heavy, dark curtains hung in the windows, making the face of the building look lifeless or even sinister, as if the windows were empty blank eyes. The door’s paint was peeling, and there was a notice tacked to it that read FORECLOSURE. NO ENTRY.

  “Watt . . .” Leda began, but the protest died on her lips as he pushed the front door. It gave way easily.

  Leda squeezed behind him, blinking at the faded wallpaper. Standing in the middle of the cramped entryway, before a wooden staircase, was a tall white guy who looked about their age. Leda heard the unmistakable sounds of laughter and music drifting down from the second floor. She shot Watt a confused glance.

  “Do I know you?” the bouncer demanded.

  Watt didn’t miss a beat. “Hey, Ryan. We’re friends of José’s. Is he here yet?”

  “He’s coming later,” Ryan replied with a shade less hostility, though he still stood determinedly between Watt and Leda and whatever was at the top of that staircase. “It’s forty nanos each.”

  “Fine. Confirm transfer,” Watt muttered. He locked gazes with the bouncer and nodded, to move forty nanodollars from his bitbanc into Ryan’s. Leda started to do the same, but Watt nodded again to cover her payment, and Ryan stepped aside to let them pass.

  “What are we doing here?” Leda hissed as they made their way up the stairs.

  “I’m hoping that we’ll get some answers about Mariel—about what she knew and who she told,” Watt explained. “She used to come here a lot.”

  “Of course she did,” Leda said darkly. She stumbled over a protruding nail and cursed under her breath. “Who wouldn’t want to pay for the privilege of traipsing around an old tear-down?”

  “It’s okay to be afraid,” Watt said softly, reaching out to steady her.

  Leda brushed his hand aside. She felt suddenly angry with him, for knowing her so intimately. “Who is José?”

  “José has been doing this for a while now: setting up parties in abandoned homes, then charging people for entry. He also happens to be Mariel’s cousin,” Watt replied as they reached the top of the stairs, and Leda fell silent.

  The second-floor living room had been utterly transformed. Temporary drink stations were set up on either side of the room. Music spilled out of small egg-shaped speakers. Dim lighting emanated from glo-bulbs, the disposable orbs of light that were powered by self-contained nanowires, though they only lasted several hours. Because the electricity must have been cut off with the foreclosure, Leda realized. Clever.

  But most striking of all were the dozens of young people packed into the space.

  They were all good-looking in a fierce, edgy way, with angular inktats and 3-D skin appliqués. Leda saw lopsided hemlines, micro-miniskirts paired with kneesocks, vinyl dresses that flashed in bright, eclectic colors. One girl was wearing a dress that consisted of nothing but plastic squares linked together by tiny metal rings. Several of them looked up, murmuring at the arrival of Leda and Watt.

  Leda felt strangled by a sudden, sticky fear. “I can’t do this. I thought that I could but I can’t; I barely made it through Cord’s the other day. I’m not ready for this.” She winced, shrinking in on herself, but Watt reached to grab her above both elbows.

  “What happened to the Leda Cole I used to know?” he asked, his voice low and urgent. “That girl wasn’t afraid of anything.”

  That girl was afraid of everything, Leda thought. She was just better at hiding her fear.

  “I’m right here with you. I won’t let anything bad happen, I promise,” Watt added.

  Leda knew that was an impossible promise. But she thought suddenly of Dubai—of how she’d been lying helpless by the water and Watt had come to save her, riding a stolen hoverboard at breakneck speed. She remembered how reassuringly safe she had felt the moment she realized he was with her.

  “Okay. We can stay,” she said reluctantly and cast another glance around the room.

  Leda quickly lifted her flowy black shirt and tied it into a knot on one side, making it into a midriff top. She ran her fingers through her short, dense hair to loosen its curls. Then she reached into her pocket for her shiny red paintstick and swiped it over her lips.

  “You don’t have to stare,” she told Watt, discomfited. “I’m just trying to fit in.”

  “I’m not—I’m sorry—I mean, if I’m staring, it’s just because you’re so beautiful,” Watt said haltingly.

  Leda caught her breath and quickly shook her head. She refused to let Watt dredge up any of those feelings. They belonged to the old Leda, and she and the old Leda had long since parted ways.

  “Seriously, Watt. You say one more thing like that, and I’m gone,” she told him, ignoring the slightly mutinous cast to his expression. “Now, what’s our plan?”

  “We should to talk to José when he gets here. Mariel was pretty close with him; he might have a sense of what Mariel knew.”

  “How are you going to find out? Break into his contact lenses? Or steal his tablet?”

  “I thought we could try talking to him. As a smart girl once told me, not every problem needs to be hacked,” Watt told her.

  Leda flushed at the memory. It was something she’d said to Watt the very first night they kissed. “This isn’t a very sophisticated plan.”

  “Sometimes simplicity is the key to success,” Watt countered, and shrugged. “Want to play beer pong while we wait? With soda, of course,” he amended, and gestured toward the far wall, where several beer pong tables were powered by graphene charge-packs. A group of older guys clustered around the tables, pounding on the surface and hollering at something that had happened in the game.

  Leda’s throat felt sealed shut. No way in hell was she playing beer pong with Watt. It was too convivial, too relaxed, when she needed things between them to be strictly professional.

  “Or we can keep staring at each other in silence,” Watt went on cheerfully.

  Leda felt her old competitive instinct rising stubbornly to the surface. “I would love nothing more than to beat you at beer pong,” she snapped. “Except that none of the tables are free.”

  “Not a problem,” Watt said easily. “Grab a pitcher and meet me over there?” He started toward the group of guys before she could argue.

  Sure enough, when she returned a minute later with a plastic pitcher of lemonade, Watt was leaning with proprietary ease on a table. “How did you clear out the frat rats?” Leda asked, reluctantly impressed.

  “I scared them away.”

  “Right, because you’re so intimidating.” Leda rolled her eyes. “More like you used Nadia to hack their accounts, and sent them fake messages from the people they like.”

  “A magician never reveals his secrets,” Watt said mysteriously. He poured the lemonade into their cups, which were made of a metal so thin that they felt lighter than paper. Then he pressed a button and the cups leapt instantly into the air, lifted by the table’s powerful magnet, arranging themselves in a triangular shape perpendicular to the ground. Tiny bubbles of suction prevented the liquid inside from spilling.

  “Did you know that when they first invented this game, there were no force fields?” Watt weighed one of the white pong balls in his hand, tossing it back and forth. “Apparently people had to constantly run around chasing their Ping-Pong balls when they overshot.”

  “Quit stalling, Watt.”

  He laughed and tossed the ball at a sharp angle. It bounced off the force field along the side of the table and clattered to the surface.

  Leda felt an involuntary smile spreading over her features. She held out her hand and the Ping-Pong ball floated into her palm, responding to the powerful 3-D sensors as if by magic.

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself. Rebound shots are an advanced move.” She flung the pong ball deliberately a
gainst the force field. It collided with an audible sizzle, then clattered directly into one of Watt’s cups.

  “Impressive.” He lifted the cup in a salute before tipping it back. Leda rolled up her sleeves and reached for the pong ball again, grinning wickedly.

  “Ready to concede yet?”

  “Not a chance.”

  As they settled into the game, Leda felt her heartbeat relaxing, the tense knot in her stomach beginning to slowly uncoil. Strangely enough, she and Watt had never actually gotten to just hang out before. They had either been plotting against each other or plotting together against someone else or sneaking around, hooking up in secret. By the time they finally admitted how they felt, it was too late: Leda had learned the truth about Eris and fallen off the deep end, only to realize that she couldn’t let herself be with Watt.

  Still, it was nice, pretending to be normal. If only for a moment.

  Leda immediately went stone-faced. What did she think she was doing? She shouldn’t be relaxing around Watt, letting him make her laugh. She couldn’t afford to let him get close again, no matter how easy it—

  Watt abruptly dropped the Ping-Pong ball and swiped his hand over the surface of the table, abandoning the game. “José is here.”

  Leda turned, and saw at once who Watt was talking about.

  José moved through the room with unmistakable authority. He looked several years older than they were: stocky, with a close-cropped dark beard. Red and black inktats curled around his bicep to disappear beneath the fabric of his shirt.

  She hurried after Watt, who had already moved to stand on the edge of José’s circle of admirers. Eventually José turned to them with a slightly puzzled, but polite, expression.

  Watt cleared his throat. “Hi, José. We were hoping to talk to you for a minute. Alone,” he added when José didn’t say anything. “It’s about Mariel.”

  José made a small gesture with his hand, and the group of people around him instantly melted into the party. He led Leda and Watt to a side room, empty except for a small baby pool, where a few girls were splashing barefoot in the few centimeters of water. They took one look at José and retreated.