Except that everything had changed, Avery thought furiously. She had changed. And it wasn’t fair that he was suddenly here, when she’d gone to such painful lengths to move on from him.
“Are you okay, Avery?” Max asked, sensing her hesitation.
“I just wish that I could stay with you tonight,” she said, and meant it. Avery had slept over in Max’s dorm room the past few evenings. She wished she could keep staying there indefinitely—but her mom had made a pointed comment about it this morning, and Avery didn’t want to push her luck.
“Me too.” Max pulled her into a hug, tucking his chin above her head. “I’m sorry this election stuff has been so intense. I never realized how much it would affect you. We aren’t so obsessed with the candidates’ families in Germany.”
“That sounds nice.” Avery smiled. “Maybe next time my dad can run for mayor of Würzburg.”
In the week since her dad’s election, her parents had become more committed than ever to maintaining their image as New York’s first family. “New York royalty,” the feeds kept calling them. Even worse, they had dubbed Avery the so-called princess of New York.
Her inbox was now flooded with interview requests—which she found ludicrous, given that she wasn’t an authority in anything except, perhaps, being a teenager. Or hiding an illicit romance from her parents.
Yet bloggers suddenly wanted her to weigh in on everything from her favorite face cream to her most-anticipated fashion trends. When Avery tried to decline the interviews, her parents were horrified. “You’re the youthful face of my administration! Tell them whatever they want to know!” her dad cried out, and signed her up to talk to anyone who would listen.
Meanwhile, Avery’s follower count on the feeds had skyrocketed from a few thousand to a half million. She’d tried to make her page private, but her parents adamantly refused. “We can hire an intern for you, to post and reply to things,” her mom offered. Avery had thought she was joking.
“I’ll see you later,” she murmured and gave Max one last kiss. Then she stepped into the elevator that rose toward their foyer, holding her breath.
As the door slid open, Avery saw with a sinking feeling that she hadn’t waited long enough. Atlas was home.
He stepped out of the kitchen, the shadows falling softly over the planes of his face, so familiar and yet so changed. The silence fluttered between them like a curtain.
“Hey, Aves,” he ventured.
“Hey.” All she was willing to give him was that single word.
She was acutely aware that this was the first time she and Atlas had been alone together since he came home. She had seen him, of course, but always with her parents or Max there as a buffer.
“I was just about to make pasta. Want some?” Atlas offered into the silence.
“It’s almost midnight,” Avery croaked, which she realized wasn’t an answer. She felt like a newborn, discovering her vocal cords for the first time.
“I was at work late.”
Avery wondered, suddenly, if he’d stayed at work late on purpose—if he was avoiding home for the same reason she was. Because he didn’t want to run into her.
She followed him warily into the kitchen, lingering near the doorway as if she might make a quick escape at any moment. “Since when do you cook?”
Atlas smiled, the old half smile that Avery used to love, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Since I live alone in Dubai and got sick of takeout. Though pasta isn’t exactly complicated.”
She watched as Atlas flash-cooked the noodles, chopped tomatoes, shaved down a hunk of cheese. There was a strong, lean grace to his movements that seemed new to her. She felt the same way she’d felt the last time he returned home—like he’d traveled across some unknown distance, had seen and done things that would forever set him apart from her.
And just like last time, she felt an instinctive urge to draw near him. As though, if she got close enough, she might understand some of what he had done.
“What was it like?” Avery leaned forward onto the counter, pulling the sleeves of her sweater toward her wrists.
“Loud. Busy. Not that different from New York, except way hotter outside the towers.”
“Not Dubai.” She shook her head. “I meant—being away.”
“You went away too, if I recall,” Atlas pointed out.
“It’s not the same.” When Avery traveled, she took her identity with her; she never stopped being Avery Fuller. She was jealous, she realized, of Atlas’s anonymity.
“That reminds me. I have a present that I’ve been meaning to give you,” Atlas said abruptly, wiping his hands beneath the UV sanitizer beam. Before Avery could react, he’d disappeared down the hall toward his room.
Moments later he returned, holding something bulky behind his back. “Sorry I didn’t wrap it,” he apologized, and handed Avery a multicolored bundle.
She unfurled it before her, and her breath caught in her chest.
It was a square of handmade rug, about the size of the coffee table in their living room. A vibrant swirl of colors, blue and yellow and orange threads all woven into an intricate pattern that kept revealing more details the longer you looked at it. Avery saw peacocks, miniature trees, fiery sunbursts, and in the center, a radiant white lotus floating against a turquoise pool. The border was edged in gold stitching.
“Atlas,” she said softly, “this is breathtaking. Thank you.”
“I know it’s not a real magic carpet, but this was the closest I could find.”
She looked up sharply. “You remember that?” Avery used to ask Santa for a magic carpet every Christmas. She’d wanted one so desperately that her parents ended up commissioning an engineer to build a child-sized one, with metallic-woven fabric that lifted her a whole four centimeters above the ground, like a hover. They never understood why Avery hated that thing.
This was much more what a magic carpet should feel like.
Atlas was watching her closely. “Where would you go, if it were really magic?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted, and smiled. Her fantasies of magic carpet rides had never gone past the part where she left the thousandth floor. “I guess I was always more excited for the flying than for the destination.”
“I know what you mean.”
Avery glanced again at the carpet, the beautiful woven richness of its fibers. “Thank you,” she repeated, taking an unconscious step forward, and realizing a beat too late how close Atlas’s face was to hers.
That was when he leaned in to kiss her.
Some part of her saw it coming, and yet Avery couldn’t pull away. Her body seemed to have momentarily shut down. She couldn’t move, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything except stand here and let Atlas kiss her. His mouth on hers struck something deep within her, like a bell.
And for a single forbidden moment, Avery felt herself kiss him back.
Then her nerves came violently to life again, and she stumbled away, her breathing ragged. “Atlas! What the hell?” She wanted to scream, but their parents were home, so somehow—using every last shred of her willpower—she kept her voice at a low hiss. “You can’t do that, okay? I’m with Max now!”
It felt to Avery like the very air was charged, like the old Tower air before they adjusted the oxygen levels; as if a single spark might burst into flames, and destroy everything.
“I’m sorry. I guess I was . . . Never mind. Just pretend it didn’t happen.”
“Pretend it didn’t happen? How do you expect me to do that?”
“I don’t know,” Atlas said bitingly, “but you’ve been doing a fantastic job of it so far.”
“That’s not fair.” Avery noted with a wild sort of hysteria that she was still holding the rug in one hand. She brandished it before her like a weapon. “You’re the one who ended things with me, remember?”
“I’m just saying, you’ve done a great job pretending that you and I never happened. You have everyone convinced, even me.” He kept his gaze on
her, steady and unblinking. “When I saw you with Max, I almost thought that I’d made the whole thing up. That it was something I’d dreamed.”
“That isn’t fair,” Avery said again. Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes. “You can’t do this, Atlas. You literally destroyed me. I was so broken, I thought it would be a lifetime before I could put myself back together. And then I met Max . . .” She trailed off, taking a shaky breath. “You can’t resent me for being happy with him.”
He winced. “Aves, I’m sorry. Of course I want you to be happy. I didn’t come here to break up you and Max.”
“Then why the hell did you just kiss me?”
Atlas’s grip tightened over the edge of the counter. “Like I said, forget it. Chalk it up to a stupid mistake, okay? I promise it won’t happen again. What more do you want from me?”
“I want you to forget that anything ever happened between us, okay? Because I have!”
He took a step back, retreating across the distance her words had created. “Consider it done.”
Back in her bedroom, Avery couldn’t resist unfurling the carpet near her windows. She had to admit, her room needed this—it was all neutrals, ivory and gray and the occasional soft blue. The carpet was a glorious oasis of color in a sea of boringness.
Trust Atlas to bring her the most thoughtful present in the world, then ruin it by turning her emotions upside down.
She sat down on the magic carpet and closed her eyes, wishing it would take her anywhere but here.
WATT
LEDA KEPT GLANCING nervously over her shoulder as they turned onto Mariel’s street. “I can’t believe we’re doing this. Actually, I can’t believe you’re doing this. I don’t really have a choice, but you . . .” She glanced over at Watt, seeming disconcerted. “There’s no reason you should be doing this for me.”
Watt thought it was pretty obvious why he was here: He would take any opportunity to spend time with Leda, in any context. Even if it meant asking questions about a girl’s murder.
He hadn’t seen Leda since he dropped by her apartment with the Bakehouse order. They had been flickering back and forth all week, discussing what to do about Mariel’s diary—studiously avoiding any mention of their almost-kiss on Leda’s couch. Watt was so glad that Leda was still talking to him, he had even agreed to her initial idea: that they should just show up at the Valconsuelos’ apartment and ask to be let inside.
“We’re here,” he realized, pausing at the door marked 2704.
The Valconsuelos’ apartment was on the 103rd floor, on a street called Baneberry Lane. It was only a hundred and forty floors below where Watt lived with his family, but the difference was palpable. Down here the streets felt less like streets, and more like wide hallways that happened to be floored in carbon-composite, lined with metal studs. The overhead lights were fluorescent and distinctly unforgiving. Even Watt, who hadn’t known Eris very long, had trouble picturing her here. It made him cringe to think of what it must be like for Rylin, down on the 32nd floor.
“Okay,” Leda said in an oddly small voice. She poised her finger on the doorbell—and held it there, uncertain. Watt understood her reluctance. This felt much more serious than sneaking into a party.
Wordlessly, he put his hand over Leda’s to help press the bell. They heard the sound of it on the other side of the front door, echoing through the apartment. Leda pulled her hand out from beneath Watt’s, though he couldn’t help noticing that it wasn’t all that quickly. The thought made him smile, in spite of everything.
The door swung open to reveal a woman in a cozy purple dress. Her hair rose to a widow’s peak at her brow, and her brown eyes crinkled with lines, the pleasant sort of lines that came from a lifetime of smiling. But she wasn’t smiling right now.
“Can I help you?”
“Hi, Mrs. Valconsuelo. We’re friends of Mariel,” Watt said quickly.
For a moment Mrs. Valconsuelo simply stared at them both, as if trying to place them.
She doesn’t believe you, Nadia told Watt. Her nostrils are flaring, her hands tensing, the classic signs of mistrust.
Nadia was right; they should have known better than to try to lie to a mom. Moms had a bullshit meter that was hard to sneak anything past.
“I should have said that we were friends of Eris. I only met Mariel once,” Watt amended, and nudged Leda sharply in her side. She blinked, seeming jarred to life.
“We’re so sorry to bother you. Eris”—Leda faltered for only a fraction of an instant over the name—“had something of mine, something she borrowed, and I’ve been trying to track it down. It seems as if Eris might have lent it to Mariel. I wouldn’t ask, except it’s something important.”
“What is it?” Mrs. Valconsuelo asked.
Leda’s chin tipped imperceptibly higher; the face she made when she was about to lie. She was so tremulous, so fiercely vulnerable, Watt marveled that Mrs. Valconsuelo didn’t see it.
“A scarf,” Leda decided, and Watt felt a pang of sympathy for her, because he knew exactly which scarf she was thinking of. The one that Leda’s father had given Eris, which started the entire cascade of misunderstandings. “It has sentimental value, otherwise I wouldn’t ask.”
“I understand.” Mrs. Valconsuelo stepped aside to let them in.
An oppressive silence hovered in the apartment. Watt could tell that it wasn’t normally this quiet; this was the type of apartment that should be ringing with laughter. The silence was a stranger here, lurking around every corner with heavy footsteps, as uninvited and unwelcome a guest as he and Leda.
They followed Mariel’s mom down the hall to a door that was covered in loud, brightly colored stickers. Mrs. Valconsuelo kept her eyes deliberately averted from her daughter’s bedroom. “Feel free to look around. Everything is the way she left it, except for whatever the police might have moved when they came by.” With that, Mrs. Valconsuelo hurried back down the hall, as if she couldn’t get away from the painful memories fast enough.
So the police had already been here. Whatever they found, if they found anything at all, Watt and Leda could assume that the police had already seen it. At least this way, they would know what the police knew.
They exchanged a glance and stepped into the dead girl’s bedroom.
The overhead lights, sensing their movement, flicked on. Dust motes hung suspended in the air. The room was much as Watt had expected: a narrow bed with a multicolored quilt; a small desk with a cream-white top and embedded touch-controls, easily the most expensive thing in the room. A chair was tucked to one side, only slightly visible under the mountain of jackets flung casually over its back. It felt oddly as if Mariel had just walked out and might return again at any moment.
“Should we divide the room in half?” Watt suggested, passing off Nadia’s idea as his own.
“Good thinking. I’ll start with the closet.”
They moved quickly through the room, searching beneath the mattress, inside drawers, in the closet. Watt noticed that Leda wasn’t moving very fast. She kept running her hand over the quilted bedspread or picking up an item of clothing and setting it down again.
I wish we could figure out Mariel’s death, he thought to Nadia, in a burst of frustration. No matter how many times he reasoned through it, Watt couldn’t shake the sense that he had all the right pieces to the puzzle—that the answer to Mariel’s death was somehow right before him, and he just wasn’t seeing it. Was it really a murder? If so, who had done it and why? What evidence did the police have suggesting foul play?
You aren’t here to solve her murder, Nadia reminded him. Just to find out what she was doing before she died. Whether the police might have found the connection between her and you.
Nadia was right, of course. But part of Watt still wished he could solve it. Maybe if he found out who killed Mariel, he could give the answer to the police and make the whole investigation go away.
“This feels weird,” Leda said at last, holding up a framed instaphoto.
“I know.” Watt had been thinking of Mariel only as the girl who attacked Leda in Dubai. But standing in her bedroom, surrounded by all the accumulated clutter of her life, Mariel felt much less like a goddess of vengeance, and much more like a teenage girl. A misguided girl who was desperately hurt by the loss of the person she’d loved.
“No, you don’t know. It isn’t your fault,” Leda replied, her voice breaking. Watt glanced over in surprise. She was still holding the framed instaphoto, staring at it furiously, as if it might reveal some new secret. It was a photo, Watt realized, of Mariel and Eris.
“It’s all my fault,” she said again fiercely. “If I hadn’t pushed Eris, none of this would have happened! Mariel and Eris would still be together, and Mariel would never have followed us to Dubai—you and I would still be together—”
Leda crumpled a little, still holding tightly to the frame. Watt hurried forward and folded her in his arms. She didn’t lean in, but she didn’t push him away either. “It isn’t your fault that Mariel tried to enact some kind of Old Testament vengeance on us,” he told her. “Stop trying to carry all the guilt in the entire world by yourself. There’s enough blame to go around, I promise.”
A breath shuddered through Leda’s thin body. Watt fought back the urge to hug her tighter. “Why do you keep doing this?” she demanded.
“Doing what?”
“Being so nice, acting like you still care about me.”
“Because I do still care about you. You know that.”
“Well, you shouldn’t,” she said tersely, taking a step back. “I’m no good for you, Watt.”
“Stop saying that. I know you, Leda, the real you—”
“That’s just it! You know me too well! You know the real me, the me that no one else has seen. You’re the only person I ever told about me and Eris being related,” she added quietly.
Watt was strangely touched by that. “I do know you, Leda,” he said softly. “I like to think I know you in a way that no one else does. That I can see a core of goodness in you that the rest of the world is too hurried or careless to see.”
The Towering Sky Page 16
