The Towering Sky

by Katharine McGee

  “There are times, Leda, when the truth can do more harm than good. When sharing a secret is much more selfish than keeping it,” her dad insisted. “I know it’s not fair to put you in the middle like this, and I’m sorry. Someday, when you do something you wish you could undo—something you regret, something that changes you forever—you’ll understand what I mean.”

  Leda knew exactly what her father meant, far more than he could ever guess.

  CALLIOPE

  IT WAS VERY early on Monday, and already Calliope was slipping out of the Mizrahis’ apartment.

  She couldn’t take another morning there. Elise and Nadav had come back from their honeymoon last week, in a show of hand-holding, smothering affection. Calliope was happy that her mom had found love, she really was, but that didn’t mean she wanted to be witness to that love all the freaking time. But Nadav was obsessed with family togetherness, even more now that they were officially a family. Every meal, every conversation, every last school function—they all suddenly became family events, which meant that Calliope was expected to be there, smiling that dumb pasted-on smile. She felt stifled beneath it all.

  Her only escape was going out with Brice. Calliope knew she shouldn’t be seeing him anymore, yet she couldn’t not see him. She told Elise and Nadav that she was continuing her volunteer work at the hospital. So far it seemed to be working as an excuse, even if Nadav did occasionally insist on dropping her off there. Calliope would just smile and walk inside, then slip out a few minutes later.

  Still, every time she came home from seeing Brice—after those brief few hours of actually being herself—Calliope would return to the Mizrahis’, to the role she hated so much. At least now she was sleeping in her own room again, even if there was that creepy painting of the dead deer hanging on the wall.

  This morning, when she woke up hours before her alarm, Calliope felt a sudden, almost panicked desire to get out. She needed a morning to herself, to hell with the consequences. She messaged her mom and Nadav that she had to meet a classmate early for a school project, then slid into raspberry-colored jeans, a thin black top, and dangly earrings, weaving her hair into a messy fishtail braid. Like hell was she wearing her school uniform right now.

  She went straight down the E line to Grand Central, and felt better the moment she walked through its massive carved archway.

  Calliope had always loved train stations. There was something inherently soothing about them, especially this early in the morning, when they were inhabited by a strange, almost subdued silence. Vacuum-bots moved across the floor in stately isolation. Warm muffins began to emerge from bakeshops, the scent of them wafting out into the corridors. Calliope headed to a coffee dispenser and placed her order for an iced hazelnut latte, her footsteps echoing in the vast space.

  As in the original Grand Central, the floors were laid with a creamy, distinguished-looking Italian travertine. Doric columns soared up at the corners of every intersection. Directional holograms flickered throughout, helping travelers find their way to the countless lift lines, monorails, helipads, Hyperloop subsea trains that all met here, in a ruthlessly efficient tangle. This was the center of the spiderweb knitting the city, the entire world, together.

  Calliope realized that she was just in time for the sunrise. She took a seat in the Metro-North corridor, turning expectantly toward the massive windows along the eastern wall.

  It had been a long time since she saw the sun rise, even longer since she’d actually woken up for it. Usually when Calliope witnessed the dawn of a new day, it was because the previous day hadn’t actually ended.

  She leaned back in her chair, watching the sunrise as if it were a private performance intended just for her. And for a moment it felt that way: as if the sun, or perhaps the city, was showing off for her benefit, reminding her how wonderful it was to be young and alive and in New York. There was something delicious about being awake while most of the city was still asleep. It was as if Calliope alone presided over the sacred mysteries of the city.

  The station began to stir to life around her. The first trains were arriving from the European seaboard, the early morning commuter trains for people who’d wanted to squeeze the last few hours out of their weekends in Paris or London. Announcements began booming louder and more frequently over the speakers, creating a sense of continually cresting excitement. An indefinable magic seemed to cling about it all—but then, transportation was the only real magic left on earth, wasn’t it? The ability to go anywhere, become anyone, simply by purchasing a ticket.

  Maybe Calliope loved train stations because for most of her life, they had been her escape mechanism.

  She was startled by the sight of a familiar figure in the crowd. It was Avery Fuller, walking hand in hand with that lanky German boyfriend of hers. They seemed to be returning from a weekend away, just in time for school. Calliope watched as Avery hugged her boyfriend; then they turned in opposite directions, each of them apparently going to a different lift line.

  Calliope realized with a start that Avery was headed right toward her. She quickly arranged herself just so, as if she was on display—the iced coffee held casually in one hand, one leg folded over the other—and directed her profile toward the sunrise. She expected Avery to glide on past without speaking, or maybe even to say something snide.

  What she didn’t anticipate was that Avery would pause. “May I?” she asked, gesturing to the neighboring seat.

  Calliope gave an unconcerned shrug. She’d never been one to back down from a confrontation, or whatever this was. But behind her steely facade, her heart was hammering. She and Avery hadn’t exactly talked since last year, when Calliope had confronted her after the Dubai party, and told Avery that she knew about her and Atlas.

  “Are you headed somewhere?” Avery asked, her printed faux-leather suitcase hovering uncertainly behind her. Her hair, which fell loose around her shoulders like in a shampoo advert, gave off a lively light. She looked expensive and cool in her simple white shirt and jeans, not at all creased or disordered, the way Calliope always appeared post-travel. Calliope resented her for it, a little.

  “I just came here to think.” Perhaps it was the early hour, or the strangeness of Avery Fuller deciding to sit and chat with her for no apparent reason, but Calliope was feeling honest. “I actually like train stations. All these people going different places, hurrying toward destinations I’ll never know . . .” She trailed off. “It makes me feel calm when I’m agitated.”

  Avery stared at her with naked curiosity. “It’s your Tiffany’s.”

  “My what?”

  “The place you go to feel calm,” Avery explained. “Haven’t you read Breakfast at Tiffany’s? Or seen the holo?”

  “Never heard of it,” Calliope said dismissively.

  To her surprise, Avery laughed. It was a clear, self-assured laugh, the kind of laugh that made you want to sit up straighter and join in.

  Calliope cast a puzzled glance in Avery’s direction. “Where are you coming back from?” she ventured.

  “I was in Oxford for my college interview. My boyfriend went with me. But I had to get back for this week. . . .”

  Oh, right. Calliope remembered that the inauguration ball was this weekend.

  As the train station filled up, more and more people seemed to be noticing Avery’s presence. Calliope watched as the whispers gathered and spread, spiraling out like a hurricane with Avery at its epicenter. She saw the hard, impassive look that settled on Avery’s face, and came to a startling realization.

  Avery Fuller didn’t enjoy being the center of attention.

  “It must be liberating,” Avery said softly, as if reading her thoughts.

  “What?”

  “Getting to do what you want, be who you want.” Avery shifted abruptly toward Calliope, her cheeks a soft pink. “What’s it like, traveling the world that way?”

  Was Avery Fuller, the girl from the thousandth floor, actually asking her what it was like to be a con artis
t? “I’m sure you’ve traveled all over the world,” Calliope replied, disconcerted. “I mean, you just came back from a weekend in England.”

  Avery waved that aside. “I’m traveling as myself, and usually with my parents. Which comes with its own set of expectations. What’s it like to become a new person whenever you go somewhere new?”

  All of Calliope’s senses were on high alert. She had never, ever talked about this with anyone. It was so taboo it felt like blasphemy.

  She wiped her palms on her jeans. “Why do you want to know?”

  “I’m just curious,” Avery said, and Calliope heard the edge beneath her words. Even Avery Fuller doesn’t always know her own mind, she thought wonderingly. Even Avery Fuller occasionally felt torn between two different paths, two different versions of herself.

  Calliope cleared her throat, not wanting to get this wrong. “It is liberating sometimes, but also lonely. Every time I go somewhere new, I have to let go of whoever I was last time, and become the person that the situation calls for. I’m constantly pushing restart on myself.”

  “Doesn’t anyone ever recognize you?”

  Calliope looked up sharply, wondering if Brice had said something to Avery, but the question didn’t seem prompted by anything in particular.

  “Sorry,” Avery breathed. “I guess what I mean is, what do you change about yourself? Just your accent?”

  Calliope flashed suddenly to all those hours of practicing accents with her mom. She used to stand before Elise, her hands folded, like an actress at an audition. Tell me a story, Elise would command, and Calliope would launch into some inconsequential anecdote about what she’d eaten for breakfast or how she wanted to cut her hair. Toulouse! Elise would exclaim, and then Dublin! Lisbon! Each time she named a city, Calliope had to switch to that accent seamlessly, without breaking stride in her narrative.

  “It’s the accent, sure. But it’s as much about confidence, and how you carry yourself. You, for instance, have the posture of a girl who’s used to being at the center of the spotlight, in every room you’ve ever been in. No offense,” she added quickly.

  Avery nodded slowly. “What if I wanted to carry myself differently?”

  “Slouch. Don’t make eye contact with people; use your peripheral vision instead. Shrink in on yourself, and de-emphasize the physical,” Calliope told her. “It’s surprisingly easy to keep people from looking at you. I bet you’ve just never really tried.”

  Avery seemed to think that over for a while. “You’re very brave,” she said at last, and Calliope couldn’t have been more shocked if Avery had begun stripping off all her clothes, right there in the train station. Brave? She was selfish and impulsive, but never had she thought of herself as brave.

  “I guess it’s only brave if you succeed. It’s just reckless if you fail.”

  “But when have you ever failed?” Avery asked.

  Calliope blinked. I’ve failed in New York, by living as someone I’m not, she wanted to say, but then she thought of Brice and brightened a little. He knew the real her, whoever it was, buried beneath all those layers of lies.

  “I’ve had my moments,” she evaded, but Avery didn’t really seem to be listening anymore. She was looking back out at the sunrise, thoughtful.

  “See you in class later,” Avery said abruptly, standing up. “I’m sure we’ll both be exhausted.”

  “I’ve had later nights—and earlier mornings. And I’d venture to say you have too.” Calliope was pleased to see that she had coaxed a smile from Avery. For a moment, it felt as if they were almost friends.

  As the other girl walked off, Calliope turned away from the sunrise to watch the anonymous sea of people moving through the train station: all the greetings and good-byes, the laughter and tears, the commuters chattering on various pings, the travelers standing in pools of isolation. She was very accustomed to being alone. But it suddenly struck her how many other people there were in this vast city, also alone.

  RYLIN

  “YOU ARE ALLOWED to take me out in New York, you know.” Rylin pulled aside the curtain of their enclosed private deck to gaze at the view.

  “Where’s the fun in that?” Cord laughed, seeming unconcerned.

  They were on the evening cruise of the Skyspear: the most luxurious, and most famous, of the space tourism vessels now in operation. Though this hardly counted as space, Cord insisted. They would remain at an altitude of three hundred kilometers the entire time, never leaving the comforting band of Earth’s low orbit.

  “I mean, you don’t have to always be making big romantic gestures with me,” Rylin insisted. Last year he’d whisked her off to Paris, and now this?

  “Maybe I like big romantic gestures,” Cord replied.

  “I know. But next weekend, let’s cook tacos and watch a holo. Something more . . . low-key,” she finished, and smiled. “I guess I feel silly being on a flight to nowhere.”

  They had taken off from New York a few minutes ago, in the late afternoon, and would land back in New York just two hours after departure, having circumnavigated the entire globe. They had already technically reached orbit, which meant that they weren’t burning any more fuel. The Skyspear worked like a high-speed satellite, propelled by the slingshot effect of Earth’s gravity.

  Their “viewing suite,” one of several dozen in first class, was essentially a private living room, containing a stone-colored couch and a pair of armchairs. No bed, Rylin had noted right away, in a confusing combination of relief and disappointment.

  The real showstopper was the flexiglass that lined most of the floor and one entire wall. Rylin could scarcely look away. It was heart-stopping but exhilarating, watching the view unfurl beneath them. The entire world felt like a secret, wild and full of promise, revealing itself only to her.

  On the edge of the glittering patchwork quilt, a golden crescent of sun just tipped over the planet’s curve. That was one of the highlights of this evening cruise: that they would fly straight into the dawn and through to the other side. Rylin wished she’d brought her vid-cam.

  “This isn’t about the destination, Rylin. It’s about the journey.” Cord came to stand behind her, wrapping his arms around her and resting his chin on her shoulder.

  But Rylin felt as if most of her life had been about the journey, rather than the destination. Now she finally had a sense of purpose, and she didn’t want to make any moves unless they were in the right direction. She didn’t need to slow down and enjoy the ride. She wanted to get where she was going, and then enjoy being there.

  “Besides, I wanted to do something special tonight. Isn’t it nice, being so far from New York?” Cord gestured down to the city, which was already a tiny, pulsing firefly receding behind them. “Really puts things in perspective.”

  “The world does look small from up here,” she agreed.

  “The world is small.”

  “Maybe to you!” Rylin spun around, her breath catching at how close Cord was. Her blood felt as if it had rushed to her fingertips, her lips. “To me, it’s enormous.”

  “For now. It’s my goal to change that.”

  Rylin hesitated. She knew she should probably say something, point out that Cord was trying to throw money at their relationship again, just as he had the last time. But she didn’t want to ruin the moment. She liked Cord for Cord, not for the expensive things that came along with dating him.

  “You have that wrinkled-nose, lost-in-thought look.” Cord smiled. “Whatever it is, you don’t have to take it so seriously.”

  “Maybe you don’t take things seriously enough.” Rylin meant it as a joke, but her delivery wasn’t quite right. Cord looked hurt.

  “I take you seriously,” he countered.

  “Sorry.” Rylin glanced back down at the view, still pensive. “I wish my mom were here. She would have loved to see this.”

  “Really?” Cord sounded skeptical, as if he couldn’t picture Rylin’s mom up here—which he probably couldn’t, she realized. He had never kn
own her mom as anything except the maid.

  She tried not to sound defensive. “She loved adventures. She was the one who always dreamed of getting to see Paris.”

  Cord seemed to have nothing to say to that. He never did, Rylin thought in chagrin, not when the conversation got heavy like this. For someone who’d suffered plenty of losses of his own, he wasn’t very good at talking about them.

  He settled down on the couch, letting her study the view in silence. Eventually Rylin came to sit next to him, leaning her head on his shoulder. “Tell me everything I missed this past year,” she demanded.

  “Where should I begin?”

  “At the beginning,” Rylin teased, and Cord smiled.

  “Fair enough. I guess the first story is what happened to Brice on the way to Dubai. . . .”

  Rylin tipped her head back, listening to Cord’s smattering of anecdotes from the past year: the trip he and Brice took to New Zealand, the time his cousins came to visit from Rio and overstayed their welcome, the prank Cord pulled on his friend Joaquin. She listened, and yet she didn’t actually care that she had missed any of these things.

  Cord had a tendency to focus on the big, epic moments, things like this Skyspear cruise. But a relationship wasn’t made or broken on the dramatic stories. It was built the rest of the time, during the drowsy late-night conversations, the laughter over a bag of pretzels, the quiet study sessions after class. That was what Rylin loved.

  She realized that Cord had finished talking, and was looking at her in a way that brought color to her cheeks. “I’ve missed you, Myers,” he said. “This might sound weird, but I missed having you to talk to more than anything else. There were a lot of things that I only talked about with you.”

  Rylin reached for his hand. She knew what he meant—that underneath the romance, they had also been friends. “I missed talking to you too.” She really had missed him, she thought, even when she was with Hiral.