The Towering Sky

by Katharine McGee

  She started to take a step forward, but her mom recoiled, her features twisted into a mask of pain. Avery realized that her mom was silently crying. “Stop. Please, just stop!”

  Avery felt tears slide down her own cheeks. “I tried to stop, don’t you get it? Sometimes you can’t pick who you love. Sometimes love chooses you.” She bit her lip. “Don’t you remember what it felt like to fall in love and know this was the person you were meant to be with?”

  For a half second, Avery saw a flicker on her mom’s face, aqueous and uncertain, and then just as quickly it was gone. “You don’t know half of what you’re saying. It’s a hormonal mistake; you’re still children, for god’s sake—”

  “We’re both adults, actually,” Atlas interrupted. Didn’t their parents remember that they had both voted in the election?

  “What’s wrong with you?” Pierson cut in. “Why would you do this to us? Our only daughter and our only son? You’re disgusting.”

  We aren’t doing it to you, Avery wanted to cry out, trying not to wince at his stinging words. This wasn’t about her parents at all. If anything, it existed in spite of them.

  “We love each other,” Atlas said softly. “I know it seems unlikely, and maybe even selfish, but it’s happened. It’s real.”

  Then, to Avery’s surprise, he sank down onto one knee before their dad. He looked curiously as if he were about to propose. It took a moment for Avery to realize what he was doing.

  He was begging their dad for help.

  “Please,” Atlas implored him. “I know this is upsetting, because it caught you off guard, but it isn’t disgusting at all. It’s true love, which makes it the most rare and beautiful thing in the world. Avery and I can survive this—our family can survive this, I swear it—but only as long as you support us.”

  Avery was stunned at his boldness. Was he really asking their parents for their blessing?

  “This is New York,” Atlas went on, undaunted. “You just need to give people enough time to get over it, which we all know they’ll do, sooner than you think. We can figure it out. I’ll move out of the apartment; I’ll change my name; I’ll do anything you ask. Please,” he said again, his breath ragged. “You’re Pierson Fuller. You know how easy it is to sway public opinion! New York will follow your lead in this, the way they do in everything! If you reject us, then the world will too. But if you stand by us, and publicly accept us, I know the world will come around.”

  Avery was stunned. She had never even considered the possibility that they might stay in New York and actually be together. But as Atlas spoke, she realized the truth of his words, and a sharp hope began to snag in her chest. It just might work.

  This was New York, where the pockmarked surface of society was riddled with scandals. Everyone had secrets, everyone had done something shocking. Was it really all that bad, for two unrelated young people to fall in love?

  “What are you saying, Atlas? You want me to condone this—this”—her father spluttered—“this abomination?”

  Atlas flinched. “I’m saying that if you can overcome your initial reaction, and think about our happiness—”

  Pierson reached down to brutally haul his son to his feet. “Your happiness is what I’m thinking about! I love you too much to let you make this kind of mistake. Your mother is right; you clearly have no idea what you’re saying.”

  Elizabeth was crying in earnest now, her frame racked with great ugly hiccups. No, Avery realized, she was retching. Her mother was so repulsed by the thought of Avery and Atlas together that she literally wanted to vomit.

  “This conversation is over,” her father shouted. “You both need to leave.”

  When neither of them moved, he slammed his fist on the table. “Get out! Both of you! Can’t you see how upset you’ve made your mother?”

  Avery exchanged a glance with Atlas, but he was shaking his head, as if to say not now. She knew better than to say anything. They just turned and walked in opposite directions, toward their separate bedrooms.

  Only when she was safely ensconced in her room did Avery pull the article back up. It was still as ugly and hurtful as before. And beneath the lurid text, and the photo, there was now a stream of comments.

  In the ten minutes that entire ugly scene had taken, the article had been shared and reposted thousands of times. Avery wasn’t all that surprised. She was the freaking princess of New York, wasn’t she?

  She knew she shouldn’t look, but the words were practically leaping off the page, hurling themselves at her consciousness—

  Don’t be fooled by her perfect exterior—that slut is DISGUSTING!

  I always knew the thousandth floor was one giant orgy!

  Ugh! I have a stepbrother. Excuse me while I go vomit.

  I sat next to her once on a train, and she never even looked my way. What a royal bitch.

  And on and on and on. Avery felt a knot of despair gather in her stomach. She had never imagined that so many people in the world—people she had never even met—could hate her so viciously.

  She curled up in a tiny ball, squeezing her eyes shut to black out the world, wishing herself into oblivion.

  RYLIN

  RYLIN’S SNEAKERS POUNDED a vicious rhythm on the pavement of the outdoor track.

  She usually loved running out here on the deck, past the basketball courts and swimming pools and jungle gyms. But today it felt painfully monotonous, or maybe just painful. No matter how far she ran, the horizon never seemed to change, as if any illusion of progress was just that: an illusion.

  Still Rylin kept going, because even useless movement was better than stillness right now. At least if she kept moving, the air would hiss past her sweat-dampened skin, calm the heat pounding through her. She ran faster and faster, until her hamstrings were burning and she could feel a blister forming on her left ankle. Ahead of her was an artificial pond, where a group of small children were racing miniature hovercrafts, a flotilla of toys with colored flags waving in the breeze.

  This was the point where Rylin usually turned back. But today she pressed onward. She wanted to run until she sweat out all the anger still clinging to her from last night, if that was even possible.

  She couldn’t believe what Cord had done. How dare he get involved in her relationship with Hiral? It was so typical of him, of all the highliers, to think that he could bend and twist the world to his will. How gross, that he had used money to try to knock down the obstacles between them.

  She remembered the Skyspear, the way their bodies had been intertwined in the dawn glow, and fought back a sudden sense of shame. Knowing what she knew now, the memory no longer seemed magical. If anything, it made Rylin feel rather cheap.

  She couldn’t keep doing this. No more thinking about Cord or Hiral. Rylin was more than the sum of the boys she’d loved. She refused to let them define her.

  Her contacts lit up with an incoming ping.

  Rylin tripped from the shock of it, but managed to catch her balance before she fell. She slowed to a walk and turned around, toward the pond. Flecks of golden sunlight danced over its surface.

  She hesitated another instant before giving in and accepting the ping.

  “Hiral. I thought we agreed not to talk,” she said acerbically, lowering herself onto one of the benches.

  “Chrissa reached out. She told me I was supposed to ping you?”

  Rylin winced. She’d been banging around the apartment all morning, letting out loud angry sighs, until Chrissa bullied her into sharing what was going on. “It sounds like you need to talk to Hiral,” she had said. To which Rylin responded by grabbing her sneakers and escaping for a run.

  “That sounds like Chrissa,” she muttered under her breath.

  “I see. Younger sister, meddling again,” Hiral replied. Rylin heard a note of concern beneath the false lightness of his tone.

  Rylin wanted so badly to be angry with him—royally pissed, in fact. But she found that she didn’t really have it in her.

&nb
sp; “How is it?” she asked, because no matter what had happened between them, she still wanted to know that Hiral was okay.

  “Awesome, actually.” She heard the excitement in his voice. “I’ve finished training and started work in the algae-harvesting pens. The only drawback is that I’m eating way more green-protein than I ever wanted to see. I feel like even my sweat is turning green.”

  “Gross,” Rylin snorted at the unexpected image.

  Hiral fell momentarily silent. “What was it that Chrissa wanted me to talk to you about?”

  “It doesn’t matter now.”

  “Okay,” Hiral said, as if he didn’t quite believe her. “For what it’s worth, though, I’m sorry. For everything I put you through. I know you’re still upset with me for leaving town without giving you much warning. But I also know that it was the best thing for us.”

  “I’m getting really sick of everyone telling me what’s best for me, without any actual input from me,” Rylin couldn’t help replying.

  “Trouble in paradise for you and Anderton?”

  This was really weird, talking about Cord with Hiral. “How did you know?”

  “Because I know you, Ry. I saw it in the mall that afternoon, when we were working on your ridiculous project; I wanted to ignore it, but it was there. The way your whole face lit up when you made eye contact with him. I know that look.” Hiral’s voice was very faint in her eartennas, and it suddenly struck Rylin how utterly distant he was, on the other side of the world. “I know because once upon a time, you looked at me that way.”

  Rylin lifted a hand to her eyes, disconcerted. The sunlight was getting brighter.

  Hiral didn’t say anything, just let the moments of silence tick away, though god knows how much those minutes were costing him.

  “Cord told me that he helped you leave town,” Rylin said at last.

  “You know about that?” Hiral asked, and she recognized the guilty note creeping into his voice. “I’m sorry. Please don’t judge me too harshly, okay? I didn’t have a lot of options.”

  It took a moment for Rylin to process his words. “Judge you too harshly?”

  “For going behind your back, asking your ex-boyfriend to help me flee the country. That’s what you’re upset about, right?”

  “Wait—you’re the one who approached Cord?”

  “Yeah, obviously. What did you think, that Cord bribed me to leave or something?” When Rylin didn’t answer, Hiral sucked in a breath. “Rylin, you have to stop assuming the worst of people.”

  “I don’t—”

  “It’s from all your years of living alone, from being the adult and taking care of Chrissa. Trust me, I get it,” Hiral said gently. “But you can’t keep living like that. Always holding people at arm’s length, hiding behind the lens of your camera. Sometimes it’s okay to let people in.”

  Rylin felt a flush of defensiveness—but she also knew that there was an element of truth to his words.

  “Look,” Hiral went on, “the whole thing was my idea. I went to Cord, asking if he could get me a job and a plane ticket away. He kept saying that he didn’t want to get involved, but I talked him into it.”

  “Why? Surely there were other places you could have gone for help,” Rylin began, but Hiral cut her off.

  “Not really, Ry. Getting a job, let alone a job on another continent, is pretty hard to do when you have a record. I needed someone with money and connections. Turns out Cord is the only fancy rich person I knew.” He said it surprisingly without bitterness. “Also,” he added, “I knew that he cared about you so damned much that he would even help me.”

  The children’s hovercrafts were darting eagerly across the water, like dragonflies dancing over the surface, barely even leaving a ripple.

  “But . . .” She trailed off, helpless. It was still wrong, wasn’t it, that Cord would help Hiral get out of the country, then immediately go after Rylin? And not even tell her that he had played a part in getting rid of her ex?

  She heard a rustling on the other end of the line, and a series of muffled voices as Hiral talked to someone else, probably explaining that he was on a ping with an old friend. Rylin wondered if he was talking to a girl. She tried to imagine him stretched out on a deck on that floating city, soaking up the sun’s rays.

  And then, because she wasn’t quite ready to lose Hiral’s voice in her ears, she asked him to tell her more about Undina. She could practically hear him smile on the other end of the line.

  “The first thing you notice when you get here is the sky. It feels so much closer than in New York, which is strange, since of course we’re way higher up in the Tower. . . .”

  Hiral went on for a while, telling her about his routine, out there on the world’s largest floating city. How he was on night shift, because all the new hires started on night shift until they were promoted. How he worked by touch alone, hauling in nets of algae and scraping off the soft plant growth, all in the pitch darkness so the algae wouldn’t be sensitized by light.

  Rylin sat there listening, watching the flow of people past her, the calm waters on the surface of the pond.

  “Ry,” Hiral said, and she realized she’d been silent for a while. “Are you still upset with me?”

  “I’m not upset with you,” she assured him. Hiral was so obviously happy in his new life; she would have to be a pretty terrible friend not to feel happy for him. He belonged where he was, and Rylin belonged here, in New York.

  She just wasn’t sure who she belonged with. Part of her still loved Cord—but she wasn’t ready to forgive him for everything he had done, and said.

  “I have to go. Bye, Rylin,” Hiral said softly.

  She started to say see you later, then realized she wasn’t sure when, if ever, she would see Hiral again. “Take care of yourself, okay?” she told him instead.

  Rylin sat there for a long time, staring thoughtfully at the water, the lines of her face strong and unreadable.

  AVERY

  AVERY FELT HERSELF drifting slowly toward consciousness.

  Some instinct tried to pull her back. She didn’t want to wake up; she should stay here instead, safe in the cool, forgiving darkness.

  But another instinct urged her to pry open her eyelids and sit up, blinking and disoriented. And then she remembered.

  The truth about her and Atlas was out.

  It was early afternoon: Avery must have fallen asleep, lying here atop her bedcovers, reading the hateful things people had scrawled at the bottom of that article. She’d already deleted her page on the feeds—she had to, after she saw the things people were saying there—not that it made much of a difference. They were still cramming the i-Net with all their ugly, foul comments about her.

  What’s done is done, she thought sadly, and now there was no going back.

  Avery became aware of a glowing icon in the corner of her vision, indicating a series of flickers that she must have missed while she was asleep. Bracing herself—what if it was her parents, or worse, Max—Avery muttered the commands that would open her inbox, only to let out a relieved breath. It was Leda.

  But then she read Leda’s series of frantic flickers, and her pulse began to pound in alarm.

  Hey, can you talk? I need to see you.

  Avery???

  Okay, I’m coming over.

  Shit, your parents won’t even let me inside. What the—

  OH. I saw the article. I’m so sorry.

  And then, a few hours later: Just ping me when you can.

  Avery forgot her own overpowering despair in her worry about her best friend. Something had happened, and Leda needed her. It felt good to be needed right now.

  She ran her fingers through her hair, reached for her jacket, and paused. She was still Avery Fuller, and she might as well look it, since the world would be staring at her anyway.

  Quickly, Avery traded her artech pants for a new dress and her favorite black boots. She leaned over her vanity table to program her makeup—carefully, layer by layer
, letting it spray over her face like particle-sized flecks of armor.

  An eerie, heavy stillness hung over the apartment as she moved down the hallway with quick steps. She considered going to check on Atlas, but decided it would be tempting fate. Instead she just sent him a flicker: I’m heading to Leda’s. How are you holding up?

  On the downTower local line, Avery caught a few sidelong glances, a few surreptitious whispers aimed her way. She just kept her eyes down and shoulders up, staring at the dead space between her feet in that way New Yorkers always did. No one bothered her. She marched like that all the way to the Coles’ front door.

  The streets felt hushed with expectation. Avery imagined she could hear the sound of the air itself, moving in its incessant preprogrammed patterns through the dense bulk of the Tower. It felt like a bad omen.

  Leda was in her room, sitting in one of the barrel-backed chairs by her window, her eyes glazed over. That was what worried Avery most of all. Because this was Leda Cole, the girl who couldn’t sit still, the girl who was always plotting and hustling and moving. And now here she was, just staring into space.

  “You okay?” Avery asked, and finally Leda turned around.

  She looked terrible, Avery saw at once; her features strained, her eyes wide. She looked as if she were running on air and unshed tears.

  “Oh, Avery. I’m so sorry,” Leda whispered. She hurried to her feet and threw her arms around her friend. “How are you holding up?”

  “I’ve been better,” Avery said mirthlessly.

  “You don’t have to be brave about this, you know.”

  Avery felt her throat constricting. She sank into the opposite chair. “I’m not very good at it. You’re the brave one, always trying to be so tough, to look out for everyone around you.”

  “I don’t feel particularly brave right now.” Leda sighed sadly. “Avery, why didn’t you tell me that you were called in for questioning about Mariel’s death?”

  It took a moment for Avery to remember the questioning. It felt as if it had happened so long ago, and yet it was only yesterday. “There were a lot of other things going on. Besides, we don’t need to worry about that; none of us had anything to do with Mariel’s death.”