The Towering Sky

by Katharine McGee

  They had spent the last two nights at the Nuage. “How perfect that we’re ending our time in New York the same way it began,” Elise had pointed out, though Calliope didn’t answer. She knew the real reason they had stayed an extra night, instead of taking yesterday’s Hyperloop train.

  Elise had been holding out hope that Nadav would change his mind, and come running after them in some grand romantic gesture. But as the hours ticked by and they didn’t hear from him, it became apparent to both of them that he wasn’t coming.

  Calliope lifted her eyes to the mirrored wall of the bitbanc on the corner and was startled at the version of herself she saw reflected there. Because she knew this girl. This was Leaving Calliope, the girl who skipped eagerly from one place to another, standing next to her mom in a sleek coat and boots, an assortment of luggage wheeling along in her wake.

  She and Elise were clutching their usual hazelnut lattes, their bags jostling with their favorite snail-cream moisturizers and the massage pillows that helped them fall asleep on train rides. Each detail was part of the ritual, familiar from all the other times they’d left town at the end of a con; yet it felt all wrong. This time they weren’t skipping away, bowled over with laughter, flush with the cheap thrill of success.

  They were subdued. A miasma of regret hung over them; and Calliope imagined that their steps resounded louder than usual, like in an echo chamber, because each step took them farther and farther away from New York. From the only people who actually cared about them.

  Not even the bustle of Grand Central could cheer her up. Calliope kept her eyes on the floor, willing herself into invisibility. It wasn’t all that hard, really—after all, it was the other side of the coin from being stared at, and Calliope was an expert at that. The only difference was that this time she had to repel attention instead of attract it. She retreated into herself, imagining an invisible force field that she wore like a cloak.

  She wondered how long it would take everyone to forget her.

  The kids at school would go first, she thought. After all, what did they know about her, or she about them? They would whisper about her for a while—Whatever happened to that British girl, the one with the weird name? She hoped there would at least be some gossipy rumors. That she’d run away to Hawaii to work on a coffee plantation, or that she was eloping with an older man and her parents didn’t approve—hell, she’d even take rumors about drugs and rehab, as long as she wasn’t forgotten.

  But Calliope wasn’t a fool; she knew they would remember her for a week at most.

  It would take longer for Nadav and Livya and Brice. Don’t think about Brice, she scolded herself. There was no use dwelling on it; it would only hurt her more. She hated to imagine herself quietly vanishing from his memory, like a holo fading out of focus.

  These past few weeks, she had let herself hope that they might have some kind of future. She cared about Brice, with his irreverent humor and sense of adventure, his bouts of surprising sincerity. He knew Calliope better than anyone in the world, except for her mom. Which just went to show that no one in her life had really known her at all.

  She had shown Brice her real self, underneath all the false layers and lies that she wore so well.

  And now that she wouldn’t see him again, Calliope felt alone in a way she hadn’t felt since before New York: as if she would never connect with another person again, for the rest of her life.

  “I wasn’t planning on stopping over in Lisbon, unless you want to,” Elise said, breaking the silence. Her eyes were still red-rimmed from crying, and she pulled a scarf closer around her neck, but at least her voice was steady.

  Calliope knew her next line. She was supposed to suggest Biarritz or Marrakech, make a joke about how her tan was fading, and couldn’t they go someplace warm? Instead she shrugged and pulled the force field closer around herself.

  Elise smiled bravely and tried again. “Beginning or end?” she asked, nodding toward a young couple holding hands. They looked very East Coast preppy, with their crisp sweaters and matching monogrammed luggage.

  Calliope knew what her mom was doing, feeding her cues, reminding her of the dialogue they used to fling back and forth at each other. Beginning or End was a game they would play, guessing whether people were at the beginning or end of their respective journeys—whether they were starting out on a vacation or returning home. Calliope and Elise used to love it because it made them feel superior; because of course they were always at the start of a journey, every single time.

  Calliope didn’t feel very superior right now, though. “I don’t know,” she said vaguely, and her mom fell silent.

  A train pulled up to the platform, its sleek chrome curves stamped with the purple Rail Iberia logo. Calliope stepped back as the new arrivals flooded out. Some were flushed with excitement, others dull-eyed with weariness; but all of them here, in New York, about to start whatever adventure this city might hold for them.

  The moment the last passenger had de-boarded, the train’s doors closed, and the seats began to swivel a perfect 180-degree arc to face the other way. A flurry of lemon-yellow cleaning bots instantly scoured the train car from top to bottom, changing out the seat covers and sterilizing everything with ultraviolet light. Calliope remembered the first time she’d seen a train self-cleaning, when she was eleven and she and her mom ran away from London. The pulses of neon purple through the windows had looked to her like a fairy rave.

  A crowd had started to gather around them, pushing hungrily toward the waiting train; because once its doors opened it would take off in a matter of minutes.

  “I’m sorry. This is all my fault,” Elise said and sighed.

  Calliope felt the bitter taste of guilt in her mouth. “No, it’s my fault. If it wasn’t for me, we would still be living our normal lives.”

  “What normal lives?” Elise kept untwisting and then re-twisting her scarf from around her neck. Calliope saw that her hand—still wearing her wedding ring—was shaking. “Nothing about our lives is normal, and it’s all my doing. I built this life for us, a life that consists of nothing but running away! And just when we were starting to live somewhere, when you finally had friends, and a boyfriend, we have to leave again.”

  He wasn’t my boyfriend, Calliope wanted to protest, but the point didn’t seem worth arguing. Instead she wrapped an arm around her mom and pulled her close. “I’m not a child. I’ve known what I was doing for a while now. You can’t blame yourself,” she said reassuringly.

  Elise pulled away. “Don’t you see? It’s because of me that you aren’t a child! I forced you to grow up too soon—to be an adult before you were ready!”

  Calliope paused at the truthfulness of her mom’s words. Maybe she had grown up too soon. Maybe that was why she sucked at being a teenager, because she’d long ago adapted to the adult rules for conduct. She knew how to be sincere and how to be sneaky, how to dress for parties in prisons or palaces, how to evade the truth and get things for free.

  She knew everything except how to be herself.

  Behind Elise, the doors to the Hyperloop cars shot open, and the crowd shoved forward to pour themselves inside.

  “You should stay,” Elise whispered, so softly that Calliope thought at first she hadn’t heard her.

  “What?”

  “Nadav isn’t angry with you. He’s angry with me. If you stayed, he wouldn’t blow your cover—wouldn’t tell everyone the truth about us.” Elise’s eyelashes trembled. They looked impossibly thick and fringed, but then, they weren’t real—like so much of her. “You could stay in New York. You couldn’t go back to Nadav’s apartment, of course, but you’ll figure something out. And now that you wouldn’t be living with him, you could be yourself, not so buttoned-up and prissy. . . .”

  It took a moment for her mom’s meaning to dawn, and when it did, Calliope felt stunned. “Stay . . . without you?”

  Elise cupped her hand under Calliope’s chin and looked directly into her eyes. “You’re ready, sweeth
eart. You don’t need me anymore.”

  The import of those words seemed to bounce around Grand Central. Calliope imagined them repeating over and over; she imagined them in bright neon like the signs above the food stalls. You’re ready. How long had she waited for her mom to say that? And now that it had happened, she wasn’t sure she actually wanted to hear it.

  “Where would I go?”

  “You’ll figure it out. You’re spontaneous and resourceful.” Elise smiled, but Calliope barely saw it through her blurry vision. “You learned from the best, after all.”

  “Train 1099 to Lisbon departs in two minutes,” an electronic voice boomed over the speakers.

  And then they were both crying: real, ugly tears, not the soft dewy ones they used during cons. Calliope felt the other Rail Iberia passengers swerving around them, shooting them looks of irritation or pity, or ignoring them altogether. Those were the genuine New Yorkers, Calliope thought, the ones who could see something unpleasant—like a mother and daughter crying at Grand Central—and skip right over it.

  She wanted to be one of them, she realized. A genuine New Yorker. She wanted to stay, to keep building a life here, even if it meant she had to do it alone.

  “There are a lot of solo cons you can run, you know,” Elise was saying. “The one-handed flapover works well, and ghost crown, and you can always adapt the runaway princess to—”

  “It’s okay, Mom. I’ll be fine,” Calliope assured her, and they both knew in that moment that her mind was made up.

  Calliope felt her mom’s arms closing tight around her, her heartbeat hammering through her ribs. “My darling girl. I’m so proud of you,” Elise said fiercely.

  “I’m going to miss you.” Calliope’s statement was muffled against her mom’s shoulder.

  “I’ll let you know where I end up. I’m thinking the Italian Riviera. Who knows, maybe you can come meet me in Capri for New Year’s,” Elise replied in a passable approximation of her normal tone.

  “Thirty seconds,” interrupted the canned voice of the automated reminder.

  “Be safe. I love you,” Elise said, and then it was one last hug, all elbows and tangled coats, and a tear exchanged from one cheek to another; and with that Elise was stepping onto the train, her enormous suitcases floating ahead of her toward the luggage compartment.

  “I love you too,” Calliope answered, though her mom couldn’t hear. She stood there waving, her eyes glued to the bright red of Elise’s sweater, long after the train had sped away on its whispering rails.

  Finally she turned and lifted her eyes toward the ceiling, wondering where in this massive city she would go now.

  LEDA

  LEDA STEPPED UP to the NYPD headquarters, queasy with anxiety.

  Her contacts lit up with an incoming ping, and she turned quickly aside, hoping for a split second that it was Avery—but no, it was Watt. Again. Leda let the ping roll on, unanswered.

  Watt had been trying her practically once an hour for the past day. Leda kept on ignoring him. She had nothing to say to Watt right now.

  Because she still loved him. And Leda knew that if she let herself speak to him, if she heard his voice for even a single instant, she would lose her nerve and back down from what she was about to do.

  She tried Avery one final time, her heart hammering. She’d been so certain that Avery would be here—Avery had promised she would, late last night, when Leda had pinged her in twisted, cold fear. “Of course I’ll be there,” Avery had assured her. “Let’s meet at the station at seven.”

  “Can you come here first, to my place?” Leda asked, her voice small. She wanted to be walked to her murder confession, like a child being walked to school.

  “I’ll meet you at the station, I swear,” Avery answered.

  Now it was almost 7:20, and Avery still hadn’t shown. Leda was starting to think she wasn’t coming. She couldn’t blame her: Avery had plenty to deal with right now; she didn’t need Leda’s mess piled on top of her own.

  Still, Leda wished she didn’t have to do this alone.

  She’d barely made it through breakfast with her parents. They had coptered back from the Hamptons late last night. Leda could tell that things weren’t completely resolved between them—she could see the questions in her mom’s eyes—but she also knew that her mom hadn’t left. And when she came downstairs this morning, her dad was cooking waffles: the delightfully fat kind, loaded with chocolate chips and whipped cream. The way he always used to, back when they ate breakfast as a family.

  When her mom came down and started to set the table, Leda realized that it would be okay. Her family might not be anywhere near healed yet, but it would be, eventually.

  She almost—almost—changed her mind about confessing.

  “You okay, sweetie?” her mom had asked. Leda startled, wondering if Ilara had somehow guessed her plans; but then she realized that her mom meant the Avery-Atlas news.

  Instead Leda mumbled that she was worried about Avery and took a bite of her waffle. She forced herself to finish the entire plate, because she didn’t know when she would get to eat again. What would they feed her in prison?

  She’d taken a hover down to the police station, a last little act of extravagance. As it slid seamlessly down her street, Leda had leaned against the flexiglass window, staring out at the view for once, instead of flicking through the feeds on her contacts. She tried to memorize every detail of her neighborhood, every iron gate and brick step and shining entrance pad. It all felt imbued with a new poignant significance, because Leda was seeing it for the last time.

  She passed a woman jogging, a baby floating along next to her in a runner’s stroller; Leda suddenly remembered that the woman had once asked her to babysit. Leda had rolled her eyes at the ridiculousness of the request. Isn’t that what room comps are for? she’d replied, and the woman had just laughed. Some people want their children cared for by humans, not bots.

  Leda wondered how old that baby would be when she got out of prison someday.

  She shifted, feeling suddenly ridiculous in her pleated school skirt and uniform shirt. She had debated wearing something else this morning, only to decide it would tip her parents off. Besides, maybe if the police arrested her like this, it would remind them how young she was, and encourage them not to be too harsh with her.

  7:25. Avery still wasn’t here. Leda was lingering. She couldn’t help hesitating a little, right here at the brink—the way she used to freeze up on the high dive, paralyzed in fear of jumping off.

  But there was no going back down the ladder once you’d climbed it. So Leda gathered the frayed remnants of her strength from somewhere deep within herself, and walked through the entrance.

  She had come this early on purpose, at that bleary moment when the night shift traded for the day. She’d expected the officers to be glazed over with sleepy lethargy, their hands curled around cups of powdered coffee. But there was a little shiver of energy in the air, people walking back and forth down hallways with brisk steps, voices conferring behind closed doors. So much for catching the police at a slow moment.

  “Yes?” said the officer behind the front desk, a friendly-looking man with OFFICER REYNOLDS on his name tag.

  Leda shrank into herself like a snail in a shell, prolonging this moment, her last one of freedom. “I’m here to offer some information,” she declared.

  “Information regarding . . . ?”

  “The death of Eris Dodd-Radson.”

  Just saying Eris’s name pulled her back toward that dark, bitter despair. Don’t cry, she told herself, blinking back tears. Leda never cried in public. It was one of her cardinal rules.

  “Ah. The girl who fell off the roof?” Reynolds mused aloud, and it struck Leda speechless that he barely remembered who Eris was. That she’d been nothing to him but a name, while Leda had been thinking about her nonstop for the past few months.

  “Also, the death of Mariel Valconsuelo.” She’d practiced the sentence dozens of times, sounde
d it out in her head, but still it came out shaky and nervous.

  Reynolds’s eyebrows shot up, and he looked at her with new interest. “You’re Leda Cole, aren’t you?”

  “I—” She opened her mouth, but her throat was sandpaper-dry. Did they already know she was guilty?

  “Thanks for coming by so quickly,” he said, with an energy that surprised her, “but we aren’t quite ready to gather supporting testimonies. Honestly, after what Miss Fuller told us, we may not need it.”

  Avery? What did she have to do with any of this?

  “Supporting testimony?” she repeated.

  “When your friend said you would be coming by, I didn’t realize she meant this morning,” he told Leda, almost genially.

  “Avery was here?” That explained why the station was more awake than it should have been this early in the day: the frisson of electricity sizzling throughout the place, as if someone very important had just come through, causing quite a stir.

  “She left barely half an hour ago,” Reynolds informed her, and then, more softly: “None of us had any idea what that girl was hiding.”

  His words caused something in Leda to snap. “They aren’t even related, okay? Leave her alone! She’s already heard enough of that—that filth!”

  Reynolds lifted an eyebrow. “I wasn’t talking about her family situation. I was talking about what she did. She just confessed to the deaths of Miss Dodd-Radson and Miss Valconsuelo. Her parents took her home on temporary bail.”

  What? Leda felt suddenly dizzy. She pressed her hands against the desk to keep herself from toppling over. “Avery didn’t kill those girls,” she said very softly.

  “She confessed to it. We have it on record.”

  “No, she wouldn’t . . . Avery never . . .”

  Reynolds gave a delicate cough. “Miss Cole, I’m sure you want to help your friend, but she’s already being helped quite a bit. Don’t forget who her father is. It’s too early for me to take your testimony, and anyway, you look tired,” he said, not unkindly, and gestured at her uniform. “Why don’t you go on to school?”