The Towering Sky

Avery had known somehow that he would say it, and yet Max’s declaration still sent a delicious shiver down her spine. She let the words echo for a moment, savoring them, knowing that with those words their relationship had shifted into something new. “I love you too.”

She snaked her arms around Max to pull him closer, feeling the muscles of his back through the fabric of his shirt. He leaned forward to drop a kiss on her forehead, but Avery tilted her face up, so that his lips met hers instead.

The kiss was soft and tender at first, almost languid. But then Max’s hands were tracing over her body with increasing urgency, sending little tingling whorls up and down her nerves. It felt as if her entire body was sizzling beneath her skin, or maybe her skin had grown too small to contain her. Avery’s breath came faster. She clung tighter to Max, feeling like the vines draping along the walls, as if she wouldn’t be able to stand without his support—

“Oh my god, get a room,” someone said, sliding open the door. Avery tore herself back in a sudden panic. She recognized the voice as Cord’s.

“We have a room, thanks. It’s this one,” Max replied blithely.

Avery couldn’t even bring herself to speak. She just watched the horrified amusement spread over Cord’s face as he realized who he’d interrupted. “Sorry, Avery, I didn’t realize. You two, um, carry on.”

He gave a funny double tap on the wall and started to beat a hasty retreat, but Avery had found her voice at last. “Cord, I don’t know if you’ve met my boyfriend, Max?”

Cord looked the same as ever, Avery thought, broad and imposing in his pirate costume, a crimson sash flung dramatically across his open-necked white shirt. He was holding a packet of potshots; a couple other guys, Ty Rodrick and Maxton Feld, were clustered behind him. They’d clearly all been about to smoke.

Cord’s ice-blue eyes held hers for a meaningful moment. Avery wondered if he was thinking about that night too—the one and only time that they had kissed, back in Dubai. It had been reckless and foolish and Avery hadn’t cared; she’d been tumbling down a dark and perilous spiral after losing Atlas, and nothing at all had mattered to her. Not even the implications of that kiss, and what it might do to her relationship with Cord.

She knew it was cowardly and immature, but she and Cord had never spoken of it. She’d barely even seen him afterward; she’d left the next week for England, and then met Max. Part of her felt that she owed Cord an apology. Because afterward, in the cruel light of day, Avery saw that kiss for what it was: a selfish attempt to wipe Atlas from her brain. Cord deserved better.

He smiled at Max and held out a hand. “Great to meet you, Max. I’m Avery’s friend Cord.” And Avery understood without being told that everything was folded into that word, friend. She and Cord would be just fine.

“Oh. This is your greenhouse!” Max edged past Cord, toward the door. “In that case, we should find another room. Maybe one less in demand. Or more geographically convenient.” He said that last bit to Avery, though loud enough that the rest of them all heard. She pursed her lips against a smile and dragged him back out into the party.

The rest of the night passed in a joy-soaked blur. She introduced Max to everyone—Leda stayed just long enough to say hi, though Avery was glad to see that he coaxed a smile from her. Finally, as the party was winding down, they slid into a hovertaxi home.

“You and Cord used to date, didn’t you?” Max asked abruptly.

Avery blinked, caught off guard, but Max didn’t seem to notice.

“He’s the guy, isn’t he? The one who broke your heart before you came to England?” Max sounded almost proud of himself for having figured it out. “I just felt a strange vibe between you, and I wondered.”

Avery’s heart was pounding wildly, echoing in her ears. “You’re right,” she said quickly. “Cord and I had a thing. But it didn’t work out.”

“Of course it didn’t,” Max agreed, as if pointing out the obvious. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. “Because you belong with me.”

Avery loved that about Max: the way he seemed so self-assured, so certain of the world and his place in it. The way he noticed things no one else paid attention to. But right now she needed him to pay a little bit less attention, or he might realize that she hadn’t really told him the truth.

She hadn’t wanted to lie to Max, but what other choice did she have? He couldn’t ever know who had actually broken her heart last year. If he knew the truth, Max wouldn’t want her anymore.

It didn’t matter that she and Atlas were long since over. If anyone found out the truth about them, Avery knew, her life would come crashing down around her.

CALLIOPE (#ulink_335cd299-645e-5c32-a5a0-c546d29c99d2)

CALLIOPE HATED HER bedroom at Nadav’s apartment.

It used to be the formal guest room and still contained the same set of heavy furniture, with clawed feet and angry-looking eagle heads carved into each drawer. The heavy velvet drapes seemed to crush the very air from the room. On the wall facing the bed hung an antique image of dogs killing a deer. Calliope thought it was morbid, but Nadav had won it in an auction and was terribly proud of it. She’d gotten in the habit of throwing a sweater over the painting before she went to bed, so the deer’s mournful eyes wouldn’t haunt her in her sleep.

When Calliope first moved in, she’d instantly begun planning how she would redo the room. She would buy light, airy furniture and colorful pillows and paint the wall with pigmaspectrum paint, in the bold primary palette. But when she mentioned her intention one night at dinner, Nadav had been so shocked that he let his fork clatter loudly to his plate.

“That paint is intended for toddlers’ rooms,” he pointed out, clearly affronted by her suggestion.

Calliope didn’t care that the paint was made for children. She loved the way it subtly shifted colors throughout the day, from a deep angry red all the way to purple and back again. “If you hate it, I can pick something else,” she’d offered as Elise met her gaze meaningfully across the table.

Nadav shook his head. “I’m sorry, Calliope, but you can’t redecorate. We need that room as a guest room for when my mom comes to stay.”

Why couldn’t she change her room just because Nadav’s mom would eventually be sleeping there? “When your mom is staying in my room, where will I—”

“You’ll share Livya’s room, of course.”

The only person who’d seemed unhappier about that than Calliope was Livya, whose lips pursed into a thin, pale line.

Calliope had grown used to a long litany of no’s from Nadav. When she signed up for the school play: No, you should try student government instead. When she wanted to go to a party: No, you have to be home by curfew. When she wanted to get a puppy: No, puppies are a frivolous distraction—at your age, you need to be focused on your studies. As the months went by, Nadav had eventually started to say no before she’d finished voicing her question.

She told herself that it was fine, that she didn’t really care about that stuff anyway. Except maybe for the puppy. At least that would have made her feel less lonely.

Standing now in her bedroom, Calliope let out a petulant sigh. This room might as well have belonged to a stranger. Even after eight months, there was something decidedly temporary about it all, as if Calliope were only camping out here: boxes and suitcases stacked haphazardly in the closet like the belongings of a criminal who might have to run from the law at any moment.

She stepped toward the closet and pushed past the rows of hangers, covered in demure silk dresses and high-waisted slacks. Even the clothes didn’t feel like hers; before they moved in, her mom had sorted through Calliope’s wardrobe with ruthless abandon, tossing out anything tight or revealing or remotely sexy. Thank god that Calliope had secretly managed to salvage a few pieces before that bonfire of the vanities.

She stretched toward the edge of the wall, past an enormous wool coat, until her fingers brushed the bag she was looking for. Quickly she began sifting through it, pulling out an electric bracelet, a pair of gaudy clip-on earrings, her favorite red lip gloss: things she hadn’t worn in months. When she was finally ready, Calliope lifted her eyes to the only thing in the room she did like—the mirror-screen that took up an entire wall.

She kept the room bulbs on their maximum setting and gave a self-satisfied smirk. Her beauty was as vivid, and almost as harsh, as the overbright lighting.

“Here goes nothing,” she said to herself, and was down the hallway without a backward glance.

Calliope felt a little shiver of adventure as she slipped out of Nadav’s apartment. Because she wasn’t just sneaking out of the house. She was sneaking out of her life, shedding her skin, sliding neatly from the role of Calliope Brown into another role. One that she was making up as she went along.

She knew this was risky. But Calliope had hit breaking point. She couldn’t take another night in that cold, gilded apartment, with its thick carpets and ticking clocks. It was the sort of apartment where she knew exactly what was happening at any given moment, because it all ran with such monotonous efficiency. Even now, for instance, Nadav would be sitting at his modular recycled-aluminum desk to review some contract or message before going to sleep. Livya would be tucked safely into her four-poster princess bed, her room comp whispering SAT questions to her throughout the night for some osmosal learning. It was all so terrifyingly predictable.

As she stepped onto the downTower lift, filled with clamor and conversation—all the messy chaos of real life—Calliope felt an overwhelming sense of relief. New York was still here. It hadn’t gone anywhere.

She switched to the monorail at Grand Central, heading out of the Tower altogether, toward the lower Manhattan neighborhood known as the Sprawl. It was as unlike the sleek, ordered reality of the Tower as night from day; parts of it were still radically low-tech, with warped wooden floors and twisted railings. Church steeples rose into the sky alongside bright holograms.

Calliope glanced back at the Tower as she stepped off the monorail. From this angle it seemed to burn more brightly than ever. Next to it, the half-moon looked alone in its isolated glory.

She paused at the corner of Elizabeth and Prince Street, her eyes closed with deceptive nonchalance. It was almost nine on a weeknight and the streets were mostly quiet. But Calliope could feel the Sprawl’s thrum of excitement—the seething, excited pulse of things young and thrilling and illegal.

She pushed open an unmarked brown door and stepped inside.

A wall of sound roared up to meet her: crowds erupting in screams, the slippery beat of electronic music. Another turn down the stairs and Calliope emerged in a bar, all done up in neons and pulsing LED lights, like some kind of video-game speakeasy. The ceiling was lined in prisms of glass that reflected the garish illumination, separating it into a million glowing strands and tossing it down again. The colors were so vibrant that it almost hurt to look at them.

Calliope didn’t bother getting a drink, though she could have; she was over eighteen. She just lingered in the corner, her eyes flicking expertly around the room. It was crowded, with a mix of nerds, tourists, and others who were simply curious. The afternoon show was meant for children, she knew; but the night performance was supposedly much edgier—and more violent.

Someone sounded a gong. The crowd obediently shuffled through the bar to the stadium beyond, clutching their drinks to their chests. Calliope let herself be caught along in the surge, her hair falling loose around her bare shoulders. She was wearing a strapless silver dress and boots, and had even sprayed a temporary inktat patch on her tanned cheek, just for fun. It would leave a sticky film over her face for several days, but the effect was worth it.

The stadium smelled like popcorn and grease. Calliope sank eagerly into her seat and leaned forward, elbows on her knees, to study the ComBots—Combat Robots—waiting around the room. A team of handlers huddled near each of them, clutching tablets as they engaged in last-minute system checks. Calliope caught a surreptitious movement in the corner of her eye and smiled. Probably bookies, recording under-the-table bets. ComBattles might not be illegal, but gambling on them assuredly was.

ComBattles were an expensive and arguably illogical sport, like racing cars used to be—how wasteful to build these sleek, elaborate bots, only to let them tear one another apart. Calliope wondered what it was about humans that made them relish destruction. This was the modern version of gladiatorial fights, or bear baitings, or reality television. For whatever reason, people loved watching things explode.