The Towering Sky

“Look, can we just get this lab done with, and—”

“Forget the lab, Rylin.”

She was startled by the flash of anger that ran through Cord’s words. Reluctantly she took off the VR headset and set it on the table.

“What is it?”

“Why are you acting like this?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Rylin protested weakly—because she knew exactly what he meant, and felt suddenly ashamed of herself. She fiddled awkwardly with the strap on the headset.

“Did I do something to upset you?” Cord pressed.

Their eyes met, and Rylin felt herself flush a bright agonized red. Telling Cord the truth meant admitting how she’d felt about him last year: that she’d gone all the way to Dubai chasing him. Yet some part of her insisted that she owed Cord an explanation, no matter how much it stung her pride.

“I saw you with Avery. In Dubai,” she said quietly.

Rylin watched as he sorted through the implications of her words. “You saw Avery kiss me?” he demanded at last.

Rylin gave a miserable nod, not trusting herself to speak. Even though it was months ago—even though she was with Hiral now, and it shouldn’t matter—Rylin felt the shame of that night stealing over her, as sticky and suffocating as ever.

She’d gone to Dubai buoyed by a ridiculous hope that she could find Cord and tell him how she felt. That they could start over. She’d looked for him that whole night, but when she’d finally found him, it was too late. He was with Avery. Kissing her.

“Nothing ever happened again between me and Avery,” Cord said slowly. “We’re just friends.”

Rylin had figured that out eventually, once Avery left for Europe and started dating that Belgian guy or whoever he was. She felt a little foolish. “You don’t owe me an explanation,” she said quickly. “It was all so long ago, it doesn’t matter anyway.”

“Except that it clearly does matter.” Cord’s eyes were unreadable. “I wish you’d said something,” he added softly.

Rylin felt her blood hammering underneath her skin. “Hiral and I got back together,” she felt a sudden need to say.

“Hiral?”

Rylin knew what Cord must be thinking. He was remembering what Hiral had done last year when she’d been working for Cord. “It’s different this time,” she added, not sure why she was explaining herself to Cord anyway.

“If you’re happy, Rylin, then I’m happy for you.”

“I am happy,” she agreed, and she meant it; she was happy with Hiral. Yet somehow the statement had come out a bit defensive.

Cord nodded. “Look, Rylin, can’t we start over?”

Start over. Was that even possible after everything they’d been through? Perhaps it wasn’t a start-over as much as a start-from-here. It sounded nice, actually.

“I’d like that,” Rylin decided.

Cord held out his hand toward her. For a moment Rylin was startled at the gesture, but then she tentatively reached out and shook his hand.

“Friends,” Cord declared. Then he reached for the VR goggles to begin his section of the lab.

Rylin glanced over at him, curious at something she thought she’d heard in his tone, but his expression was already hidden behind the bulky mask of the goggles.

LEDA

LATER THAT AFTERNOON, Leda turned down the hallway toward the main entrance of the Berkeley School. The other students moved in coordinated flocks around her like uniformed birds, all wearing the same navy pants or plaid pleated skirts. Leda watched as they formed into groups, only to exchange a few snitches of gossip before breaking off again. The halls were thick with that frantic back-to-school hum, everyone rapidly recalibrating their relationships after three months apart.

Thank god some relationships didn’t change, she thought gratefully as Avery emerged from a classroom across the hall. Avery had no idea just how much Leda had needed her.

She was oddly glad that Avery had insisted she come to Cord’s the other night. Leda hadn’t exactly been the life of the party—it all felt so garishly loud and bright, and she kept worrying that the darkness would open up within her again, like an earthquake that might erupt at any moment. But nothing all that bad had happened. Actually, Leda realized, it had felt good, doing something almost normal again.

“Come with me to Altitude?” Avery asked, falling into step alongside her. “There’s a new thermo-shock yoga class I want to try. Super hot for the stretch, freezing for the cooldown.”

“I have some studying to do tonight,” Leda said, adjusting her crossbody bag over her shoulder.

“Our first day back? We don’t even have any homework yet!”

“It’s my SAT tutor. I need to push my score above a three thousand.” Leda was applying to Princeton. Her mom had gone there, and lately, Leda had found herself trying to be more and more like her. It was a new impulse, given that she’d spent the first eighteen years of her life trying to be the opposite of her mom.

“You’re welcome to come with me, if you want the extra practice,” she added, but Avery shook her head.

“I’m not taking the SAT. Oxford doesn’t recognize it.”

“Oh, right. Because of Max,” Leda said lightly as they walked through the school’s massive stone gates and out into the fabricated sunshine. Though Leda had to admit that she’d been pleasantly surprised by Max. He wasn’t at all what she’d expected. She couldn’t imagine being attracted to him herself, with his shaggy hair and eclectic Euro style; the way his attention flitted between distraction and sudden, intense focus. But she sensed something fundamentally warm and sturdy about him. He was the type of boy you could trust with your best friend’s heart.

“I wanted to go to Oxford before Max, remember?” Avery insisted, though a goofy smile played around her lips at the mention of him.

Leda froze at the unusual sight of two police officers lingering just past the school’s entrance. Their relaxed poses didn’t fool her one bit. They were watching the ebb and flow of students around the edge of the tech-net, looking for someone in particular.

Leda knew, with an instinctive animal certainty, that they were here for her.

One of the police officers—or maybe they were detectives?—met her gaze, and the flash of recognition in his eyes confirmed her suspicions.

“Miss Cole?” he asked, stepping forward. He was pale and plump, with a curling dark moustache and a name tag that said OFFICER CAMPBELL. In contrast, his partner was a young woman named Kiles; tall and willowy with a dark bronzed tan.

“That’s me,” Leda said reluctantly.

“We were hoping you would come down to the station, answer a few questions for us.”

“Leda . . .” Avery whispered, and bit her lip in alarm. Leda held her head high, ignoring the frantic pattering of her heart. On some level she had known that this day would come.

She just didn’t know which of her many transgressions she had to answer for.

“What is this regarding?” Leda was proud of how cool and unconcerned her voice came out. But then, Leda had plenty of practice at pretending not to care about things that actually mattered.

“We’ll fill you in at the station,” said Officer Kiles. Her eyes cut significantly to Avery. Through the haze of her panic, Leda felt a sharp curiosity. Whatever this was, it was confidential.

“I’m sorry, but you can’t just question my friend without reason,” Avery cut in. She had that stubborn, protective look she’d inherited from her father. “Do you have any paperwork?”

Kiles swerved on her. “Avery Fuller, right?”

The fact that they knew her name didn’t subdue Avery one bit. She was used to being recognized, especially these days. “If you think I’m going to let you drag my friend off without any formal request—”

“We’re not dragging anyone. We were hoping that Miss Cole would come voluntarily,” Kiles said smoothly.

“It’s okay, Avery,” Leda cut in, though she was touched by Avery’s defense of her. She knew what would happen if she told the police no. They would just go get whatever paperwork they needed, meaning she would still end up there involuntarily. And with far fewer niceties.

“I’m happy to come,” she told the officers, trying to project more confidence than she felt.

“How are you doing, Miss Cole?”

Leda barely refrained from rolling her eyes. She’d always hated that question. It reminded her far too much of what her therapist would ask.

“I’m fine, thank you.” She knew the police didn’t actually care how she was doing. The question was a vacuous courtesy or perhaps some kind of test.

She tucked her heels behind the legs of her dented metal chair and glanced impassively around the interrogation room. She didn’t see the telltale shimmer in the air, like a self-contained heat wave, that usually indicated a security cam—but that didn’t mean anything, did it? Surely the police were recording her some other way. Or would they need her parents’ consent for that, since she was still a minor?

Across the metal table, both police officers blinked at her, revealing nothing. Leda kept her lips pursed, content to let the silence swirl around her.

“Are you aware of why you’re here?” asked Officer Campbell.

“I’m here because you asked me,” Leda said crisply.

Campbell leaned forward. “What do you know about Mariel Valconsuelo?”

“Who is that?” Leda asked with more force than she should have.

“You don’t know her?” Campbell laid his palms on the table, causing a holographic insta-screen to flare to life before him. Leda craned her neck, but from her perspective the holo was just a flat, opaque rectangle of pixels. He tapped the screen to input a series of commands, and a hologram burst to life, visible to all of them.

It depicted a Hispanic girl around Leda’s age, with curling dark hair and conspicuous eyes. There was something fierce and determined in her features. She wasn’t smiling, the way most people did in their official ID photos.

It was the face that, along with Eris’s, had haunted Leda’s nightmares for the past year.

Suddenly Leda was back in Dubai, terrified and helpless on that beach, and Mariel was looming over her, her gaze sharp with hatred. You killed your sister, Leda, she’d spat. A light from the dock had illuminated Mariel from behind, limning the edges of her form, making her look like some kind of avenging angel in her black bartender’s outfit. An angel sent from hell, to hold Leda accountable for all the ugliness in her heart—

“It looks like you might recognize her,” Kiles said pointedly.

Shit. Leda tried to get a hold on her emotions. “Maybe I’ve seen her around? She seems familiar, but I don’t know why.”

“Mariel worked as a waitress at Altitude Club,” Campbell offered in a condescending tone. As if Leda was supposed to seize gratefully on that fact and thank him for it.

“I guess that explains it.” Leda shrugged, but the officer wasn’t done.

“She was also at the launch event for the Mirrors in Dubai. She was part of the Altitude Club staff that the Fullers brought over to work the event.” His eyes were twin globes of watchfulness. “According to her family, she was also dating Eris Dodd-Radson, before Eris’s death.”

Leda was very quiet and still. She tried to breathe silently, in and out through her nostrils, deliberate yoga breaths. She waited for the other shoe to drop.

Officer Kiles was the one who broke the silence. “You didn’t meet her in that context? As Eris’s girlfriend?”

“Eris didn’t exactly gush about her relationships with me.” That, at least, was true. “I didn’t know Mariel.”

“Didn’t know her?” Kiles repeated. “But apparently you know that she’s dead?”

God, what was wrong with her? “She’s dead?” Leda lifted her eyebrows, as if she couldn’t be bothered to know what had happened to Mariel. “I only used the past tense because Eris is dead. As you may be aware, I was actually on the roof of the Fullers’ apartment when it happened.” The worst day of my life.

Leda wondered, again, how Mariel had died. She hadn’t been able to find that information on the i-Net, and it wasn’t as if the obituary said what had happened; they never listed the cause of death. Presumably that was in poor taste.

Campbell leaned his elbows onto the table, trying to impress upon Leda how much sheer physical space he occupied. “Mariel drowned. Her body was found in the East River.”

Leda’s mind lurched violently to one side, as if yanked by a thin thread of memory, but it snapped off and floated away before she could be certain of it. She felt cold all over.

Mariel had ended up with the death she’d tried to give Leda. There was a dark irony there, as if this were some kind of poetic justice administered by the gods.

“What does this have to do with me?”

The two police officers glanced at Leda, then at each other, then at Leda again. They seemed to come to some unspoken understanding, because Kiles leaned forward with what she probably assumed was an encouraging expression. “You may not have known Mariel, but she certainly knew you. She was gathering information about you before she died. She had a file on you and your movements.”

Of course she did. Mariel had been planning her revenge on Leda, for what Leda had done to Eris. But the police didn’t know that—right? If they did, wouldn’t she have been brought here a long time ago?

Leda did her best to act afraid, which wasn’t difficult given that her nerves were stretching tighter and tighter over the empty pit of her panic. “Are you saying that Mariel was stalking me?” she demanded.

“That is what it looks like, yes.” There was a pause. “Do you have any idea why she might do that?”

“Isn’t it obvious? She was grief-stricken over the loss of Eris and wanted to feel close to her. So she turned to Eris’s friends.”

It was a gamble, but it was the best Leda could come up with on the fly.

There was a silence heavy with meaning, as if all the air in the room had gone stale. Finally Campbell lifted his brows. “You see, until now, we thought Mariel’s death was accidental. But we recently uncovered new evidence that suggests it might have been the result of foul play. So we’ve reopened the case as a murder investigation.”

Mariel had been murdered? But who would do such a thing, and why? Leda blinked, panicked that the subject of her thoughts was somehow visible.

“We’re trying to understand what was going on with Mariel before she died. Especially since she had been dating Eris.” Officer Campbell lifted an eyebrow to underscore the strangeness of it, that two young women should die under unexpected circumstances, so soon after dating each other.

“What kind of new evidence?” Leda asked as innocently as she could.

“That’s classified.”

Leda’s mind echoed with a strange, unsettling silence. It was a silence that rang with chilly finality, like the weight of a gravestone, as if the entire current of the East River was pressing down on her chest, forcing the air from her lungs. They might find out.

If the police were investigating Mariel, they might somehow discover Leda’s relationship to Eris—and worse, the fact that Leda had accidentally pushed her. . . .

“Mariel was very fixated on you,” Kiles was saying. “I don’t think it’s just because you were friends with Eris. Do you know of any other reason she might have been watching you?”

“I don’t know,” Leda said defensively, wishing she could put her hands over her ears to block out the terrifying silence. Fear and alarm were swirling wildly through her.

“Perhaps you—”

“I don’t know!”

The words burst out of her like bullets and rebounded sharply around the room. Leda put her hands firmly on the surface of the table to hide their trembling and stood.

“I have made every effort to be cooperative,” she said clearly. “But this line of questioning is useless. I didn’t know this Mariel person and have no information about what happened to her. If you need to get in touch with me again, please do so through my family’s lawyer. Otherwise, I believe we’re done here.”

Leda stormed away, half expecting one of the detectives to stop her. But neither of them said a thing.

Outside the station, she leaned against a wall for support, her mind spinning through the implications of what had just happened.

The police were reinvestigating Mariel’s death. They had already discovered the connection between Mariel and Leda. How long would it take before they found out the reason Mariel was stalking her: that Leda had pushed Eris off the roof?

And that wasn’t the only thing that Mariel had known before she died. There were also the other secrets: Rylin’s, and Avery’s, and Watt’s. The secrets that Leda told her in a drug-fueled haze. If the police kept digging, they might discover Mariel’s connection to the others too. They were in danger, and it was her fault.

She was going to have to see them again, she realized. All of them. Even Watt.

WATT

YOU’RE NERVOUS.

I’m not nervous, Watt insisted, then realized that he was perched on the very edge of Avery Fuller’s couch. He scooted back against the pillows self-consciously.

Okay, he told Nadia. Maybe a little nervous.

When Leda flickered him last night, Watt had practically slid out of his desk chair in shock. He almost thought the message was some kind of twisted practical joke from Nadia. He hadn’t been expecting to hear from Leda anytime soon—really, anytime ever—given the bleak finality of their good-bye last year.

Then Watt realized that it was a group message, and the other two recipients were Avery and Rylin. We need to talk—in person, Leda had written. I think we’re all in danger.

And despite the gravity of the situation, despite the fact that he should probably be concerned about whatever Leda had discovered, Watt couldn’t help feeling a fragile hope ballooning in his chest. He was going to see Leda again.

He’d shown up early to Avery’s apartment, hoping that he might catch Leda for a moment alone; after all, she was the one who’d summoned them all to this group meeting. But she hadn’t yet arrived. Watt just sat there silently, ignoring Avery’s pointed glances, trying to figure out what the hell he was going to say. How did you greet the girl you loved when you hadn’t seen her in eight months—when her last words to you were If you care about me at all, you’ll leave me alone?

He cast his gaze nervously around the room, all brocade carpets and blue-patterned wallpaper and carved antiques that looked as if they’d been shipped straight from Versailles. For all Watt knew, maybe they had. He’d forgotten how imposing it was simply to get this high: switching on the 990th floor to the private elevator that opened onto the Fullers’ landing, then stepping through that massive two-story entryway. He’d felt a bit like Hercules climbing the staircase of the gods to Mount Olympus.

Now here he was, in the fabled sky island, the bright human aerie perched atop the greatest structure in the world. Watt glanced out the floor-to-ceiling windows, the flexiglass so impossibly clear that it looked like it wasn’t there at all. He felt like he could stretch out his hands and brush the sky. What was it like for the Fullers, having no neighbors except those below them? Didn’t it feel strange that their only connection with the rest of the city was the opening to their private elevator shaft?

His head darted up at the sound of the doorbell, but then he realized that of course Leda wouldn’t need to ring the doorbell at all. She was on the preapproved entry list here.

“I thought we were done with all this.” Rylin Myers sank into the opposite armchair.

“I thought it was over too. A long time ago.” The sleeve of Avery’s sweater dress fell forward as she reached for a glass of lemon water. A platter of snacks was arranged on the coffee table before them, completely untouched.

How like Avery to provide refreshments at a time like this. Yet Watt couldn’t help thinking that it was oddly comforting, as if Avery’s unobtrusive hospitality was helping diffuse the tension.

He’d almost forgotten that when he first met Avery, he’d thought he was infatuated with her. But after dating Leda—after realizing what it really felt like to fall for someone—Watt knew that all he’d felt for Avery was a crush. He and Avery were much better off this way, as occasional friends.

He heard footsteps again, and before he could figure out what his first words to her would be (Something witty, Nadia, help!) Leda stepped into the living room, knocking all the air from the immediate vicinity.

She was even thinner than before, draped in a black turtleneck sweater, and her hair was cut short. It drew attention to the stark architecture of her face.

Leda’s eyes automatically rose to meet his. For a moment there was no one in the room but the two of them. Watt swallowed against the maddening flood of old tendernesses and love and frustrations that rose up in him.

She was really here. For the first time in months, she was here, and Watt couldn’t believe it; he felt as if he’d taken an adrenaline boost, slapped a million caffeine patches over every last inch of his skin. It was as if he’d been in a trance these long months without Leda, and seeing her again had struck him violently back to life.

“I would apologize for being late, except I think you’re all early,” she said smoothly, taking a step forward. Watt had forgotten the way she moved, as if every motion began in her warm, dark eyes, and flowed unbroken all the way to her ballet flats. She sat down next to Avery and crossed one leg over the other, only the slight jangling of her foot betraying her anxiety.

“We’re early because your message was so terrifying and vague!” Rylin cut in. “What’s going on?”

“The police are investigating Mariel’s death.”

There was a beat of collective silence at Leda’s announcement. Avery twisted her hands in her lap. Rylin’s eyes were wide with horror.

Nadia, Watt thought fiercely, what do the police know so far? And why weren’t we keeping tabs on this?

I’m sorry. But you know I can’t hack the police department. They back up those files using location-specific hardware protections.

Leda explained that police detectives had called her in for questioning because they were reopening the investigation into Mariel’s death—this time as a homicide case. The cops had clearly found a connection between Leda and Mariel, but they didn’t seem to understand it yet.

Avery clutched a chenille pillow to her chest. “Did you tell them about Dubai?”

“You mean, did I tell them that Mariel tried to kill me? I don’t think it would make me look very good in a murder investigation. All I said was that I have no idea what happened to her.”

“None of us know anything!” Rylin burst out. “So we’re fine, right? That’s the end of it?”

“Except that Mariel knew our secrets,” Watt said, speaking up for the first time.

All three girls whirled around to face him. Avery’s and Rylin’s eyes were wide and startled and thick-lashed; but Leda just met his gaze evenly. She’d clearly already been down this line of thought.

“She knew our secrets,” he repeated. “There’s a clear connection between Mariel and us. Now that the police are digging into her death, it’s only a matter of time before they figure it out. After all, they already found Leda.”

Leda gave a terse nod of agreement, her dangle earrings brushing forward over the collar of her sweater.

“Are you saying that we’re suspects?” Rylin demanded.

Watt knew what she meant. If Mariel had been gathering files on all of them, it could look like they’d killed her to cover up what she knew. It was proof of motive, if nothing else.