The Towering Sky Read online

  “Of course they will,” she said resolutely. Though she didn’t know what to expect of her friends right now, least of all her best friend, Leda Cole. When Avery left last spring, Leda hadn’t exactly been in a great state of mind.

  “I’m so glad you came with me,” she added. Max would only stay in New York a few days before heading back for the start of his sophomore year at Oxford. It meant a lot that he’d crossed the ocean for her, to meet the people she cared about and see the city she came from.

  “As if I would pass up the chance for more time with you.” Max reached to brush his thumb lightly over Avery’s knuckles. A thin woven bracelet, a memoriam to a childhood friend who had died young, slid down Max’s wrist. Avery squeezed his hand.

  They tipped a few degrees sideways, tilting into the airstream that shot around the edge of the Tower. Even their copter, which was weighted on all sides to prevent turbulence, couldn’t avoid being buffeted in winds this strong. Avery braced herself, and then the gaping mouth of the helipad was before them: sliced from the wall of the Tower in perfect ninety-degree angles, everything stark and flat and gleaming, as if to scream at you that it was new. How different from Oxford, where curved uneven roofs rose into the wine-colored sky.

  Their copter lurched into the helipad, whipping up the hair of the waiting crowds. Avery blinked in surprise. What were all these people doing here? They jostled together, clutching small image capturers, with lenses gleaming in the middle like cyclopean eyes. Probably vloggers or i-Net reporters.

  “Looks like New York is glad you’re back,” Max remarked, sparking a rueful smile from Avery.

  “I’m sorry. I had no idea.” She was used to the occasional fashion bloggers taking snaps of her outfits, but nothing like this.

  Then she caught sight of her parents, and Avery realized exactly whose fault this was. Her dad had decided to make her homecoming a PR moment.

  The copter’s door opened, its staircase unfolding like an accordion. Avery exchanged a final glance with Max before starting down.

  Elizabeth Fuller swept forward, wearing a tailored luncheon dress and heels. “Welcome home, sweetie! We missed you.”

  Avery forgot her irritation that their reunion was happening like this, in the heat and noise of a crowded helipad. She forgot everything except the fact that she was seeing her mom again after so many months apart. “I missed you too!” she exclaimed, pulling her mom into a tight hug.

  “Avery!” Her father turned away from Max, who had been shaking his hand. “I’m so glad you’re back!”

  He hugged Avery too, and she closed her eyes, returning the embrace—until her dad deftly swiveled her around to better angle her toward the cameras. He stepped back, looking sleek and self-satisfied in his crisp white shirt, beaming with pride. Avery tried to hide her disappointment—that her dad had turned her homecoming into a stunt, and that the media had obliged him.

  “Thank you all!” he declared in his booming, charming voice, for the benefit of everyone recording. What he was thanking them for, Avery didn’t exactly understand, but from the nodding faces of the reporters, it didn’t seem to matter. “We are thrilled that our daughter, Avery, has returned from her semester abroad just in time for the election! Avery would be delighted to answer a few questions,” her dad added, nudging her gently forward.

  She wouldn’t, actually, but Avery didn’t have a choice.

  “Avery! What are they wearing in England right now?” one of them cried out, a fashion blogger whom Avery recognized.

  “Um . . .” No matter how many times she said she wasn’t a fashionista, no one seemed to believe her. Avery turned a pleading glance toward Max—not that he would really be any help—and her attention fastened on the neckline of his flannel shirt. Most of the buttons that marched up the collar were dark brown, but one was much lighter, a soft fawn color. He must have lost that button and replaced it with another, not caring that it didn’t go with the others.

  “Clashing buttons,” she heard herself say. “I mean, buttons that don’t match. On purpose.”

  Max caught her eye, one eyebrow lifted in amusement. She forced herself to look away so she wouldn’t burst out laughing.

  “And who is this? Your new boyfriend?” another of the bloggers asked, causing the group’s focus to swerve hungrily toward Max. He gave a genial shrug.

  Avery couldn’t help noticing that her parents’ gazes had hardened as they focused on Max. “Yes. This is my boyfriend, Max,” she declared.

  There was a mild uproar at her words, and before Avery could say anything else, Pierson had put a protective arm around her. “Thank you for your support! We are so glad to have Avery back in New York,” he said again. “And now, if you’ll excuse us, we need some time alone as a family.”

  “Clashing buttons?” Max fell into step alongside her. “Wonder where that came from.”

  “You should be thanking me. I just made you the most stylish guy in New York,” Avery joked, reaching for his hand.

  “Exactly! How will I handle that kind of pressure?”

  As they walked toward the waiting hover, Avery’s mind drifted back to her father’s final words. Some time alone as a family. Except they weren’t a family right now, because they were missing one very important person.

  Avery knew she shouldn’t be thinking about him, yet she couldn’t help wondering what Atlas was doing, half a world away.

  LEDA

  “ISN’T THIS NICE?” Leda Cole’s mom attempted, her tone remorselessly upbeat.

  Leda cast a brief, disinterested glance around. She and Ilara were standing in waist-deep warm water, surrounded by the jagged boulders of the Blue Lagoon. The ceiling of the 834th floor soared overhead, colored a cheerful azure that clashed with Leda’s mood.

  “Sure,” she mumbled, ignoring the hurt that darted over her mom’s features. She hadn’t wanted to come out today at all. She’d been perfectly fine in her room, alone with her slender, solitary sadness.

  Leda knew that her mom was only trying to help. She wondered if this forced outing had been suggested by Dr. Vanderstein, the psychiatrist who treated both of them. Why don’t you try some “girl time”? Leda could hear him saying, with invisible air quotes. Ilara would have seized gratefully on the idea. Anything to drag her daughter out of this unshakable dark mood.

  A year ago it would have worked. Leda so rarely got a chunk of her mom’s time; she would have been grateful just for the chance to hang out with her. And the old Leda had always loved going to a hot new spa or restaurant before anyone else.

  The Blue Lagoon had opened just a few days ago. After last year’s unexpected earthquake, which sent most of Iceland sliding back into the ocean, a development company had bought the now submerged lagoon from the bewildered Icelandic government at a bargain price. They’d spent months excavating every last sliver of volcanic rock, shipping the whole thing to New York, and re-creating it here, stone by stone.

  Typical New Yorkers, forever determined to bring the world to them, as if they couldn’t be bothered to leave their tiny island. Whatever you have, they seemed to be saying to the rest of the world, we can build it here—and better.

  Leda used to possess that same kind of cool self-confidence. She had been the girl who knew everything about everyone, who dispensed gossip and favors, who tried to bend the universe to her will. But that was before.

  She ran a hand dispassionately through the water, wondering if it was treated with light-bending particles to make it that impossible blue color. Unlike the original lagoon, this one wasn’t filled from a real hot spring. It was just heated tap water, infused with multivitamins and a hint of aloe, supposedly much better than that old foul-smelling sulfuric stuff.

  Leda had also heard a rumor that the lagoon managers pumped illegal relaxants into the air: nothing serious, just enough to make up 0.02 percent of the air composition. Well, she could use a little relaxing right now.

  “I saw that Avery’s back in town,” Ilara ventured, an
d the name splintered through Leda’s protective shell of numbness.

  It had been easy not to think about Avery while she was in England. Avery had never been reliable at vid-chatting; as long as Leda replied to her occasional one-line message, Avery was distracted into thinking that everything was fine. But what if seeing Avery again dredged up all those memories—the ones Leda forced herself not to think about, the ones she had buried deep within her, in the pitch-darkness—

  No, she told herself, Avery wouldn’t want to think about the past any more than Leda did. She was with Max now.

  “She has a new boyfriend, right?” Ilara fiddled with the strap of her black one-piece. “Do you know anything about him?”

  “A little. His name is Max.”

  Her mom nodded. They both knew that the old Leda would have bubbled over at the question, offering various conjectures and speculation about Max, and whether or not he was good enough for her best friend. “What about you, Leda? I haven’t heard you talk about any boys lately,” her mom went on, even though she knew perfectly well that Leda had been alone all summer.

  “That’s because there’s nothing to talk about.” Leda’s jaw tightened, and she sank a little lower in the water.

  Ilara hesitated, then apparently decided to forge ahead. “I know you’re still not over Watt, but maybe it’s time to—”

  “Seriously, Mom?” Leda snapped.

  “You’ve had such a rough year, Leda; I just want you to be happy! And Watt . . .” She paused. “You never really told me what happened with him.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Before her mom could press her further, Leda held her breath and ducked all the way under the surface of the lagoon, not caring that the weird vitamins would make her hair crunchy. The water felt warm and pleasantly quiet, stifling all sound. She wished she could stay submerged forever, down here where there were no failures or pains, no mistakes and misunderstandings, no wrong decisions. Wash me and I shall be clean, she remembered from her days at Sunday school, except Leda would never be clean, not if she stayed under forever. Not after what she had done.

  First there had been that whole mess with Avery and Atlas. Hard to believe now, but Leda used to like Atlas—even, foolishly, thought that she loved him. Until she learned that he and Avery were secretly together. Leda flinched, remembering how she’d confronted Avery about it on the roof, the night when everything went so terribly wrong.

  Their friend Eris had tried to calm down Leda, despite Leda’s shouts that she should back off. When Eris came close, Leda pushed her away—and inadvertently pushed her off the side of the Tower.

  After that, it was no surprise that Avery wanted to leave New York. And Avery didn’t even know the full story. Only Leda had learned the darkest and most shameful part of the truth.

  Eris had been Leda’s half sister.

  Leda found out last winter, from Eris’s ex-girlfriend, Mariel Valconsuelo. Mariel had told her about it at the launch party for the new Dubai tower—right before she drugged Leda and left her for dead, abandoning her at the water’s edge during a rising tide.

  The truth of Mariel’s words had resonated in Leda with sickening finality. It made so much more sense than what she thought was going on: that Eris was secretly having an affair with Leda’s dad. Instead, Eris and Leda shared a dad; and worse, Eris had known the truth before she died. Leda realized that now. It was what Eris had been trying to tell her, that night on the roof, which Leda so drastically misunderstood.

  The knowledge that she’d killed her own sister burned Leda from within. She wanted to pound her fists and scream until the sky split open. She couldn’t sleep, haunted by plaintive images of Eris up on the roof, staring balefully at her with those amber-flecked eyes.

  There was only one way to find relief from this kind of pain, and Leda had sworn never to touch it again. But she couldn’t help herself. With a shaking voice, Leda pinged her old drug dealer.

  She took more and more pills, mixing and combining them with a shocking recklessness. She didn’t care what the hell she took as long as it numbed her. And then, as she’d probably known deep down that she would, Leda took one too many pills.

  She was missing for an entire day. When her mom found her the next morning, Leda was curled atop her bed, her jeans and her shoes still on. At some point Leda must have gotten a nosebleed. The blood had trailed down her shirt to crust in sticky flakes all over her chest. Her forehead felt clammy and damp with sweat.

  “Where were you?” her mom cried out, horrified.

  “I don’t know,” Leda admitted. There was a flutter in the empty cavity of her chest where her heart should have been. The last thing she really remembered was getting high with her old dealer, Ross. She couldn’t account for anything else in the last twenty-four hours; she didn’t even know how she had managed to drag herself home.

  Her parents sent her to rehab, terrified that Leda had meant to kill herself. Maybe, on some subconscious level, she had. She would only be finishing what Mariel started.

  And then, to Leda’s surprise, she learned that Mariel was dead too.

  In the aftermath of that terrifying confrontation in Dubai, Leda had set an i-Net alert to flag any mentions of Mariel’s name. She’d never expected it to catch an obituary. But one day in rehab, she found the obit waiting in her inbox: Mariel Arellano Valconsuelo, age 17, has gone to the Lord. She is survived by her parents, Eduardo and Marina Valconsuelo, and her brother Marcos. . . .

  Has gone to the Lord. That was even more vague than the usual passed away or died suddenly. Leda had no idea what had happened to Mariel, whether she’d been in an accident or suffered a sudden illness. Perhaps she too had turned to drugs—out of grief at losing Eris, or regret for what she’d done to Leda in Dubai.

  At the news of Mariel’s death, a chilling new fear began to seep into Leda. It felt oddly like some kind of omen, like a terrible portent of things to come.

  “I need to get better,” she announced to her doctor that afternoon.

  Dr. Reasoner smiled. “Of course, Leda. We all want that for you.”

  “No, you don’t understand,” Leda insisted, almost frantic. “I’m caught in this vicious cycle of hurt, and I want to break away from it, but I don’t know how!”

  “Life is hard, and drugs are easy. They insulate you from real life, protect you from feeling anything too deeply,” Dr. Reasoner said softly. Leda caught her breath, wishing she could explain that her problem was more than just drugs. It was the gaping vortex of darkness within her that seemed to pull her, and everyone around her, inexorably downward.

  “Leda,” the doctor went on, “you need to break the emotional patterns that cause your addiction, and start over. Which is why I’ve recommended that your parents send you to boarding school when you’ve finished your treatment here. You need a fresh start.”

  “I can’t go to boarding school!” Leda couldn’t stand the thought of being away from her friends—or her family, as broken and fragile as it was.

  “Then the only way you can escape this cycle is with a complete and total overhaul.”

  Dr. Reasoner explained that Leda would have to amputate the poisoned parts of her life, like a surgeon with a scalpel, and move forward with whatever remained. She needed to cut out anything that might trigger her problematic behavior, and rebuild.

  “What about my boyfriend?” Leda had whispered, and Dr. Reasoner sighed. She had actually met Watt earlier that year, when he came to Leda’s rehab check-in.

  “I think that Watt is the worst trigger of them all.”

  Even amid the blind haze of her pain, Leda realized that the doctor was right. Watt knew her—really knew her, beneath every last scrap of deceit, all her insecurities and fears, all the terrible things she had done. Watt was too tangled up in who she had been, and Leda needed to focus on who she was becoming.

  So when she got back from rehab, she broke up with Watt for good.

  Leda’s thoughts were inte
rrupted by a bright-red notification flashing in the corner of her vision. “Look! It’s time for our massages!” Ilara exclaimed, glancing hopefully at her daughter.

  Leda tried to muster up a smile, though she didn’t really care about massages anymore. Massages were something that had belonged to the old Leda.

  She waded through the water after her mom, past the mud mask station and carved ice bar to the cordoned-off area reserved for private spa treatments. They stepped through an invisible sound barrier, and the laughter and voices of the Blue Lagoon cut off sharply, replaced by harp music that was piped in through speakers.

  Two flotation mats were arranged in the sheltered space, each anchored to the bottom of the pool with an ivory ribbon. Leda froze with her hands on her mat. Suddenly, all she could see was the cream-colored ribbon of Eris’s scarf, fluttering against her red-gold hair as she tumbled into the darkness. The scarf that Leda had so drastically misinterpreted, because it was a gift from Leda’s dad—

  “Leda? Is everything okay?” her mom asked, her brow furrowed in concern.

  “Of course,” Leda said stiffly, and she hauled herself onto her massage mat. It began heating up, its sensors determining where she was sore and customizing her treatment.

  Leda tried to force her eyes shut and relax. Everything would be fine, now that all the darkness of last year was behind her. She wouldn’t let the mistakes of her past weigh her down.

  She let her hands trail in the artificially blue waters of the lagoon, trying to empty her mind, but her fingers kept splaying and then closing anxiously into a fist.

  I’ll be fine, she repeated to herself. As long as she kept herself remote, cut away from anything that might trigger her old addictions, she would be safe from the world.

  And the world would be safe from her.

  CALLIOPE

  CALLIOPE BROWN LEANED her palms on the cast-iron railing, looking down at the street seventy stories below.

  “Oh, Nadav!” her mom, Elise, exclaimed behind her. “You were right. This is absolutely perfect for the wedding reception.”