THE FOLLOWING MONDAY, Rylin stood before the grandiose carved entrance to the Berkeley School, immobile with shock. This couldn’t be her, Rylin Myers, wearing a collared shirt and pleated skirt, about to start at a preppy highlier private school. It felt like it was happening to another person, a bizarre series of images that someone else had dreamed.
She adjusted the strap of her tote bag over one shoulder, shifting her weight uncertainly. The world was brightening around her as the timed bulbs subtly adjusted their luminosity to indicate the lateness of the morning. Rylin had forgotten how much she loved the effect; one time she’d sat on Cord’s doorstep as the sun rose outside, just watching the slow shift of the overhead lights. Down on the 32nd floor, the lights never shifted from their single fluorescent setting, unless one of the kids on her block threw something to smash out a bulb.
Well, it was now or never. She started toward the main office, following the highlighted yellow arrows on the school-issued official tablet she’d picked up last week. Unlike her normal MacBash tablet, this one worked within the boundaries of the tech-net that surrounded the school, though it could only carry out basic approved tasks, like checking her academic e-mail account or taking notes. And the tablets all shut down during exams, to prevent cheating. There was no hacking the tech-net, Rylin knew; though plenty of kids through the years had tried.
She tried not to stare as she moved through the hallways. This place looked the way she’d always imagined college campuses, with its wide, light-filled corridors and stone colonnades. Directional holos popped up each time she turned a corner. In a courtyard down the hall, palm trees waved in a simulated breeze. A few kids passed, all wearing the same uniform.
Of course, Rylin had seen the uniform before—in the laundry, back when she worked for Cord Anderton.
She had no idea what she would say when she saw him. Maybe she wouldn’t see him, she thought with a dubious hope; maybe this was a big enough campus that she could avoid him for the next three semesters. But she had a feeling she wouldn’t be that lucky.
“Rylin Myers. I’m here to meet with an academic adviser,” she told the young man behind the desk, when she’d finally reached the main office. She still couldn’t believe that this school even had a human academic adviser. DownTower, things like college recommendations and course assignments were distributed by an algorithm. These people must feel pretty full of themselves if they thought they could do a better job than a computer.
The man typed on a tablet. “Of course. The new scholarship student.” He glanced up at her, an unreadable expression on his face. “You know that Eris Dodd-Radson was very beloved here at Berkeley. We all miss her.”
It was an odd welcome, to bring up the person whose death had made her very presence here possible. Rylin wasn’t sure how to reply, but the man didn’t seem to expect an answer. “Have a seat. The adviser will see you in a minute.”
Rylin sank onto a couch and glanced around the room, its beige walls decorated with framed teaching awards and motivational holos. She wondered suddenly what her friends were doing—her real friends, downTower. Lux, Andrés, Bronwyn, even Indigo. She knew a few people at Berkeley, but they all already hated her.
And just like that, as if she’d summoned him with her thoughts, Cord Anderton walked into the office.
She’d told herself over and over these past weeks that she didn’t miss him, that she was doing perfectly fine without him. But it nearly undid her, seeing Cord now; his oxford shirt untucked, his dark hair a little unkempt. So familiar, and so achingly off-limits.
She sat still, letting her eyes drink him in, dreading the moment when he would notice her and she’d have to glance away. It was a cruel cosmic joke, that the very first person she ran into at her new school had to be Cord.
His gaze almost slid past her, seeing just another half-Asian girl in the uniform—and then he seemed to register who she was, and did a double take. “Rylin Myers,” he said, in the old familiar drawl; the one he used for people he didn’t know well. Rylin’s heart broke a little when she heard it. It was the way Cord had spoken the first night he met her, when she was nothing but the hired help. Before she stole from him and fell in love with him and everything spun wildly out of control.
“I’m as shocked as you are, trust me,” she told him.
Cord leaned back against the wall and folded his arms over his chest. He was smiling, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I have to admit, this is one place I hadn’t expected to see you.”
“It’s my first day. I have to meet with an adviser,” Rylin explained, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for her to be here. “What about you?”
“Truancy,” Cord said carelessly. Rylin knew that he sometimes skipped school to visit his parents’ house on Long Island and drive their illegal old autocars. She thought of the day he’d taken her out there, a day that had ended on the beach in a rainstorm, and she reddened at the memory.
“Is there somewhere we can talk in private?” She hadn’t planned on having this conversation with Cord, at least not today, but there was no avoiding it. She was here, in his world—or was it her world now too? It certainly didn’t feel like it.
Cord hesitated, seeming torn between his resentment toward Rylin and his curiosity about what she was doing here—and what she had to say. Apparently curiosity won out. “Follow me,” he told her.
He led Rylin out of the office and down the hallway. It was getting more crowded as the first bell approached, students gossiping in small clusters, their gold bracelets and wrist-comps flashing as they gesticulated to make a point. Rylin saw their eyes travel curiously over her—taking in her unfamiliar features, her angular beaded earrings, her close-cut blue fingernails and the scuffed flats she’d stolen from Chrissa, because she didn’t own any footwear that qualified as “simple black shoes without a heel.” She kept her head held high, daring them to challenge her, resisting the urge to look over at Cord. A few people said hi to him, but he just nodded in greeting, and certainly never introduced Rylin.
Finally he turned through a set of double doors into a pitch-dark room. Rylin was startled by the holographic label that popped up as they crossed the door. “You have a screening room at school?” she asked, because it was weird and because she desperately wanted to break the silence.
Cord messed with a control box, and after a moment, the track lighting along the stairs flickered on. It was still very dark. Cord was little more than a shadow.
“Yeah, it’s for the film class.” Cord sounded impatient. “Okay, Myers, what’s up?”
Rylin took a deep breath. “I’ve imagined this conversation at least a hundred different times, and in absolutely zero of those scenarios was I here, at your school.”
Cord’s teeth gleamed in a hollow smile. “Oh, yeah? Where did you imagine this conversation?”
In bed, but that was wishful thinking. “It doesn’t matter,” Rylin said quickly. “The point is, I owe you an apology.”
Cord stepped back, toward the top row of seats. Rylin forced herself to look directly at him as she spoke. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you ever since that night.” She didn’t need to clarify; he would know what night she meant.
“I wanted to ping you, but I had no idea what to say. And it didn’t seem like it mattered anymore. You were up here, and I was down on thirty-two, and I figured it was just easier not to dig it all up.” And I’m a coward, she admitted to herself. I was afraid to see you again, knowing how much it would hurt.
“Anyway, now I apparently go to school with you—I mean, I’m here on scholarship—”
“The one Eris’s parents endowed,” Cord said, unnecessarily.
Rylin blinked. She hadn’t counted on the fact that so many people would talk to her about Eris. “Yes, that one. And since I’m going to keep seeing you around, I wanted to clear the air.”
“‘Clear the air,’” Cord repeated, his voice flat. “After you pretended to date me so that you could steal from me.”
“It wasn’t pretend! And I didn’t want to steal—at least, not after the first time,” Rylin protested. “Please, let me explain.”
Cord nodded but didn’t answer.
So she told him everything. She admitted the truth about her ex-boyfriend, Hiral, and about the Spokes—how she’d stolen the custom-made drugs from Cord that one time, the first week she worked for him, to keep her and Chrissa from being evicted. Rylin lifted her chin a little, trying not to falter as she explained how Hiral had blackmailed her into selling his drugs for bail money. How V threatened her, forcing her to steal from Cord again.
She told Cord everything except how his older brother, Brice, had confronted her, saying that unless she broke up with Cord—unless she acted like she’d only dated him for the money—he would send her to jail. She knew how close Cord was with his older brother and had no desire to get in the middle of that relationship. So she made it sound like Hiral did it all.
And she didn’t tell Cord how much she’d loved him. How much she still loved him.
Cord didn’t say anything until Rylin’s last words fell into the silence like stones, causing it to ripple in waves around them. By now it was well into first period; they’d both missed their meetings in the main office. Rylin didn’t care. This was more important. She wanted, desperately, to make things right with Cord. And if she was being honest with herself, she wanted so much more than that.
“Thank you for telling me all this,” he said slowly.
Rylin took an involuntary step forward. “Cord. Do you think that we could ever—”
“No.” He flinched away before she could finish the question. The movement hit her like a blow to the stomach.
“Why?” she couldn’t help asking. She felt like she’d ripped her heart open, let its contents spill like sawdust all over the floor, and now Cord was walking carelessly all over it. She somehow held back the tears that threatened to overwhelm her.
Cord let out a breath. “Rylin, after everything that’s happened, I don’t know how to trust you. Where does that leave us?”
“I’m sorry,” she ventured, knowing it wasn’t enough. “I never meant to hurt you.”
“But you did hurt me, Rylin.”
Someone cracked open the door, letting a flood of light into the room, then backed away hastily when they saw Cord. In the brief moment of illumination, Rylin caught sight of his face: distant, cold, closed-off. It terrified her. She would rather that he yell at her, seem angry or wounded, even cruel. This casual indifference was infinitely worse. He was retreating somewhere deep inside himself, where she could never reach him—where he would be lost to her forever.
“I wish I could rewind, do things differently,” she said uselessly.
“I wish that too. But that’s not how life works, is it?”
Cord took a step forward, as if he was about to leave. Rylin realized in an instant of clarity that she could not let him be the one to walk away from her, not if she were to maintain any semblance of pride. She moved quickly to the door and glanced back over her shoulder.
“I guess it isn’t. I’ll see you around, Cord,” she told him, which was, unfortunately, the truth. She would keep seeing the boy who didn’t want her, over and over again.
Later that day, Rylin moved mechanically through the lunch line, wondering how many total minutes she had left at this school. Already she wanted to start a ticking countdown in the corner of her tablet, the way some girls did for their birthdays.
Predictably, the school had launched her on a schedule of entirely base-level classes—including freshman biology, since biology was the one science she’d never taken at her old school. She was actually relieved that she’d shown up so late to her meeting with the registrar, Mrs. Lane, if only because it spared her a full half hour of that woman’s incredulous condescension. “It says here you were working at a store called Arrow?” Mrs. Lane had asked with a haughty sniff. Rylin half wished she’d bought a pair of the flashing Arrow rainboots and worn them around school, just to make some kind of point.
As she stepped up to the retinal scanner to check out, Rylin grabbed a shining red bottle of water from one of the dispensers. The scripted logo read MARSAQUA, in letters that looked like icicles against a bright red planet. The cartoon letters repeatedly melted, dripped to the bottom of the bottle, then floated back up to re-form ice crystals.
“Martian water,” she heard from behind her.
Rylin whirled around, only to see her worst nightmare standing there. Leda Cole.
“They chip away chunks of the Martian ice caps, then bring it back to Earth and bottle it. It’s fantastic for your metabolism,” Leda went on. Her voice was frighteningly sweet.
“That sounds harmful to Mars,” Rylin replied, proud of how unconcerned she sounded. Leda was like the vicious stray dog that used to lurk near their apartment—you couldn’t afford to reveal any weakness before her, or she would never lay off the attack.
“Come sit with me,” Leda commanded, and started off without waiting to see whether Rylin would follow.
Rylin didn’t bother hiding her sigh of irritation. Well, she might as well get all her shitty conversations over with on the first day. It could only go upward from here, right?
Leda had planted herself at a two-person table near a flexiglass window that overlooked an interior courtyard. Rylin saw kids out there playing with flying video-cams and chatting around an enormous fountain. There was so much real sunlight flooding in from the ceiling, filtered by mirrors from the roof, that it felt like they were outdoors—if outdoors was ever this clean and symmetrical and perfect.
She sank into the seat across from Leda and dunked one of her sweet potato fries in aioli. Leda obviously wanted her to feel intimidated, but Rylin wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.
“What the hell are you doing here, Rylin?” Leda demanded, without preamble.
“I go to this school now.” Rylin gestured down at her pleated skirt and lifted an eyebrow. “We’re wearing the same uniform, in case you didn’t notice.”
Leda didn’t seem to have heard. “Did the cops send you?”
“The cops? Do you realize how paranoid you sound?” The idea was ludicrous, that Rylin Myers would become some kind of undercover police spy.
“All I know is that you’re a walking reminder of a night I’d rather not think about.” That makes two of us, Rylin thought. “And now, for some inexplicable reason, you’re here at my school, instead of down on the twentieth floor where you belong!” Leda’s voice quavered, and Rylin realized with pleasure that she sounded just a little bit … afraid.
“Last I checked, Leda, it didn’t say your name on the arch out front. So no, this isn’t your school. And I live on the thirty-second floor,” she corrected, “but I’m here on scholarship.”
Understanding flashed in Leda’s eyes. “The Eris scholarship,” she breathed.
“That’s the one,” Rylin said cheerfully, and took a bite of her enormous cheeseburger, relishing the look of disgust that flitted over Leda’s face. “Now, unless you have more threats for me, I’d suggest you back off and let me enjoy my lunch in peace. I’m not here to mess with your perfect life.” She put just a little emphasis on perfect, as if to indicate that she didn’t quite buy into the notion that Leda’s life was so perfect after all.
Leda stood up abruptly, scraping her chair across the dark walnut floor. She grabbed her uneaten spinach salad and tossed her hair over one shoulder. “Let me give you some free advice,” she said, a fake smile pasted on her face, and glanced again at Rylin’s burger. “Girls don’t ever eat the grill special.”
Rylin smiled back, just as wide. “That’s funny. Because I’m a girl, and I just did. Guess you don’t know everything after all.”
“Be careful, Myers. I’m watching you.”
What a great first day it was shaping up to be. Rylin leaned back in her chair and took an enormous sip of the overpriced Martian water, because why the hell not.