“THE ENTIRE FARM was designed as one enormous Fibonacci spiral. When you stand at the pinnacle, you can look down over all the levels and see the breathtaking symmetry of the plans …” the tour guide droned on.
It was Monday morning. Rylin had completely forgotten that she had a field trip for biology class today—she’d only realized it when she showed up to school and her tablet immediately prompted her to board the waiting shuttle. Rylin had never really minded being in biology before, but standing here now, surrounded by the entire freshman class, she felt an overwhelming sense of injustice. These kids were Chrissa’s age. Why couldn’t the school have let her get away with skipping biology altogether?
After the weekend she’d just had, a field trip was the last place she wanted to be. She’d gotten back from LA early yesterday morning—she’d rebooked herself onto the five a.m. train home, not even bothering to tell Xiayne her new plan. She knew he would receive an automated message notifying him of the ticket change, and he would obviously know what had prompted Rylin’s early departure.
She still hadn’t told Chrissa what happened. Chrissa, who believed in her so fervently, who’d handed her a new suitcase they couldn’t afford and told her to go follow her dreams. How could she confess to her little sister that her faith was missplaced—that her teacher was thoughtless and shortsighted, and it had all been a farce?
Just thinking about it made Rylin want to melt into a vicious black hole. She should have called in sick, curled up in bed all day, and shut out the world.
Instead she was here, standing at the main entrance to the Farm on the 700th floor. Like the Tower itself, the Farm was a one-word kind of place; there was only one farm in Manhattan, because there wasn’t space for more than one. It took up a massive chunk of the Tower, spiraling up through the center of the building from the 700th to almost the 970th floor. Each of the Farm’s three thousand agricultural plots was lined with solar panels and smart mirrors, which shifted from reflective to opaque depending on the season or the time of day, controlling how much light each plant received down to the very photon. And it was a constant-harvest operation, which meant that no matter the month, at least some crops were always ready to pick. Rylin half listened as the tour guide explained that the crops closer to the top of the building were currently experiencing fall, while farther down the conditions shifted to those of spring and wheelbarrow bots moved up and down the rows to plant new seeds. It was the greatest example of indoor farming in the world, the guide stated proudly.
“Not as good as the ones in Japan, of course, but no one will ever admit that,” said a voice next to her, and Rylin instinctively stood up a little straighter, her heart racing. Cord was one person she hadn’t expected to see right now.
“Felt like crashing the freshman field trip?” she deadpanned. She wasn’t sure why, but the sight of Cord irritated her, as if he’d come here for the express purpose of ruining her day.
“Seems like you had the same brilliant idea.” Cord rocked back on his heels, the corner of his mouth lifting as if to resist a smile. Rylin didn’t smile back.
“Unfortunately for me, I’m actually in this class. I never took biology at my old school. What’s your excuse?”
“I’m a TA, of course. For Professor Norris’s section. Too bad I didn’t get yours—I would have had fun grading your essays.”
“You, a TA?” she repeated in surprise. Her section of the class had a TA, but it was a quiet girl whose name Rylin couldn’t even remember. She would never in a million years have guessed that the other TA was Cord.
“I know, I’m so devastatingly good-looking that no one ever suspects me of actually being smart. But I got a perfect score on the AP exam.” Cord grinned. “Besides, Rylin, you of all people should know that I’m an expert in biology.”
Rylin rolled her eyes and edged away from Cord, as if listening to the tour guide. She had no desire to be teased right now.
“Whoa, you okay?” Cord asked, stepping in front of her.
At the concern in his voice, Rylin felt herself crumble. “Not really. It’s been a long week, and kind of a rough one.”
“Want to get out of here?” he offered.
“Can we?” The thought of escaping was so painfully attractive that Rylin didn’t even stop to think about what it meant for her to leave with Cord, alone.
“As long as we stay inside the Farm, I don’t see why not. Come on.”
Rylin followed him through the soil cultivation tunnels, past fields of spirulina and hydroponic ponds of leafy spinach, until they reached a bank of plain gray elevators. The doors opened easily for them. When they stepped inside, Cord pushed a button marked 880 AND ABOVE: RESIDENTS AND MAINTENANCE ONLY. He looked up and held his eyes open toward the retinal scanner. After a moment, the doors clicked shut with approval, and the elevator started up. Rylin lifted an eyebrow at all this, but didn’t comment.
“There’s a private park on my floor that’s part of the Farm. All the residents have access,” Cord explained haltingly.
Of course you do, Rylin thought. She just nodded. Her tablet vibrated with an incoming ping from Lux, and she quickly pushed a button to decline it.
The park that they stepped into at first looked overwhelmingly formal and French; all close-cut emerald grass and trimmed parterres sweeping toward a narrow landscaped canal. Then Cord led them past a brick wall with an old-fashioned iron gate, into an area of the garden that was clearly much younger, and less orderly. Rylin wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but it wasn’t this.
“Here,” he said, and sat abruptly on the ground beneath an enormous tree with spreading branches. After a moment, Rylin lowered herself to sit opposite him, leaning back on her palms. She thought she heard frogs croaking somewhere nearby, but she couldn’t see any water. Overhead, the ceiling was a beautiful false blue.
It was easy to forget you were inside a steel Tower in places like this, full of life and oxygen and growing things.
“Okay, Myers. What’s going on?”
“Um …” She wasn’t sure she wanted to get into it, not with Cord. She ran her hands over her arms, feeling suddenly cold at the memory.
He shrugged wordlessly out of his school blazer and held it out to her. Rylin accepted it gratefully. She remembered the last time she’d worn a jacket of Cord’s—when they’d been in Paris and he’d draped it chivalrously around her, his hands brushing her bare shoulders. That felt like so long ago.
“Thank you,” she said, sliding her hands into the sleeves. There was a loose button in the front pocket. She played with it idly, the plastic cool on her fingers. It was nice to know that even Cord’s buttons fell off.
“I’m sorry I was an ass to you about going to LA,” he said, trying again. “You asked me to be happy for you, and I really am. Not to mention, really proud of you.”
Rylin looked down. “Don’t be. I’m not sure I even deserved it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Just that you were right.” Feeling a flush of shame rise to her cheeks, Rylin told him how Xiayne had kissed her at the cast party the final evening.
“What the hell, Rylin? Are you serious? He should be fired for that.” Cord started to stand up, as if to go confront Xiayne this very minute. Rylin put a hand on his to still him.
Cord’s eyes darted to hers at the touch, and she quickly pulled her hand away, scalded.
“No,” she said slowly. “I don’t want to get him fired. It was wrong of him, but he wasn’t aggressive or … forceful about it. He was just being stupid.”
Cord watched her closely. “It’s still not okay,” he said at last.
“Of course it’s not.” Rylin fumbled for a way to explain it to him, that she wasn’t angry about the kiss so much as hurt by its implications. She wanted to go back to being the star holography student, the prodigy whose Oscar-winning professor had invited her cross-country to help because she was so talented—instead of what she was now: the assistant whose director had hit on her. Even she knew that that was a tired Hollywood cliché, and she’d only spent one week there.
“I just thought he wanted me there for real. But in the end, you were right,” she said wearily.
Cord flinched at the reminder of what he’d said. “I’m really sorry that I was.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m going to drop the class.”
“You can’t quit!” Cord exclaimed. “Don’t you see that if you do, you’ve let Xiayne win?”
“But how can I face him again after what happened?”
Cord gave a strange sigh, as if he wanted to be frustrated with her, but wasn’t. “There’s another holography class—intro level, taught by a professor who’s been here forever. The class is mostly freshmen, and it’ll probably be too slow for you, but it’s better than nothing. If you have to, you should at least switch to that.”
Rylin murmured her thanks and reached for a blade of grass, rubbing it thoughtfully between a thumb and forefinger. “I just wonder, sometimes, if my being at Berkeley wasn’t some huge mistake. In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t exactly fit in here.” She laughed, a laugh that was as dry as the leaves whispering above them.
“It wasn’t a mistake. You’re talented. Don’t ever let anyone make you think otherwise,” Cord declared, with a conviction that startled her.
“Why do you care, anyway?” Rylin heard herself ask. After what I did to you, she thought, but didn’t have to say.
Cord took a moment to answer. “I never stopped caring what happened to you, Rylin. Even after everything that happened between us.”
I never stopped caring what happened to you. That meant that he still cared even now, didn’t it? But did he care as a friend … or something more?
Cord brushed off his navy uniform pants and stood up, and Rylin knew the moment was over. “We should be getting back. I can’t afford to lose my job as TA. It’s the only extracurricular on my college applications,” he said lightly. He held out a hand to pull her to her feet. Where their skin touched it sent electric vortices down Rylin’s nerve endings, all the way to her toes.
“What, street racing old driver-cars out in the Hamptons doesn’t count?” Rylin teased, and was rewarded with a smile at the shared memory.
The whole walk back, some new feeling was pressing at Rylin, subdued and insistent and joyful and terrifying, and she didn’t dare look at it too closely in case she was mistaken.
But as the tour guide droned on, she kept sneaking glances at Cord’s profile, wondering what it all meant.