“I’M PROUD OF my father for everything he’s already done for the city of New York and everything he plans to do.” Avery forced herself to smile, her mouth spitting out the pre-approved sound bytes from her father’s PR team. “I know that his impact on the city will continue to be monumental.”
“And yet you’re planning to move to England?” the reporter pressed. A zetta hovered near Avery’s mouth to capture her response.
“I’m hoping to attend Oxford, if I get in,” Avery said, her teeth still clenched in that smile. She didn’t really see what her college plans had to do with her father’s inauguration. And how did they know about Oxford, anyway? Her application status was supposed to be confidential. One of her friends must have let the rumor get out—or worse, someone on the streets of Oxford had spotted her and recognized her. Which meant that Oxford wasn’t nearly as removed from it all as Avery had hoped.
“New York would be devastated to lose you,” the reporter simpered. She had bronzed skin and jet-black hair that was styled into shining waves. “Speaking of, here’s your brother. Perhaps he can join you to—”
“Will you excuse me?” Avery said smoothly, ducking to one side. Like hell did she want to stand here and be co-interviewed with Atlas. After that interview at the police station this afternoon, she was already at breaking point. She hadn’t told the detectives anything incriminating, but it had still rattled her.
The moment she got back home, Avery had immediately messaged Watt. For some reason she’d wanted to keep it between the two of them, rather than involving Rylin—or Leda. There was no predicting Leda’s erratic behavior in situations like this. Besides, Avery couldn’t shake the sense that Leda was still the one in the greatest danger.
She knew that Watt, no matter what, would have Leda’s best interests at heart.
I don’t think they know anything—do you? she had asked him. After all, the police weren’t really accusing her of anything. It was more as if they were prodding her, fishing for something without fully knowing what it was.
I’m working on it, Watt had said obliquely. I’ll let you know what I find.
Avery didn’t know what he meant by that. She was afraid to ask.
She stalked now through the middle of city hall, which her dad had transformed into a gilded and hologrammed wilderness, filled with a herd of overdressed New Yorkers. Her parents stood near the stage, greeting people, smiling their empty politician smiles.
She glanced around, wondering where Max was, even though a strange part of her felt reluctant to see him. She kept replaying that moment in Oxford—when he gave her the key-chip to the apartment and imagined out loud the life they would build there. If he’d handed her the key to his heart, she couldn’t have felt more guilty or undeserving.
Avery tried to set out looking for Max, but every few feet, someone stopped her. Lila Donnelly, who’d started the marathon on the moon, where everyone ran in weight-additive shoes to simulate Earth’s gravity. Marc de Beauville, one of her father’s greatest donors, who owned the midTower multilevel golf course. Fan PingPing, the Chinese pop star. They were all here, old money and new money, the curious and the bored, the businesspeople and the wide-eyed clusters of friends who had bought a ticket just because they had a weakness for glamorous parties.
She nodded at each of them, murmuring a few words of thanks before swishing past in her gown of gold tulle. It fell in frothy folds from her nipped-in waist, the edge of each tier lined in pale gold sequins and shimmering embroidery. With her hair pinned up in delicate curls and her mom’s five-carat canary diamonds blazing in her ears, Avery knew she looked glittering and expensive. She hated it.
“Avery!” Leda pushed determinedly through the crowd toward her. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”
“Hey, Leda,” Avery managed, her smile still affixed to her face, but it felt a little wobbly. Leda wasn’t fooled.
“What is it?”
“I can’t escape him,” Avery said helplessly. The words fell from her lips before she’d given them thought.
“But why would you want to?” Leda’s eyes narrowed. “Is it the apartment thing?”
Avery’s lips parted. Her mouth felt sandpaper-dry. Her eyes had darted reflexively toward Atlas.
Leda followed her gaze. Avery watched the comprehension dawn on her face, that moment of tacit understanding mingled with shocked disbelief.
“Oh” was all Leda said at first. “I thought you meant Max.”
Which was understandable, because she should have meant Max. If Avery was going to use a vague, antecedent-less him, it should have been her boyfriend she was talking about.
Neither of them spoke Atlas’s name.
“Look, Avery,” Leda said slowly. “You and Max are good together—calm, stable. No drama.” Somehow, the way she pronounced it made it sound as though a world without drama was as dull as it was safe.
“Max and I have drama!” Avery protested. “And sparks and fireworks. Whatever you want to call it.”
“Of course you do,” Leda said, too quickly to be convincing. She heaved a sigh. “You’ve just been so happy lately with Max. I don’t want you to lose that.”
“You seem happy too.” This time Avery’s smile came out more genuine. “Is Watt here tonight?”
She didn’t miss the telltale way that Leda’s cheeks flushed at the mention of him. “He was supposed to be here, but he couldn’t make it at the last minute. Something urgent came up,” Leda said, and shrugged. “He told me not to worry.”
Avery nodded. “I’m glad that you two are . . . you know.”
“Yeah.” Leda’s eyes skimmed over the crowded room. “Can you believe that we’re here? Senior year, at your dad’s inauguration?”
Avery knew the feeling. Time kept slipping through her hands, too quickly for her to snatch it. “If only we could go back, do things differently. Fix all our mistakes.”
“I wish,” Leda agreed. “But I think the only thing to do is keep going forward, the best we can.”
Maybe Leda was right. Maybe the secret to growing up was turning away from the ugliest parts of yourself. Pasting a smile on your face, and pretending that it—the kiss, the confession, the night you watched your best friend die—never happened.
Avery wondered if maybe she should tell Leda that the police had questioned her today. She didn’t want her to worry or spin out of control again. But maybe it was foolish to hide it from her. Maybe Leda had a right to know.
Avery started to open her mouth, uncertain how to bring it up, just as Max appeared at her side.
“Here you are,” he exclaimed, dropping a kiss on Avery’s brow. He looked crisply handsome in his tux.
“I was just going to go grab some dessert,” Leda announced, taking her cue to leave. She shot Avery a meaningful look before swishing away. Avery watched her go, the exaggerated V of the back of her dress drawing attention to her tiny frame, the stark black-and-white pattern of her skirts.
“Sorry. I was doing interviews.” Avery willed herself to seem normal, to refrain from looking in Atlas’s direction. Because even now she knew exactly where he was. She kept trying not to, but she’d been following his movements all night out of the corner of her eye with that silent pulsing radar that operates just under the surface of one’s mind.
She knew she shouldn’t be thinking this way. She was with Max now—she loved Max. It was just that Atlas had been her first love, and when he was near her like this, all their secret history seemed to cloud over her head and suck the very air from the ballroom.
“No more interviews. I get you to myself from now on.” Max reached eagerly for Avery’s hand. The warmth of his skin on hers felt reassuring.
For a while she managed it. She moved through the room with Max, kept up a stream of small talk, chatting about all the things they were going to do in Oxford. When the band struck up a slow song, she let him spin her effortlessly over the dance floor, her feet moving through the steps with no input from her brain. She accepted a flute of champagne, but it tasted like nothing at all.
Avery felt his gaze like a brush against her lower back, as if someone across the room had whispered her name and it echoed all the way to her. She lifted her eyes and looked directly into Atlas’s.
“I’m sorry.” She broke away, tearing her hand from Max’s. “I just—I need some air.”
“I’ll come with you,” Max offered, but Avery shook her head frantically.
“I only need a minute,” she insisted, more forcibly than she’d meant. And before Max could protest, she grabbed the skirts of her gown with both hands and fled toward the archway that led to city hall’s single elevator. The New York princess, running away from it all.
The elevator door was tucked to one side, facing a row of offices that were currently empty of people. Avery knew that it had been crowded over here earlier: Groups of bored partygoers had stumbled up to look out at the observation deck, wandered around drunkenly, then come back down. But by now everyone had worked their way through another cocktail or two, and the dance floor was picking up speed; and besides, these people all saw the same view from their living rooms anyway, and from a much better altitude.
Now it was just Avery, standing alone, tapping viciously at the button to summon the single gray elevator.
When she emerged onto the observation deck, she let out a great rasping breath, as if she’d been swimming and had finally surfaced for air. The half-moon of the deck curved before her. She took a step closer, reaching her fingers toward the flexiglass. The deepening winter twilight hovered outside the windows. She saw the ghost of her own reflection there, transposed eerily over the view.
Avery leaned her head against the flexiglass and closed her eyes, willing her heart to slow down. She knew she wanted to leave New York. But why wasn’t she more excited about moving to Oxford with Max?
For so much of her life, Avery had let her desires be dictated by other people, without really questioning them. She knew how lucky she was to be living a life so many people would give anything for, and yet it hadn’t been hers. She hadn’t chosen it for herself. Her parents had literally custom-designed her to be the exact person they wanted. Avery had absorbed their beliefs every day until they became her own, until she didn’t even know what she wanted anymore because it was all wrapped up in what they wanted for her.
She had thought that going abroad, studying art history, would be her way out of all that. Except Avery was starting to feel as if she had traded one set of expectations for another. She would be moving from the thousandth floor, and all the strings that came with it, to the life that Max wanted.
But was it the life she wanted?
She could see the years unfolding before her in sharp cinematic detail: filling that apartment with an eclectic collection of furniture. Staying there while Max got his PhD and became a professor and settled into a tenure-track position. A steady, thoughtful life filled with friends and scholarship and laughter and Max.
She loved Oxford, with its quaint charm, its cobblestones soaked with history. But it was hardly the only place she loved. Why should she limit herself to that single set of expectations when there was a whole wide world just begging to be explored?
Avery wanted to laugh too loudly. Drink too much beer. Smile so wide that her face hurt. Sing karaoke off-key. She wanted bright colors and raucous music and exhilaration and, yes, even heartbreak, if it came alongside love. Gazing out at the vast dark stretches of the city, Avery felt suddenly that New York—that Oxford—wasn’t big enough to contain the sum total of all she wanted to live and experience and be. That it couldn’t hold the volume of her unbridled, uncertain desire.
When she heard the elevator doors open behind her, Avery didn’t turn around. It was probably Max.
“You okay?”
Of course, she thought woodenly. She had told Max to give her space, and so he had.
Atlas was the one who never did what she wanted him to.
“Why did you come up here, Atlas?”
“I was looking for you.” His face in the moonlight was dark on one side and silvered on the other, turning his eyes to caramel.
“Congratulations,” she said heavily. “You’ve found me. Now what?”
“Don’t be like this, Aves.”
She tried to sweep past him, but to her anguished surprise, he followed her into the elevator. She pushed the button to return to the main level of city hall.
“What do you want me to be like?” she demanded. Her voice was taut with tension. Couldn’t Atlas hear it?
“Never mind.”
She looked away from him, keeping her gaze stubbornly on the chrome doors of the elevator.
They were halfway down when the elevator jolted to a sudden, unexpected stop and the power cut out.