The Thousandth Floor

“I had help. And I practiced. Now come on,” he teased, “where’s your sense of adventure?” He held the passenger door gallantly open for her. Rylin sighed, mutinous, and took the proffered seat. The Spokes dug sharply into her rear, reminding her what she’d done earlier. She fought aside the fresh wave of guilt that rose up at the thought.

Cord reached for the handle of the garage door and manually lifted it up, letting the cool afternoon light stream in. Rylin brought her hand over her eyes to shade them. She watched as Cord reviewed the car, checking the tires, lifting the hood and studying the silver tangle of the engine beneath. His movements were clean and focused, his brows drawn together in concentration. Finally he slid into the driver’s seat and turned the key in the ignition. The engine purred to life.

They started down the leaf-strewn residential road—lined with houses that peered out at them with empty eyes, abandoned in the off-season—toward the turnoff to the Long Island Expressway. Rylin marveled at the way Cord’s hands moved on the wheel. “Want me to teach you to drive later?” he offered with a wink, following her gaze. She shook her head mutely.

The highway extended silent in both directions, on the left to Amagansett and the ferry to Montauk; and on the right, back to the city. Rylin could see the Tower far off, nothing but a dark haze in the distance. If she hadn’t known better, she might have thought it was a storm cloud.

“Here goes,” Cord said, and slammed his foot on the accelerator.

The car lurched forward like a living thing, the needle on the speedometer spiking up to fifty, then eighty, then ninety. The entire world seemed to shrink to a silent pinpoint. Rylin lost all sense of time or place. There was nothing but this, the car beneath them and the curve of the road before them and the rush of her blood pumping hot and fast through her veins. The landscape flashed past, a blur of sky and dark forest punctuated only by the yellow line glowing on the road.

The highway curved ahead. Rylin watched as Cord just barely moved the wheel, letting the car turn smoothly along with it. Her whole body thrummed with the energy of the vehicle beneath them. She understood why Cord loved this so much.

The wind pulled her hair in a loose tangle around her shoulders. She could feel Cord looking at her and she wanted to remind him to keep his eyes on the road but something told her she didn’t need to. He let his right hand fall over the middle console, driving only with his left, and Rylin reached for it. Neither of them spoke.

Finally Cord turned onto a small country lane. Rylin was still trembling from the shock and exhilaration of the highway. She saw a sign that said NO PARKING and wanted to make a joke, something about how even though she’d only been in a car once, she knew what parking implied—until she saw the white ribbon of the beach, and everything else fell from her mind. “Oh!” she exclaimed, kicking off her shoes to run toward the water. The wind had carved the sand into small scallops, sloping down to the angry gray surf that mirrored the skies overhead.

“I love this,” she said eagerly as Cord stepped up behind her. She and Lux had only ever been to a beach once, at Coney Island, and it was miserable and crowded. Here she could only see the sky and the sand and Cord, not even the houses that she knew were right there behind the dunes. It felt like they could be anywhere in the world.

Thunder broke, and a sudden downpour rained over them.

Cord muttered under his breath to his contacts. Almost instantly a hovercover emerged from where it had been folded in the trunk of the car, and floated through the rain toward them.

“Want to go back?” he asked over the increasing roar of the storm as they huddled for shelter on the beach, beneath the hovercover. It was the size of a very large blanket, printed with cheerful red-and-white stripes, like the old-fashioned umbrellas Rylin had seen in pics. But unlike umbrellas, which apparently had to be held aloft by anyone who wanted to use them, hovercovers were lifted by tiny aerial motors in each corner.

It could have been the storm, or that crazy car ride, or the fact that they were so far from everything resembling normal life. But Rylin was done waiting. None of the complications keeping her apart from Cord seemed important anymore, not even the stolen Spokes in her back pocket. It all faded to a distant blur, drowned out by the rainstorm and the beat of her heart.

She kissed him in answer, pulling him down deliberately onto the cold sand. The rain drummed even harder over their tiny hovercover-protected square of beach, but underneath, the sand was still warm.

Cord seemed to understand her sense of purpose. He didn’t say anything, just kissed her back, slowly, as if they had all the time in the world.



ERIS



ERIS STOOD OUTSIDE Cascade, an out-of-the-way French restaurant on the 930th floor. She tried pinging her mom one last time, just in case; but Caroline didn’t pick up, and she hadn’t been at home earlier either. Eris shook her head in irritation and stepped inside. She would just have dinner with Mr. Cole on her own.

Ever since their lunch last week, Eris had been asking her mom constant questions. What did it mean that Mr. Cole was her father? When were they going to see him again? “I don’t know, Eris. It’s only been a few days,” Caroline had said, then sighed. “I’ll send him a message, and we’ll see what he says.”

So Mr. Cole had arranged this dinner. Eris had been looking forward to it all week, had discussed it at length with Mariel, who nodded and listened but didn’t seem sure what advice to give.