Leda looked up, tremulous and hopeful. “You would do that?”

“Of course. No one should have to confess to murder alone,” Avery assured her. “Haven’t you heard? That’s what best friends are for.”

To Avery’s surprise, Leda gave a strangled, snorting laugh—and then just as quickly, the laugh dissolved into tears. It was as if the taut strain under which she had been operating was finally snapped.

Avery slid her chair closer to Leda, who leaned her head on Avery’s shoulder and kept on sobbing with reckless abandon.

“God,” Leda sniffed at one point, “why can’t I stop crying?”

“When was the last time you cried?” Avery asked.

Leda shook her head. “I don’t remember.”

“Then it sounds like you have some catching up to do.”

Avery stayed there, her arm on Leda’s back as if she were comforting a child, as tears slid down her own face.

She was crying for her best friend’s anguish, and what had happened to Eris, and what she had done to Max. She was crying for her and Atlas, and her own selfish fear that she would lose him—that this crazy, broken world would refuse to let them be together, and it would cost them everything.

The stares were much worse on the way home from Leda’s.

It was after noon; by now the article had gone completely viral, shared and re-shared in countless grotesque incarnations. Avery had been fine on the way downTower, but now, heading home, her confidence faltered.

The entire Tower had become a sea of hot, eager whispers and searching eyes. Everyone was looking her up and down, staring at her with a collective disgusted fascination. Avery wasn’t unaccustomed to being stared at. Her whole life, people had looked at her and said things: She’s so beautiful; she’s not as beautiful as I expected; I hear she’s a slut; I hear she’s a prude; and on and on and on. Avery had learned to let it slide right off her. Until now.

“Whore,” she heard one girl mutter under her breath, as she boarded the C local lift upTower. The girl’s friends giggled maliciously.

I haven’t done anything wrong. All I did was fall in love with someone they think I shouldn’t be with, Avery reminded herself. She tried to feel sorry for these people, for being so pitifully narrow-minded.

It got worse when the lift paused at the express stop on 965, and a group of her friends stepped on board.

They were chatting loosely among themselves, clearly coming from a hungover post-party brunch. Avery remembered those brunches: sitting across from her friends at Bakehouse or Miatza, ordering truffle fries and bacon and exchanging stories from the night before, laughing over the silly things everyone had done. They now felt like memories that belonged to a different person.

The moment they saw her, everyone in the group fell silent.

Avery made eye contact with Zay Wagner, but he quickly flushed and glanced down. Behind him, Ming stared at Avery, her lips parted in horrified shock, before she spun around to start a conversation with Maxton Feld. Avery’s gaze sought Risha’s—Risha, her friend since fourth grade—and she watched, almost in slow motion, as Risha turned her back on her. “I left something at the table,” Risha said in a loud, false voice. “Can we go back?”

Before the doors could slide shut, Avery’s friends had all turned and escaped the lift with an audible sigh of relief, leaving her alone, surrounded by strangers. The entire scene had taken less than five seconds.

This was a lot of people to be on an elevator this high, Avery thought, a little dazed; and then she realized that of course it wasn’t a coincidence. They had come hoping to see her, to get a glimpse of the infamous Avery Fuller.

A few of them stepped closer. She felt their eyes drilling into her, scraping at her—it was as if they could see straight through her clothes, to her naked, raw self beneath.

“Disgusting,” muttered one of the men, and he spit on her shoes, a great wad of mucus dripping there on her black suede boot.

Avery kept her chin up, blinking furiously to keep her eyes from welling with tears, but her silence must have emboldened them, because then another person—a boy only a few years younger than her—was calling out in her direction. “Hey, Fuller, heading home to do it with your brother?”

“Some princess of New York.”

“Why don’t you try this on for size instead?” one man cried out, making a lewd gesture.

“What a dirty little—”

And then the floodgates were truly open, and everyone was shouting at her, calling her vulgar, ugly names—things that she would never in a million years say to another human being, especially to someone she didn’t know. Foul slurs that Avery had never dreamed would be hurled in her direction.

The strangest part, she thought in a daze, was the raw delight on their expressions. They were all so eager to witness her downfall. They relished it.

Someone tossed a soda on her. Avery didn’t even speak up, just let the syrup collect in her hair, viscous and foul. It stung her eyes, or maybe that was her tears.

It didn’t matter, she told herself: This was just soda, and these were just words. Love would always be stronger than hate.

When the elevator finally stopped at 990, Avery saw in shock that there was a whole crowd of people there, gathered around the landing. Reporters and bystanders and zettas, flocks of them. They all immediately whirled on her, shouting her name, asking if she wanted to comment—